March 18, 2006
'STELLA,' WE HARDLY KNEW YE
A while back, I wrote about a show that was being enjoyed mightily in Casa del Ensalada: "Stella'' on Comedy Central.
It was beyond stupid, but smartly so. (The show's tag line was, "Dumb comedy dressed in a suit.") It reminded me greatly of "The Hudson Brothers Razzle-Dazzle Show" I used to watch on Saturday mornings on CBS when I was a kid.
One of the funniest moments came during one episode when the three main characters, David, Michael and Michael, decide to go camping and almost die before a bearded Mountain Man, played by Tim Blake Nelson, rescues them and tries to teach them about living in the woods. (You can see a video clip by clicking here.)
Mountain Man: Nature can be fun...."David: "Like boobs?"
Mountain Man: "....sometimes it can be dangerous."
Michael: "Like fire boobs?"
Oh, lord. If my son and I have quoted this line once, we've done it a million times. It's one of the funniest things I've ever heard.
Well, the season finished to mixed reviews and then... nothing. No repeats, no anything.
Then last week, Comedy Central started airing "Stella" repeats. It gave me hope that a second season had been ordered and that they were priming the pump for new episodes by showing the old ones.
Alas, it was not to be:
STELLA COMEDY CENTRAL SERIES
The STELLA series was on Comedy Central last summer. The network has offcially decided not to renew it for a second season.
Thank you to all the fans for your lobbying and support. Perhaps Stella will return on TV in some other form in the future. In the meantime, Comedy Central occasionally repeats the episodes, and we are currently working on DVD which will have the whole season and lots of cool extras. The DVD release (and possible touring) will be this fall.
I was crestfallen. And I knew Salad Boy, a prepubescent aficionado of slapstick and farce if there ever was one, would be devastated.
So I did something I never do; I tried to contact a couple of the guys on the show. It was all Rupert Pupkin-like, but I didn't care; these guys had touched my soul.
So I sent the following note on Friday to actors Michael Showalter and David Wain:
David and Michael,
“Stella’’ was the one show my 10-year-old son and I could watch and both of us think that neither one of us was getting the jokes and that the other was just fake-giggling to make the other one feel better. It also was a show he and I could simultaneously annoy my wife/his mother with. He’s going to be crushed when I tell him the news tonight.
I don’t know if it says something about my parenting or his advanced awareness of body parts, but we’ve constantly been quoting the “fire boobs” line since it aired. Sometimes, we say it in robot voice. It’s much funnier.
Thanks for the laughs. Looking forward to the DVD – and your next project.
Cheers,
Jeff
And a few hours later, I got this nice reply from David Wain:
thanks jeff - that's awesome - hopefully we'll do something else before your son goes to collegedw
It reminded me of a quote that Showalter once gave to an answer from a reporter last year about the delayed appreciation of his film, "Wet Hot American Summer":
A: Does that mean it will take four years for people to get "Stella"?
Q: I hope that’s not the trajectory for it. I hope people get it faster than that. There was one review that said in the year 2008 people will love this show. I hope people get it right away because it’s really funny.
Sometimes, we need a little more time to get the joke, apparently.
Here's to looking forward to 2008.