Over the weekend I received something in the mail that I've been waiting for since... well... college. MTV's The State has arrived on DVD, and through some funky (read as: "funky but legal") pre-ordering, I have obtained a copy a week and a half before its release.
I've been subjecting my wife to it. She's been a very good sport about the whole thing.
The State was MTV's first foray into sketch comedy via a half-hour show starring and written by an eleven-member black-box comedy troupe with some very strange ideas about comedy. It started in 1993 and ran for four seasons before the group moved to CBS and ended up disbanding to work on other projects. 3 members are on Reno 9-1-1, Michael Ian Black has been featured in every single VH1 I Love the ______ series produced (and there are tons of them).
Etc, etc, etc.
But for those who remember, you can now own all 24 episodes of the show (MTV had some funny ideas about what constituted a "season" back then), ripe as it is with early 90's fashion sensibilities, bizarre sketches, memorable characters, and perhaps the most annoying theme song ever made.
Some favorites:
- Barry and Levon, in which two men in velvet robes romance $240 worth of pudding
- Service With a Smile, better known as the "Chicken Sandwich Carl" sketch
- The Barry Lutz Show, in which we learn important facts about monkey torture (notably: they hate it)
- Porcupine Racetrack, a musical
- Tenement, a dramatic script with the language "toned down" a bit.
- Muppet Hunting
- Etc.
I could honestly go on and on. But it's worth a rental if you enjoy sketch comedy. Some of the material is dated, and they did do that thing everybody does where they try to link sketches together with random go-betweens that only sometimes work. But their material was original, really funny, very strange, edgy for its time, and they kept the sketches short--unlike some other shows I won't (MadTV) mention out (SNL) loud.
Also, this DVD comes with the promise of a Daria set due out in 2010, so that's exciting. My teenage years come home to roost.
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1 comments:
It's actually pretty funny - though I don't like the "Chicken Sandwich, Carl!" as much as you do. No more amused by the Nutcracker performed in a small room and the dancing hormones of the teenagers on the couch.
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