Word: straightman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Colbert is the series' rock, and a straightman contrast to the constantly yammering Person, his driver. As the stoic enigma and the hopped-up smart-ass speed through the desert landscape, you could almost take Kill for a surreal road comedy. The drama of this outstanding miniseries, and its horror, comes from knowing where that road leads...
...obliged to feel sorry for them, a surefire way to kill the fun. Bean's curator host is incredibly whiny and annoying, and quite undeserving of all the screen time he soaks up. MacNicol, whom one wants to strangle, is straight out of the generic fretting and put-upon straightman mold, and his presence truly cheapens Atkinson's admirable efforts...
Still, the pathetic Shands, who demonstrate their faded wealth by wearing wonderfully out-of-date clothes, get to shine comically more than the other bit-players. As Bobo's brother, Lloyd is a hapless straightman, demonstrating his own talent for physical comedy by being a complete klutz. He is at the mercy of both Bobo and his loopy mother (Cloris Leachman). With her deadpan delivery of some of Walk's funniest lines, Leachman almost steals the limelight from Mandel...
...beer on each other's heads; where your roommate leeringly asks you if you have laid your girlfriend yet... you must have read about it somewhere.) Pookie is slightly neurotic, if one would describe a person with all the symptoms of a speed-freak in those words. Jerry is straightman. He is so deeply affected by contact with the chick that his inch-long hair becomes tousled and he starts wearing a sweater instead of a three-piece suit...
...joined the Devil, but then apologized." The delegates applauded, and aging 80-year-old Voroshilov, sitting as an obscure member of the 41-man Congress Presidium, dutifully joined in by clapping his hands at his own condemnation. Nikita then went on to denounce Nikolai Bulganin, who was straightman in the touring company of Khrushchev and Bulganin until his 1958 demotion. Bulganin, in the audience as a delegate, seemed to wake from a slight doze at the mention of his name and made a few notes. The other anti-party villains-Molotov (relatively safe in Vienna), Kaganovich, Malenkov, Pervukhin, Saburov...