The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers Season 2 review: fun times

You know you’re in for a good time when a series begins with the cast discussing a range of things that the upcoming episodes definitely won’t contain … followed by clips containing those exact things. So rest assured, fans of The Inspired Unemployed: Season 2 of (Impractical) Jokers once again features plenty of nudity, pain, awkwardness and unpleasant things being inserted into mouths.

But is that enough to build a show on?

Last year, The Inspired Unemployed – Jack Steele, Liam Moore, Dom Littrich and Matt ‘Falcon’ Ford – managed to wring new life out of the tried and tired prank show format with a fairly simple twist (well, it was a twist if you didn’t remember Hamish & Andy doing a similar thing early on in their careers). Instead of playing pranks on unsuspecting members of the public, the idea was to torment and torture each other by forcing them to do stupid things in front of the unsuspecting public. This year, more of the same: if it ain’t broke, go out to Mitre 10 and do it again.

Each scenario has a similar basic structure: three of the Jokers are in a back room watching via hidden camera, while the fourth is out in public and is required to do everything they say via earpiece. If he refuses to do something, he loses the challenge: the loser overall at the end of the episode is stuck with a particularly gruelling challenge, usually involving being a dickhead in front of a crowd that’s not going to be happy about it.

Within that fairly simple premise, there’s plenty of room for variety (which is a good thing, because there’s eight half hour episodes a season). The member out front sometimes has a bit of room to improvise, especially when the challenge is something like ‘be the most Aussie guy ever’ or ‘try and sell a product when you have no idea what it actually is’.

The goal is to escalate the embarrassment and stupidity to a point where something breaks; the occasional abrupt ending suggests that sometimes it’s the public’s goodwill.

The goal here is always to come up with the most embarrassingly silly thing to get someone else to do, so the laughs are two-fold: first when you hear the idea, and then when you see it executed (or not). Not every prank gets two laughs, but the team’s joy at getting to humiliate each other is infectious – there’s always cutaways to the backroom three jumping around in joy at the stupid ideas they’ve inflicted on the fourth member.

Then there’s the public themselves, who are usually incredulous or dismayed by what they’re seeing. Sometimes they’re a bit of a threat (you don’t insult a tradie’s hands), and other times they’re a little bit too into it, as is the case of the woman who actually goes along with the suggestion that she puts her foot in one of the Joker’s mouth. Uh, okay.

Each episode ends up being a mix of the harmlessly bizarre (Liam has to talk and listen to a customer through a long piece of plastic pipe, which ends with him standing on a counter constantly yelling ‘Stannnnn’), the childishly smutty (there’s an upcoming nude life drawing class that goes exactly as well as you’d expect) and the painfully embarrassing (the final punishment round). You wouldn’t want to binge the whole season at once, but in half-hour doses it gets the job done.

The Jokers themselves manage to be firmly specific types while also being undefined everybodies. They’re all tradies (some more experienced than others), and they’re all mates, but otherwise they’re largely interchangeable. Falcon seems to be the wild card of the bunch – or at least, he’s the one getting stuck with the challenges that the others might balk at – but they’re really just the same all-Aussie, likable larrikin four times over.

Which is fine; nobody’s watching this for character development. Season 2 hits the same notes as the one before. It’s half-an-hour of well thought out mutual embarrassment, a harmless prank show where it’s all just a bunch of mates messing around. Unless they’re ruining a private concert, then it’s no wonder the fans start getting a bit riled up.

The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers – Season 2 is available on Network 10, with episodes airing weekly Wednesday 8.30pm and the entire season available on Paramount+. Watch the trailer.