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.
matthijsalexander
Sometimes comedy is beyond comedy and simply genius.Won't waste words on the plot as it will be largely known by now but will only say that if you like dry and dark humor, if you like monologues that have many commas and are jammed with outrageous comparisons and if you like a good story about some silly backward, idiotic but lovable and relatable people, that find themselves in somewhat awkward and ridiculous situations: Brockmire is your pick! From the pilot on I was hooked and sold, watched the first 4 in a row and will dread having to wait once I catch up :-(
Christopher Smith
I've never really followed baseball in real life, but, for whatever reason, I've always loved baseball comedies with The Bad News Bears being one of my favorite movies of all time, and "Eastbound & Down" being arguably the funniest television series of the past decade. Although "Brockmire" has yet to air an entire season yet, it has already come close to surpassing "Eastbound & Down" in my mind. Like "Eastbound & Down", "Brockmire" features a hard-to-love protagonist with self-destructive tendencies, but it's also smarter and better written. Hank Azaria, who I've never really particularly loved in anything other than Gross Point Blank, is simply amazing Jim Brockmire, a baseball announcer famous for losing his mind on the air upon learning his wife cheated on him. Such a scenario could just be an excuse to go for cheap laughs at every turn, and although "Brockmire" certainly goes for cheap laughs at times, it's also surprisingly moving and even a little philosophical at times. The main question of "Brockmire" is whether peoples' lives are defined by only their worst moments, and what it means to change as a human being in order to have a meaningful legacy. While "Brockmire" never approaches becoming a drama, Azaria's performance carries a fair amount of dramatic weight, as the hurt and sadness of Brockmire are as much a source of conflict as they are for dark humor. Ultimately, "Brockmire" is only partially about baseball, though the baseball scenes tend to be the funniest. The show has proved to be a big hit for IFC, and it will be interesting to see how both the character and the show grow in its second season. For its fantastic first season, I'd give it 9/10 so far. Highly recommended.
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.
