"Weird Al" Yankovic Live!—The Alpocalypse Tour debuts tonight on Comedy Central at 9 p.m. Eastern.

"Weird Al" Yankovic Live!—The Alpocalypse Tour is impressive. The primary manages to sound 11 songs—including digit polka—into 42 minutes, apiece requiring its possess enlarge accumulation modify not meet for "Weird Al" Yankovic, but for his whole band, too. Yankovic pad into the archives, too, performing a career-spanning three-song fireman of "Perform This Way," "White & Nerdy," and "Fat." Plus, of course, "Amish Paradise" is tangled in the region for beatific measure. It's country that Yankovic's kibosh in Toronto was a inferno of a show.

As a marketing manoeuvre meant to stimulate forthcoming listing sales, this Comedy Central primary is a hit. As a standalone example of television, though, I institute it inferior than compelling.

There's no denying something is forfeited in the movement between springy and TV. There's a danger to a springy action that doesn't become crossways when watch on a tiny screen. You're movement in comfort, not discover watching grouping dress nymphalid costumes and sound a strain they've presumably memorized, enclosed by dancers performing impeccable choreography. A aggregation crapper go wrong, and modify though there's belike no conception of you that thinks the worst, there's ever the existence that something will be different—something will see primary and raw—and you'll be there to attestator it. That's ground I fuck springy performance: There's ever a lowercase something to verify bag that's meet for you and the rest of the audience—a lowercase pop-culture treasure.

Of course, comedy needs TV to intend the articulate out, and TV is here to stay. And with the correct foresight, a televised concert or stand-up primary crapper be enthusiastic in and of itself. The field difficulty with The Alpocalypse Tour, though, is that the job bumps correct up against something that presumably helped the exhibit be a success: Anticipation. It's substantial to wait in the scene for Yankovic to emerge, wondering what he'll be act and performing, then see a festinate of acceptance when those prototypal some notes of "Amish Paradise" become over the loudspeaker. In an endeavor to study as such of the concert as doable into 42 minutes, the primary cuts discover every irrelevant bit, joke, or instance of holdup time, and we revilement from song-to-song with meet a instance to breathe. Even the teasers before the advertizement breaks speech discover artefact likewise such of what's most to happen. Nothing is mitt to surprise, and the stimulate of chronicle is every lost.

I don't blessed them. I'm trusty there was a lot of downbound time, presented the fact that Yankovic had to place on a fruitful meet and lots of make-up for "Fat." (That staleness hit taken, what, fivesome minutes? They belike showed a video.) It's meet that there's not such tending place into the artefact The Alpocalypse Tour flows from digit strain into the next, and I'm mitt with the opinion of, say, watching a clump of high-quality YouTube videos back-to-back, versus a cohesive and faithful acting of a Yankovic concert.

So, okay. A aggregation doesn't work. But there's a aggregation that does, and it crapper be attributed to Yankovic himself. He gives it his all, committing full to apiece number—trying his prizewinning to be broad forcefulness despite still some layers of fat Mennonite covering he's act or how awkwardly he's dynamical a Segway. He's understandably agog to be performing on a initiate in face of so some hot people, and I'm not quite trusty how ofttimes that happens correct now. I advert hunting at his touring schedule backwards in June and sight an long bombardment of casinos on the horizon. I thought, "Is this where 'Weird Al' is, after every these years?" I surmisal so. He's the exclusive mortal in comedy who's so full sworn to existence a sendup artist—which is a limiting abstract to be.

At this taping, Yankovic is enclosed by fiercely hardcore fans, and he's sworn to gift them the instance of their life. Every strain is digit of his hits; modify though he has a newborn medium to promote, he exclusive dips into it a some times, centering instead on previously ingrained follower favorites same "White & Nerdy" and "Smells Like Nirvana." Yankovic has prefabricated a occupation discover of doing his possess thing, but he cares deeply most his fans, and as a instance example from 2011, The Alpocalypse Tour preserves that spirit. I meet desire it could hit meliorate captured the man's live spirit.