HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

June 27, 2005
Stella
By Ray Richmond
10:30-11 p.m., Tuesday, June 28
Comedy Central


You'll be excused for believing that David Lynch has somehow seized control of Comedy Central while watching "Stella," the network's new 10-episode summer series starring "The State" alumni Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain. "The State" was a cult hit for MTV based on the wigged-out exploits of the long-running sketch comedy troupe of the same name. Now three of the refugees are back for "Stella," which plays very much like the Marx Brothers on acid. Not that this is at all a bad thing, merely a highly surrealistic one.

In an adaptation of their stage revue, Black, Showalter and Wain portray three arrested-development roommates with the maturity level of lab monkeys. They're clad in suits a la a modern-day Marx clan, simultaneously tapping the zeitgeist of Pee-wee Herman. Then they head off on misadventures at once brilliantly banal and adroitly absurd.

In the opener, for example, the guys are evicted from their apartment for blasting "funk rock" music at all hours of the night. Suddenly they're homeless and making literally like hobos. Then they hit on an ingenious scheme: disguise themselves with fake mustaches (and only fake mustaches) and get back in the good graces of the German landlord who booted them. That's after their impromptu "Flashdance"-like dance routine designed to impress a co-op board and a relationship that covers literally 30 seconds from infatuation to attachment to breakup.

(Spoiler alert if you don't want this zany highlight ruined for you, stop reading here.) So anyway, the landlord is so horrified upon finding out that he's been duped by the toddleresque trio that he suffers a massive coronary -- and the boys perform impromptu open-heart surgery right there in the dwelling in all of its bloody splendor. And then they find out this guy isn't who he claimed to be but actually is the notorious Nazi butcher Josef Mengele. Talk about bizarro. That's not to mention a cameo appearance out of nowhere by Edward Norton. (End of spoiler alert.)

There is indeed the sense while watching "Stella" that anything can happen and probably will, and at the weirdest possible moment. This alone makes it the stuff of which appointment viewing is made. Rest assured, the spirit of the Three Stooges is alive and well.