My Onion Problem

Couched

I’ve been trying very hard recently to really get into podcasts, but every time I do I have the same problem — I find myself listening to/watching the Onion News Network instead. But not just the Onion News Network — it seems to be the Onion News Network always and only from 2007-2011 and peaking in the Obama-Romney campaign. This involves a constant war with my own algorithm, which is forever trying to direct me back to the contemporary Onion News Network, which is ok but just doesn’t have nearly the same taste — and it becomes a far-from-ideal situation to reach across the counter with soapy hands (I’m usually doing the dishes while this is going on) and to navigate back to “Romney To Travel Back in Time To Kill Liberal Versions Of Himself” or “Romney, Santorum Supporters To Beat Living Shit Out Of Each Other At Montana Primary.”

This can’t be a good habit — what do I really gain from watching “Man Lives Thanks To Heart Stolen From Dead Man” for the tenth (maybe twelfth? fifteenth?) time? Hasn’t there been other comedy since then? As material goes, isn’t the Obama-Romney election — which I don’t remember being a particularly funny election — inherently limited?

And the point to make is that The Onion’s comedy at this time wasn’t just funny or escapist. It was perfect.

If we try to chart out the peaks of human achievement we might well come up with something like this:

• Alec Guinness (1977-1983)

• Radiohead (2007-2011)

• Larry David (1989-2011)

• Lana Del Rey (2012-2014)

• The Onion (2007-2011)

And there are a few things to notice. One is that The Onion’s period of perfection lasted for a comparatively long time — much longer for instance than Lana Del Rey’s two perfect albums before the light started to go out, and that The Onion produced a startlingly large number of flawless segments. Another is that what The Onion was doing was really very complicated — lots of different moving parts at once, between the writing, the casting, the acting, the production design — and The Onion somehow pulled it off with far more elements involved than, say, The Daily Show or Colbert Report. And then the other is that, for the level of peak performance The Onion hit, it’s astonishingly overlooked. I read The Onion regularly during this period but somehow never drifted over to the News Network — and, as far as I know, no one I knew really did either. I was paying close attention to the Obama-Romney election. I worked on the Obama-McCain election. The entire experience of that time would have been very different if we had all been quoting Onion News Network bits at each other, instead of rehashing Tina Fey impressions.

And as a result of its underexposure — it started on YouTube and then had two seasons on the IFC — none of the ONN’s stars broke out, which is astonishing. They’re all really great, but if we had to single out a few, this would be what the top five list might look like:

5.Tracy Gill (Tracy Toth) — The quieter of the two hosts of Today Now, the ONN’s morning talk show, but fully capable of stealing a given segment, either with blithe soccer mom sociopathy or a Stepford Wives-ish inability to hide her inner scream. She is at her best when she utterly loathes the guest — “there’s no light in your eyes K’Rronikka” (1:33); or, best of all, in her encounter with Rebecca, the parenting advice expert who dares to tell you how to raise your child: “You know, I bet a lot of moms watching right now are thinking ‘fuck you’” (1:50).

4.Andrea Bennett (Kyla Grogan) — It’s the very slight gothic turn that sets Andrea apart from the other field correspondents. She never actually does anything particularly Addams Family-ish, but it’s the knowledge that she’s secretly quite a sick puppy that just gives that extra bit of dimensionality to her reportage. Grogan is maybe the best actor of all of them in getting that relentlessly-upbeat-yet-totally-insincere news correspondent tone (“now some boyfriends have been dragging their feet on this issue” 1:48); (“with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vanessa Williams” 1:29) and it’s that feeling of her mind being somewhere else altogether that really makes it work for her.

3.Lauralee Hickock (Julie Brister) — The anchor of the panel. The danger with the panel is that the other panelists can sometimes blur together, although each has their own star turn (David Barrodale’s flailing defense of Obama in “Obama’s Approval Rating Down After Photos Surface Of Him Eating Big Sandwich All Alone”), Duncan Birch’s Being John Malkovich’s burst of self-loathing in “Is Pundit Duncan Birch A Worthless Idjit?”, Jason Copeland’s advice on how to disguise your amateur porn as your grandparents’ in “What Is Your Amateur Porn Telling Your Employers About You?” 1:54) but the panel wouldn’t be what is without Lauralee — her animation whatever the topic is (“Should Adults Be Allowed To Bring Kids To R-Rated Movies Where We Masturbate?” 1:52), her sheer delight at the suffering of others (“New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time” 3:00), as well as the occasional bouts of despair when the panel suddenly turns on her (“Should The Nation’s Unemployed Be Buying New Apple Computers?” 2:22) are the panel’s real secret sauce.

2.Jim Haggerty (Brad Holbrook) — This might well be the best comedy performance I’m aware of. It’s one note all the way through, which is the cheery sadistic pleasure a talk show host takes from his guests’ discomfiture, but the note is just perfect. A couple of highlights out of so, so many would be the “Man Lives Thanks To A Heart Stolen From A Dead Man” sketch (“You’re leaving something out there, Dave” 2:26) — and the attempt in “Firefighter Died To Save Unimpressive Teen” to figure out whether the loss of a firefighter for the high school girl he saved (“How will your going to college help to fill in the void left for Sam’s widow?” 1:21) is really a good trade.

1.Nancy Fichandler (Dorothi Fox) — The ONN, knowing the gold they have here, is very sparing in their use of Fichandler — every time she shows up on the panel, she steals the show as the wise old black commentator who happens to be completely crazy. Her excitement about the money fire (1:18) in “Should the Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole” is a good introduction to her, as is her nausea at the Obamas’ love life (1:55) in “Happy, Healthy Obamas Out Of Touch With Miserable Americans,” but the real star turn is “Are Our Children Learning Enough About Whales,” which, for quite a while, seems like a rare bust of a sketch until Nancy breaks into whale song right at the end (2:00). It’s important to notice as well how much Kip O’Leary, as the dilapidated preppie from the Shuttleworth Institute, contributes (2:15) to that sketch.

This is so far from exhaustive. Brooke Alvarez gets a maybe bit overworked, but the bitchy handoffs to Jane Carmichael (“eyeliner, Jane”) never miss. Congressman Ingersol’s dim-witted gravitas is essential to the C-SPAN segment. Omar Al-Farouq, Al-Qaeda’s chill but sinister spokesman (“How would you like it if you spent two months sleeping in a mountain cave planning something really special only for someone to take the credit away from you?” 1:00), is just perfect. Theodore Barrett’s gravel-voiced press secretary is very close to breaking into the top five list (“Press Secretary Spins Wife’s Death As A Positive”). The children guest stars are all stranger than the one before (maybe peaking in “Girl Raised From Birth By Wolf Blitzer Taken Into Protective Custody”). And guest chef Adam Scott probably gets credit for the single best skit of all in “Chef Cooks Dream Omelette That Came To Him In A Dream.”

So how did they do it? First of all, it’s a testament to how far dry humor can go — none of the actors ever come anywhere close to breaking; and I think the ONN’s dryness is why it’s possible to watch the skits over and over again without their ever spoiling. Then, even though The Onion was far from the only program to notice the comic potential of the news, they went much further than anybody else in understanding just how much smarm underlies the news business. Then, they seem to have decided that nothing was out of bounds and there was no such thing as too far in pursuing a joke (school shootings, for instance, turn out to be particularly rich in material, as in “Police Say School Shooter Had History of School Shootings”; as are mental health issues, as in “Is The Government Spying On Schizophrenics Enough?”). It’s very hard to say anything profound about The Onion News Network, but let me try this — much more than any of their competitors, certainly more than the Daily Show or The Colbert Report, which were essentially extensions of Democratic Party politics, they were under no illusions about the United States of America. Even while broadcasting at a relatively optimistic moment, they seemed to sense what was about to come with Trumpism. Everybody in their America is either perfectly lazy or perfectly venal, or often both. Their critiques of America often tend to cut very deep — when the American Dream finally dies as Tuffy the Pennington bartender is changing channels; or when Obama visits a Denny’s and realizes that he needs to drastically scale back his program for America; or when Obama’s ‘hope and change’ vision is revealed to have been a manic episode. In this sense, The Onion is fairly close actually to the “No Values” voters of “‘No Values’ Voters Search For Most Evil Candidate.” There is nothing redemptive anywhere in their take on America; and no hint of anything outside the satire.

Given all that, it’s something like a national tragedy that what might well be the best comedy show ever could disappear without a trace after two seasons, but all is not lost. It turns out, interestingly, that the ONN is better taken in as stand-alone YouTube segments — when you watch it together in half-hour pockets, it’s so brilliant that it gets overwhelming. And if it has a whole new life on YouTube, it also somehow keeps its own era very much alive — all of this is before Trump and before the body politic started to really disintegrate, but there’s something reassuring about seeing the whole thing captured so perfectly in advance. At least somebody was never under any illusions.