The Pulp Fiction episode that led down this winding road to Cougar Town…

If you don’t watch Community, this season there was a very special episode called “Critical Film Studies.” But before we get into what that was about, one thing’s first: what’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you watching Community? It’s awesome. Anyway, the episode, although advertised as a Pulp Fiction homage, actually ended up being an homage to the quiet conversation film My Dinner With Andre, with the character Abed planning a My Dinner With Andre inspired birthday dinner with study-group pal Jeff. Throughout the dinner, Abed tells a tale of his recent visit to the set of the TV show Cougar Town and how he got to appear in a scene as an extra. The fact that he says Cougar Town (an awful, awful name for a TV show) about 27 times throughout a 4 minute story is what made it hilarious, but the joke just got a lot funnier. Oh and he also said he pooped his pants and had to run off set while they were filming, and that’s always funny.

Abed has referenced Cougar Town many times on the show, partially because it’s just a funny show for a pop culture nerd to be obsessed with, but also because several Community and Cougar Town producers worked together on Scrubs for years. Nothing wrong with a little cross-promotion! Dan Byrd and Busy Philips from Cougar Town even showed up in the background of the Community season finale to further mix things up. But on this week’s Cougar Town we finally got what we’ve been waiting for: Abed as an extra. In the scene he does everything you’d imagine Abed would (aka everything an extra never should: overacted, looked right into the camera, stared at the actors and even mimed their actions. Oh. and then he ran off set. Remember the pants incident I mentioned?

It’s a hilarious cross-over that exists just because it’s fun. Abed should show up on every TV show. Check it out:

TV’s latest prankster and a man apparently very happy to win coasters.

The prank show has existed for almost as long as television itself, and for good reason. No matter how much people hate being embarrassed by pranks themselves, they absolutely love seeing other people made to look like idiots. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures. So it should come as no surprise to hear that a brand new prank show called WTF! is being developed by CBS. Don’t worry, according to CBS it means “Wow That’s Funny!”, because there may be 3 individuals on remote parts of the planet who don’t know what WTF stands for and we must protect their delicate sensibilities. All we really know so far is that it will be a hidden camera show and Drew Carey is developing it. I’m hoping it’s just an extension of Drew’s hosting gig on The Price is Right, but in this version they have to name the how much things like a baby or a stolen Miata would get on the black market. Also they win Monopoly money.

But until we know what this new prank show is all about, let’s take a look at some of our favorite prank shows of all time!

Candid Camera

The one that started them all, Allen Funt first hosted Candid Microphone on the radio in 1947 before moving the show over to TV in 1948. The premise of the show provided the archetype that most prank shows are still built on today: unsuspecting people dealing with something ridiculously weird, annoying or awkward while they are filmed without their knowledge. It’s like if Big Brother had a sense of humor! And keep in mind how hard this would have been to pull off in the 40’s. This wasn’t a world with Flip cameras, after all. I believe in 1947 cameras were as big as refrigerators and required a team of 3 men to shovel coal into them. Not so easy to keep candid! The show has existed in many incarnations over the years, ending its last run in 2004.

Punk’d

Despite Ashton Kutcher’s best efforts to make this show unwatchable with his over-excited, trucker hat wearing addresses to the camera, the concept of pranking celebrities overcame and proved hilarious. If we have learned anything from reality TV, it’s that the only way to make an already successful formula better is to add celebrities. Well, except for Celebrity Duets. It’s best to forget about that one. The reactions from some celebs to the over-the-top pranks were priceless, like in the case of Scrubs star Zach Braff, who tried to beat up a 12 year old for messing with his car. Lesson learned: Zach Braff really likes his car. And is kind of a jerk.

Boiling Points

The concept of Boiling Points is simple: let’s see how long we can annoy people with horribly rude behavior, and if they last a certain amount of time we’ll give them $100. So simple, yet so entertaining. Plus as a viewer you don’t feel so bad watching someone go through awkward hell for 20 minutes if you know they’re getting money. It’s like the show’s producers bribe the victims on behalf of your conscience. The show also has an odd claim to fame in the fact that Lady Gaga, years before becoming famous, appeared on the show and was served food with garbage on it. She received no cash, however, as she went on to cuss-out the waiter. I think she was just mad that the garbage covered food was ripping off the look of a new outfit she was working on.

Da Ali G Show

Da Ali G Show is unique for a prank show because everyone on screen knows they are on camera and are generally quite happy to be there, eager to share their expertise with the viewing world. The only thing they aren’t prepared for is who will interview them. As Ali G, Borat or Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen brought the prank show to a new satirical level on this show by posing as dumb and ridiculous characters to get average people and world renowned experts alike to say things even dumber and more ridiculous. Though it’s hard to pick a favorite moment, Ali G getting former presidential adviser/old conservative crank Pat Buchanan to refer to a weapon of mass destruction as a “B.L.T.” is up there.

Howie Do It

In this experimental hidden-camera prank show, NBC pranked audiences by convincing them (once again) that Howie Mandel is supposedly funny.

Did we leave out your favorite prank show? Let us know what it is in the comments!

Oh man.  You’ve got to see this clip of Jersey Shore’s Mike/”The Situation” and Snooki on Late Night with Conan O’Brien:

I love everything about these guidos.  And “The Solution” is an incredible nickname, don’t you think?  I really hope Conan runs with it.

And for shizz and giggs, here’s what Scrubs star/New Jerseyman Zach Braff has to say about Jersey Shore on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

Ha.  I’ve always wanted to hate Zach Braff, but he always seems so reasonable.  Thoughts?

HA!  Scrubs star Zach Braff speaks out about Zach Braff death (SPOILER ALERT: he’s not dead!).  Check him out:

In case you missed it, a rumor regarding Braff’s death was circulating something awful ’round the Internets (mostly Twitta) yesterday, with a hoax CNN page briefly legitimizing the rumor (the page has since been taken down).

The hoaxer in question, Jersey boy Chris Laganella has posted a full explanation and apology today on his website.  The gist:

Wayyy back in 2007, I copied CNN’s webpage and changed some text and some pictures to reflect an apparent Zach Braff suicide. This wasn’t a publicity stunt, it wasn’t a plea for hits, or to promote anything else. It was just to fool some of my friends. We’re really big Scrubs fans and really big Zach Braff fans. I made this page to fool them, called them to my computer, and showed them to get their reaction. I obviously told them it was a joke afterwards, but I neglected to take the page down.

You can guess how it snowballed from there.

A joke in poor taste but hey, at least Zach Braff now knows what the public reaction to his death might be.  And how many of you can say that?

[Source: Perez]

Oh snap!  Cougar Town, that show I’ve been trashing without seeing for the past few months, finally premieres tonight at 9:30 p.m. on ABC.

To refresh your mem, Friends’s Courteney Cox stars as Jules, a divorcée/real estate agent whose neighbor bets she can’t pull in younger men the way he does women.  All the while, Cox delivers lines like: “I was 19, I started thinking with my coochie-cooch, and then, bam, I had a kid.” Hilarity ensues!

Gross me out!

I read a few reviews of the show and it seems common consensus is that the problem with the show isn’t Courteney Cox (who we can all agree is a wholly decent comedic actress), but the concept itself.  I particularly liked this excerpt from the Los Angeles Times’s review:

This is a real show whose main conceit is that having sex with a younger man is fun and exciting for women over 40. Crude stuff for a family newspaper, but despite the warm-and-fuzzy-celebrity cred that star Courteney Cox brings to it, some funny lines and good acting all around, Cougar Town is a crude show, built on jokes about oral sex and droopy breasts, a show in which words like “coochie” are used with regrettable abandon… Clearly, creators Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel (both previously of Scrubs) are trying to take on some legitimate issues, and no doubt there is pathos and insight to be gleaned from a divorced woman staring down her mid-40s as her child prepares to leave the nest, wondering if this is as good as it is ever going to get. But that is no excuse, and I mean whatsoever, for having that woman look at a shirtless young man and say, “I want to lick him.”

Travis (Dan Byrd of Aliens in America) is Jules‘ teenage son, whose actual adolescence is being preempted by his mother’s second go-round. Jules seems to take pride in her lack of boundaries, giving their relationship an ick factor that even Byrd’s quietly hilarious performance cannot overcome. He does his very best, though, stealing every scene he’s in. “Why don’t you laugh at my jokes?” his mother asks after she cracks one about the fact that, in an attempt to prove her attractiveness, she flashed a neighbor kid. “Because they make me sad,” Travis says, giving voice to us all.

Wow.  That is some seriously poignant shizz right there.  Let’s all watch Cougar Town tonight and cry.

Well, shucks.  You can thank our buddy Allan at Mission Mission for the tip on this one.

Check it: visionary XXX company New Sensations has slapped together a porn based on Square Eyes fave 30 Rock. Yes, Square Eyes fave 30 Rock!

You really have to see this trailer. Someone over at New Sensations is like two secs away from landing a job as head writer (lates, Tina!), cuz this dialogue is pretty spot on, particularly Tracy Jordan’s (here: Trey Jordan).

This is clip is pretty SFW, depending on how chill your W is, of course.  Plug in your headphones, dummy, just to be S!

The video starts with a mediocre Cribs parody - skip to 2:10 for the 30 Rock:

Beep beep bop bop I’m a black robot, MFer?  Yup.

New Sensations is the same company that came up with that Seinfeld porn parody we wrote about a few months back.  They’ve apparently also made a Scrubs parody, as well as one for The Office.

Who are these perv clowns?  Former NBC creatives, spurned and short on funds?  Aspiring sitcom writers, desperate to get their feet in the door?  Or just like, funny porn-makers?  Yeah, probably that last one.

Well done, New Sensations!  Now where’s sexy Frasier?

Well, now I’ve heard everything.  Apparently a company called New Sensations is making a porno parody of Seinfeld.  Yes, Seinfeld. Possibly the least sexy show of all time.

Check out the trailer below - and don’t worry, it’s totally SFW, no nudity in this one.  I guess all these fellas are sponge-worthy:

The Porn Nazi!  Ridiculous.

Apparently, New Sensations already scored big with their XXX parodies of The Office and Scrubs.  And why stop there?  They should totally do Frasier next.

Blarf!  Remember how weirded out we were to learn that Courteney Cox had signed on to star in a sitcom called Cougar Town? Remember how dismayed we all were to find out how low our beloved Friends’s standards had dropped?

Okay, maybe it was just me… but you’re about to agree 100%.

What I’m about to show you isn’t easy on the eyes.  Posted today, it’s two preview clips from Cox’s new show, Cougar Town, premiering this fall no ABC.  Observe:

Sacre bleu!  I’m at a loss for words.  What is with the over-the-top delivery of those embarrassing jokes?  I don’t remember Courteney Cox ever being so awkwardly zany, either.

Perhaps she’s better suited for the quippy, dry East Coast humor of her youth (see: Family Ties, Friends).  Us Californians are SO obnoxious.

I blame Jennifer Aniston.

Ooh la la!  So a few months ago we posted our doubts that George Clooney would ever return to ER.  Boy, was there egg on our face when PopSugar posted the following pics:

It’s the Cloonester, all scrubbed up and ready to operate!  ER is in serious need of some resuscitation, too. If I were a huge nerd, I’d make some sexy joke about George Clooney doing mouth-to-mouth right about NOW.

Oops!

Now if only he’d agree to a Facts of Life reunion special.  I’m totally willing to hammer out a script for that if no one else is game, btw.

Did everyone watch Thursday’s The Office / 30 Rock powerblock last night?  Kinda snoozy, no?  Neither a stand-out episode, if you ask me.

In any case, still love ‘em, and sure am glad both have been renewed for the 2009-2010 season on NBC.  Sarah Palin totally saved 30 Rock, y’all.  Thanks, S.P!!!

But ANYWAY!  Exciting news this week related to the NBC powerblock!  The premise of Untitled Amy Poehler Comedy Project has been revealed!

What was originally to be a spin-off of The Office but then wasn’t, Untitled Amy Poehler Comedy Project will be filmed in the same mockumentary style, but set in the wacky world of local government rather than an office.

Poehler will play Leslie Knope, a “mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana” who teams up with a local nurse (Rashida Jones from - what else? - The Office) to get a construction pit turned into a park.  Along the way, she butts heads with a town official played by Aziz Ansari of Human Giant and Scrubs.

Still no title, howevs.  I’m sorta hoping they go with Untitled Amy Poehler Comedy Project, though.  I don’t like change.

Thoughts?  Doesn’t sound all that exciting to me, though I’m extremely willing to be proven wrong.  I’m a big fan of Amy Poehler, particularly her one-legged reality show contestant character Amber on Saturday Night Live.

Peep this and never be the same again:

Happy Friday!

I’m outtie, nerds!  Jealous?