August 4-10, 2005

tv party!

Men Out Of Time

Sweet, classy physical comedy: Is Stella ahead of its time?

by Joey Sweeney

The history of alternative comedy is littered with tales of The Once-Edgy But Now Annoying. Dave Foley, once a beacon of light on The Kids In The Hall, is now the jerk scraping a paycheck together on Bravo's Celebrity Poker. Janeane Garofalo is now Janeane Garofalo. And don't let's even get started on Eddie Izzard, John Leguizamo and Andy Dick.

By rights, then, Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, who make up two-thirds of the principals on Stella, should be noticeably unfresh. After all, the pair first appeared on MTV's ill-fated but much beloved sketch comedy series The State in 1993. The State — which has somehow still not been issued on DVD — was a touchstone for post-grunge alt-comedy; without it, it'd be hard to imagine Mr. Show, Upright Citizens Brigade and certainly smirky movies like Wet Hot American Summer, which featured most of The State's cast.

The intervening years have been a rough time for the class of '93, it seems, so it feels like a kind of justice that the alums are all back on television, sometimes even back-to-back. A gaggle of ex-Staters star on Reno 911!, a faux-umetary series a la Cops that is one of the more consistently funny shows on Comedy Central. And now, Black and Showalter, with Wet Hot director David Wain, have Stella, the TV adaptation of their long-running nightclub act of the same name.

If Reno 911! is all about knowing jabs at the inefficacy of The Man, Stella has a sweetness and classicism to it that seems very pleasantly out of time. And therefore, kind of edgy. The setup is fairly simple: Michael, Michael and David are three witty yet witless bumblers who careen from one unbelievably stupid situation to another. Like the Three Stooges and lots of other buddy acts down through comedic time, they exist in their own bumbling orb while the rest of the world trudges along in its own real-time sobriety. When those orbs collide, comedy ensues.

In a time when most comedy is marked by rapid-fire pop culture references and snark in general, Stella is kind of a gamble. For one, much of the comedy is classically physical. Stumbling gags and visual jokes abound; it helps that the lads all dress in matching drab suits. Those suits also touch upon the second strange thing about Stella: If it's an homage to anything, a lot of the comedy here seems to reference the Beatles, specifically in their Dick Lester period. Like the Beatles of Help! and A Hard Day's Night, the Stella boys are just that: boys, in a man's man's man's world. The suits, the dippy affect and the willingness to please all conspire towards this. In one episode, the fellas are so eager to please that they wing it at open heart surgery on their landlord. They don't know what they're doing, but the only other option is to face their fellow tenants with the sad news that the man's had a heart attack. So in they go with some household tools and an open mind. It's part disgusting, and part ye olde solicitous Peter Sellers.

In the end, that kind of battiness — along with the absence of a laugh track to point out jokes to the less-than-with-it — might doom Stella. But on the other hand, isn't "doomed" just a longer version of the prefix "alt"?

Stella airs on Comedy Central Tuesdays at 10:30 p.m.

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Plus... TV/Tivo Tips!
This week's theme: Born in the U.S.A.!

Aug. 4-11

Dukes of Hazzard
Thu., Aug. 4, 9 p.m., SpikeTV
If you're going to see the movie, you should probably take this opportunity to catch up on the TV show. You know, so you can understand it. Yahoo fun fact — original airdate: January 26, 1979. What a kooky world we used to live in, huh?

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live In New York City
Sun., Aug. 7, 6:55 p.m., WHYY 12
The obscure airing time and rebroadcast a few hours later on WNJS can only mean one thing: It's beg week, baby. And recently this concert film has fortunately become a new beg week staple, notable mostly for its amazing 18-minute version of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," in which Bruce pretends to be a dirty preacher, makes goo goo eyes at his wife repeatedly and generally proves the point once again that he is the most awesome man who has ever lived.

Miss Teen USA
Mon., Aug. 8, 9 p.m., NBC
If you really and truly want to know why the rest of the world hates us so, I suppose this is as good a place as any to start.

Miami Ink
Tue., Aug. 9, 10 p.m., TLC
Five tattoo artists open a new shop in Miami, only to find that it is their mission to tattoo the stupidest men and women the world has ever known.