ABSO- LISTLY

Know your Tim & Eric (2010-present)

nside a two-story office building on the outskirts of f Los Angeles, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are grinning into a computer screen. On a wall nearby, a painting depicts the comedians in pink suits and on fire. “Hey Doc!” Wareheim says. “Hey Doctor!” Heidecker says. “Hi friends,” says John C. Reilly, who’s on a video call from a studio in Australia. Reilly, the Oscar-nominated actor celebrated for his sensitive character work in Magnolia and other art-house classics, has built a second career in cult comedy. He’s Skyping in to record voice-overs for one of Heidecker and Wareheim’s television shows, Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule. The fourth season premieres this month on the Cartoon Network; it’s airing after dark, when the channel’s candy- colored animations for kids make way for the nighttime programming block Adult Swim.

On the show, Reilly, as Brule, an eager and incompetent loc local-tv health expert, sports a bad suit and a helmet of thinning curls. In the Australian sound studio, he’s wearing a sharp short-sleeve shirt. Wareheim, a huge man, is draped on a couch facing the computer. On the floor in front of him, Heidecker folds his body into a crouch. “We have one shot at this,” he says. “One shot,” Reilly answers. “All right, let’s make some ho-hos.”

What they’re really making here is the kind of TV Heidecker and Wareheim have refined over 20 years. It’s wobbly in a way that suggests their equipment has broken down, the tapes are disintegrating, and all the adults have fled the station. The style has made the comedians into alt-humor heroes, and, as they helpep other oddballs make TV, it’s turning the two o into emperors of the new fan-driven, platformmpolygamous comedy landscape. “Action!” Wareheim screams from the couch. “When he says action,” Heidecker says right away, “you’ve got to start.”

“Do it again!” Wareheim screams, pretending to boil with Hollywood rage.

“Here we go,” Reilly says and then pauses. When he speaks, what comes out is Dr. Brule’s voice, mushy and crooked. “Jail’s where bad boys live,” he says. “It’s where all the meanest hunks sleep.”

“It’s pretty cool,” Heidecker says, feeding him a new line.

“Jail is where all the bad boys live,” Reill Reilly says. “It “It’s pretty cool,” Heidecker says again. “I heard you,” Reilly says, not understandi ing. “Oh! Say ‘pretty cool’?”

“Like you kind of like it,” Wareheim says. “Cool place.”

“Jail is the clubhouse where all the bad boys live,” Reilly says. “It’s where all the meanestest hunks sleep and live. Pretty cool!”

The three giggle and pass lines back and nd forth about big-boy crimes and handsomee mug shots. Heidecker leaves the room, Reilly hangs up, and Wareheim runs a rough cut of the episode, which follows Dr. Brule into jail and on a highly unprofessional police ride-along. Just like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, the series that made the two semifamous, the work is too peculiar to count as slapstick but so funny that it doesn’t qualify as conceptual art—though their augmented ugliness brings to mind the artist Ryan Trecartin’s kamikaze post-apocalyptic videos. Watching the climax of the episode, which involves a kiss for Dr. Brule from a small man named Scott Clam, Wareheim laughs so hard that the noise rising out of him sounds like a hungry baby’s wail.

doesn’td worry about the business side: “I try to stay focused,” he says as the sun sets behind him over L.A. “A lot of people are like, ‘What do you want to do?’ I’m actually just doing my dream job right now.”

In the past year Abso Lutely has produced Comedy Central’s Nathan for You, hosted by an awkward Canadian who foists outlandish advice on struggling small businesses; Adult Swim’s The Eric Andre Show, , a talk show whose episodes open withh the obliteration of its set; plus IFC’S Comedy Bang! Bang! and Netflix’s W/ Bob & David. Also in development: a show starring rapper and Bernie Sanders activist Killer Mike, a special about the beauty industry with the exceptionally dry Esther Povitsky, and a series with the hammy pair Kate Berlant and John Early.

Their first hit as producers, The Eric Andre Show, premiered on Adult Swim in 2012. When André, a Berklee College of Musictrained bassist, sent them his demo comedy video, they recognized a kindred mayhem, and helped him channel it. The right pieces for a standard talk show are here—monologue, celebrity guests, sidekick, studio band, and man- on-thestreet gags—but it’s all scrambled. In the opening minute of his debut as the host, André appears to pry out one of his teeth, tackles his drummer, and stands naked with both hands in raw chickens. On one episode, he throws up while interviewing reality star Lauren Conrad, who freezes, aghast, until h he slurps the oatmeal-colored goop off his desk. “I like her,” he says calmly to his sidekick, Hannibal Buress.

One floor below where Heidecker and Wareheim brushed up Check It Out!, André is working with directo tor Kitao Sakurai on their show’s fourth season. Wearing Reebok high-tops and a shirt covered in photos of women’s nipples, André slouches with his feet up on his desk, eating a banana. “They don’t want to get sued, that’s the only time we