liquidcelluloid-1 Network: Comedy Central; Genre: Reality/Comedy; Content Rating: TV-14; Classification: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4)Season Reviewed: series (3+ seasons)***Reader Discretion Advised*** 'Insomniac' is a somewhat surprising and odd choice for a series Dave Attell chose to showcase his comic talents. It is essentially the Comedy Central version of E!'s 'Wild On…' where the bald, acerbic slacker comedian walks the streets and wanders into bars, clubs, parties, and festivals, observing the nightlife of cities around the country and sometimes the world. Attell was poised to breakout big with his terrific stand-up special and recurring spots on 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'. I can't help but think that this show is more a buffer than an accelerator in his career. As funny and edgy as his act is it doesn't translate to this format with everything intact. The humor seems, if you can believe it in this setting, more homogenized or mainstreamed. It's base-level, dumbed down stuff without Attell's usual razor sharp edge, probably to appeal to the 'Girls Gone Wild' Comedy Central demographic. 'Insomniac' shows a kindler, gentler Dave Attell and we are supposed to go along with it because, after all, Attell is at bars, in clubs, around hookers and alcohol and things that Comedy Central just thinks are inherently funny. "Show them and your show will be cool" is the law of the land, no matter how lame your accompanying commentary is. And some of Attell's comments are shockingly lame. Quite a slide from a guy who once advocated that men in his audience spice up their love life by going home and "taking a dump" in the corner so their partner will think there was a wild animal loose in the house. Now that's funny. Attell selflessly steps back and lets the regular street folks he meets take the spotlight and get the laughs (theoretically). Instead of poking fun at them, he looks into the camera and asks if we'd like to "go over and say hello". The show works best when Attell plays straight man to the ridiculousness around him. When he stands around as a common American while everyone else makes fools of themselves. Or when he tours a burlesque house or a New Orleans fetish parlor with the seriousness of a National Geographic safari, asking question we're all thinking but seem to inane to wonder aloud. That's when the show is really in high gear. Sometimes the old colloquial Attell comes out. He describes Rio De Janeiro as being "like the Super Bowl and the World Series banging each other on top of a pool table".The show is put together in such a standard and distracting way that it takes away from any feeling of actually being there. We get a lot of quick cutting to Attell's comments (I wouldn't call them wise-cracks or one-liners) as he goes from one scene to the next. No technique is to cornball for the editors as we get more then a few scenes of Attell walking in fast motion through the crowd. As a fan of Attell's I'd like to see him take a sharper and more prominent role. This is a potential firecracker of comedy, ripe with commentary and satire. I'd like to see Attell grab it by the throat and shake it until the party favors fall to the floor. Instead he serves as our passive tour guide. Without that twist it's just another Girls Gone Wild or 'Wild On…'. Come one, this is Comedy Central, not the Travel Channel after 10:00. The show is kind of fun to watch, I'll be the first to admit, but it's little more than a time-passer and could have - no should have - been so much funnier.* * / 4

kingklassy I happened to see Dave Attell on Comedy Central when his first special aired in 1999 and I thought his material and delivery were amongst the best in the realm of comedy. So, it was a pleasant surprise when I saw an ad on that very same channel two years later for a show called "Insomniac." I've got to tell you, this show is fantastic. Not only do you get to follow Attell through some of the weirdest and craziest stuff that goes on late at night in various cities throughout the US (and with the 2003 season, throughout the world), you get to see Dave at perhaps his best. Brief selections from his act are featured at the top of each show, which are always a treat, but Attell actually works best when he's working off the cuff. His spur-of-the-moment comments to the various debauchery his witnesses are priceless and really make this show worth watching time and time again. This program deserves to remain on the air for years to come...and probably will, considering there will never be a shortage of drunken oddballs walking this Earth.

bebe22 This show has got to be one of the best on TV. It's so hilarious, whatever Dave does, I laugh so hard at. He does things I never even have heard of!! If you're looking for a great show to just laugh at and forget all your problems, "Insomniac" is the one

gregorynj "Insomniac" never fails to make me laugh out loud!Much of the humor of "Insomniac" comes from the unintended absurdity of the situations that Dave Attell encounters during his nocturnal adventures: big hairy men in blue jeans and leather harnesses whipping each other with a cat o'nine tails in a Boise gay bar; a group of women celebrating a batchelorette party walking down the street with a 6-foot tall inflatable penis; the sometimes incoherent, often nonsensical ramblings of the various street people he meets, etc. "Insomniac" gives credence to the phrase that "you just can't make this stuff up", and this show is proof that reality is often funnier - much funnier - than fiction.Dave always keeps things moving for the viewer with his great wisecracks and observations. I love the time he was at the Bunnyland Ranch in Nevada - a legal brothel. The house "madam" was giving Dave a tour of the place, including all the "role-playing" rooms (ex., one with a giant crib for people into that sort of thing), when they walk by the business office. Dave says something like, "Is this a real office or part of someone's fantasy" - funny because after seeing the role-playing rooms, now it's plausible that customers could come to live out an office-based sexual fantasy, and Dave's comment articulates the humor of this "anything goes" environment. Dave's follow-up comment: "Could I have sex on the fax machine?" Hostess: "We can arrange just about anything for you"."Insomniac" is definitely in-the-moment humor that you have to watch firsthand to appreciate. Many of the situations are sexually suggestive...or just downright sexually explicit (images of taboo body parts are screened out)...but this isn't exploitation, because it's all just part of the everyday (everynight?) human behavior that Dave brings us to see. But don't get the wrong idea - "Insomniac" is not just a survey of sexual fetishes. Dave also introduces us to the people who work through the night to keep the world running: sewage plant workers, coal miners, police officers, firemen, among others. While cracking jokes about the jobs these folks have to do and the environments they work in, Dave also helps us appreciate just what these people actually do for a living, often toiling away in anonymity while the rest of us sleep. In that sense, "Insomniac" is more of an urban athropology study (with sarcastic commentary) than a comedy show.There's a reason this show is on late at nite, but if you're not uptight and can appreciate the humor in the absurdity of human behavior, you won't be disappointed!