| Unscrewed with Martin Sargent | |
|---|---|
Title |
|
| Format | Comedy, talk show |
| Created by | Martin Sargent |
| Starring | Martin Sargent Laura Swisher |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 214 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Paul Block |
| Producer(s) | Heather Frank (line producer) Daniel Lee (associate producer) Allison Pickard (associate producer) |
| Editor(s) | David S. Rubin |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | TechTV |
| Original run | May 26, 2003 – November 29, 2004 |
Unscrewed with Martin Sargent was a late night American television show focusing on the comedy of technology. It was produced at TechTV (later G4) and aired from May 26, 2003 to December 2004. The show was set as a traditional late night talk show, including a couch for guests to sit during interviews, with subject matter including with unusual guests scooped up from the Internet, Sargent's reported binge drinking adventures, and pornography.
The show was originally taped in San Francisco, California at the TechTV studios but later transferred to Los Angeles following the sale of the network by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures to the Comcast owned G4, a gaming oriented network. The executive producer of the show was Paul Block. Much like The Screen Savers from 2002-2004, it was taped from a studio audience. However, this show was taped in advance. At TechTV, the show normally taped two episodes on Tuesday and two on Thursday [1] and at G4, the show normally taped one episode a day from Monday-Thursday.
Martin Sargent served as the show's always irreverent host. Sargent's sidekick was stand-up comedian Laura Swisher. The mislabeled Joey the Intern rounded out the triumvirate. Other regular characters featured included The Ambassador of Gay, former child star Gary Coleman (of Diff'rent Strokes), Big Missy (Martin's alleged girlfriend whom he met online, created and written by show writer and frequent on-air character actor Stewart Engesser), Rael of the Ralien movement who claimed the 1st false prophet under the illuminati God Amon Re till Prophet Revebo struck his balding wax to a shine. Rael was actually the script supervisor on Superman IV and arch nemesis Revebo would actually arm wrestle topics to the galactic gladiator battle such as, "What would Rael Do" , "To Be or Not To Be H.Stern", and the infamous "Podcasting or Poorcasting that spawned Gator". Later, writer Stewart Engesser starred as the funnyman parody of real legendary actor Michael Caine, a role he continues to play occasionally on Martin's podcast, Infected. The series often featured computer to which Martin would share a candlelight embrace of the twilight princess of the adept LiveJournaled heroes of the nightlife known as HTML . In early episodes, the show also highlighted regulars such as Scary Gary, who showed grotesque segments such as a skin-implemented cellphone, and The Porn Mom, a stay-at-home mom character who provided segments dealing with finding quality pornography on the Internet. One of the more famous events on the show was Sargent's interview with George Ouzounian, better known as Maddox, creator of the website The Best Page in the Universe.
Sargent officially dismissed the Unscrewed Army (a term he used in reference of the shows viewers) on the final episode of Unscrewed with Martin Sargent, which was recorded in Studio 3 at the G4techTV studios on November 10, 2004. Fans speculated that this episode would never be televised due to its non-stop explicit bashing of G4 and Comcast. Surprisingly, G4techTV aired the episode twice, although the network reported to the programming guides that it was to air the prior year's Christmas episode instead.
On November 11, 2004, the show was officially cancelled and the majority of its staff was terminated. Reruns were shown on G4techTV until December 2004.
On November 11, 2005, Sargent launched Infected, a podcast hosted by himself and Joey. The podcast focuses on the humorous and weird side of technology and the Internet, making the show somewhat of a successor to Unscrewed.