Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about.
As I work my way through the household DVD collection, I’ve finally hit upon the entire series of The Larry Sanders Show, purchased a few years ago before it was available to stream. When we bought it, I had never seen it, and my partner felt it was crucial to remedy this oversight. In my defense, I was a preteen in the mid-’90s, and wasn’t allowed to watch a great deal of after-dark HBO (with the unusual exception of Tales From the Crypt, which my horror- and camp-loving parents sometimes had on as, like, family viewing). At some point as a kid, I developed the mistaken belief that The Larry Sanders Show was simply HBO’s late-night talk show, like any other.
This is because it is a perfect parody — achingly perfect. Garry Shandling plays Larry Sanders, the needy, egotistical host of a sub-mediocre late-night talk show. It aired from 1992 to 1998, and is hands down among the best time capsules of celebrity and pop culture of that era. It’s also, technically speaking, funny as fuck. This is my second or third rewatch of the show, and I’ve been told my intermittent explosions of laughter carry all the way across the house to the home office.
The Larry Sanders Show is really a show within a show — there are many, many scenes “On Air” in which we see an opening monologue full of hacky, sexist, racist or dated-even-for-the-time jokes (think Captain and Tennille references 20 years later), and interviews with ’90s guest stars like Jennifer Aniston (coiffed with The Rachel) and David Duchovny. There are dozens and dozens of guest appearances, with almost everyone playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Larry hits on the foxiest guests and bickers with his co-host, the obsequious Hank Kingsley (Jeffrey Tambor) — all the talk-shot beats are hit, in perfect, groan-worthy style. Any 10-year-old who happened to catch this out of the corner of her eye would not be wrong to think it was a very real talk show, tailored to an audience of particularly horny and juvenile 14-year-old boys.
Which brings me to the Writer’s Room! Truly, the “backstage” portions of The Larry Sanders Show are the best: The behind-the-scenes dysfunction, compromise, egos and incompetence that make up probably every television production (probably every workplace in the world) are simply perfect little playlets acted out by roomfuls of comedy professionals at the top of their games. Rip Torn as Artie, the show’s producer, is simply one of the all-time-best American sitcom performances, no hyperbole. The lynchpin of the entire production, Artie is my favorite character by dint of his being the best character. (Season 4, Episode 3, “Arthur After Hours,” perfection.)
Bob Odenkirk, Janeane Garofalo and Scott Thompson are some of the ’90s comedy stars who play fictional characters within the show’s orbit, rather than themselves: Odenkirk is Larry’s aggressive up-and-coming agent; Garofalo is the show’s booker, who has a great ear for left-of-center musical acts (no one ever plays the hits) but is otherwise armed with Artie’s Rolodex filled with yesteryear stars; and Thompson is Hank’s new assistant in the last few seasons of the show.
It’s probably my favorite TV-show-about-TV-shows out there, all due respect to Alan Brady, whose writing staff was 33 percent female. “Showbiz is bizarre and attracts damaged people” may very well be the ur-example of “write what you know.” But really: Is it not viscerally funny to see two grown men in their 40s arguing over petty shit while dressed up in ridiculous costumes for a comedy sketch? My answer is, yes, it is viscerally funny.
The Larry Sanders Show is still of-its-time in both good and bad, strange and ahead-of-its-time ways. “I just want to know when you’re going to have some black people on,” says Larry’s assistant Beverly at one point — and I’ll be damned if it didn’t fully predict the rise of Jon Stewart, who fake filled-in for fake Larry toward the end. This show is pre-9/11, to say nothing of pre #MeToo — so, yeah, like I said, Jeffrey Tambor — and also there’s Jeremy “Mercury Poisoning” Piven, but for what it’s worth, they both excel at portraying smarmy, inappropriate, over-sexed egotists.
But there is no reason to deny yourself the joy of seeing the urinal joke for the first time, or the episodes where Larry runs away to Montana, or any of it. And lucky for you, no DVDs are necessary. The Larry Sanders Show went online a few years ago, shortly after Garry Shandling’s early death in 2016. So take advantage and binge something actually good while you have the time.
