Late night television is prone to cult fandom. It’s the sort of programming that is almost exclusively consumed and created by misanthropes, insomniacs, unbridled misfits and those who live on the cultural fringes. From your macabre cult films introduced by a costumed host to your off-beat alt-comedy, what is deemed unfit for mainstream consumption is scuttled to almost-morning time slots.
THE CHRIS GETHARD SHOW was quintessential late night TV.
Watching THE CHRIS GETHARD SHOW was like attending an event a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend in an artist collective’s loft. An event where the antics of weirdos and misfits and live music was worth the trek up a six-floor stairwell littered with cigarette butts and empty fifths of Fireball.
(Given that the studio was in a NYC building six floors up with no freight elevator, and the show has its roots in live UCB productions and public access TV, all of the above is entirely possible.)
GETHARD — yes, the show leaned heavily on the comedic value of Chris’s last name — was awkwardly shoehorned into the now-defunct Fusion channel before finding its home at truTV, a.k.a. the IMPRACTICAL JOKERS network, which is where I discovered it.
GETHARD quickly became appointment television for me. I’d thrill to an hour of frenzied slapstick and weird but heartfelt and human interactions. Cult comedian Chris Gethard (who helms the BEAUTIFUL/ANONYMOUS podcast) was surrounded by a stable of quirky characters, such as The Human Fish and Vacation Jason, as well as his acerbic sidekick Shannon O’Neill (who you may recognize from appearances on number of cult shows like HIGH MAINTENANCE and THE OTHER TWO) plus house band THE LLC. Shit got messy in more ways than one, laughs and commiseration ensued.
Oh, and the stunts. So many stunts. The most emblematic episode of GETHARD — and one of the finest hours of modern television — was ‘One Man’s Trash’. If you have not seen it? Do not read any further. Just watch it and you will agree that it is an episode of late night that manages to top itself minute-by-minute.
(Have you have watched it? Then you can read all about how ‘One Man’s Trash’ was willed into the world! Oh, and also read Gethard’s reflections on it and his career while you’re at it!)
Now, six years after the last episode aired, Gethard got the band back together for one more live event. While tickets sold out immediately, you can still buy tickets for the livestream! If you miss it, hopefully you’ll be able watch it even after they exit the stage.
The bulk of the public access and Fusion eps are also available on YouTube, so you have hours and hours of some of the finest, weirdest, off-the-wall late night programming you’ll ever see.