Was This “The Greatest Event in Television History”?

By John Everett

Last night Adult Swim aired a much-hyped Adam Scott production with the title, The Greatest Event in Television History. The video is below if you don’t want to be spoiled, but [SPOILERS] the “event” turned out to be Scott and a few of his comedy-scene pals spending way too much of Cartoon Network’s money to re-create, shot for shot, the opening credits to ’80s detective show Simon and Simon.

Now, we in The Demo are a little to young to have much knowledge of the original series, starring Jameson Parker and Gerlad McRaney (whom you may remember as George Hearst on Deadwood.) Still, the campy aesthetic of the recreation is unmistakably of that era and the nuttiness of the concept imbues the whole thing with infectious charm. The video is narrated by Jeff Probst and features surprise appearances by Paul Rudd, Kathryn Hahn, Paul Scheer, and Gus Van Sant, who is enough of a good sport to mock his own effort to recreate Psycho.

More than anything else, this video once again reinforces the thought of how much fun it would be to be a funny, handsome, famous TV star and have a bunch of funny, handsome, famous TV star friends to hang out with and pull off ridiculous stunts like this. Seriously, who wouldn’t to just hang out with Adam Scott, Jon Hamm, and Paul Rudd?