The three-night event “Time Traveling Bong” has come and gone. By largely the same team that brought us “Broad City,” “Time Traveling Bong” takes stoner humor and creates an entire miniseries around smoking weed. The three episodes are either a masterpiece in comedy or utterly idiotic.
The miniseries follows two cousins, Sharee (Ilana Glazer) and Jeff (Paul W. Downs), who find a bong that can travel through time. After Sharee and Jeff smoke up for the first time, they journey through time and space. But when the bong is shattered in the colonial era, the two are thrown into an adventure spanning centuries.
The miniseries is exactly what it sounds like — a story for a stoned audience, and not a whole lot more.
This TV movie split into three parts has strong things to say. Namely, the past sucks. “Time Traveling Bong” continuously brings up issues of sexism and racism throughout the ages. Whether it’s Sharee being tortured by colonists or Jeff being used as a sex toy for a cavewoman, the miniseries is anything but subtle.
“Time Traveling Bong” feels like it should be a musical, but instead of breaks in the story for show tunes, “Time Traveling Bong” takes breaks for multiple orgies. There’s an orgy with cavemen, an orgy in Ancient Greece and then another one with cavemen. The number of orgies in an hour-long story is quite frankly kind of odd, but it also plays well into the absurdity of the show’s stoner humor.
Despite it only being three installments of 20 minutes each, “Time Traveling Bong” felt like an eternity to watch. The show feels poorly constructed at places, and the breaks in between each night don’t really make you want to watch more.
Ultimately, “Time Traveling Bong” isn’t a show that’s meant to make much sense. Questioning the show’s logic or story structure misses the point — it’s about absurd humor, not plotlines. The show’s characters even break the fourth wall a bit at the end to question its continuity.
This miniseries does make you laugh, and at times the commentary is spot on. But a show named “Time Traveling Bong” was never going to be the next “Louie.” This series knows exactly what it is and who is watching, resulting in a wild and bumpy ride that will ultimately leave you confused yet weirdly happy with this trip through time.
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