'Two Guys,' The Smart Person's Stupid Show

Two Guys Drinking At A Bar is the Cheers for the new millennium. Let’s call it a minimalist sitcom. One joke minimum and in some cases half a joke, then tune in next week folks for the punchline. The first ep is a mildly funny joke. I smirked. So is this what it is? But at a minute in length, you figure, well I gotta at least hear the next joke. So second ep, hmm, is that canned laughter in the background? Well, that’s a little clever. Okay, next one…and so on and before you know it, you’re ten-point-five eps in (yes, there’s a Milner Lite ad at 10.5) and you find yourself easter egging the credits and googling Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, basically anything the creator Mike J Nichols watches or as I imagine, has watched in his entire adult life. And you realize, this is post-modernist webbing, and Marshall McLuhan would be proud of all the media commentary. For this reason, as Mike says, “Two Guys Drinking at a Bar is a smart person’s stupid show.” Amen.

The concept originated from a pilot script Mike wrote that he had no money to shoot. So with “four dollars and some duct tape” and a couple of great comedic actor friends of his, Kevin Farley (Chris Farley’s brother) and Paul Preston, he extrapolated two minor characters from the pilot and started what seems to be becoming a minor web phenomenon. Mike tells me he overheard four girls at a sushi bar talking about the show after reading about it in Wired magazine. “That was pretty damn cool.” I’d say.

The show is primarily Kevin and Paul at the bar with the errant cameo by who-knows-who just there to facilitate the joke. Mike says he thinks Quentin Tarantino would ‘get’ the show and would like to announce that Quentin will possibly be on the show though he doesn’t know it yet. I’m guessing it’s the pop-culture referencing he’s talking about. Oh, he’d also like to let us know – and this is for reals – “the show is available in higher quality (if you can even imagine that) via iTUNES. So SUBSCRIBE already!”

Editor’s Note: We are excited to have Jonathan Hludzinski joining the Tubefilter News staff. Jonathan has a graduate degree in film from Columbia University, was once a CE at Wolf Films (Law and Order, SVU, etc), currently has screenplays in development with productions companies Bad Hat Harry and Legendary Films, he’s bald, strikingly handsome and likes walks on the beach at sunset. And ladies, he’s recently single…lucky you.