How Adult Swim's Tim & Eric got so awesome
"Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" epitomizes Adult Swim's signature humor style, which embraces uncomfortable situations, ironic repetition and out-of-nowhere randomness, often trusting the audience to fill in the punchlines.
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are human beings. We can all agree on that. But does that disqualify them from being honorary cartoons?
True, they’re not particularly exaggerated in appearance. Tim looks like the towheaded, pie-faced boy next door all grown up, while Eric’s a bespectacled, sideburned galoot with plenty of height and a crooked smile. They were both born in Pennsylvania in 1976 and would draw little attention as white-collar employees alongside the water coolers of Middle America.
The late-night TV audience first glimpsed the duo's animated alter egos when they played the title characters in “Tom Goes to the Mayor” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block. Since 2007, they’ve appeared in the flesh as the stars of Adult Swim’s “Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” a surreal but emphatically not-animated sketch comedy series. Using green-screen technology to plop themselves into seemingly any environment, Tim and Eric play a host of weirdos, including tone-deaf singers whose faces drip with eczema, half-deranged corporate pitchmen, and would-be swingers obsessed with shrimp and white wine.