John C. Reilly Starred In A Twisted, Reality-Breaking Adult Swim Series

For a while Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim had a whole wonderfully twisted Adult Swim universe going. After using a hilarious method to ingratiate themselves to the great Bob Odenkirk, Tim and Eric produced the bizarre and beloved Adult Swim series "Tom Goes to The Mayor." However, it wasn't until their follow-up show for the network, "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!," that we would really be immersed in their unhinged universe, which introduced us to a host of deranged characters including the inimitable Dr. Steve Brule.

Dr. Brule is a strange guy. His medical credentials are questionable at best, as is his background and the nature of his particular brand of social awkwardness and ineptitude. That said, he's a fun guy who clearly experiences life on a different plane to the rest of us, and he happens to look a lot like celebrated Oscar nominee John C. Reilly.

If you listen to Reilly discuss Dr. Steve Brule in interviews you'll notice he refers to him in the third person, such as when he sat down with Conan O'Brien to promote the doctor's DVD release and said he was just "helping out," thereby confirming that he and the doctor are, without question, separate people. That's just as well because if you let Dr. Brule loose on a movie set he would likely destroy the entire production within a few minutes, and Academy Award success is something that is sure to elude him for the foreseeable future. That said, the four seasons of his Adult Swim show, "Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule," are deserving of pretty much every accolade imaginable.

Back in the "Tom Goes to the Mayor" days, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim introduced us to the Channel 5 married news team of Jan & Wayne Skylar, played by Heidecker and Wareheim respectively. That duo returned as part of the warped universe that was "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" but this time they had a new correspondent: Dr. Steve Brule. The doctor debuted in the very first episode of the series, "Dads," back in 2007, and returned for several more appearances before getting his own spin-off, "Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule," which premiered on Adult Swim May 16, 2010.

Who is Dr. Steve Brule? That remains a mystery. But much like large parts of the "Awesome Show" universe, his spin-off was essentially a 1980s cable-access style show in which the doctor learned about a new topic in each 11-minute episode. This often involved Dr. Brule interviewing real experts or people knowledgeable about a certain field, with the interactions typically devolving into chaos due to the doctor's severe lack of social awareness and cognitive shortcomings. In the "Music" episode, for instance, he visits a music store "filled to the brim with ingstruments" and asks the proprietor probing questions ranging from "what is trumpet" to "you got a dang trumpet in this place?" After announcing himself as a "real bugle boy," Dr. Brule gets his hands on a dang trumpet and repeatedly chokes himself by shoving the mouthpiece down his throat. We're then shown a final shot of someone who looks a lot like Oscar-nominated actor John C. Reilly filling his pants in front of a horrified employee .

That's one of the tamer segments on "Check It Out!" which sometimes went to surprisingly dark places. At one point, Dr. Brule visits a daycare for adult babies, whom he finds living in squalor on the top floor of a suburban home. Despite the horrific scene, Brule remains oblivious, asking for a piece of candy and announcing that he likes "brutterscrotch."

"Check It Out!" ran for four seasons on Adult Swim from 2010 to 2017, with 25 episodes in total, including a 30-minute special from 2015 entitled "Bagboy." Just like other Tim and Eric offerings, every single episode of "Check It Out!" is simultaneously laugh-out-loud hilarious and humming with the feeling that something is horribly wrong. Throughout the series, we learn increasingly shocking details about the doctor's past and upbringing, such as the fact he was kept in a cat crate as a child, and at one point, a man who looks strikingly similar to Oscar nominee John C. Reilly is seen changing an adult man's diaper. Even these darker elements, however, serve to heighten the comedy by clashing with the cable access production values that you'd typically associate with some sort of local reporter covering stories about bake sales.

Mostly, though, the humor comes from Dr. Brule himself, whose naive and unintentionally crass manner catches every interviewee off-guard. There's also an improvisational element that's so integral to the humor of "Check It Out!" Sometimes there's nothing more to the comedy than Dr. Brule delivering a ridiculous line while pulling a ridiculous face, and it just works. Speaking to Interview Magazine, Reilly referred to Brule as "a spontaneous creation," adding, "The whole show is improvised. The character is improvised." This all adds to the lo-fi aesthetic of the show, but frankly I could watch an hour-long supercut of all Dr. Brule's botched line readings on their own.

At a time when there's only a handful of TV shows that can make us actually laugh out loud (Tim Robinson's hilarious sketch series "I Think You Should Leave" being one), and when studios seem to have all but stopped making comedies, a show like "Check It Out!" feels more essential than ever, and is a must-watch if you happen to be among those who never knew a John C. Reilly look-alike got his own Adult Swim series.