There are four stages to Carolla’s career (that I’ve ever been familiar with) that I have very distinct feelings about.
Stage 1:
Regular Guest on the KROQ morning show hosted by Kevin and Bean. Here Carolla played a cranky handy man called Mr. Birchum (some time around 1995-1997 I think) that would answer caller’s home improvement questions. At the time if you would have suggested that anybody could squeeze in home improvement tips in a comedic morning radio show, and make it work, I’d have balked. But it worked, and the regular segment was a huge hit. Personally, I loved the segment and looked forward to it every day on my way to work.
Carolla was available in small doses, and as such his prolonged rants were shorter and easier to digest.
Stage 2:
Loveline. This is where Carolla was at the height of his ‘funny’ for me. Loveline seemed equally divided into 4 parts, 1 part Dr Drew, 1 Part insane callers, 1 part overwhelmed guest star, and 1 part Carolla.
All Carolla really had to do all day was make fun of the insane callers that had insisted on calling in with the craziest questions, help the guest star feel more at home by breaking down exactly why the callers were not like you and me, and pretty much say all the things the listening audience were thinking about most dumb-shit callers that none of the other people in the studio could really express without coming across as an asshole. This worked really well for him.
Dr. Drew played a good straight-man to Carolla. Because they had famous guests in all the time for Carolla to banter with, the show, although at times dominated by Carolla, was not all about Carolla (or by Carolla & for Carolla). It worked because he was only one part of a much larger machine.
Stage 3:
Crank Yankers (which featured, among many other things, a puppet modeled after Mr Birchum, the cranky old handy man from the KROQ morning show) & The Man Show. I couldn’t stomach either of these enterprises, and spent the duration of both of these endeavors wondering, “What happened to the Adam Carolla I thought was funny?”.
Stage 4:
The Adam Carolla Show & subsequent Podcast. These never worked for me, and I stopped listening shortly after giving each one a shot. My biggest complaint is that there was nobody around to keep Carolla in check. Some of his funniest stuff in years past was when other people would try to reign him in, and to get him to admit how crazy some of his feelings were on certain subjects. he needed a straight-man. These shows have other people sharing the mic with him, but they all play second fiddle, and he dominates them.
There’s nobody around to challenge him when he goes off on a tangent, and instead the audience is left listening to the ‘dumb broad’ that sits across from him laughing at everything he says, and repeating every… fucking… punchline… What he needs here is somebody with a different opinion or spin. Somebody who challenges him, on some level at least. What we’ve got now is Adam and an in-studio mouth-breathing laugh-track.
The Adam Carolla now days sort of reminds me of Gilbert Godfried. He works best in very small doses. Unlike Godfried though, Adam is considered mostly relevant to younger audiences and gets a lot more attention, and freedom to say and do as he pleases. Sure, in the past he’s been taken to task over certain disparaging remarks he’s made, but that’s okay for him because it’s what his core audience wants anyway.
In my opinion Adam Carolla is too big. Relatively unknown hosts like Doug Benson can’t contain him, because, really… who the fuck is Doug Benson, and who fucking cares? Adam has found himself in a place where listeners follow him around, and it doesn’t matter if he wrecks a show, because it’s what they want.
