We’ve spent a lot of ink… well, whatever the internet equivalent of ink is… in these parts on the absurdity that is ESPN2’s First Take and the carnival barking of Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith. First Take is so awful, we can always spend just a little bit more, though.
First Take is to ESPN as Joffrey is to Game of Thrones. It’s less fulfilling than the second season of True Detective. Skip and Stephen A. are the Roger Goodell and Sepp Blatter of ESPN. Watching First Take is worse than sitting down and watching two hours of continuous college basketball media timeouts. And such and such, and such and such…
But in all the years of First Take’s existence, we can’t believe that nobody thought to add a laugh track to the show until now. That’s exactly what Katie Nolan and Garbage Time did for this brief bit heading into a commercial break and the results are stupendous.
Stephen A. Smith likes to party and have a good time! Did you see him hanging with Floyd Mayweather! He knows Kobe Bryant on a personal level! HIGH COMEDY INDEED.
You know, I think this is how we need to view First Take from now on – as a crappy network sitcom. That’s really all it’s meant to be, isn’t it? It’s a lot less depressing when you laugh at the fact that First Take is two grown adults doing an amateurish job of playing professional wrestling villains and having make-believe sports debates. From now on, every episode of First Take should have a laugh track. I know ESPN is slashing their budget, but c’mon, make some room for this Bristol!
This is almost as good as when you remove the laugh track from network sitcoms and find out how weird they really are…