Picked up the DVD set last week - my impressions

Nice to see that not everyone here gushes about the show. I'm not at all a fan of Stiller's, but I had vague memories of his show being funny. Guess I was wrong. Or perhaps it was the MTV series that I was remembering. Or maybe my taste has just changed. Made the mistake of buying the DVDs and over four hours of boredom ensued. Every now and then there was something mildly amusing, though not always for the reasons they intended. I thought it was kinda funny that they took jabs at then-floundering sitcom Seinfeld, and not-yet-rebounded-on-Baywatch star David Hasselhoff. And is it just me, or did it seem odd to anyone else that the Skank skit originated following a segment with Bobcat Goldwaithe, who went on to star as the voice of the bunny in the similar (but superior) "Unhappily Ever After?"

For the most part, the skits were mindlessly droll and went on waaaayyy too long, the guest-stars were not made use of, and the writing was purely idiotic (I can't believe they won an Emmy for best writing). As XenNinjaX said, the cast was appealing and have all gone on to bigger and BETTER things. Surprisingly Andy Dick is tolerable in this one. Guess it wasn't until he took the lead in the "Get Smart" remake the following year that he got really annoying. Janeane Garafalo is remarkably sedate, but perhaps it's because she's now known for her outrageousness that she seems so. Someone commented on the main page for the show that they couldn't believe this got replaced by "The Edge." I've seen episodes of "The Edge" after 1993 -- they were funnier and held up a lot better than this series did.

Diehard fans of Stiller should rejoice this DVD release (as should lovers of obscure TV shows that are getting new life on disc). Others beware!

Picked up the DVD set, which has 2 discs, and all 12 originally aired episodes, plus the 13th "unaired" episode, which I believe was actually later aired on the FX channel.


The special features are a mixed bag. It has about an hour of behind the scenes footage, outtakes, and deleted sketches. The deleted Sketches were obviously deleted for good reason, because they were really bland, and not funny at all. One of the cool special features is that that it has commentary, with the cast, and other people involved in the show, however it's not for all of the episodes. Only a little under half of them feature commentary.


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I agree with everything up to this point. I still find it hilarious. The "unaired" episode originally aired on HBO, FYI. I was hoping for more commentary on other episodes, as well as closed captioning for the music parodies.

I knew this wasn't funny anymore...but for some reason, the third viewing seems to have regained some of the humor that was missing from the second.

I used to watch the show when I was in high school, and I used to find it hilarious. (It was on at freaking midnight here in LA, though. That meant when a show was bad I was pissed for staying up that late.) It's kind of interesting to not how my perceptions of the sketches have changed...I don't remember thinking Tank was obviously gay in the Melrose Heights sketches. Ask Manson is now funnier. I also didn't used to like the Last Stand of Yakov Smirnoff sketch, because I kinda dug Smirnoff, and then life pretty much played itself out like the sketch did...so that was kinda sad.

But, then they showed all 12 aired episodes on Codemy Central back-to-back before Mystery Men was being released. Those were painful to watch.

After picking up the DVD they're a bit funnier than they were now, but not as funny as they were then. A lot of the sketches are REALLY dated, as they were making fun of something that was topical that particular week or month, and then not ever again. In a way, the show ended up being just like Yakov Smirnoff. Because it wasn't around as long as SNL, which they were obviously shooting for, it now stands as a set of sketches that mostly, "You had to have been there" for.

My favorite sketches (in episodic order):

Melrose Heights 90210-2402 (remember when they just started adding those extra 4 digits to the ZIP code?)
Advantage Agassi
Cops in Salem, Egypt, Medieval Times
Kill Doug Szathkey
B-Minus Time Traveler
Information 411
Ask Manson
The Grungies
Grady's Oats (You're dirty and you need to be punished!)
Tony Bobbins
Bad Twist Ending Theater
A Few Good Scouts
T.J. O'Pootertoot's

If you're looking for a related cancelled sketch show that might also be funny, try Mr. Show. Bob Odenkirk goes on to do that with a guest from the show, David Cross. I guess Bob learned a lesson from the Ben Stiller Show because he states that they strove to make Mr. Show something that wasn't dated. They weren't picking on events of the day, rather, general societal trends that they were pretty sure would still be around. I'd say Mr. Show ends up weathering the time much better than the Ben Stiller Show did.

I'm definitely going to have to disagree on this one, I found it rarely funny.

When you first see this item somewhere (internet, store) it looks very tempting because I remember it coming out and not even knowing who Ben Stiller was and then seeing him in Reality Bites and still not caring enough to watch the show. Anyway you then think about where Ben Stiller is now and figure it would be fun to pick this up, that maybe you missed something, but its not as much fun as you might imagine. For one he writes and directs a great deal of the material which becomes increasingly disenchanting and difficult to tolerate as you watch subsequent episodes. At some points it almost becomes like "Ben Stiller Bored At Home Making Movies On Saturday Afternoon". I think he does a lot better as an actual actor with fully imagined characters and plots than a creative force behind a sketch comedy show, although I do give him credit for creating Derek Zoolander.

Even though the show boasts Jeanane Garofalo and Bob Odenkirk, you rarely get to fully enjoy their talents beacuse a bulk of the show is taken up with some lame stuff Ben Stiller thought of, and they end up playing uninvolved parts that you or I could have played. The few flashes of brilliance, I thought, were Bob Odenkirk's little satire of French film where he rides down the streets of LA and talks about women and buildings or the Grady Oats skits. I thought Andy Dick was used and featured well but for some reason it seemed like a lot of Jeanane Garofalo was lost in playing almost any and all female parts in the skits and Odenkirk was just plain under-utilized. If you love constantly seeing the whole Ben Stiller schtick i.e. the goofy faces and celebrity impressions, you'll love this.

The special guests idea was mostly useless because the guests weren't even involved in the sketches, just the complete wastes of time that are the little interludes of Ben trying severely hard to induce some on the spot humor (and typically failing).

As someone mentioned earlier, for some reason the sketches just don't click. A lot of them aren't funny at all, but you can appreciate what they're trying to do with the ideas they have but something about the execution makes it humorous but not funny. One thing I noticed is it seemed some skits tried to focus on narrow bits of humor like the "Models in Space" skit which seemed to struggle just to make a joke about a model bringing a hair-stylist into space or the fake Head and Shoulders commercial which was a take-off on a commercial, something that likely wasn't easily accessable even a year after the show. This also runs into the show being dated. One reason I think shows like "SNL" or even the short-lived MTV sketch-show "The State" can be hilarious is because they tend to focus more on characters and situations. The pop culture aspect is present but it works to remind you more of what era you're in than be the basis of the shows humor. While it was great remembering shows like "Rescue 911" and "Beverley Hills 90210" the skits weren't very funny.

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I totally disagree, the show is still great as I remember. I couldn't stop laughing for a half hour after I saw the Ron Pearlman/ Mary Lou Retton Teen Mascot Sketch that was never aired. I had to turn the DVD off because I couldn't stop laughing. The wrestling sketch was prophetic if nothing else.


I love the Grungies, Skank, and Relaxation tape bits. The Counting with Bruce.
THere were a few that never quite worked for me, but hilarious over all.

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yeah, I pretty much agree, and I'm in the same boat with you, but thankfully I just rented it on netflix and didn't buy it. I probably won't rent the second disc at least for a few months. I saw maybe 2 episodes back when it was on TV (or maybe the MTV one?), and thought it was the greatest thing since Kids in the Hall. Then he got cancelled and I was wondering "why?". Well I guess I'm seeing the answer, because it's very uneven. All sketch is uneven, even Monty Python's Flying Circus isn't all 100% funny, or at least not to every person. One person might laugh at something and another person will laugh at another thing, and that's why good sketch shows always have more than one writer. I think there was at least one really funny writer on the show in addition to Bob Odenkirk. Maybe 1/3 of the people writing it were funny, and the rest were people that Fox kind of foisted on them. In the commentary with Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller they talk about how Fox insisted that they hire TV writers who had success from sitcoms and stuff like that.

Another skit I liked though in addition to the ones you mentioned was "Oliverstoneland." I just saw "W" the other night and seeing that sketch gave me a much needed laugh at his expense. That's one of the things I like about Stiller, too, and the movies he's written like "Tropic Thunder" bear this out -- he's one of the only "insider" Hollywood types who's not afraid to really make fun of Hollywood's sacred cows. The skit with U2, I mean nobody out there at that time was really making fun of U2, much less making fun of their liberalism. Sinead O'Connor, OK she was a softer target. But nobody's asking Ben Stiller to parade around in a panda scalp or to mock Tom Cruise and Oliver Stone in 1992.

Just food for thought, I mean overall I'm in the same place as you, and I probably wouldn't buy the set unless it was under $10 for both DVDs or something like that. It has enough laughs that if I figured out where the good sketches are, I could entertain some friends of mine with it for an hour or so out of the actual 5 or 6 hours or whatever. The sketches that are good, those are really good, and I still like this show better than "Mad TV" or a lot of sketch shows from more recent times.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'