After years of producing endless fly-on-the-wall crap, Reality TV has finally produced something worth seeing in the form of I'm With Busey.
The premise is simple : Adam De La Pena is a comedy writer who grew up worshiping Gary Busey. So Busey takes young Adam under his wing and shows him life and the world through the eyes of Busey.
Admittedly the initial appeal of the program hinges largely on well you know Gary Busey. If like me you thought he was the high point of Point Break, then the show simply suckers you in and doesn't let up. On the other hand I initially caught the program with a friend of mine who had no idea whatsoever who Busey was and simply found him entertaining as hell. The truth is that simple - Busey is clinically insane. Not in a threatening-to-humanity sort of way, but in a Doctor-Cox-from-Scrubs sort of a way. The man is not only funny, violent, arrogant, interfering, impulsive, brash, rude and childlike, but he somehow manages to be most of these things at the same time. Don't let this fool you into thinking he's evil or anything, he's not - he's just funny as hell to see going through his motions.
To add more humour to the mix, Adam De La Pena is the polar opposite of Busey. He lives constantly in fear of anything even remotely risky and as such becomes the witless foil for old Busey on many many occasions.
Busey shows Adam a lot of different aspects of life through his eyes - dating ("Adam, tell her 'I like your scent'"), technology ("One day technology's gonna be developed that can kill your mother"), death ("You're not gonna be conscious when you die, so what's to be afraid of?"). From cooking roadkill, to absurd poetry, breaking up childhood friendships, making an enemy of Andy Dick, the show never lets up. The sight of Busey physically assaulting an organic vegetable delivery man is positively the funniest thing you'll see in years.
There is some talk of the show being more scripted than reality-based and although I agree that the final episode of the series (featuring Andy Dick) just screams "set up" the rest of the episodes are simply too insidiously twisted and darkly comical to be scripted. If De La Pena HAD legitimately scripted the show then quite frankly he'd be one of the best comedy writers in the business and he'd be an idiot for not admitting it.
Good show, good "characters" and more importantly good Busey.
