In considering comedians who have moved the proverbial ball forward within their respective creative formats and platforms, it's probably easy, and perhaps even tempting, to take someone like Tom Green for granted. Having achieved a certain amount of fame and notoriety in his native Ontario with The Tom Green Show, which originally aired on Canadian television in 1994, Green exploded onto the international entertainment scene when MTV acquired his show in 1999. A combination of formats including talk show, sketch comedy, and interaction with the public, the show prided itself on subverting the expectations of traditional programming. The result was Green taking viewers on a wild yet ultimately hilarious ride with an approach to humor that was unorthodox, surreal, and oftentimes downright shocking. Regardless of the show's polarizing place in the vast annals of television history, there's no denying that it was unlike anything people had seen before.
While The Tom Green Show's tenure as a popular bit of entertainment was relatively short-lived (in part due to his diagnosis of testicular cancer in early 2000), vestiges of the show and its host's trademark brand of humor have long endured, finding their way into the mainstream of television and self-generated content on platforms like YouTube. Subsequent shows across an array of formats would enjoy a great deal of success by capitalizing on elements and sensibilities brought forth by Green on his show, further paving the way for and cementing the acceptance of comedic entertainment that was once considered brainless and disposable.
Turning the Talk Show on Its Head
The talk show is one of television's oldest and most familiar forms of entertainment. While each host has always brought his or her own bit of personality and comedic sensibilities to the format, there are only so many ways to reinvent the wheel and deliver something truly new and unique to an audience. Whether it's the dry and irreverent wit of a host like David Letterman or the more goofy and juvenile tone of a host like Conan O'Brien, audiences have always been accustomed to certain expectations regarding behavioral consistency and a handful of structural tropes. An opening monologue segues into a series of cordial interviews, accompanied by mostly straight-laced but occasionally edgy humor peppered in for good measure. While it takes a great deal of talent and creativity to adhere to and respect this format, there's something to be said for performers who are willing to upend standards and embrace an anti-comedy approach to an entertainment format typically known for traditional ethics and structural rigidity.
It's safe to say that Tom Green had no interest in embracing the norms and standards of a talk show. If anything, for better or worse, he was singularly hellbent on breaking every rule in the book and showing audiences things they'd never seen before in such a format. On the surface, Green approached this aspect of his show with a deceptive sense of familiarity on behalf of his live studio audience. As the host, just as every other host before him, he dressed up and sat behind a large desk. His guests, often locals who were promoting random products like disposable razors and power tools, sat on a couch situated next to the desk and participated in an interview (technically). Things began to take an unfamiliar turn, however, as this particular host would improvise and experiment with his guests and his audience. Whether he was undermining his own interview by suddenly thrashing around the studio like a maniac, dousing himself and his viewers with various liquids and condiments as if they were attending a Gwar concert, or jokingly targeting an audience member with accusations of some unusual transgression, Green led his audience and home viewers down a surreal rabbit hole of unpredictable comedic exploits never before seen in the talk show format.
Green's Unusual Approach to Comedy Would Become a Standard
Another method for generating comedic material in The Tom Green Show, and a very uncommon one at the time, was the notion of interacting and improvising with members of the public. Ranging from mundane conversations marked by a sense of banal comedy to shock jock bits involving animals, the comedian's ultimate goal was not to just bask in silliness but to also provoke reactions from unsuspecting pedestrians who had the misfortune of crossing his path. Whether he was pretending to be an injured man in a wheelchair and repeatedly falling down in front of concerned bystanders, or being disruptive and confrontational under the guise of some constructed character, the public segments of his show presented viewers with an experimental approach to television that operated under its own improvisational rubric. This school of comedy, in which the public itself was engaged with and manipulated for the sake of generating material, would eventually become standard among a number of reality TV programming and, eventually, do-it-yourself comedy videos on platforms like YouTube.
It shouldn't be taken as a coincidence that just a short time after Green's show aired on MTV, the network would debut another hit reality TV show with like-minded sensibilities: Jackass. A recurring bit in the show saw Bam Margera famously involving his parents in pranks and childish antics, sometimes directly as targets and other times as reluctant participants. It may be all too easy to forget that years prior, Tom Green was similarly foisting comedic shenanigans onto his parents, Richard and Mary Jane. He famously painted pornographic imagery on their car, woke them in the middle of the night by placing a dead cow's head in their bed in an "homage" to The Godfather, and repainted their house with a hideous configuration of horizontal stripes. In hindsight, it's quite remarkable that the comedian's parents were such good sports much of the time and allowed him to continue living in their basement. Jackass would also take a page out of Green's playbook by regularly playing pranks on members of the public. In the case of The Tom Green Show, whether the host's pranks were lighthearted and fun or outright shocking in nature, they ranged from his disrupting of public events in strange, yet largely innocent ways to his infamously sucking milk out of a cow's udder as stunned faces looked on.
A Lasting Legacy of Do-It-Yourself Entertainment
When The Tom Green Show aired on MTV in the late nineties and early aughts, the mainstream comedy scene was still largely dominated by sketches, sitcoms, and stand-up performance. The internet, while already transforming the way in which people transmit and receive information in fundamental ways, was not yet the juggernaut for self-generated entertainment like it is today. Had Tom Green been able to upload his material the same day it was shot and edited, making it immediately available for public consumption and feedback, he likely would've never even attempted to break into traditional television broadcasting. As is the case with countless content creators on platforms like YouTube, audiences would have gotten to know Green and his material exclusively in the digital realm. It's worth remembering that in the same way his comedic sensibilities and intuition for what audiences would find funny were ahead of the curve, Green was also among the first entertainers to jump into online broadcasting with Tom Green's House Tonight, a web show that originally premiered in 2006 as Tom Green Live. Broadcast from his living room in the Hollywood Hills, Tom Green's House Tonight showcased a basic template and format that has since become commonplace among content creators on digital platforms, helping to pave the way for and inspire other entertainers to take advantage of the democratized and readily available tools made accessible by digital technology.
Coming from a background that included skateboarding and hip hop music, each a form of expression that prides itself on tossing any kind of rule book aside in favor of blazing a new and experimental trail for oneself, the creative and comedic sensibilities Tom Green employed for his original show certainly adhered to the notion that there was no right or wrong way to approach getting a laugh. In a world where anything goes, and the performer isn't bound by strict regulations and audience expectations, Green was able to embrace an unfettered level of freedom that's all too familiar in the digital age we now call home. While the comedian's star among mainstream entertainment seemed to fade as quickly as it rose, the legacy that The Tom Green Show left behind is still seen and felt more than two decades later.
