Middleditch & Schwartz (2020)

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   Siskoid

   I feel a little weird reviewing (Thomas) Middleditch & (Ben) Schwartz's three long-form improv specials (on Netflix) because I myself am a long-form improv expert (I play short-form too, but my heart is in the long form). So I come at it from someone who's been there. First of all, all three episodes are funny, the two guys have great chemistry, and their premise - having a short conversation with someone in the audience to draw inspiration from that collection of details (which doesn't really get any better than the first episode's absurd wedding party) - is fruitful and fun unto itself. The big challenge is that there are only two of them, and they have to play every character, never letting who's who at any given moment stop them from getting to the next scene, so identities are more fluid than I expected. The same character may be played alternatively by either comedian. As a player, I find Ben Schwartz the most like myself, trying to make sense of the progressively more baroque stories as suggestions pile up, and fixing plot holes and strange inconsistencies in an entertaining way; I feel like his role is to keep it all straight. Also impressive to me is how they keep the stories at the same length, possibly with the help of clocks we can't see, but even so, pacing is probably one of the hardest things to do in long-form. All three specials are fun and different, and the laughter is contagious, whether coming from the crowd or the duo (because they break character fairly often to react or corpse, which is very "improvy", or at least consistent with free-form shows, but a mistake in "theater games"-style improv; I tend to prefer character integrity myself). In terms of weaknesses, I will only mention their obsession with naming characters and then promptly forgetting those names. It happens in every show, and maybe they know this will lead to laughs and is thus part of their shtick, but at times, it's a little bit like quicksand and it sinks the story, if not the comedy. Well, I'm up for more if they have it in them. 3 years 10 months ago

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