Saturday Night Showcase: TJ TV

My bosses like to drive me nuts.

Someone calls out, and they ask me to fill the hours, sending me home and having me come back later. Since I need the money, and (no offense) the blog isn’t a can’t-work priority, I had to scrap this week’s plans and use what little time I’m offered to throw something up here.

Lucky for me (God does weird things with me) a new series started posting at the blog side of That Guy With The Glasses. Yes, even the audience uses the site to promote web shows they are working on. These aren’t produced by Channel Awesome, and aren’t officially “That Guy” shows, like previous postings Atop The Fourth Wall, Bad Movie Beatdown, or The Spoony Experiment. Looking down at the blogs you can find some decent shows, like tonight’s Showcase entry, TJ TV, a nostalgia critique (not to be confused with you-know-who) show that goes after classic cartoons. The episode I’ve chosen is proof that even GOOD shows can be a source for comedy. So let’s take a look at Tyler James’ review of Thundercats.

So far he has also reviewed bad cartoons, like Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and Laser Tag Academy. However, ranking on bad cartoons, comics, and shows are pretty easy. Finding comedy in a good show is a challenge, and one Tyler did rather well. As great as most the Thundercats show is, it runs on some rather strange premises. But in some ways I think that’s why the show worked. It was able to make those situations work, but if I told you the basics, you’d think it was a comic out of the Silver Age.

As for TJ TV, I like his style. In only three episodes he’s done better than even some of the Channel Awesome crew if you look back at their first three episodes. Maybe Tyler had the benefit of watching those that came before at their best and work off of that. Guys like Doug Parker and James Rolfe (the “Angry Video Game Nerd”) created this genre of nostalgia critique shows, which work better on the internet than it would on TV, dropping the “talking heads” format of the VH-1 “I Love the (insert decade here)’s” in favor of one person going through the show, game, comic, or movie and making fun of it.

Here he already has his opening credits concept down, and it’s rather unique (or at least rare). Also, he has a cool theme song.

I hope to see more of this show. It’s a great presentation, and the boy’s a natural. He post new shows up at the That Guy blogs or you can follow him on Blip.tv. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him signed up with Channel Awesome at some point in the future if he can keep it up.