Television is once again in its summer phase, with all the reruns, reality shows and all-purpose filler your heart rejects.  Upload Yours (The Comedy Network: debuted Thursday, June 3 at 10:30 ET/PT) carries on this yearly tradition in style.  It wouldn’t be The Comedy Network without its usual bit of cheaply-produced CanCon.

Upload Yours‘ debut features the works of Josh Rachlis, Pot of Coffee, Lars Classington, Jeff D’Silva and Perrodue5.  Kelsey Anonsen performs some scats, earning four segments for some reason.

Josh Rachlis’ “An Inconvenient Proposal” is Upload Yours’ best sketch so far.  It’s a white boy rap, but Rachlis forms the rap around his hard-on for An Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David.  His Upload Yours clip is well-edited and professional, if a bit obsessive over Larry David’s ex-wife.

Maybe it’s just me, but an 11-minute show shouldn’t have three white boy rappers.  Too many segments are wasted on one man’s deliberately bad attempt at scatting.  This is what Upload Yours considers a dynamite first episode?  Seriously?  Upload Yours‘ debut has very little variety.

I don’t have anything against the people who submit clips to the Upload Yours website.  At least Upload Yours brings forth some people not generally seen on The Comedy Network, but I’m not stupid enough to think UY is anything more than time filler.

What can I really expect from a site where the best-rated clips are termed Monster Balls?  Screw Funny or Die’s straightforward ratings system.  This is The Comedy Network!  They need to base popularity on testicle size!  Eh, at least TCN’s not reviving Popcultured…this year.

Upload Yours, a collection of user-generated clips from The Comedy Network’s heavily promoted Youtube-baiter, will debut Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 10:30 PM.  The show will follow Tosh.0, which The Comedy Network tends to move around often.

Anyone watching The Comedy Network since 2009 will know (and hate) the Upload Yours commercial by heart – Jamie Watson asking viewers if they have a treasure box of comic gold, man in hardhat dancing and faking an injury, upbeat ska music.  By this point, Upload Yours has been flogged for more than a year.

I should be against Upload Yours on principle.  CTVglobemedia owns every clip sent to Upload Yours.  The terms and conditions are fairly onerous.  You’re giving material away to Upload Yours for the carrot of free publicity.  This is the exact thing Amid Amidi rails against on Cartoon Brew.

The Comedy Network’s previous web-projects-made-series are Good Morning World and Hotbox.  Whatever one can say about those programs, at least they’re proper programs.  Upload Yours is stitched-together clips, like The Comedy Network needs an excuse to be cheaper with its CanCon than it already is.

I’d be happy if The Comedy Network could greenlight a series like Summer Heights High, Ugly Americans or We Can Be Heroes – you know, rise to the calibre of the shows TCN is currently airing.  Instead, Canadians get a “best”-of-Internet clip show.  This country…

I don’t like Daniel Tosh as a comedian.  His snarky sense of humour, as seen on Daniel Tosh: Completely Serious, doesn’t appeal to me.  He’s less predictable than Dane Cook, a man Tosh is often compared to, and his stuff is intelligently written.  I don’t find Tosh funny, but he’s not the worst comic I’ve seen.

Tosh is a good choice to star in a show making fun of viral videos.  Tosh.0 (The Comedy Network: premiered June 10, 10:30 PM ET/PT) is Comedy Central’s answer to G4′s Web Soup and VH1′s Web Junk 20.  Naturally, there’s a “Tosh.0 is a ripoff of Web Soup” thread at G4tv.com’s forums.

Tosh.0 is fairly low-concept – show a video, watch Daniel Tosh make fun of it.  Specific segments like “Web Redemption” are added in to break the monotony, but it’s Tosh making fun of viral video culture for the most part.  The show would be straight filler if not for the individual segments.

“Web Redemption” is the best segment on the show.  Internet celebrities like Afro Ninja and Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 are given a chance to make right their popularized wrongs.  While this segment could easily become mean-spirited, Tosh.0 doesn’t go that route.  Tosh.0 should pick more recent videos for the segment, since the Internet rots faster than one can say “full of fail.”

“Celebrity Video” is another matter.  In the debut episode, Dave Attell and Bree Olson play beer pong.  Being a porn star, Olson plays her own predictable way.

David Koechner orders roses in the second episode, delivering a special message to his wife in the process.  I’m amazed at seeing David Koechner on television.  Add to that a Kato Kaelin appearance in the first episode, and it’s like 1996 just farted in my face.  I know Koechner’s a character actor, but his name doesn’t scream “Internet culture.”  I don’t even know if Koechner’s name screams.

Tosh.0 is too slight to be anything.  The premise is thin.  The show’s not bad, but there’s little substance to it.  There is almost no difference between Tosh.0 and Most Outrageous Moments, which is the kiss of death if you’re trying to sell Daniel Tosh to a general audience.  I’ll be amazed if Comedy Central gets more than one season out of this thing.

The Comedy Network hyped Hotbox (The Comedy Network: premieres June 2, 10:00 PM) well.  The strange intrusions into ad time helped drum interest in the show.  The promotion hasn’t been all that successful – the official website sucks.  The URL was weirdly formatted when first introduced.  Luckily, Hotbox is good enough to survive its crappy web site and references to Crotch Lake in its “commercials.”

Hotbox fulfills the Canadian cultural need to have an own-brand version of a popular show.  In this case, Hotbox emulates shows like Robot Chicken and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!  Hotbox is currently being paired with Tim and Eric, which makes perfect sense.  In my mind, it makes Tim and Eric look more like a pile of cat dung than it already is.

While Hotbox is less absurdist than its American counterparts, it’s at least comedically sound, its short-sketch edict taken from You Can’t Do That on Television.  The show could be less sophomoric in its humour, which is a problem Hotbox shares with The Jon Dore Television Show, but the writing is solid enough.  Unlike The Jon Dore Television Show, Hotbox displays better levels of consistency.

Hotbox is great in its attention to detail.  The Brad Piss segment mimics the style of an amateurishly-done commercial, the tape looking washed-out and badly edited.  The gag name is horrible, but the sketch wisely focuses on Piss’ inept hucksterism.  Another sketch, “Best Smelling Man Awards,” uses the VHS look to similar effect.  The humour comes more from the look of the commercials and cheap overlaid explosions than the extended body-odour gags.

Not everything on Hotbox works, but a surprising amount of it does.  The success of The Owl and the Man, created by Hotbox hyphenate Pat Thornton as a series of two-minute filler items, wasn’t a fluke.  Not surprisingly, The Owl and the Man has been subsumed into Hotbox.

Hotbox has a possible major weakness.  RoboCop and Lobsterman are recurring characters, and I’d like to know how “RoboCop shills products, creep” and “Lobsterman is crap at keeping a secret identity” deserve more than one sketch.  I hope Hotbox can find the variation necessary to keep the segments fresh, otherwise they will get old fast.  The first episode only scratches the surface of Hotbox, so subsequent episodes will be a complete toss-up.

If Hotbox can maintain its consistency over the course of a full season, this show should do well.  Like Jon Dore, Hotbox will attract a certain type of fan and alienate others.  It’s not a show with broad appeal.  Still, Canada needs more shows like Hotbox.  If How It’s Made can gain a worldwide following despite being a series of nicely-packaged industrial videos, I think Hotbox will find its niche.

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Addendum (June 24, 2009) | The next two episodes are much worse than the first.  In retrospect, I should have watched more than the one episode of Hotbox before reviewing it.  While I’m not going to change the review of the first episode, since I did enjoy it at the time, putting it over Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! was a bit much.  I still don’t like Tim and Eric, but I jumped the gun on Hotbox.

I honestly had no idea the “possible major weakness” I alluded to in the first-episode review was, in fact, Hotbox‘s obvious major weakness.  Most of the recurring characters simply aren’t that well-realized.  Rage Rabbit is a lapine Incredible Hulk who gets frustrated with seemingly minor things.  ”Dinosaur Man” is about a man who entertains kids by saying “dinosaur” after inane things.  Strict time limits notwithstanding, it’s hard to get behind one-note concepts like that.  I don’t know what the hell Team Course One is supposed to be.

I will note that Hotbox is either loved or hated.  Not trying to influence opinion, just saying it elicits strong reactions.  Of course, so did Girls Will Be Girls and Popcultured.

The Comedy Network now receives South Park episodes two days after the show’s initial American airing.  As a longtime South Park fan, I’m happy.  I’d be happier if the major ISPs in this country didn’t automatically redirect me from Comedy Central’s webpage to The Comedy Network’s, but then I’d be walking into a morass of questions like “how will the CRTC handle new media?”  As soon as it figures out how to handle regional television and cable channels switching their mandates on a whim, let me know.

“The Ring” suffers from a bad case of déjà vu.  Mr. Hankey is South Park‘s own-brand Mickey Mouse, as “Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls” makes clear.  High School Musical had already been made fun of by South Park four months previous to “The Ring.”

Kenny’s dying of syphilis as a result of girlfriend Tammy Warner’s fatal blowjob is reminiscent of “Kenny Dies” and “Spontaneous Combustion,” as Kenny is given a proper funeral.  ”The Ring” is even similar to “Christian Rock Hard.”  Replace secular lyrics in Christian songs with the purity ring’s role in selling sex to minors, it’s the same concept.  Never mind “Simpsons Already Did It,” South Park is cannibalizing its own ideas at this point.

Despite this, “The Ring” is a fairly spot-on thirteenth season premiere.  ”Elementary School Musical” was essentially “High School Musical is gay” brought to a moderately funny extreme.  ”The Ring” goes after the selling of a semi-religious item, the purity ring, to a secular audience.

The Walt Disney Company is also given a skewering.  Mickey Mouse is revealed as a greedy corporate bastard.  Using the character in this fashion is obvious, but South Park keeps the Mouse surprisingly on-model.  Mickey punctuates his sentences with his trademark laugh, a surprisingly funny verbal tic.

The last time Mickey was this funny, it was during a Saturday TV Funhouse cartoon.  Mickey’s never funny in his own cartoons.  Then again, no one is, not even Goofy.

Other Walt Disney Company-related items are also lampooned.  After Kenny wears his potentially blowjob-nullifying purity ring, he becomes boring enough to want to watch Grey’s Anatomy.  The Jonas Brothers also sing about Netflix, a great place for Disney Channel’s more homogenized offal, as an alternative to sex.

“The Ring” works as it’s not about how The Jonas Brothers and Disney suck.  How The Jonas Brothers are portrayed in the episode versus what they’re really like is irrelevant.  What is relevant is how commercial interests can take something like The Jonas Brothers’ evangelical beliefs and use it as a selling point to shift units.  Mickey Mouse is the only character in the episode openly disdainful of Christianity (“they believe in a talking dead guy!”), but that’s because he’s actually a Norse demon.  Or something.  Ha ha.

Overall, “The Ring” makes for a strong South Park season premiere.  It’s a better debut for its season than “Tonsil Trouble” was for the twelfth.  I’ll go so far as to say it’s the best season premiere since season ten’s “The Return of Chef.”  ”The Ring” is familiar in spots, but it’s above-average for South Park.  I can’t wait to see how South Park makes fun of The Princess and the Frog.

Hell, I’d like to see if South Park acknowledges Robot Chicken‘s existence and/or the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer brouhaha.  Those topics would make for fun episodes.

By the way, Mickey as depicted in South Park would not have come from Valhalla.  He would most likely have come from Múspellsheimr, the realm of fire.  I’m reading too much into a throwaway gag near the end of “The Ring,” but it’s still lazy writing.

I’m also not fond of South Park ending the episode on an over-referenced G.I. Joe line.  Discredited tropes always make for painful television.  Now you know, and screwing the pooch is half the battle!

Originally I was going to review The Jon Dore Television Show (The Comedy Network: Wednesday, 10:00 PM ET/PT) a day before the premiere.  In typical me fashion, I flaked on the review.  It’s a thing that I do occasionally.

There hasn’t been much press about The Jon Dore Television Show‘s second season anyway.  A few mainstream interviews have appeared in newspapers.  The usual condemnations of the show exist.  Dore isn’t exactly Russell Peters in terms of popularity.

The Jon Dore Television Show knows Jon Dore isn’t a great actor.  His deadpan persona is milked effectively for comedy.  JDTS takes the basic premise of The Sarah Silverman Program. – unlikable protagonist goes through a life issue every episode – and splices it with a TLC documentary.  This conceit actually works, even though there is no way it should.

The second-season premiere of The Jon Dore Television Show, “Jon Fights Discrimination,” features feminist Judy Rebick, media professor Marion Coomey and microbiologist Chris Liu.  They all intersect with Dore’s campaign to end discrimination, a quest borne of Dore having to pay to get into a bar on Ladies’ Night.

Dore does his part to end discrimination by dressing up as a fat, blind, Asian black woman with red hair and a snake for a tail.  Somehow, the show progresses from this to Dore dressing his neighbours up in white bodystockings while he rants on about creating a “pure race of people.”  Some of the jokes in “Jon Fights Discrimination” fall flat, such as a running joke involving black centaurs, but I found Dore as the ultimate minority amusing.

“Jon Gets Horny” continues the comedy trend set by “Jon Fights Discrimination.”  This time, Dore has a constant erection and needs to get rid of it.  Dore talks sex with his aunt Kathy Layton, who is a registered nurse.  He also interviews sex addiction expert “Mike” and “Sex Industy Expert” Kedra Alliard.

Psychotherapist Susan Lynne, who guested as herself several times in the first season, makes her first appearance of the second season here.  She is to JDTS what Chef was to South Park, a voice of reason that Dore plays off of.

Compared to “Jon Fights Discrimination,” “Jon Gets Horny” is comedically limp.  In one week, the show has gone from satirizing the media to making fun of cam whores.  Too many of the jokes in “Jon Gets Horny” are variations on the “Jon humps inanimate object” theme, which is not good.

The Jon Dore Television Show will probably stay a cult item by the end of its second season.  The show’s format is such that it would easily fall apart in the wrong hands.  I’m curious to know how long Dore can keep the show going before it collapses like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.  As long as JDTS is funny at least some of the time, I’ll keep watching.

The Comedy Network is airing The Gong Show with Dave Attell (The Comedy Network: January 15, 10:30 PM ET/PT) out of order.  The fourth episode will be the first aired in Canada, which makes little sense to me.  It’s not like there’s a danger in airing a talent show out of order, but the scheduling is arbitrary.

The original Gong Show* was both old-fashioned and a product of its time.  Contestants went before the cameras to have their acts judged by a celebrity panel.  If an act was bad enough, it was gonged.

Acts usually started off bad and deteriorated from there.  Chuck Barris’ amateurish hosting meshed with the bad acts, while the celebrity panelists did whatever the hell they felt like.  The show was a daily trainwreck, which is part of its enduring appeal.

To its credit, The Gong Show with Dave Attell remembers what made the original show good.  The amateur performers are about as bad as on the original Gong Show.  The top prize is $600 and a gaudy championship belt.  The panelists have a rapport with each other and the show doesn’t pretend to be an earnest talent competition.

The main problem with The Gong Show with Dave Attell is that it’s too stiff.  The host and panelists find it more necessary to deliver stinging one-liners to contestants/each other than to have fun with the format.

Andy Dick at least threatens a contestant with the gong mallet, but that’s as chaotic as The Gong Show with Dave Attell gets.  Maybe the panelists are boring this episode.  Not every panelist can be Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, where you can just sniff his non-butt and smell the money.

The Gong Show with Dave Attell isn’t as cheerfully haphazard as the original Gong Show, but it’s better than Extreme Gong.  I give this show a 5 for execution and a 2.5 for Brian Posehn’s beard.

^{*No, not the John Barbour version.  Don’t be smart.}

I haven’t been in the habit of doing best-ofs.  URBMN only went in its “new” direction late last September.  What I can do at this point in URBMN’s history is talk about Canadian shows that I want to see this year.

I’m more receptive to Canadian television than a lot of people.  Sometimes a Canadian show will have a horrible premise, like Life’s a Zoo.tv‘s “animals + reality show parody = fun.”  I honestly thought that show would die on its ass, yet Life’s a Zoo.tv is actually decent.  It’s a weaker stop-motion Drawn Together, but what the hell, I like Dr. D.

Consequently, I want to like Testees.  I like South Park and Kenny vs. Spenny, two shows Kenny Hotz has had his finger in.  Testees is tepid by comparison.  It’s a well-worn buddy comedy without the Odd Couple-meets-reality-television dynamic that makes Kenny vs. Spenny funny.  The greatest conflict in Testees is between Testico and the human guinea pigs, and that takes up two minutes of a half-hour show.

It’s hard to predict which new and returning shows will keep my interest this year.  Here’s to hoping that one of these shows will meet my personal hype.

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Hotbox | The Comedy Network actually teased this show late in 2008, with Pat Thornton in an owl costume wishing viewers a Merry Christmas.  This was followed by random clips of the show and some “eerie” static.

Thornton is the creator of The Owl and the Man, a series of YouTube-ready shorts depicting the differences between a man and an owl.  Hotbox will likely follow that tradition of absurdist humour.  The show seems like Robot Chicken with proper wraparounds.

I don’t know whether or not Hotbox will be good.  Thornton created and writes for the show, yet I find The Owl and the Man just okay.  There have been better and worse things on The Comedy Network.

I hope Hotbox meets TV Funhouse-level standards, but it’s a tall order to be as funny as Robert Smigel.  At the very least, Hotbox must be funnier than Comedy Inc.  Static is funnier and far more highbrow than Comedy Inc.

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The Jon Dore Television Show‘s second season | I’ve been watching some YouTube clips of the show’s first season.  The new season premieres January 21, 2009 on The Comedy Network.

I wasn’t impressed by The Jon Dore Television Show at first glance.  After watching this clip, my fears were allayed.  I have no idea why The Comedy Network buries this show in post-South Park timeslots, but at least Jon Dore survived Canadian Idol.  I guess this show did deserve its Gemini nominations last year.  Neat!

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Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town | Whether this airs in 2009 or early 2010 doesn’t matter.  It’s Kids in the Hall.  KitH is taking a page from shows like League of Gentlemen with Death Comes to Town, and a job lot of people want to see this.  I want to see it.  You want to see it, even if you hate Kids in the Hall with a passion.  I know you!

I have reservations about Death Comes to Town.  My taste for Bruce McCulloch will never wane, but Scott Thompson has annoyed me with his post-Kids work.  Shows like My Fabulous Gay Wedding have underlined the fact that Thompson is gay, but where is his funny?  He even threatened to ruin The Larry Sanders Show at one point, but no one can make Hank Kingsley unfunny.

Dave Foley has starred in subpar work post-Kids, like his Christmas special and NewsRadio.  I’ll give Mark McKinney credit for producing Less Than Kind, but that doesn’t excuse his two mediocre seasons on Saturday Night Live.  As for Kevin McDonald, he was in Zeroman and the Lilo & Stitch cartoon.  ’Nuff said.

The hype factor also works against Death Comes to Town.  I remember being excited at the announcement of Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon.  I was met with “Ren and Stimpy are gay” subtext and the beatdown of Mr. Horse.  The new Ren & Stimpy‘s awfulness killed my respect for John Kricfalusi.

I don’t want to see Kids in the Hall suffer the same fate as John K.  As soon as Dave Foley says “you’re the pitcher, I’m the catcher” to Scott Thompson, off goes the television.

Simply put, the five Kids in the Hall castmembers need each other.  Together, they are a force for comedic good.  It’s hard to say whether the comeback will be as funny as the original KitH, but CBC’s comedy lineup needs more than uneven political humour, Rick Mercer doing his best Shelagh Rogers impression and Being Erica.

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Durham County‘s second season | I actually see this show making inroads on American television, since Flashpoint has introduced Americans to Hugh Dillon.

I’m not saying Durham County will pick up fans disenchanted by Dexter‘s third season, but what the hell.  NBC bought Howie Do It, and that’s just Howie Mandel hosting a Candid Camera derivative.  Slings and Arrows has an American fanbase two-and-a-half years after its death.  Who the hell knows which shows will become popular in the fifteen-thousand-channel world?

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Howie Do It | It debuts on Global and NBC this Friday.  It probably won’t be any good, but who knows?  Howie Mandel has the power to survive this show if it stiffs.  This is an age where people have a new appreciation for Bob Saget and David Duchovny.

I haven’t written this show off in my mind like I have The Animated Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie.  Dave Coulier as Bob?  Take off, eh.