Those two lads make Hector Ó hEochagáin look like George Carlin by comparison.
Total garbage.
Lowest common denominator rubbish. Theres a Liam Fay review of their show that is absolutely scathing but accurate , must see if I can find it.
~found it
The 2 Johnnies Do America review — Enough of this hillbilly hokum
Everything’s bigger in Texas. Back home the 2 Johnnies are the unrivalled kings of theatrically countrified buffoonery; the high muckety-mucks of mock-mucker malarkey. The Tipperary-bred buddy bros of O’Brien and McMahon — aka Johnny B and Johnny Smacks — have garnered considerable Irish fame, fortune and media airspace with their crude and usually witless parody of culchie culture.
In an apparent effort to prove they can be equally annoying in a foreign setting, the buckleppers are trying to rebrand themselves as buckaroos, by going large in the USA. Their latest excursion is billed as a wild new adventure, but, in entertainment terms, it’s just another big bore.
Jumbo-sized jackassery is both the USP and the undoing of
The 2 Johnnies Do America, a second run of stateside clod-hopping by Ireland’s most brass-necked rednecks.
Like the first series, the show trades in a shamelessly corny blend of stage Oirishry and hackneyed Americana. Caricatures, crass simplifications and daft exaggerations abound as the titular pair of cartoon Paddies affect to be rendered helpless with thigh-slapping mirth by the crazee antics of madcap Yanks. This time round, however, there’s an increased shrillness to the duo’s yee-hawing yahooing — a ramping up of the cockiness, blather and self-satisfaction that only serves to underscore the essential puniness of their hayseed shtick.
Though often described as “comedians”, the Johnnies are conspicuously lacking in humorous perspective or comedic flair. The closest thing they have to comic skill is their uncanny knack for making each other crack up and double over at will. They communicate in an unrelenting banterese that is jocular without being funny, as brash as it is vacuous. And yet they almost never stop laughing.
Route one — the most predictable course of action or reaction — is always the pathway of choice for both Johnnies. Stereotypes are their lodestars, banality their native tongue. They act and talk as though they’re breaking new ground; introducing us to what they repeatedly insist is “the real USA”. Throughout the programme, however, they cling tightly to well-trodden tracks and well-worn assertions. Their notion of the “real” America is just as bogus as that “real” Ireland to which their hillbilly hokum is supposed to appeal.
The season opener was set in Texas and its composition leant heavily on
The Bumper Book of Texan Clichés. Cowboy hats, country music and masked wrestlers loomed large. The Johnnies travelled by pickup truck and spoke in a Tipp-tongued approximation of a good ol’ boy twang. Urban Texas was represented by a swift bar-hop through Austin’s hipster quarter and lessons in southern charm from an etiquette coach in Dallas. The problem with this theme-park version of the Lone Star State wasn’t the predictability of the itinerary so much as the yawn-inducing inanity with which the tour was conducted.
Cockeyed and half-cocked would be overkind descriptions for the Johnnies’ efforts at larky reportage. There is something inherently sleepy and slapdash about their approach, a sluggish plod that always seems a day late and a dollar short, sometimes literally. They visited the site of a reputedly hedonistic motorcycle rally, but arrived just as the camp was being dismantled on the morning after the festival ended.
To justify the trip, the Johnnies hung out with a few hungover bikers to no evident purpose. They then wandered around, sniggering at bumper stickers before they found some daredevil riders who agreed to perform a couple of stunts. It was pitifully meagre stuff and the inclusion of this botched item in the first episode does not bode well for the remaining three.
Later the Johnnies sought to test their sons-of-the-soil credentials by volunteering as farmhands on a wagyu cattle ranch. They turned up in stetsons, shorts and runners — with Johnny B completing his ensemble with the classic backwoods flourish of a Wolfe Tones T-shirt. Big laughs on the great plains seemed in store, but within minutes the segment had run into the sand.
Once again the set-up felt like an idea that looked smart on paper but disintegrated to dust on contact with reality. It’s a long way to Tipperary and, given the ferocity of their rise so far, nobody should underestimate the 2 Johnnies’ ability to establish themselves as RTE’s go-to boyos for bumpkin-led travelogues — globetrotting bogtrotters in chief. Yet the threadbare nature of their tiny bag of designer rustic tricks was cruelly exposed beneath the Texan sun.
' Stereotypes are their lodestars, banality their native tongue'. Ouch...
