SHAM—Upright Citizens Brigade member Lizzy Bryce’s webseries about two 30-year-olds who marry out of desperation despite not liking each other—is neither funny nor interesting. But show it to someone who still disagrees with marriage equality, and you may just change their minds.
Here’s the setup: Lizzy and Tim (Tim Keck) are housemates who, finding themselves unmarried, trigger a My Best Friend’s Wedding–style pact. And then, despite the pending nuptials being a sham and with open hostility frothing between them, nevertheless go through all the normal wedding rigmarole—compiling a gift registry, choosing a cake, and being thoroughly nauseating human beings.
But by this point in proceedings, it’s quite clear why Lizzy and Tim are unlucky in love: They’re horrid. They’re also boring, self-centered, and—fatally, for a relationship built upon a lie—humorless. And what is fatal for a relationship is fatal for a comedic webseries. Why watch the irredeemable? Why waste your time listening to a terrible recurring joke that leverages the dual use of “kid” for the young offspring of both humans and goats?
Well this is why: Because in a world where people like Lizzy and Tim—people who can’t even find housemates who like them—are able to tie the knot, the sanctity of marriage has long been corrupted. Forget about gay people who love each other, or even Gérard Depardieu types hoping to secure a green card; it’s the ones getting together for no other reason than anxiety and the realization that this may be their only shot that trivializes the alliance.
So show this to someone that disagrees with the judgment in Obergefell v. Hodges. And if they can get through it, they may have somewhere else to direct their ire.
Screengrab via Lizzy Bryce/YouTube
