‘Impractical Jokers’ laugh at themselves — and welcome you to join in
It’s not sophisticated comedy that makes you wonder, “Did Oscar Wilde write this?” — and the guys aren’t waiting anxiously for the Emmy Awards nominations, but the show that makes me laugh the hardest, that’s an easy one.
It’s “Impractical Jokers” on truTV, a channel you may have to check the cable guide to find.
Yeah, I know it’s dumb, but dumb — done properly — is funny.
The four “Impractical Jokers” are Sal Vulcano, Joe Gatto, Brian Quinn and James Murray, four high school buddies from Staten Island, now 40 years old so they should know better, who star in a hidden-camera show where they compete to embarrass each other.
Each episode consists of “challenges,” such as seeing how many Post-it Notes they can stick on unsuspecting customers or cut in line to buy discount Broadway tickets without being punched out.
The loser each week must endure a “punishment,” which might be posing nude for a class of art students, sitting on a toilet in a restaurant with the door open and asking diners if they have toilet paper or answering humiliating questions for a lie-detector test at their alma mater’s assembly.
Like I said, dumb. But I promise, funny.
In one episode, they punished Vulcano by sending him to a bingo parlor packed with elderly players and making him yell, “I got Bingo” after each letter was called. It was so excruciating, his life flashed before my eyes. It’s a miracle he got out of there alive.
Or the time he sat at an author’s reading, and his phone went off every two minutes. Or the time the guys locked him in a stuck elevator with one passenger sneezing on him and another passenger holding a cat — two of Vulcano’s worst nightmares.
His most awkward punishment? Maybe when he had to give a speech at a wedding where he wasn’t invited, didn’t belong and didn’t know one person there.
“It’s the ones where I make other people angry or nervous that are the most painful to me,” Vulcano said. Finding his phone buried at the city dump was a piece of cake compared to judging a children’s talent show and having to ridicule the contestants in front of their parents.
What makes “Impractical Jokers” work — they’re four regular guys. They use their real names on the show. They don’t wear disguises. They don’t dress like TV stars. Three of them don’t exactly look like gym rats, and Murray is losing his hair so fast the studio floor must look like a Supercuts after a busy $12 Tuesday.
“Impractical Jokers,” with new episodes at 9 p.m. Thursdays, is truTV’s monster hit. Now in its sixth season, “Impractical Jokers” airs around the world, and the four stars tour the U.S. on a regular basis. They’ll be at the Revention Music Center for two shows, 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday. The next day they’re in San Antonio for two shows at the Majestic Theatre.
“We do some stand-up, we tell stories and show videos. It’s not a traditional comedy show, but it’s really cool. Our fans come to the show, and it’s like a concert. Some fans come dressed as us, holding signs; it’s a pretty incredible experience,” Vulcano said.
I asked Vulcano, OK, you guys are 40, and “Impractical Jokers” debuted in 2011. What were you guys doing between school and TV stardom?
“We had regular jobs, even though we were doing comedy on the side the whole time. I managed a bar and owned one for a little while. Murr (Murray) worked for a TV production company. Q (Quinn) was a fireman, and Joe was a personal shopper at a baby store. I think our friendship, now going on 25 years, is the hallmark of our show. We had a bunch of failed TV-show ideas before ‘Impractical Jokers.’ We were always trying to figure out a show that would capture ourselves, for better or worse, and our friendship.
“With ‘Impractical Jokers,’ people caught on and started to root for us. People say we’re celebrities, and we don’t know how to react to that. Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise, those are celebrities to us. We acknowledge the success of the
show, but we haven’t changed. That’s important to us. People want to hang with us, and they absolutely can. There’s no separation between us and our fans. On the street, when people see us, they come up and say hello. There’s a bond between us and our fans, and it’s really cool.
“Because we found success a little later in life, we know who we are. If they had happened when we were young, I don’t know how we would have handled this. It’s easier now that we’re mature.”
Mature? Applying for a job with the back of your pants cut out, exposing your butt cheeks, is mature?
Vulcano is known for being the easiest cut-up of the group. He’s always falling down laughing so hard that it’s smart to keep a trash can nearby. He’s the runaway leader in being punished — 45 times.
“Someone is really keeping track of that? I didn’t know I was so far ahead,” he said.
A running gag on the show is Gatto (aka “Captain Fat Belly”) running around naked. Even with certain body parts blurred, it’s not a pretty sight.
“You think you have it bad? I have to look at that every day. He’s always trying to make me laugh. There’s nothing worse than seeing him naked,” Vulcano said. “He has this thing, whenever I have to close my eyes or wear dark glasses so I can’t see, Joe slaps me in the face. I would happily accept a daily slap in the face if I never had to look at his naked body again.”