★★★★★ 4.5/5

The first time I heard of Eric Andre was when he appeared as a supporting character on the offbeat series “Man Seeking Woman” on FXX. I thought he was a skilled comedic actor with a lot of charisma and screen presence, so I decided to look him up. It was then I saw he actually had his own series “The Eric Andre Show,” which airs on the Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network. A few months ago, my interest was peaked enough to look up compilations of the show’s interviews and sketches on YouTube. It was a shocking experience.

   Judging by the majority of Adult Swim’s current programming (with some exceptions), I assumed it would be tired shock humor and gross-out gags in a condensed 14-minute run time. It is all those things — except tired.

  Andre, along with partner-in-crime Hannibal Buress, has concocted a surreal and disgusting yet absolutely genius series that manages to deliver “Tim & Eric” levels of boundary-pushing cringe comedy in its under-15 minute runtime.

   Andre plays a fictitious version of himself, hosting a bizarre, ultra low-budget late night talk show wherein he, co-host Buress, and his band repulse their various celebrity guests and aim to make them feel as uncomfortable and confused as possible. Andre often goes on violent tangents, asks completely superfluous or frankly strange questions, harasses guests, and subjects them to witnessing a milieu of awful events. The other half of his show consists of Andre and his friends going around New York City, doing a variety of sketches in public at the expense of citizens.

   Now, while these premises may sound all too familiar, Andre’s show is unlike anything else on television (I guarantee it); it is also a lot smarter than it appears.

   Andre’s intro consists of him savagely rushing about his set, destroying everything in sight while Buress stands to the side in apathy and his frantic band plays discordantly. In the end, Andre sits, defeated, as the set somehow rebuilds itself around him as the show begins. In this display of off-the-wall insanity, Andre could be making a commentary at the state of late night television.     Andre also subverts the typical late-night formula. Rather than coddling his guests and sucking up, he openly mocks and disrespects his guests and subjects them to cruel pranks. Andre replaces the safe, family friendly-humor of late-night TV hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel with dark, disturbing acts that many find humorous just because they’re so upsetting to watch.

   His sketches, too, have a lot more to them than simple shock gags done in a public setting. Andre, like Andy Kaufman and Sacha Baron Cohen before him, does not care what society thinks of him and is committed to character acting in public. It is through this willingness to embarrass himself and allow others to have a laugh at his expense that he is actually in turn having the ultimate laugh at society. Most of his sketches involve him portraying a person in some sort of pitiful position. When in these various states of distress or despair, people either laugh and film, or merely walk by carelessly (even repulsed); no one offers to help him. By making people confront the most overtly upsetting aspects of society, he is unveiling something much more diseased under the surface: apathy. Herein lies the genius of comedians like Andre. Sure, there’s great fun to be had laughing or cringing at his awkward interviews, horrific stunts, and his purposefully low-budget look, but truly, it is the way Andre takes satire to the streets and involves his unwitting victims in this morbidly entertaining look at modern day society that makes this show as worthwhile as it is.