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Review 'Garfunkel and Oates' finds an odd, funny, endearing harmony

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With Comedy Central's "Broad City," USA's "Playing House" and now "Garfunkel and Oates," which premieres Thursday on IFC, it is springtime on television for female comedy teams.

If the dynamic is not exactly without precedent — Lucy and Ethel, Mary and Rhoda, Laverne and Shirley, Leslie Knope and Ann Perkins, and whoever those characters on "2 Broke Girls" are — it has not been dominant. At the moment, it feels like an exciting new kind of dessert that makes all the old desserts seem suddenly less interesting.  Read more...

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Demure, Deadpan and Smutty, an Offshoot of Girl Power

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Garfunkel and Oates are Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, a pair of comedians, actresses and songwriters who bear a glancing physical likeness to Art Garfunkel (Ms. Lindhome is tall and blond) and John Oates (Ms. Micucci is short and dark haired).

Naming their act — funny songs, stand-up, web videos and now a television show, “Garfunkel and Oates,” beginning Thursday on IFC — after a pair of famous supporting players signals Ms. Lindhome and Ms. Micucci’s intentions. They practice the comedy of female semi-empowerment, in which confidence (tending toward narcissism) and a still somewhat startling sexual frankness combine with old-fashioned insecurity and self-abasement, all of them generating laughs.               Read more...

The GQ+A: Garfunkel and Oates's Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome on the Best Dating Advice They've Ever Received

Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome like a good underdog story. Case in point: the name of their musical comedy duo is Garfunkel and Oates. For their quirky and highly entertaining new IFC series, Garfunkel and Oates, the pair dipped into their own experiences to play a struggling comedy team trying to claw their way up to what Lindhome calls "the middle class of show business." In the first episode, premiering this Thursday, Kate’s ineffectual agent spoils her big audition, while Riki’s sex life becomes, er, messy because of her...weak gag reflex. Was the gag reflex bit based on experience too, we asked? "I plead the Fifth!" said Lindhome. But she and Micucci were game to tell us all about burning bridges, hanging out with John Oates, and dropping some dating advice.  Read more...

Garfunkel and Oates Saying What Everyone Else Is Thinking

Seven years since a pair of quickly written songs landed thousands of clicks and an unintended audience on YouTube, prompting them to turn their sweetly foul-mouthed and subversive brand of musical comedy into a genuine live act as Garfunkel and Oates, Riki Lindhome (Garfunkel) and Kate Micucci (Oates) have become the most well-known guitar and ukulele players who have tackled their distaste for smug pregnant women, their ignorance on performing handjobs, and the virginal loophole of anal sex. Following a number of chart-climbing albums—their most recent 2012's All Over Your Face—and a recent series of shorts for HBO, Lindhome and Micucci are hoping to follow the cult success of Flight of Conchords with their very own self-titled television program, debuting this week (Thursday at 10 PM) on IFC. Taking a breather from a long weekend of promotion at this year's Comic-Con in San Diego, the duo discussed the difference between themselves and their characters "Riki" and "Kate," John Oates, and having porn and puppets featured in the same episode.  Read more...

Garfunkel and Oates: The Best of What's Next

Photo by Kyle Christy

Photo by Kyle Christy

The night Kate Micucci met Riki Lindhome, they were both on bad dates.

Says Kate: “When I met Riki…You know when you meet someone who is important in your life and you just have that feeling like you know it’s a bigger deal than usual? Like I couldn’t stop thinking about Riki after meeting her. I knew we were going to know each other. I just didn’t know that we would be singing and making shows and touring the country together.”  Read more...

Garfunkel and Oates: What the Folk?

Photo by Chad Nicholson

Photo by Chad Nicholson

There are a lot of people out there who are adept at mixing comedy and music, but no one does it quite like Garfunkel and Oates, the duo comprised of actresses Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome.  No strangers to comedy, their humorous songwriting partnership happened quite by accident.  "We were friends for a while,” Lindome explains. “We talked about our creative interests and we both wrote songs. It was just sort of a flow of things.”  Read more...

 

Hey, Ladies!: Achieving the Delightful, Dreamy Look on 'Garfunkel and Oates'

Photo by Darren Michaels

Photo by Darren Michaels

Cinematographer Jay Hunter has served as director of photography on Garfunkel and Oates since its launch as a web series in 2013. Hunter met Lindhome while shooting Joss Whedon’s 2012 Much Ado About Nothing—on which she played Conrade—and the group became friends. While the black-and-white Shakespeare adaptation was shot with RED Epic cameras, Hunter selected ARRI Alexa for Garfunkel and Oates. “The Alexa is my go-to camera for just about everything,” he comments. “It’s the best looking, most stable, most user-friendly camera that exists right now. No matter what I’m shooting, it’s my number one choice of format these days.”   Read more...