We are watching the old Nirvana the Band the Show series
Since we loved Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, we have begun the process of watching their old webseries and their old TV show.
This material provides some context to the movie... but you absolutely can just enjoy the movie without watching any of this older stuff. We're almost done with the webseries, and the main thing we're getting from it is a deeper sense of how serious the movie was about gently repudiating their old material.
The movie spends a lot of time musing on what it feels like to look back on your younger self, and to feel kind of grossed out or disappointed by your juvenile interests or creative work. There is an incredible gag in the early part of the movie where, having time-traveled to the 2000s, one character only realizes that the time travel worked when he starts to hear people casually using certain slurs. The movie is constantly drawing attention to the fact that these social norms have changed. It's fairly unusual - there isn't a lot of art out there about the shame that a comedian from the 2000s might feel when looking back at their old material.
We've now seen a lot of that old, old material... and, yeah! The webseries is crammed with edgelord stuff! In particular, there's a ton of race jokes. Now that I've seen the degree to which the old material was edgelord-aligned, I'm much more impressed that Johnson and McCarrol wanted to directly address it in their movie. Most actors and comedians don't!
The movie achieved precisely the same tone as the old material without including as much of the stuff that "aged poorly." The character dynamic between the two protagonists is completely preserved, and with it, the tone of the entire series is preserved. It's fascinating to see a comedian completely recapitulate their old material without embracing the old norms under which it was produced. Wild stuff!
I'm curious to see how the Vice TV show feels. I think the most interesting thing about this whole series is how completely consistent they kept the energy, characters, and tone. Keeping your output completely consistent for seventeen years is nuts!!