TV: Mind of Mencia

On a cable channel that has brought a few gems to the world like South Park and Reno 911, and a lot of garbage like “Con.” Mind of Mencia is no exception to the latter bunch.

I was duped years ago, back freshman year of college, into watching nearly every Comedy Central Presents (mostly ones aired between 99 and 01). There were hits such as Jim Gaffigan’s great stand up routine, and ones that I quickly realized were not that good after watching them a few times. Pablo Francisco comes to mind, unfortunately because from all the material I’ve seen, he’s been doing the same standup routine for about a decade. That stuff only works with Yakov Smirnoff, people.

So anyway, after about the second or third time watching a comedian by the name of Carlos Mencia, I came to realize that his standup routine was not a some deep message he made it out to be, but a veiled attack at pretty much all races, most creeds, and mentally deficient people. Very nice.

Unfortunately, years later after Dave Chappelle went crazy, they got Mencia to “take over” the standup/skit show format they had going. If there was anyone more different than Chappelle, Mencia would be it. He’s the bizzaro Dave, someone who insults the audience maliciously, discusses race issues with all the subtly of a bulldozer, and who tries to pass off what he’s pushing as if it was some brilliant piece of investigative journalism “exposing” societies ills. The sheer vitriol he spews is maddening.

Okay, we get it. When will you finally fill in your fans that this entire experiment was to expose the fact that they are bigots by going along with everything you said? You’d think people would be brighter than to take nearly 30 episodes to see this.

Verdict: 0/*****