The thing that can make improv comedy so fun is that you never know what you're going to get, and neither do the artists performing in the show. There was enough funny in Election Show that we're willing to imagine that some nights are far better than others. Clearly these folks are good at what they do—they never committed the cardinal sin of breaking character, among other things—but, when all was said and done, our overall feeling about the whole thing was "Eh."

The premise of the show: let's make fun of the political process by holding a fake election based on fake problems. Seattlest is a snob about our politics, mind you, but there is so much to make fun of with our current election. As it were, their fake President Willott was a sort-of spinoff of George W. Bush in appearance and manner, but nothing else. Maybe that was the misleading part. If he had been nothing like Bush, we would've been more enticed into this "fake" world they were creating. But, then there were the sort-of Candy Crowley and sort-of Andrea Mitchell characters. In other words, they sort of went there, but not really. We would've appreciated the whole show much more had they either taken some blatant stabs, or gone in a completely different direction altogether, making zero reference to current politicians and pundits, satirizing the entire process from an absurd, objectivist standpoint. But, instead, the show lingered somewhere in between, flirting with mocking the establishment, but never really making it happen.

As soon as we walked in the place and sat down, one of the actors calling himself Senator Buckley cornered us and started asking questions about where we stand on "the issues." We made up a bunch of ridiculous "issues" (glue v. gravity, and other things we don't remember). In the end, Buckley went with someone else's issue and ran on a platform that was based on putting live bald eagles on every American flag. Our idea was so much funnier. Oh well, Buckley lost to a guy who wanted to turn the whole world into a series of tiny Americas—kind of funnier. The third opponent's platform? Everyone gets their own personal grammar—funniest, but he somehow didn't stand a chance.

The best part of the show were the improv attack ads that took the ridiculous lies of real-life smear campaigns and turned them into absolute absurdity. For example, ads attacking Senator Buckley suggested numerous variations to the "eyes gauged out by bald eagles" theme. These and other small moments made us laugh out loud and enjoy ourselves, even when our gin and tonic had worn off. But, aside from the part where quasi-Candy Crowley made out with quasi-Andrea Mitchell, the show mostly lacked what is often so hysterically funny about great improv (and, for that matter, great political campaigns): the element of surprise.