DVD REVIEW: MIND OF MENCIA – SEASON 3

The Nutshell

Mind of Mencia Season 3 is a two disc, 14 episode journey into the mind of ‘comedian’ Carlos Mencia. Why do you need two discs and 14 episodes to understand this guys mind? That’s a good question. I’m still wondering why we needed three seasons of this mean spirited, pathetically empty, overly defensive and horrendously unfunny television show. After all, it’s not like there were a lot of bats flying around up in Mencia’s bell free to begin with. The season opens with him doing various “impressions” of celebrities like Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and the female astronaut who drove cross country in a diaper to attack her husbands new girlfriend. What wit does Mencia inject into these stale, annoying, attention grabbing headlines we were all sick-to-death of long before he wrapped his humorless fingers around them? Nothing. He simply “does” them all. The cops pull over Mencia as Gibson…I guess. The only reason we know it’s Gibson is because the cops say, “Have you been drinking Mr. Gibson?” Mencia replies, “Have you been Jewing, Mr. Officer?” That’s about as good as it gets, folks. It’s all downhill from there and we started in the swamp.

The Lowdown

As you can tell from my ‘nutshell,” I hated this. I feel really bad because I received this DVD a long time ago and I’ve been meaning to review it for months. Months! I’ve been dreading putting it into my DVD player because I don’t like making my DVD player cry. I was afraid of what my roommates would think. I was afraid that my neighbors might hear Mencia’s annoying, motor-mouthed, idiotic racist rants and assume I had no taste whatsoever. And I have nice neighbors; they once rang my bell in the morning to warn me that my car was about to get towed and I’d just moved in. So, I don’t want to piss them off.

"Mr. Mencia, you’re under arrest for being unfunny. And blurry."

What is it about Carlos Mencia that sucks so much? Where to begin? Well, with the fact that he’s a thief, I guess. Mencia has stolen variations of jokes from comics as diverse as Bill Cosby to Dave Chappelle to George Lopez to Sam Kinison. Go ahead and do a search for ‘Carlos Mencia joke thief’ on youtube and you’ll come up with more hits then you’ll know what to do with. I find this clip to be particularly enlightening. Notice how Cosby sells the joke with fantastic delivery and comic timing contrasted with Mencia, who simply screams at the end and adds a misogynistic “bitch” for good measure.

And that’s another problem. Mencia simply isn’t funny. He’s been described as a good performer, taking other people’s material and enriching the humor with his absurdist race-related slant. Yeah, Mencia talks about racism a lot, but not in a productive way, not in a thoughtful way and not in a critical way. When Dave Chappelle examined racial stereotypes on his show he was never mean spirited and constantly posed tough questions. Take his skit from his superior show featuring the CEO who gets abused by the cops (they even shoot his dog!) because he screws over his company and employees vs. the crack dealer who pleads the fifth and gets away with it. Is he playing with stereotypes? Yeah, a little, but he’s commenting on much more, including our perverted justice system. And Chappelle brings so much idiosyncratic wit to all of his characters, infusing even the weakest stereotypes with warmth that prevents them from becoming mean spirited caricatures. Mencia doesn’t have that level of performance. That’s why his Mel Gibson is nothing but a guy who gets out of a car and yells “Jew” over and over again. That’s the whole joke. But that’s exactly what happened in the first place and we’ve all heard accounts of the Gibson scandal so much we don’t need Mencia to remind us of the situation. What’s fresh about Mencia’s rendition, what humor gets added, what’s witty about his portrayal? Are we supposed to laugh at Mencia dressed as Michael Richards screaming “nigger” over and over again? If so, why? And why can’t this be viewed just as offensive as Richards breakdown? Because Mencia doesn’t “mean” it? The only difference between Mencia’s rendition of this horribly racist event is that he himself is cast as the racist individual, which can be read as very telling.

In space, nobody can hear you not being funny. Oh, how I yearn for space…

Mencia uses race in his humor in a way that is insulting and inane. Many comics shape their material around race, sexuality and gender, but Mencia’s take lacks any freshness and infuses absolutely nothing new into the discussion. He frames a sketch about the first black president (with all the same old lame fried chicken and watermelon jokes that have been around for decades) around his own stand-up material in which he claims he’s aiming the sketch at the few people who say they wouldn’t vote for a black president. This is clearly a case of eating your cake and wanting it too. He wallows in black stereotypes with clear intentions to appeal to the lowest common denominator and then frames the sketch as if he’s criticizing those few racist individuals for not wanting a black president. Is this really the best way to lampoon racists? By appealing to these pathetic individuals by perpetuating the same tired stereotypes that have been around since the slave days? In BLACK FACE? Earlier in the same episode, Mencia defensively argues against claims that he’s a racist by going out as a man on the street, asking people to give their own impressions of people of color, Jews and gays. That’s his argument? I’m not a racist because everyone does it? What is this, grade school? “Jimmy, stop making fun of minorities!” “BUT MOM—EVERYBODY DOES IT!”

A few days ago, the Onion had Patton Oswalt review the KFC Famous Bowl after he incorporated the infamous glob of goop that tries to pass itself off as food into his act for months. It’s a funny review. Oswalt is a real comic which an original sense of humor and a way with words. He brings a level of wit and social commentary to his material. And the KFC Famous Bowl pretty much sums up Mencia. It’s a bowl of processed sludge that’s trying to pass itself off as a meal, much like Mencia is trying to pass himself off as a comedian (mostly by stealing other, superior comedian’s material). Like the Famous Bowl, Mencia is bad for you, his humor is in poor taste. And most strikingly, like the KFC Famous Bowl, Mencia is incredibly popular. His show rates behind South Park as the most watched show on Comedy Central.

So I blame the people who watch this guy, who support him, who find him funny. I hope you also enjoy Famous Bowls because if you eat a steady diet of that crap you’re not long for this world.

Just another reason for you not to watch this show. Does this image make you laugh? Of course not. It’s not funny! Anything to deter you. Anything…

The Package

As trashy looking, cheap and ugly as a KFC Famous Bowl also! The “deleted scenes” are far more painful than the sketches that made it in. The commentaries are lame and reach for humor but just come across as defensive with that old “we’re not racist” argument over and over again.

Bottom Line: If Mencia is really speaking his mind with this series, it theoretically shouldn’t even exist.