LA WEEKLY

July 8, 2005

DANGER-HUMOR
By Robert Abele

The male triumvirate who make up Stella, Comedy CentralÕs newest half-hour, is Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain, and they play themselves, but not in the eponymous sitcom way Jerry Seinfeld did. Instead of portraying show-biz folk in a comedy trio, Black, Showalter and Wain are same-named, but jobless kooks in a self-contained surreal world where they always wear suits and seem unable to carry on normal relations with anybody else.

Stella is the TV version of a live act that the three Ñ all former members of the troupe The State Ñ have kept up since 1997. The comparison to the Marx Brothers, which the network touts in press releases, is cosmically apt, but these guys are more closet anarchists than Groucho and his brothers, even at times given to politeness when making their bizarre points. When asked by an apartment co-op president why the boys Ñ sporting black-and-white tails for their crucial evaluation meeting Ñ are dressed as skunks, Black softly corrects him: ÒIf I may, sir, weÕre not dressed as skunks. WeÕre dressed as skunk people.Ó

Black, who is decidedly more gopherish in looks than skunklike, has become a snark star of late for his deadpan pop-culture musings on VH-1Õs decade-by-decade I Love the . . . series. He transitions to dumb humor nicely here, but thereÕs a postmodern parodic intelligence behind the scenes. It allows the three to use the showÕs sketch/story mixture to send up all manner of narrative convention in movies and television, from impassioned line deliveries and crazy plot twists to, in one episode, the character dynamics in a political campaign story. ItÕs also a micro-lampoon for a trivia-savvy audience, so when the previously mentioned co-op meeting turns into a goof on the dance-audition climax of Flashdance, it references what we know about the making of that classic scene: that the star obviously didnÕt do the more rigorous moves. This may become one of those shows where certain gags are caught only on repeat viewings. My second time through the pilot, I noticed that when Wain says, ÒHey look!Ó and leads his buddies to a sign on a wall, itÕs around a corner, clearly outside his line of vision.

My favorite Stella Ñ assuming that becomes the characterized term for a cast member, the way ÒPythonÓ did Ñ is Michael Showalter, who has an appealingly dazed dumb guyÕs face, squeaky-voiced delivery and unfettered approach to random acts of silliness. Will the Stella men become Marx Brothers for the 21st century? Maybe, maybe not, but in Showalter at least it feels as if the Office Space generation has its own Stan Laurel.