‘Ab Fab’ Goes Over The Edge Into Total, Delightful Absurdity
Patsy and Edina are falling down,
Falling down, falling down
Patsy and Edina are falling down
They’re both as drunk as skunks
Take a key and lock ‘em up
Lock ‘em up, lock ‘em up
Take a key and lock ‘em up
But first - scrape ‘em off the floor.
So goes the ballad of the klutzy Ab Fab Two, who’ve followed in the footsteps of the Fab Four to steal America’s fickle psyche. Except that these two out-of-control ‘60s-stuck stars of the cult British sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous,” seen in the United States on Comedy Central, make the Beatles look like hypoallergenic angels.
OK, you’re probably thinking, “How could we Yanks really love grown-up babies Patsy and Edina, two women on the verge of becoming a biochemical hazard to themselves?”
It’s easy, sweetie darlings. If ever there was a show that tickled our very human relish of total absurdity - and brought out our latent mothering instincts, too - it’s the absolutely trashy, absolutely daring, absolutely side-splitting “Ab Fab.”
On June 12, check out how gutsy and addictive “Ab Fab” is, when the BBC-produced ditz-com begins its third and final fuzzed-out season on Comedy Central. For openers, Edina jets from London to Manhattan to find the perfect doorknob for her apartment. Patsy slums along, persuading Edina to get her navel pierced. A wild orgy ensues.
But first, to prep for all this lunacy, catch the “Ab Fab” highlights special “How To Be Absolutely Fabulous” at 10 p.m. Monday. You’ll relive Patsy and Edina’s most classic, incoherent moments.
Example: If you think you’re having a hot flash, you could be standing too close to a boiling tea kettle.
And: If those clear plastic gloves you’re wearing to clean the kitchen don’t have fingers - oops - they could be condoms.
Now, becoming “Absolutely Fabulous” isn’t all that difficult. You’ve just gotta put your whole body, checkbook and ‘60s-relic mindset into it.
Wanna be Edina?
1. Frizz hair. 2. Affix Tammy Faye Bakker makeup. 3. Drag your - OK, your parents’ - groovy tie-dyed bellbottoms out of the attic. 4. Smoke incessantly. 5. Fall on the floor in a temper tantrum when life isn’t fair.
Wanna play Patsy?
1. Grease yourself up, slither into a barely crotch-covering Spandex teeny skirt. 2. Affix Tammy Faye Bakker makeup. 3. Put on your foulest mouth. 4. Keel over dead drunk, because you’re not a Keith Moon groupie anymore, and life isn’t fair.
Now you’re “Ab Fab” sweetie dahlinks. And the results are kinda like your average put-upon stuck-indebt-and-traffic cusp-of-the-21stcentury human life - vacillating somewhere among the pitiful, the ridiculous and the goofy-on-totaloverload.
Strident? Sure. Garish? Oh, yes. Offensive to some? That’s what American networks thought when they passed on “Ab Fab” - too drugged and drunken, they thought - and Comedy Central snapped it up.
In fact, viewing “Ab Fab” for the first time when it debuted on cable last summer was like getting massaged by a jackhammer. Edina’s endless bitching and screaming - at Patsy, at co-workers, at cops, at herself - grated our eyeballs and eardrums painfully.
Then the joke kicked in. The joke is excess itself. These are two totally unlovable, hopelessly unhelpable characters. And if we don’t love them, no one else will.
Besides, Patsy and Edina do exactly what we’d like to do if we dared. They’ve lost all social conscience. They don’t give a damn about PC. They flaunt themselves as they choose. What fun.
Do they work?
Just barely. Edina is a wacked-out fashion publicist who’s too busy trying to relive the acid days of the Stones and The Who to crawl into her office. And Patsy … well, she’s an expert at holding a cigarette in one hand and a drinkie in the other.
Marriage and kids? On the skids.
Eat your heart out, “Grace Under Fire,” “Ellen” and “Roseanne.” Which, of course, is just what Roseanne did. Then she went out and bought the rights to an American version of “Ab Fab.” Network censors undoubtedly are cringing. What fun.