azsmutfan
I loved the original "skit" from funny or die and never knew this shoe existed till today. Azariais delivery on every thing is so announcer like. Being a fan of baseball and listening to Buck,Carey,Scully growing up,where there is a art of telling a story as well as calling the game.It is just funny,brilliant and i cant wait for more.
ruthlessroddy
I had heard about this show but soon realized I don't get the IFC channel, but I do get AMC and was able to watch it on there (for those who may be in the same boat with IFC). I went through the first 5 episodes in an afternoon and laughed my butt off. Azaria's character Jim is both despicable and lovable at the same time because you just don't know what he's going to say next. Everything that comes out of his mouth is either a story with an immoral 'moral' to tell, or is just his brutal, frank way of being a man who just doesn't give a cr*p what anybody thinks. Peet (AKA Jules) is the team's owner who needs Brockmire's name (albeit disgraced in the public eye) to help revive her bush-league baseball team, in an otherwise would-be small town where most people look like they haven't showered in weeks. The chemistry between owner and announcer is dysfunctional, yet undeniable at the same time. And then there's the young naive intern Charles, pitted in-between them and trying help anyway he can while generally astonished at the behavior of just about everybody around him, including the game of baseball itself which he barely understands. Everything clicks nicely and the laughs are there for the taking, after the initial shock of what is said and done by the many characters involved. You don't have to be a fan of baseball to enjoy this show, but if you are, you will only appreciate the shows humor and setting even more. I hope they can stretch a lot out of this shows concept, because the story line works great, but for how long will only be determined by the quantitative talents of the writers. But for now, so far so funny, very very funny... I eagerly await episode 6...
RNDorrell
"Brockmire," starring Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet, is frankly hilarious. (The highlight of this show are the jokes in the dialogue, so summarizing the plot so far doesn't really amount to the disclosure of too many spoilers.) This has to be the show meant to be created just for Azaria (and primarily by Azaria), although it began as one of a set of Funny Or Die videos. He plays an on-the-precipice-of-irretrievably-washed-up baseball announcer Jim Brockmire, whose acidly cynical prose and foulest of mouths serves up a nonstop flood of hardball commentary and darkly comic social poetry. He hates the world, people, his life and his part in it, and yet he loves baseball because of its potential for purity and poetry, but also for how ridiculous a spectacle it can often be. Brockmire, who had been among the gold standard of announcers in the bigs, gets fired for cause by a team in K.C. after an extended, alcohol-fueled, on-air rant about deviant sex practices involving his ex-wife, later succinctly captured by the term "Lucy-ed." After wandering in overseas venues for 10 years (including a stint calling cockfights in Manila), he alights in Morristown, Pa., an economically dispirited town where the local off-off-off market semipro ball club, the Frackers, must compete with meth, the other low-cost form of recreation in the area. The team are a sorry lot of uniquely untalented, skinny geeks, plus several morbidly obese hackers, and one former big leaguer of actual talent and Latin origin, Uribe (played with swagger by Hemky Madera), who has tons of la Postura. All of the Frackers worship Brockmire for the sake of his middle aged bad boy YouTube profile, of which, as the show begins, Brockmire himself was wholly unaware. While overseas, he missed the whole Internet thing, which eventually involved Drake writing a lyric about him "keeping it Brockmire." Peet plays a smart baseball idealist and owner of a local bar that she inherited from her Dad, who was a Pirates fan. She sold her house and took out a mortgage on the bar to buy the downtrodden, fleabag Frackers. She gradually convinces Brockmire of the insane gonzo quality of him doing play by play commentary over the P.A. system in the stadium, for perhaps the worst pro ballclub in existence, but she has plans to build up the team's public persona. Tyrel Jackson Williams plays a socially awkward tech geek who becomes Brockmire's social media assistant, and he adds the vibe of someone fascinated while watching a car wreck's aftermath. There's a gag in which one shirtless local fans busies himself by stripping and repairing a lawnmower engine in an otherwise vacant section of the stands. The writing in this show is outrageously, caustically, and obscenely funny, and Azaria's glibly sour delivery is damned near perfect. Yes, it's gimmicky. But it's the best kind of gimmicky. As Brockmire's call of an improbable grand slam homer, with three severely obese players jamming the bases (they all got hit in their capacious guts or asses by pitched balls), unwinds over the stadium P.A., "OHhhh, that ball cannot go to Jewish heaven because it got TATTOOED! One THOUSAND pounds of finely cured Italian meat come waddling home, folks, it's a Grand Salami!" The language and sexual innuendo here are not for the prude, it's IFC that's airing this, so that shouldn't be a surprise. One wonders, as others have pointed out here, how far the writing can take this concept. The first season is 8 half-hour episodes, and a second set of 8 has been ordered. The Bad News Bears was outrageously funny, once, in a single perfect film, but the sequel films and the attempted TV show couldn't recapture its magic. It appears, however, that cameos by baseball media figures are on tap for Brockmire, as well as the very funny beer ad that aired with episode 3. In the meantime, batter up, Brockmire's acid wit is at the plate, and the rye (and wry) is being poured.
