“My Brother, My Brother and Me,” and You
They Don’t Have the Answers, but They Did Bring the Goofs
By Kinaan Taha
It’s been almost two years to the day since Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy brought their patently wholesome, borderline absurdist comedy to the Orpheum Theater, but on Friday, November 16, it was as though they had never left. Bringing the live version of their popular comedic advice podcast “My Brother, My Brother and Me” to Minneapolis for the third time, the McElroy brothers answered questions from both the audience and anonymous “Yahoo! Answers” users. Though most of their advice was useless, all of it was entertaining.
The familial vibe of the night could be felt from the very beginning, as “Sawbones” opened for its sister podcast. “Sawbones,” hosted by Justin and his wife Dr. Sydnee Smirl McElroy, is a medicine-focused show that discusses historical treatments for modern diseases; on Friday, they tackled Viking’s Disease, a regionally conscious choice. The crowd reacted positively to the blend of medicinal information and observational comedy, with the first big laugh coming about three minutes into the show, elicited by only the word “penis” with almost no additional context. That’s the beauty of the McElroy family of products: the legwork that they have to do to get a laugh has already been done. Over the course of a decade, their weekly and biweekly podcasts have allowed their entrenched audience to get to know each member of the family.
After “Sawbones” wrapped up, Clint McElroy, the self-described patriarch of the family, emerged to announce his three sons. Clint, who made his career in radio, talked briefly about letting his granddaughter do his garish stage makeup for the night, before reciting the introduction that prefaces every recorded episode of “My Brother, My Brother and Me.” From opening the show alongside one of their wives to being introduced by their father, the McElroy brothers built a sort of family roadshow dynamic around their night of entertainment. To many of the longtime fans in the audience, the McElroys are a pseudo-family of sorts, with their wholesome brotherly dynamic bleeding out of listeners’ earphones and reminding them what a big brother cracking up at his own jokes sounds like or what a youngest sibling petulantly asking to be part of the joke evokes in them.
Over the course of the night, the McElroys answered such absurd questions as “Can I have a vegetable day?” (sourced from Yahoo! Answers verbatim, in all its nonsensical glory) and “How can I find out who keeps leaving snacks in my desk at work?” (from the audience). They spent about ten minutes on each question, throwing out hypotheticals and building on the proposed scenario until they reached a point where they could go no further. One of the most impressive skills that the McElroys have cultivated over their nearly decade long careers as comedians is knowing when a bit is dead: none of their goofy answers overstayed their welcome or retread covered ground.
The one break from the formula came when Justin played a game called “Minion Quotes,” which involved him reading a platitude from the Facebook page Minion Quotes and having his brothers guess which animated character had been chosen by the page to accompany it. If they guessed correctly, Justin was forced to share it to his wall with no comment. If that sounds like less of a game and more of watching three brothers scroll through Facebook together, that’s because it is, but the McElroys somehow managed to make it hilarious: the outsized reaction they all exhibited when Griffin correctly guessed one of the characters brought the audience to tears.
For longtime listeners of the show, the live performance was more of what they already enjoy. For anyone not yet inducted into the McElroy fandom, it is very possible that it came off as inscrutable nonsense. Either way, it was a whole lot of fun.