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A review by michaelnlibrarian
Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by David Bianculli
3.0
This is the kind of book that I occasionally find in the library that I would never read otherwise. It is mostly chronological description of two-and-a-half seasons that the Smothers Brothers had a TV series on CBS with some pre- and post- history, with a focus on what they did that was advanced (in some sense) for the time and the things that got them in trouble with CBS and others - usually the same things.
Because of the focus on their being "dangerous" there is perhaps not as much about the individual episodes and their guests and so on a more of a fan oriented book would have. More tiring is the amount of detail about the different CBS bureaucrats who got involved in some of their problems - if nothing else, it is as bad as a Tolstoy novel to try to keep track of all these characters.
I was out of the country for the first two years the Smothers Brothers were on and may have seen a few minutes of one or two episodes, so I have been quite astonished by some of the stuff that is available now through selections on YouTube. I'm not sure they themselves were that funny or clever at the time but they sure pushed the limits for the time and some of their guests did pretty interesting things.
Because of the focus on their being "dangerous" there is perhaps not as much about the individual episodes and their guests and so on a more of a fan oriented book would have. More tiring is the amount of detail about the different CBS bureaucrats who got involved in some of their problems - if nothing else, it is as bad as a Tolstoy novel to try to keep track of all these characters.
I was out of the country for the first two years the Smothers Brothers were on and may have seen a few minutes of one or two episodes, so I have been quite astonished by some of the stuff that is available now through selections on YouTube. I'm not sure they themselves were that funny or clever at the time but they sure pushed the limits for the time and some of their guests did pretty interesting things.