Improv-a-post-mortem

As Improv-a-Ganza lurches from one embarrassing ratings low to another, the GSN Schedule board ponders What Went Wrong. I chip in some unhappy thoughts...

Other poster: One of these past few days, I think I remember seeing an advertisement on GSN for "Improv-A-Ganza with Special Guest Host Charlie Sheen - Completely Uncut".

BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis tweeted something about the late night reruns getting raunchier than the 8:00PM first-run. I mostly snoozed through the one episode I had to watch for the review on the blog. So I haven't endured much more of Improv-a-Ganza at any time. Caught a few other bits and pieces, but they just seemed long and slow and often not very funny.

Even Ryan Stiles concedes that the pace on Improv-a-Ganza creaks compared to Whose Line: "...there's only three or four scenes per show, because we like to see these scenes play out. On Whose Line we had six, seven, eight scenes per show, so everything was pretty quick."

No kidding, Ryan. It's obvious that GSN didn't have enough funny footage, so they let the skits dawdle on forever to fill time. There must have been some genuine panic to produce that two-week delay from the original debut date of March 28. I assume some re-editing happened, but it was too little, too late.

Incredibly, Alex Davis gave this show a glowing review. I should have known better after Alex fell for the putrid puppets on Late Night Liars. But the guys at Game Show Newsnet also gave Improv-a-Ganza a "B". There are some real easy graders out there.

UPDATE: Alex Davis responded to my criticism. My reply...

Alex: If I'm a PR guru for GSN and getting paid off for them I'd first love to know where my paychecks are and why I maybe talk to them once, maybe twice a year and it doesn't tend to be overly friendly.

I'm not saying you're a PR guy for GSN. But your favorable review of Late Night Liars should have made me more cautious when I saw your enthusiastic review of Improv-a-Ganza.

You did make a caveat in your review: "The tricky part comes if GSN’s core audience will accept it. I hope they do because it is, admittedly, a big gamble for the network. They don’t take risque comedy that well as is evident by the very funny panel game show Late Night Liars."

The delay in Improv-a-Ganza's debut date and the lame bits of footage that emerged before the debut (I didn't see the screener episode) should have made me a lot more skeptical. But I still thought it was more likely that Drew would hit big on GSN. Then I actually saw the show.

I really don't think it's the "risque" nature of the humor, which isn't all that risque to begin with, anyway. Baggage and Newlywed Game are just as risque, and GSN's audience has certainly tolerated them. It's Improv-a-Ganza's overall lack of humor.

If you're going to do a non-game, non-competition comedy show, make sure it's got lots of laughs, briskly paced. Improv-a-Ganza just doesn't have that many laughs, and it's anything but briskly paced, as even Ryan Stiles admits.

As I said in my original review, the show isn't completely unfunny. All that improv talent has to produce some chuckles occasionally. But the pace does lolligag, which kills a show like this. It's easy to flip to another channel when a standup comedy show hits a lull, which Improv-a-Ganza does all too often. There's no competition to generate suspense, so the audience doesn't stay tuned to watch the twists and turns and to see who wins and who loses.