"You're a rapper? I thought you were, like, a meme"
Having a name as common as Dave (as I do) means, at least, that most people can both spell and pronounce it even if you occasionally have to be known by two names to distinguish you from other Daves that people know. Because it's such a normal name it's always being co-opted into comedy and often in quite annoying ways.
I had to put up with several years of people coming up to me repeating "hello Dave. You're my wife now" from The League of Gentlemen and when the Dave comedy channel launched I suddenly became, to a small group, "the home of witty banter". When, in truth, I'm anything but. I'm a really boring serious bastard.
It almost put me off watching the series but I'm glad it didn't because, awkward choice of name aside, it was brilliant. Laugh out loud funny in many places and even, as the life stories and motivations of not just Dave but the supporting cast were drilled down into, surprisingly touching.
The basic premise is that Dave (Dave Burd) is a white, Jewish, middle class, rapper who smells of tuna fish and neither partakes of the herb, screws around, or has any kind of gang or criminal affiliation whatsoever and he's trying to make it in the Los Angeles rap world. He raps, regularly and humorously, about the shortcomings of his wedding furniture and though he gains no little notoriety for doing so he's taken more as a comedian, comedy rapper, or even a meme than he is a serious rapper.
Dave is assisted on his mission by his black, yet very middle class, beats maker Elz (Travis 'Taco' Bennett) and his new hyperactive friend and hype man GaTa. GaTa's black too - and actually comes from a black neighbourhood which, along with GaTa's shameless self-promotion, helps open a few doors. Both Bennett and GaTa (who plays himself!) are brilliant throughout the series but props too must go to Taylor Misiak as Dave's long suffering school teacher girlfriend, Christine Ko as Ally's room-mate Emma, and Andrew Santino as Dave's roomie, and later manager, Mike.
Other hilarious set pieces involve a soundcloud rapper called Kid Toilet, a man selling wooden shirts, the accidental running over of a bunny rabbit, the sexual kink known as 'milking', Dave being asked to sign a fan's dick, and Dave asking his manager "can I suck my own dick on stage? Legally?". Dave raps that his dick is like a salt shaker, says he pees like a supersoaker, and takes out his sexual frustration on a Fuck-me-Silly III sex doll that has no upper torso. Perhaps he should have invested in the Fuck-me-Silly IV?
The relationship between Dave and Ally, though often strained, is tender and loving, Dave and his friends may rip the piss out of each other at every possible opportunity but the love between members of this closely knit group becomes more tangible with each episode and, towards the end, culminates in Ally's hilarious yet touching double edged sword of a speech at her sister's wedding.
While we laugh at Dave's dad washing another man's car and there's an awkward moment when, at an art exhibition, Dave imagines a racially insensitive word when being asked "you don't like Koons?" the show doesn't shy away from tackling head on, well side on - very side on, mental health issues, cultural appropriation, and, quite obviously, sexual anxiety.
The whole series is a fictionalised account of Dave's, and Lil Dicky's, real life rise to fame and though that can't possibly have been as amusing as this programme makes it look it does suggest that there are plenty more adventures ahead for Dave and the gang. The fact that the series ended with at least two of the key relationships unresolved suggests a second series was always in mind. The fact that the show was such a success would suggest to me that it's now merely a matter of time.
No episode of Dave is longer than half an hour but in each of those episodes I laughed, loudly and soundly, several times. As Dave himself might say "never mind the length. Feel the quality".
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