#180. Feherty, the Wise Fool

If you watched any of the Golf Channel's US Open coverage this year, you couldn't miss the promos for Feherty, the new show that debuted the night after the Open's final round.  I've had a mild crush on David Feherty for a while, so I had to check out the Irish-born commentator's latest project.



For sure, Feherty's no mystical golf figure. He is, however, a clown: he skips the garish makeup but sometimes sports the funny hair and clothes, and he's a physical comedy wiz.  He's also wicked smart and, well, deep . . . despite all the jokes about "testicle cams" and burping ("When the flaming hot Cheadles enter the earth's atmosphere, yodeling will be involved").   After watching three episodes, I can categorically say that Feherty is . . . ummmm, unlike any show I've ever seen.

Each half-hour episode (and the hour-long premier) features crazy Feherty vignettes as well as interviews with one particular celebrity: so far, respectively Lee Trevino, Don Cheadle, and Tom Watson.

Don Cheadle?

Incongruity is Feherty's hallmark. Nothing quite makes sense in Feherty's world, but somehow, the nonsense comes together to equal more than the sum of its parts.

For example, in the Don Cheadle episode, we get to see Cheadle--a 10 handicap and Academy Award nominee--take some swings on a golf course and answer questions about acting, but we also get to see him in skits where he poses as a judge for a stand-up comic job for which Feherty auditions (with purposefully terrible jokes).  And we get to see Feherty go on a goofball man-on-the-streets interview series based on some mythical confusion between Cheadles and Cheetos.  We also get to hear Feherty tell a story (and storytelling is his true forte) about the late Payne Stewart sneaking a groundhog into Feherty's hotel room. It's insanity, really.

But the kicker is that in every show, in the midst of all this lunacy, Feherty plugs into what I call the "Fourth Dimension of Clowning."  Here's the theory: if you get an audience laughing enough at ridiculous humor, the laughter breaks down their defenses and provides a perfect space into which you can drop a bit of wisdom.  The wisdom then connects on a deeper level because it's unexpected and a bunch of undefended space has been cleared by the laughter.

In Feherty's case, his sophomoric inanity lulls the audience into a relaxed availability without expectation of anything deeper, more heartfelt.  And that's when Feherty pops the trap door from under his audience by throwing out something profound that resonates at a more powerful level.  In the Cheadle episode, it's the aching, bittersweet love for daughters who will eventually leave home.  In the Trevino episode, it's Feherty describing the turning point in his battle with booze.  In the Watson episode, it's the two of them discussing their deep friendship and mutual struggles with alcohol. 

Each of these vulnerable, poignant moments comes after you've watched much and varied silliness.  Somehow the silliness preps you and enriches these moments.  Such is the modus operandi of the wise fool Feherty.

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