Mirth

– The centerpiece of any given episode of The Best Show tends to be the phone call between Scharpling and comedy partner Jon Wurster (the drummer for Superchunk, The Mountain Goats, and Bob Mould) in character as one of any number of weirdos that populate fictional Newbridge, NJ. When it comes to world-building, the “Whedonverse,” such as it is, has nothing on Newbridge. If the construction of ambitiously fleshed-out narrative worlds has generally been considered within the realms of science fiction or fantasy, the collected works of Scharpling and Wurster remind us that world-building can pay dividends in comedy. Spending thirteen years building out a story-world deepens jokes, sustains long-simmering storylines, and offers opportunities to subvert well-built expectations.

Music

– More than pretty much anything else, The Best Show finally pushed me past my punk-influenced disavowal of many of the classic rock groups I grew up listening to. On a free-form radio station where you’re likely to hear James Chance instead of James Taylor, or Yoko Ono instead of The Beatles, what could be more subversive than playing a different Led Zeppelin song every week?

– As a matter of fact, The Best Show’s use of music has given me cause to think about the personal, individual nature of taste. While academics who study taste tend to follow Bourdieu’s lead and think of it as a social phenomenon informed by our stations in life, there can be dissonance between understanding that on an intellectual level and at the same time emotionally and affectively feeling like something was made just for you—as if it sprung from the cabinet of your brain that stores your feelings about the things you like. “Evan likes ‘60s garage rock, Julie Klausner, Ted Leo, Superchunk, free-flowing conversations about popular culture, Kurt Vile, Patton Oswalt, Aimee Mann, etc etc etc, so here—have this thing that pulls together all of that stuff.” Now, obviously, I know that habitus has much to do with why I like these things. Still, while the tensions between taste as individual experience and social/structural formation have been fundamental to much of the canonical writing on the subject, it can be a strange thing to experience them oneself.

Mayhem

– Focusing only on the Scharpling and Wurster bits threatens to elide that any given episode of The Best Show features at least two additional hours of comedy, conversations, and miscellany. These ingredients make the program fundamentally unpredictable—a capriciousness amplified by the live nature of the program. Now, I’m a sucker for liveness. It’s why I love watching sports, awards shows, and Saturday Night Live regardless of quality, and it’s why I watched NBC’s live Sound of Music last week in spite of that fact that I’m an avowed SoM hater. So, I do listen live whenever possible—and in an era where more and more of my media experiences are delayed, on-demand, or catch-up, I’ll miss the presence of one more live experience in my weekly media diet.

– Most of all, though, I lament the end of The Best Show because it’s truly singular: free-form conversations with callers and guests, occasional musical performances, puppets, sound collages, and other bits of randomness. It is to the call-in radio show what Late Night with David Letterman was to the late-night talk show: proof that well-established formats are still ripe for experimentation and can be opened up and toyed with. If we’re lucky, The Best Show will be just as influential on future generations of comedians.

In a recent Spin magazine feature on the program, Tompkins suggests that The Best Show is “fully exploiting its medium.” It’s true–the affordances of live radio (and the free-form format of WFMU) are well suited to the program’s patient, ambling, and understated approach. Most episodes include a lengthy back-and-forth comedy routine between Scharpling and his comedy partner, Jon Wurster (who doubles as drummer for Superchunk and The Mountain Goats). In fact, The Best Show grew out of a 1997 Scharpling and Wurster routine from Scharpling’s pre-Best Show WFMU program. Playing a rock critic named Ronald Thomas Clontle, Wurster called the program to promote his book Rock, Rot, and Rule, a categorical guide to which popular music acts rock, which ones rot, and which ones rule. A recording of the routine became an underground hit, and The Best Show began as a going concern in 2000. Many of Scharpling and Wurster’s successive bits follow the general format of Rock, Rot, and Rule, with Scharpling as the straight man and Wurster calling the program as one of many hapless characters hailing from fictional Newbridge, New Jersey. In over ten years of these routines (some of which can be found on the duo’s self-released albums), Scharpling and Wurster have created an impressively fleshed-out narrative universe.

Although comedy podcasts and public-radio interview/variety programs represent seemingly obvious points of comparison for The Best Show, Scharpling often distinguishes his program from these genres by mocking the off-the-cuff nature of the former and the slick, genteel sleepiness of the latter. Indeed, Scharpling professes little love for NPR, dismissing Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor as a “hate-monger” and skewering the canned enthusiasm of programs like Car Talk. Alternately, he pokes fun at the amateurish nature of podcasts, albeit in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner. Still, The Best Show’s syndication within that format (as well as Best Show Gems, a podcast collecting many of The Best Show’s “greatest hits”) has expanded its audience over the past few years and helped contribute to the recent popularity of comedy podcasts.

Nevertheless, while the program’s online distribution has boosted its popularity, The Best Show’s status as a live, terrestrial radio program is fundamental to the program’s aesthetic. With its unpredictable callers and comedy routines, the program incorporates a volatile liveness that thrives on the combination of Scharpling’s gift for storytelling, his limited patience with bad callers, his intricately plotted routines with Wurster, and the contributions of a constantly evolving group of “Friends of Tom” or “FOTs” (including comedians, musicians, artists, and even puppets) who participate in the program on one level or another.

While Scharpling’s on-air persona (inhabiting a state that comedian and FOT John Hodgman refers to as “aggrieved”) may indicate a certain level of misanthropy, a humanist–and, yes, mirthful–current runs through the program. The Best Show often celebrates “the little guy” in the face of political and corporate bullies, and Scharpling has no patience for callers who espouse misogyny, racism, or any of the lowest-common-denominator approaches that draw audiences on other comedy radio programs. Ultimately, it’s not for nothing that writer Jake Fogelnest, in the aforementioned Spin feature, compares The Best Show to DIY indie/post-punk band Fugazi. Like that band, the program is an inspiring testament to the beauty of DIY art, community-supported media (whether that community is bound by geography or common interest), and non-corporate entertainment. And like Fugazi, The Best Show holds pleasures well beyond the particulars of its politics and mode of production—it’s a fantastic listen.

(The Best Show on WFMU runs every Tuesday night from 9pm to midnight, EST. Live-stream links and a nearly complete archive of the program can be found here.)