Comedy Bang! Bang!: “Joel McHale”

Comedy Bang! Bang! is a lot like the Celebrity Makeovers segment presented on this week’s episode: sometimes the different bits are just sort of smashed together, like a picture of Candice Bergen and Mike Tyson forced next to each other. But more often than not, they come together in a perfect way, into a real Morph-Me Brown situation, where things just sort of click. Thankfully “Joel McHale Wears a Navy Zip-Up and High Tops” is a pretty great Morph-Me Brown of an episode.

Like last week’s episode, last night’s event benefited from a looser structure, one that the entire story doesn’t rely on. “Joel McHale”’s introduction of the Comedy Touch Touch-1000—a smartscreen TV that can tell jokes and has comedy apps that seem to want to compare and contrast Shaq and Wallace Shawn—is a fun, 2001 inspired idea. But it’s Neil Campbell as the Terminator-esque naked man from the future trying to warn everyone that really steals the show, as Campbell is so often able to do.

Joel McHale is a perfectly fine guest, but as usual, he’s best when he’s his smarmy, slightly douchey persona. When the CBB crew doesn’t applaud him like his The Soup crew does, he leaves the stage and comes back for a second try. McHale doesn’t get enough of these moments, but there is some very funny riffing going on between him, Scott and Reggie while discussing his appearance in Spider-Man 2 and Reggie’s supposed appearance in Also Spider-Man, directed by Germy Jarmusch. For a second week in a row, CBB also reuses a similar idea, with a bit about McHale recording the show, then playing it back on the show with Scott doing something different. It’s not a huge distraction, but it also isn’t as great as it could’ve been.