Vital stats:
Format: TTWGBAC/L.A. comedy improversation
Duration: ~1h
Frequency: weekly
Archive available on iTunes: all
One episode of The Biggest Mistake [RSS] [iTunes] features an hour-plus guest appearance by Jordan Morris. [MP3] It’s a good time. Many chuckleworthy jokes are cracked. Only a few fall flat. If you hang around a speakeasy like this, chances are that’s all the prompting you’ll need to check the show out. If that’s not all the prompting you need, let me assure you that, paradoxically, you’ll only really learn if you want to listen to this show by, uh, listening to it.
I do have to hand it, in kind of a left-handed way, to hosts Dan Dominguez, Paul Jay and Jennifer Goldberg: they’ve picked an imposingly steep mountain to climb. While I routinely declare moratoria on further Podthinking about programs of the Two Twenty/Thirtysomething White Guys/Girls Bullshitting About Culture (TTWGBAC) form or those revolving around the feeling-ever-smaller Los Angeles comedy scene — on the podcast beat, you hear volumes of this that would make grown men lose control of four out of five bodily functions — I always find my way back. Here, in that spirit, is another intersection of both.
It is by no means bad to birth a podcast of this breed in 2010, but it’s hard: the hosts/producers of such a show have a daunting bout of self-distinguishment cut out for them. Task one would be rising above the landslide of cheap or free — usually free — cultural bullshitting and L.A. comedy that has covered the podscape. Task two, tougher still, would be to take on the existing titans of the genre(s), hoisted aloft as they are by their grandfatherly seniority and aggressively loyal fanbases.
But nothing I’ve heard from The Biggest Mistake suggests they can’t do it! I looked up the show upon first hearing it was helmed, in part, by Dominguez. Though I remembered him quite fondly from an appearance on The Paul Goebel Show, I couldn’t quite remember why. Smart money’s on the fact that he announced there that his MySpace username was “danshitsyourfaceapart.” For whatever reason, it stuck with me. I simply had to know what the guy was going to do with his own podcast.
On it, he’s joined by fellow L.A.median (there’s no elegant portmanteau) Jay, of whom I was previously unaware. The stool’s third leg exists in the form of Goldberg, co-host as well as producer as well as Jay’s ladyfriend. Though she may or may not be a comedian, technically speaking, she is beyond dispute comedic. The couple hold their own, but at least in the first eleven episodes, Dominguez stands out as the dominantly strange presence. As his choice in MySpace accounts suggests, he’s willing to take a few more and more absurd risks than your average L.A. comedian bullshitting about culture on a podcast. This means his lines occasionally fall into awkward silences, provoke bewlidered half-laughs or are total nonsense. But they’re something. They’re real and alive.
Since it’s such early days, I’m quite interested to see how The Biggest Mistake will ultimately form a solid identity with which to set itself apart. Within the TTWGBAC and/or Never Not Funny-ish conversational comedy formats, it couldn’t be simpler: the hosts get together, bring on a comedy-y guest and chat about ridiculous subjects for about an hour — no segments, no listener participation, no discernible regular features. And that can totally work. It must be said, though that the podcast’s tagline — “Like all other podcasts, only more so. And then some” — may or may not inspire confidence. It could signal a refreshing self-awareness about some of the already ossified tropes of this newish medium. Or it could be meant ironically. And don’t they say irony is the song of a bird who’s come to love its cage?
[Want to hire Podthinker Colin Marshall to Podthink at your bat mitzvah? colinjmarshall at gmail.]