It seems like every episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! should be a bottle episode. With all the weird characters and inherent strangeness in the studio, there shouldn’t be any reason for Scott Aukerman and Reggie Watts to ever have to leave for material. In “Ed Helms Wears A Grey Shirt & Brown Boots,” all the action appears in the studio, which features both a smaller and larger studio, a place to make commercials, the world’s longest microphone and a serious rat problem.
So far Comedy Bang! Bang! has proven that the guests and characters that appear on the show are best when they have gone through the training ground of the podcast, and that proves true again this time around. Ed Helms and Seth Morris have worked together for years and appeared on the podcast together in an episode that Aukerman actually held back and almost didn’t release. But Helms and Morris play well off each other in this episode, with Morris playing his signature character Bob Ducca.
Helms first comes out to talk about his charity organization Comedy Bing Bong which trains people how to be racist. No, wait, that’s wrong; they help organize train races. Ed can never get that right. Helms is known to be a great banjo player, and it looks like we may get a sample of this, as he does have a banjo at the ready. But instead he mock-plays, creating banjo noises while mimicking playing. After this, Scott’s questions get really weird, asking Ed things like “what was that movie with Tom Hanks and a mermaid?”, making Ed reply “Splash?” It turns out Reggie and Scott are making a Ed Helms Sound Effects CD, getting him to reply with words and sounds they can use to use as sound effects for such things as ‘Man Ruffling Shirt’ and ‘World War II.”
Unbeknownst to Scott, Comedy Bang! Bang! isn’t the only show happening on his set. He finds a tiny hole leading to ‘Tiny Talk Show’ hosted by Smally Wallace, played by Jimmy Pardo. When Scott asks him if his guest will be Thumbelina, it just so happens he has Marisa Tomei as a guest, who Scott tried to get on his show.