The Other Two

The Other Two proves itself a worthy companion. It’s raucously sex-positive and delightfully weird, but underlying is a love of the very culture it’s mocking. It’s exactly the comedy that’s needed now: funny, feel-good, and forgiving of humanity.

The Other ensemble is across-the-board excellent. ... With its blend of biting showbiz commentary and earned emotional moments, The Other Two is a goofy gem, a modern-day fable about the healing power of other people’s fame.

It is not a new subject for a television show. But The Other Two, the ten-episode Comedy Central series that debuts Thursday, is so funny and comes at this territory from such a different side street, that it manages to feel like something entirely fresh.

While the premise is plenty clever, it's the writing -- courtesy of former "SNL" head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, who created the show -- that consistently generates laughs, from the title of Chase's hit song ("I Want to Marry You at Recess") to a red-carpet line interviewer who earnestly follows up the question "Boxers or briefs?" with "Israel or Palestine?"

Across the board the cast is phenomenal and, combined with the comedic legacy of the writers, the show does so much more than expected.

The series is acutely keen satire with a pantomathic cultural IQ, dropping references to the most-online personalities (from Logan Paul to Tomi Lahren), the indignity of post-internet fame (“Burger King is ripping him apart,” Cary says, wincing, after Chase’s botched performance is lampooned by the brand on Twitter), and the strange composure of Generation Z amid all this absurdity.

Created by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, The Other Two has a melancholy and an off-kilter kindness that undergird its cutting jokes and rude gags. ... The show, in its daffy way, is in tune with both the routine disgraces and great degradations of our age.

The Other Two doesn’t actually make many mistakes in its short and delightful first season, as it holds a mirror up to our celebrity-saturated culture while also making us admit that sometimes we deride it only because we aren’t a part of it.

It’s a witty and sufficiently demented comedy created and written by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, former “Saturday Night Live” head writers. ... There are plenty of jokes about the fickleness of Chase’s fame in the social media age, but Cary and Brooke are the show. ... Together, they’re a milder version of Billy and Julie in “Difficult People.”

No reservations, just a ringing endorsement for Comedy Central’s The Other Two, a smart half-hour comedy.

The comedy is smart about its focus and targets. ... Comedy Central’s new show keeps itself timely by not relying on clichés to sell the absurdity of the situation. Instead, it relies on the wit of its writers to prove why this show, out of all shows, can handle it.

A raunchy comedy of soul-degrading envy and desperation, with an unexpectedly sweet core. [4-17 Feb 2019, p.13]

While the punchlines of The Other Two only erratically tickled my funny bone, there are things here that some viewers will find nonstop hilarious. ... Even if I was frequently annoyed by the show's needless underlining or topping of its own jokes, there was enough I was enjoying to keep going along with the show, and enough that I was enjoying in the serialized story it was telling.

As you might expect from the concept, there’s a lot of cringe humor, sometimes too much. (In those moments, I would pause the screener in hopes that when I hit play again, Cary or Brooke’s mortification would have already passed. Reader, it turns out that’s not how storytelling or technology work.) But Tarver and Yorke and the creative team turn the sibs into appealingly three-dimensional and vulnerable characters for whom we want good things, even when they’re giving into their worst impulses.