Delocated – The Best-ish Comedy on Television

Delocated returns for a third season tonight at midnight on Adult Swim.  The following article originally ran, during the second season on October 13, 2010.

All right, I’m going to explain the premise of Delocated, and see if you can tell me what doesn’t make any sense about it. It’s a reality-TV satire about a family in the Witness Protection Program. To protect their identities, they wear ski masks at all times, and had vocal harmonizers implanted into their throats. Yes, that’s right, they go out of their way to be more conspicuous. Even better, the Russian Mob knows who they are and where they live, so the ski masks serve no purpose other than as a visual hook for both the actual show and the show within the show.

So the very premise makes no damn sense at all, and yet this Adult Swim oddity is one of the best comedies on TV. In fact, I’ve sometimes called it the best comedy on TV, but then I remember that Parks and Recreation, Community, Louie and Eastbound and Down exist.  It’s right up there, though.

According to the opening of every episode (which, like any good celebreality show, has the characters explaining the series), it’s about a family in Witness Protection who move to New York City. “Jon”, “Susan”, and their son, “David”. Apparently, Jon testified against a Russian mobster, but we never really get any details. Four minutes into the first episode, Susan left Jon and took their son with her. They’ve appeared only a couple of times since then, so really the show has never actually been about what it’s stated to be about. Instead, it’s a show about a single guy who’s a bit of an a-hole, and the fact that he wears a ski mask at all times may or may not be important to the plot. And it’s shot exactly like a reality show. Delocated comes from Jon Glaser, who stars as Jon and writes much of the series. He used to be a writer for Conan O’Brien, and did voice work as Log Cabin Republican on Freak Show and DJ Jesus on Lucy, Daughter of the Devil. He also worked on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show, alongside Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K., Robert Smigel, and Charlie Kaufman. (The Dana Carvey Show – The most important television show ever.)

There’s something fascinating about Delocated. It manages to be one of the funniest comedies on television, while existing on a whole separate level as meta-commentary on reality TV. Neither of these things necessarily depends on one another, though. And neither depends on the ongoing narrative about the Mob’s attempts to kill Jon, which are sometimes the entire point of the episode and sometimes are not a factor at all.

As a deconstruction of celebreality, Delocated is unparalleled. The fact that we’re watching what is supposed to be a reality show immediately makes us question the motivations of the characters. Does Jon’s girlfriend, Kim, stay with him because she sees something good in him, or because she likes being on TV? Are his personal security agents and the network executives actually looking out for his best interests, or trying to create exciting programming? In fact, Season Two opened with one of the producers meeting a Russian assassin and suggesting that he kill those closes to Jon before coming after him directly, “to build drama”. It’s a deranged parody of that “input from producers” disclaimer we see at the end of every reality shows – the kind of input that keeps the obviously insane girls on Rock of Love right up until the end, even if Bret really isn’t into them.
Within the world of Delocated, the TV show (Delocated – New York) is popular enough to start a Witness Protection franchise, but nobody ever recognizes Jon from the show. And remember, the guy is wearing a ski mask at all times. Producers on shows like The Hills and Jersey Shore have to edit around the fact that the cast members are famous for being on a show about their lives, and it’s implied that Delocated does the same. Even the harmonizer implanted in Jon’s throat serves a satiric purpose – it distorts and flattens out his real voice, making it harder to gauge his emotions and giving him the monotone delivery of a Lauren Conrad or Khloe Kardashian.

In many ways, Delocated is almost a traditional sitcom – in some of the best episodes, the series’ central premise doesn’t even come up. In the recent “Jon He Does It”, Jon pitched a prank show to his network, and then he went around playing poorly-staged tricks on passerby. The fact that he’s wearing a ski mask and disguising his voice isn’t the joke – the joke is that his tricks are terrible and his “impressions” are not only bad, but mildly racist. It was one of the funniest episodes of anything all year, and Witness Protection had nothing to do with it. The jokes come from Jon’s spiraling obsession with pranks and their increasing complexity and hurtfulness. (Including his Prank Board with the unexplained headings “History”, “Herstory”, and “Prankstory”.)

Despite the high concept, Delocated is more than willing to just let the jokes come from the characters. Well-meaning (and well-endowed) Jay the Doorman; Kim, Jon’s girlfriend who hates him approximately half the time; Producer Mighty Joe John the Black Blond (a fantastic Jerry Minor); and occasional appearances from Jon’s estranged wife and son (who had a ska-themed Bar Mitzvah) – what’s funny about them isn’t the premise. It’s the way they’re written and performed.

However, the show works just as well when it advances the main story. The son of the convicted mobster, Yvgeny Mirminski (played by Flight of the Conchords’ Eugene Mirman) wants to avenge his father, but also to be a stand-up comedian. All of his jokes use ‘vodka’ in the punchline, but he still manages to bring in a crowd. In recent episodes, he’s gone from being a gag character to something more three-dimensional. There’s an actual conflict where he wants to please his father, but he doesn’t have the heart of a killer. “Kim’s Krafts” had Jon and Yvgeny face off in a stand-up competition sponsored by a pro-life pizza place, and it was kind of heartbreaking to see Yvgeny’s dreams crushed as Jon pandered to the judges with his jokes about the sanctity of life and potato chips. And later, an extended Face/Off parody had Jon actually switch faces with one of the mobsters to infiltrate their ranks. (He spends so long undercover that he gets married and has a child, then leaves both wife and son behind when he gets his face back.)

Surprisingly, earlier this season, Yvgeny’s more competent brother killed Jon’s parents. It was shocking, but remained absurd because we saw Jon grieve in the ski mask, with the harmonizer turning his sobs into something almost completely abstract. And then Jon honors his parent’s memory with an interpretive dance at the Witness Protection talent show, a dance which quickly becomes obscene. Steadily, Delocated has morphed from being a joke-y series (albeit a really funny one) with a ridiculous premise to being a fine comedy that’s not afraid to traffic in absurdity.

Yes, it’s a show where spunkybuddy and stand-up comedian Todd Barry plays himself in almost every episode, inexplicably hanging out with the Russian Mob. It’s a show where tortilla hats catch on with the fashion community. It’s a show where Jon runs for Dog Mayor, despite nobody ever having heard of the position before. But it’s also a show where a guy tries his hardest to connect with his son. Delocated was always funny, but it’s turned into something amazing. Yes, it airs on Cartoon Network at midnight and the protagonist sometimes talks at length about “the Bone Zone”, and it’s one of the best comedies on television. Try it out, and you’ll fall in love. Or possibly, you’ll fall in prank.

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