2 out of 5

Created by: Ilana Glazer, Paul W. Downs, and Lucia Aniello

I don’t smoke, but I’d like to think I can appreciate stoner comedy.  I mean, a good majority of the things I watch are probably influenced from that line of humor to a certain extent, so you just add in a character who wears baggy clothes and is lazy and you’ve pretty much fully swithced over.  I do have a low tolerance for _dumb_ comedy, though, which generally amounts to pointing out someone who fell down, laughing, and then looking at the audience and asking them to laugh with you.  Most of us who dislike Scary Movie and its ilk can agree: this is dumb comedy.  But there’s an offshoot of that where the person laughing is smoking a spliff, and suddenly it’s a stoner comedy and if you’re not laughing it’s ’cause you’re not down.

(Is this hidden rage at my “not being down?”)

(Is my whole life hidden rage over “not being down?”)

Time Traveling Bong occasionally exceeds this mark for some really hilarious moments that rival the smarter bits of Broad City, which follows since we’re sharing cast and production members.  Case in point: the middle episode, during which the titular device transports our leads to the 60s, during which they meet a baby Michael Jackson and decide to kidnap him, and give him a better life.  While the episode makes time for the raunchy (i.e. references to sex or masturbation) jokes which otherwise make up the majority of the scripts, the focus of its mini-parenting saga shifts TTB into satire.  However, fully otherwise, it’s dumb comedy.  Some giggles, and some nods for keeping the characterizations of 20something ignorance intaact all the way through, and I guess kudos for a “novel” use of the smoking gun concept (this is a euphemism, kids), but it’s still… dumb.