IFC’s Brockmire has delivered an amazing mix of comedy and emotional stories over its first three seasons, and it’s gearing up for its fourth and final season (premiering in March), which will feature a time jump 15 years into the future where Hank Azaria’s Jim Brockmire is now MLB commissioner (a long way up from the washed-up announcer we saw at the start of the series). Brockmire often hits on a lot of different levels, but something it’s pulled off well repeatedly is having famous media figures appear on the show and then just roasting them. And that’s particularly true with Fox Sports’ Joe Buck, who’s been a recurring guest since the start, and who has been up for plenty of jokes mocking him (including him appearing at Brockmire’s intervention via video call while simultaneously announcing a Senior LPGA event).
Well, with Buck calling Super Bowl LIV on Fox Sunday, Brockmire decided to take another jab at him and promote their coming season in the process, releasing a clip Friday with Azaria’s Brockmire telling viewers to mute their TV Sunday and follow him on Twitter instead. He’ll be live-tweeting the game there, and using a #BrockmireBowl hashtag. Here’s the clip:
“Hey football fans, Jim Brockmire here reminding you that my good friend Joe Buck is calling the big game this weekend. So don’t forget to preemptively mute your TV and follow me on Twitter instead. Not only will I be more entertaining, I don’t have a voice that makes you want to slam a metal straw into your own ears just to make it stop.”
As a serious evaluation on Buck, that would be pretty harsh. As discussed here before, he really doesn’t seem all that objectionable at the moment, and he and Troy Aikman finished fifth out of 14 teams in our reader-voted NFL announcer rankings in November, with 37.6 percent of voters giving them an A. But as a comedic shot at Buck, it’s pretty good, and definitely in keeping with how the show has handled Buck in the past; he’s definitely a rival/friend/frenemy of Brockmire. And he’s definitely playing a somewhat exaggerated version of himself on the show as well (although as his conversations with Dan Le Batard illustrate, the real Buck has certainly gotten up to some shenanigans as well), and one that can go toe-to-toe with Brockmire in terms of insults. (And this is also nicer than many of the things people continue to say about Buck on the internet, and he’s not too bothered by that.)
So this works pretty well all around, and it’s certainly a good way to get Brockmire‘s upcoming fourth season on sports fans’ radar while giving them something to laugh about in the process.
