Titus

Sorry about no posts on Tuesday but it was New Year’s and I decided I didn’t care.  I was too busy enjoying my new subscription to Netflix and having a Family Guy marathon.  Anyways…

Christopher Titus might be the funniest comedian to come from the last decade, which sucks for him because bulk of the humor is derived from his horrible life.  Titus comes from a childhood where his alcoholic father went through five marriages, his mom was a murderous psychotic who committed suicide, his sister committed suicide, and his adulterous wife took two million dollars from him in the divorce.

I’ve known some screwed up folks who had less in life stacked against them.  They give up.  Not Titus.  He makes jokes about it and he makes us enjoy being in his company.

You can check out his stand-up comedy on YouTube, Netflix, and whatever else is out there.  However, I just got done watching his too-short lived TV show, Titus, based on his first stand-up Norman Rockwell is Bleeding.  If you watch the stand-up, it’ll be fun to see every joke make an appearance.  If you watch the show first, you’ll have no need to watch the stand-up.

The show follows Titus and a cast representing his girlfriend, step-brother, best friend, and father.  Some of the stories and situations are made-up, but not as many as you would think.  Every episode is based on something that really happened.

It’s all funny, from the ups-and-downs of his romance, his father’s distaste for wussies, to the bridge-jumping episode, I laughed so hard my sides hurt.

But what makes the show rise above his stand-up was Rachel Roth guest-starring as his girlfriend’s niece, Amy.  Rachel Roth is a gorgeous actress playing a teenager who deals with personal tragedies with stronger sarcasm and violence than Titus ever put into his.  The show up until then was really about his relationship to his father and how it did and didn’t work for them.  The moment that Amy moves into his home and he takes responsibility for raising her does the show find its heart.

The most important episodes of this show was seeing him take charge of this troubled and back-talking and backstabbing (sometimes with real stabbing) child come to trust her new guardians.  This parent-child show didn’t feel complete until Titus became a parent himself.  It’s a shame Amy never became more than a guest star.  I kind of wonder what would have happened had the show been allowed to run longer.