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Minding the Store (http://tbs.com/shows/mindingthestore/0,,50285,00.html)

Pauly Shore and the world-famous The Comedy Store Stage a Comeback in TBS's Original Comedy Series, Minding the Store
series premieres Sunday, July 17 at 10/9c

TBS, television's very funny network, is giving down-but-not-out comedian Pauly Shore (Encino Man, Jury Duty) the chance to get his mother's world-famous Comedy Store back on track, while also giving his own career a boost, in a new original comedy series Minding the Store. The half-hour series, premiering Sunday, July 17 at 10/9c, comes to TBS from Shapiro/Grodner Productions (Big Brother) and Bayonne Entertainment, with Arnold Shapiro, Allison Grodner and Rob Lee executive-producing.

"The Comedy Store is the place where such comedians as Jim Carrey, Richard Pryor and David Letterman got their starts, so it seems perfectly fitting for television's very funny network to follow its revival," said Steve Koonin, executive vice president and chief operating officer of TBS. "The show will blend the comedy on-stage at The Comedy Store with the quirky personalities and offbeat backstage antics of Pauly Shore and his mother, Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore."

Minding the Store opens with Mitzi Shore reluctantly handing over the reins of her legendary Comedy Store to her youngest son Pauly, in the hopes that maybe he can pump some life back into it. With his plans of renovations, new promotions and A-list talent, Pauly's goal of making the comedy club great again proves to be a daunting task, especially since his mom just can't seem to let him take over completely.

Equally as daunting are Pauly's attempts to regain his professional footing as an actor, taking classes and telling his agent to put him up for serious, more dramatic roles. He also runs into problems as he tries to juggle relationships with the women in his life and finally date someone "appropriate."

The Comedy Store, located on the Sunset Strip, was founded in 1972 by Mitzi Shore and her husband, comedian Sammy Shore. From the beginning, it featured the top new comedic talent on the circuit, quickly becoming host for HBO's Young Comedians Special in 1980. The venue continues to present stand up comedy seven days a week.

Pauly Shore gained national attention in 1990, when his MTV series "Totally Pauly" became an immediate hit. After a four-year run, Shore moved into feature films, starring as the wiezel in Encino Man, Son-In-Law, In the Army Now, Jury Duty, Bio-Dome and The Curse of Inferno. He recently had his directorial feature debut, Pauly Shore is Dead, a semi-autobiographical dark comedy in which he fakes his own death in order to get the attention he craves.

I guess this is good a time as any to say how much "Pauly Shore is Dead" ruled. As a movie, a piece of art, and comedy sketch.

Pauly Shore is among the elite few- one of the most unfunny comedians that ever lived. He is in the pantheon with such luminaries as Mario Joyner, Sinbad, Gallagher, and the Zeus of this particular Mount Olympus- Carrot Top.

TBS is good for one thing. The Braves. For anything else Turner, TNT is the better network.

Actually Pauly Shore is incredibly fucking funny. I mean, really goddamn side-splitting funny. I went and saw him at a comedy club in Miami once and his Dad opened for him. My god, they're a funny couple of guys. If you ever have the chance to see them in a small club where he can be a nasty evil fucker, do it. He's nothing like you'd imagine.

They know drama.

Ok. Look.

Bob Sagat is hilarious.

I thought Sinbad was funny in the two of his specials I saw.

And your list is missing Bob Sagat.

"I used to suck dick for coke.  Now that's an addiction.  Have you ever sucked dick for marijuana?"

He also directed Dirty Work.

Pauly Shore is among the elite few- one of the most unfunny comedians that ever lived. He is in the pantheon with such luminaries as Mario Joyner, Sinbad, Gallagher, and the Zeus of this particular Mount Olympus- Carrot Top.

The Amazing Jonathan. He's funny once. He still uses the "I'm drinking Windex gag." He's like the Margaret Cho of prop comics.

Bob Sagat, nope, not funny. He works too hard to get away from his full house image and it shows. He's smarmy and arrogant. He's also just not funny.

Other than that, all through highschool and college (and all my time working retail), I've never met a woman who can actually make me laugh without me forcing it out while wretching on the inside. I don't know what the major malfunction is with society, but as a 20-something, I've simply written off "finding a girl that's funneh" as one of my goals. It seems to be an impossibility and I'm ok with that.

I didn't say I couldn't find smart women. I said I couldn't find one that was funny.

I didn't say I couldn't find smart women. I said I couldn't find one that was funny.

They are out there, but they are bi-products of funny families. If you know funny old people, see if they have daughters.

I always thought Brett Butler did some funny as hell standup.

Maybe you should stop drinking before watching standup.

Maybe you should stop drinking before watching standup.

Pauly Shore gets 'real' (http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-store16jul16,0,4032930.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels)
*"Minding the Store" (premiering Sunday on TBS) is a reality series — though its claim on the word "reality" is even more tenuous than usual

By Robert Lloyd, Times Staff Writer

"Minding the Store" (premiering Sunday on TBS with back-to-back episodes) is a reality series — though its claim on the word "reality" is even more tenuous than usual — in which the comedian Pauly Shore tries to revive the fortunes of West Hollywood's Comedy Store, owned by his mother, Mitzi (a voice on the telephone). That Shore is running the club for his mother is true enough, as are other details of his life; but like the upcoming "Tommy Lee Goes to College," "Minding the Store" is built to echo a certain kind of old-fashioned B-grade, fish-out-of-water, doofus-in-over-his-head B-picture comedy. (The titular similarity to Jerry Lewis' 1963 "Who's Minding the Store?" is possibly not entirely coincidental.)

Video cameras, improvised dialogue and documentary pretensions notwithstanding, this is a Pauly Shore movie in which Pauly Shore plays a character named Pauly Shore who has been given the run of a comedy club. In Sunday's opener, plagued by barely attended off-nights at the club, Shore comes up with an idea: "Hot Girls of the Comedy Store," which is to say, comedians a guy like Pauly would want to see naked. The audition scenes are clearly meant to be cruelly funny but are merely cruel.

Shore had five or six very good years back in the 1990s, when, with his corkscrew hair and Ringling Bros. wardrobe, he was a fixture on MTV and had a three-picture deal with Disney and record albums and his own HBO special; he was a Cheech and/or Chong for his generation. But steam had run out of that engine by the time of his extraordinarily short-lived 1997 Fox sitcom, "Pauly."

That failure, and his subsequent lack of Hollywood bankability, has become, strangely, the hook on which he now hangs his career, turning a morsel of desperation into endlessly self-referential shtick. "I used to be on top of the world," he says over the opening credits, "but now, not so much." His last major outing was the self-produced, -written and -directed "Pauly Shore Is Dead" (2003, and this year available on DVD), in which he fakes his death to raise his profile; and before that there was a documentary, "Spooge: Two Months in the Life of ... "; and more recently he played himself on "Entourage," being thrown out of the Playboy Mansion.

Still, it's hard to feel sympathy for his plight, as he seems not really to have one (beyond his avowed sex addiction, which comes up in Episode 2, and the fact that his mother won't let him have his way with her nightclub). He lives in a nice house, drives a nice car, and seems able to find work — just not in the movies. "He is always in the public eye with his many sold-out comedy shows throughout the country," one reads at his website. His curse is that he's not as big as Adam Sandler.

Apart from getting his face back on television, "Minding the Store" does Shore no real service. You can't tell — not from the first two episodes, at any rate — whether he's smart or stupid, generous or self-involved, or what he knows or likes beyond fame and sex. (He's trying to get more of the first and refrain from the second.) Never much of an actor to begin with, he seems stiff here just being himself. You certainly don't get the impression that he's funny, though to be fair, he's largely a straight man in this series. Shore doesn't come off as a bad guy, but he doesn't come off as any other kind of guy, particularly, neither likable nor unlikable.

As much goes for the people around him, his assistants, associates and the people who might be his friends. Some are cast as stock characters — like his stated nemesis, Tommy the club booker, whose "only talent is squashing my buzz," says Pauly, or Pauly's thickly accented Mexican "sidekick," Marlon — without getting enough screen time to convey any character at all. You strain to find moments of human behavior not utterly dictated by the camera, but rarely do you feel you are in the presence of anything actual. Apart from the occasional impulsive reaction or fugitive exchange, nearly the whole thing gives the impression — perhaps a false impression, but a strong one — of having been staged. Even Pauly's scenes with his sex therapist have an air of prearrangement.

It is different, however, when he interacts with his divorced parents, Comedy Store owner Mitzi (she may be just a voice on the telephone, but she's one that suggests a character worth getting a look at) and aged stand-up Sammy Shore, with whom, in Episode 2, Pauly splits a club date in Austin, Texas. Some of their business together is obviously planned, or at least tuned for effect — there is a lot of nonsense with busty blonds — but there are little flashes of connection between father and son that are more interesting and complicated than anything else on this otherwise unconvincing series.

    'Minding the Store"Minding the Store'

    Where: TBS

    When: 10 p.m. Sunday

    Ratings: TV-14-DL (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with advisories for coarse language and suggestive dialogue)

    Pauly Shore...Self

    Marlon Hernandez...Handyman

    Tommy Morris...Talent Booker/The Snitch

    Marc Hatchell...Food Enthusiast

    Sara Wasserman...Personal Assistant

    Dr. Pat Allen...Sex Therapist

    Dean Gelber...Manager of the Comedy Story/Best Friend

    Executive producer Rob Lee.