Review: Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union
My friends at Showtime sent over a preview of the first season of State of the Union, which some of you watched for the first time tonight. Tracey Ullman is brilliant — as an impersonator, as a writer, as an observer of the American condition.
She creates amazing parodies of public figures (Arianna Huffington is my favorite — “blogs and kisses, everyone!”). She expertly skewers LAs egotism (My fave here is a toss up: Renee Zellweger taking the role of a woman suffering from “chronic narcissistic squint” or Helen Mirren, who show her tits at the slightest provocation. Distant third: David Beckham, trying like mad to become a big fish in the overstocked Hollywood pond.)
A few of Ullman’s regular folks ring true — and hilariously so — but others seem flat, forced, or just not funny.
Photo: Art Streiber/Showtime
Among the best, IMO, are Chanel Monticello, a spot-on airport security guard who glories in confiscating a woman’s expensive face cream, and Gretchen Pincus, a white-trash glory whore who has a habit of marrying death-row convicts because she enjoys the publicity.
The less successful include Nebraska housewife Irma Billings, who spends endless amounts of time hanging her laundry on a clothesline; Mary Ann Lefrak, who’s in her 70s and about to give birth, thanks to the wonders of fertility drugs; and a yoga instructor who farts on her local-access TV show.
That said, even when Ullman’s sketches miss the mark, they’re still miles ahead of other comedian’s. She’s sharp, and a keen observer of her adopted country. I get the feeling that, were State of the Union given a full 12-episode run, the show would blossom into the best comedy on TV. For now, it feels experimental, possibly because the two-minute bits are loosely connected by a narrator detailing a day in the life of America and a graphic of a spinning globe, a la As The World Turns.
Ullman has said she wanted the sketches to be about the same length as a YouTube video, which works fine in theory. But in practice, it lends the show an ADD energy. Problem is, she’s so good at some of the characters, she ends up leaving viewers wanting more.
Next time, maybe Showtime will give her a few more shows to spread her wings.
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