Have you had a chance to see the new television program “At Home with Amy Sedaris” on the Tru TV network?
It’s a parody of the many do-it-yourself shows that demonstrate cooking, craft-making and interior design. For me, the series started a little slow with subtle conversational comedy about cooking and bathing. But then the shows began embracing more and more physical humor while taking on some ridiculous plots.
Amy is surprisingly good at pratfalls, as shown in the latest holiday episode, in which she gets physically attacked by a haunted nutcracker. That segment follows the snowman sketch shown in the video on this page. The episode also includes visits from ghosts that remind Amy of her past life, followed by the Christmas morning piece shown on this page.
I wasn’t sure how this comedy would connect with this blog’s water theme before the connection was made for me in an episode in which Amy visits the outdoors, which is actually where water originates before it gets piped indoors.
This particular show opens with a scene that includes Amy going outside for her morning exercise routine. She appears to be naked with appropriate pixilation, but that’s all part of the humor. She accidentally locks herself out of her house without any clothes, as she begins to plan for a dinner party that very night.
“Wait a minute,” she says. “Why do I need to get into my house to prepare for a dinner party? Everything I could possibly need the forest will provide.”
She borrows clothes from a female scarecrow. It turns out that the scarecrow is the girlfriend of Sully, one of the woodsy experts who helps Amy gather food for the party. But we soon learn that food is not Amy’s top priority.
“Imagine you are lost in the wilderness and have a party to throw in a few hours,” she says. “What would you do first? Build a shelter? Find water? Start a fire? For me, it’s make a back-scratcher. I got strands of hay from that scarecrow in my shirt, and it’s killing me.”
If the typical episode pokes fun at homemaking shows, this woodsy outing sheds new light on all those reality shows in which ordinary people go into the wilderness and attempt to survive with virtually nothing coming from civilized society.
“Did you ever eat a cattail?” Sully asks Amy while discussing food options.
“I didn’t know they were edible!” Amy says with surprise.
“They’re not,” says Sully, “but when you’re hungry, you lower the bar.”
Amy proceeds to get her mushroom species mixed up and goes on a psychedelic trip. When she regains her senses, her friend Ruth shows her how to make a centerpiece from simple items collected in the woods — such as trash.
Sully returns with a hollowed-out gourd and shows her how to boil water by dropping hot stones into the water-filled container.
“Well, what can you do with hot water?” Amy wonders.
“All kinds of things,” Sully says. “You can make soup or tea — or just let it cool down and heat it up again. That’s my favorite.”
Amy, a longtime writer and actor in films and TV, seems perfectly suited to this off-beat comedy. She began her career with “Second City” and “Annoyance Theatre” comedy troupes in Chicago. She wrote and performed in two shows, “Exit 57” and “Strangers with Candy,” on the Comedy Central TV network. She has made guest appearances on numerous TV shows and is popular on late-night talk shows.
In 2009, Sedaris narrated the PBS special “Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America,” a serious documentary about comedy. Since then, she has done voices for cartoon characters, performed in commercials and played characters in several TV shows, including “The Heart, She Holler” and “Alpha House.”
“At Home with Amy Sedaris,” which airs each Tuesday evening, can be replayed online at Tru TV if you have the appropriate cable or satellite TV subscriptions.
So far, the show has gotten some positive reactions. In an early review for Vox, Caroline Franke noted that Amy loves to make people feel at home before pulling the rug out from under them with a burst of laughter.
“If anything,” Franke writes, “Sedaris finding a way to build a TV show around her slightly deranged interpretation of domestic expertise feels long overdue. ‘At Home’ is the perfect mashup of these sensibilities, letting her entertain comedians, characters, and her famous friends alike with a delighted smile even as she perverts tradition.”
