Lawrence Leung should choose his own persona

After a pilot episode that was all over the place we gave Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure a second shot, and boy oh boy after being weird but enjoyable in the first episode he really just decided to be all out boring on his second outing didn’t he?

Episode 2 finds Lawrence wanting to be a rock star. So he meets the dude from You Am I, he talks to Dicko, he plays the recorder (LOLS!) and sings really bad rock songs that he wrote as a kid (hilarious!! ... those are sarcastic exclamation points...) And quite frankly I’m not sure how else to describe Lawrence’s show other than that it’s a pretty bland knock off of Borat and John Safran that really has no clue what kind of show it wants to be.

Is it supposed to be real? Is it supposed to be staged? Because it’s too fake to be real and it’s not funny enough to be staged.

The second episode highlighted everything that doesn’t work about the show. Don’t pretend like you’re bumping into Dicko when it’s obvious your producer called him up first. Don’t pretend like Tim Rogers smashed you over the head with a bottle when it’s obviously a bit, and I know it’s obviously a bit, and you know it’s obviously a bit but then why do it at all?

Is he supposed to be that guy who confronts people like Tim Rogers and Dicko just out of the blue ala the Chaser? Because if so then don’t let us know they’re in on the joke. Don’t have Dicko go “who the hell are you?” only to cut to the pair of you getting into a car to listen to a “bad” song you wrote like his agent arranged it.

The bit where he dressed up as a rock star and annoyed celebrities at the MTV Awards was funny, trying to fight 50 Cent was especially funny but only if he sticks with that character.

Lawrence is completely different from scene to scene. Is he a shy goofball? Or is he a dick? Is he a dick who’s pretending to be a shy goofball? And why can’t he pick a persona? Is he playing up his awkwardness? Or is he really that awkward?

I don’t get his persona because it’s always changing and a show like this is all about the persona. Show’s like this work if they’re embedded in reality. Borat works because you really believe he’s embarrassing himself in front of real people. John Safran works because you really believe he’s getting an exorcism. Lawrence Leung doesn’t because it’s obvious he’s doing “bits” and by constantly letting us know it’s all some big set up it removes the credibility from the rest of the show. Stuff that we’d have a hard time believing wasn’t set up before hand, like the MTV performance where he “breaks” his laptop, we know for sure is “faked.”

Tim Rogers isn’t really smashing Lawrence over the head with a bottle therefore we now know that Lawrence’s dad didn’t happen to just find all of the ‘hilariously bad’ outfits in the clothing store to get him to try on, therefore we know that bumping into Dicko was organised, therefore the ‘MTV performance goes haywire!’ bit is all part of the act – therefore the show isn’t funny because it’s lying to us about how ‘real’ it is.