WE MADE A MESOPOTAMIA, NOW YOU CLEAN IT UP
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True, We Made a Mesopotamia, Now You Clean It Up does suffer from many of the flaws that have done in previous shows. It lacks any sort of unifying worldview, for instance–in fact, some sketches come down on both sides of an issue at once. An extended bit about a “save the whales” protester (Megan Moore Burns) at Shedd Aquarium starts out by mocking the protest, then turns on the politically unconcerned tourists who think Burns is part of the Shedd’s show. It ends by attacking an unlikable politically correct graduate student (Razowsky) both because his opinions are laughably inflexible and because he lacks the courage of his convictions.
Other sketches follow Garrison Keillor’s toothless tactic of handling issues so ambiguously that no one could ever be offended. A yuppie (Peter Burns), for instance, blows his big chance with the woman next door (Fran Adams) when he makes a crack about how “Polacky” the neighbors are. Of course he finds out she’s Polish too. Hardly the sort of material to rile Jesse Helms or Jesse Jackson.
