Stella

Funk? Rock? Funk-rock? Not since the opening sequence of I Heart Huckabee's has a DVD had-me-at-"hello" quite as much as Stella. This short-lived, but wickedly funny comedy series kicks off with a heated dispute between our trio of comics as they commute to work. Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain (of The State and Wet Hot American Summer fame) are arguing about what music they want to play when they get home tonight: funk, rock, or funk-rock. A fair compromise is struck with funk-rock and the groovy Stella theme song is born.

This opening sequence is typical of Stella: it's silly, the characters are nit-picky and annoying, the subject matter is cute (and slightly hip), and there's an underlying deconstruction of the generic components of the television comedy show. Stella features three bright comics at unbridled play. Over the course of ten episodes, the three talented creators, executive producers, and stars of Stella prove their group chemistry to be potent stuff indeed. The series is an experiment in rapid-fire comic timing that is imaginatively contrasted with surreal, drawn-out set pieces. Overall, I found Stella to be a rather touching ode to the power of friendship, which is probably just me because Stella is also dang cynical.

I'm quite sad that Stella was cancelled after this, the only season. It's downright poopy that corporate media's fixation on numbers would forego the possibility of such high quality fare eventually catching on. Make no mistake, Stella is stellar. Escapist entertainment at its best, the entire first season is an amazing find and it's sure to become a popular cult favorite in due time. It's like The Kids in the Hall with three New Yorkers, instead of five Torontonians. That's how sharp it is.

It's in the many recurring comic motifs running through these ten episodes that Stella truly charms. Each episode spans no more than a few days, though lifetimes of bizzaro experiences ensue. The characters are ridiculously insulated and juvenile. Black has the classic lines, Show is hopelessly foolish, and Wain is perpetually (and hilariously) left out, except in his successful turn as cafe proprietor. The top gag of the entire series happens in "Meeting Girls" when the two Michaels get girlfriends. Lonely David undergoes quite the transformation and later informs his old friends, "Yeah, that's right. I'm Brian now."

There's a funny election episode, a nice coffee shop episode, and an epic newspaper carriers' fight club episode. There's also a strangely prescient camping episode, in which hapless Showalter shoots a man he mistook for a turkey, pre-dating Dick Cheney's similar but decidedly less funny quail-hunting gaffe by half a year. There are funny cameos by Ed Norton, Topher Grace, double-duty by the excellent Tim Blake Nelson, as well as a memorable turn by Janeane Garofolo, whose bitter novelist scores some tasty zingers on the commercialization of art which, in hindsight, ring true for the show itself.

These discs feature excellent special features, including blooper reels, a 45-minute making-of, and a 20-minute live performance that demonstrates the NYC nightclub origins of this excellent series. Bittersweet though it is that such a unique and quality program could not go on -- this is particularly reflected in the tone of some of the commentaries -- Stella will now endure thanks to this DVD package. It's an impressive accomplishment that Black, Showalter and Wain should be proud of. Moreover, being the one and only season of Stella, there's a satisfying completeness to this handy, 2-disc set. You can safely gift this to anyone you know who appreciates good-natured lunacy. -- Ken Stuebing