Read this: The brief, thwarted history of Comedy Central’s weird Stella
Of all the projects involving graduates of MTV’s rowdy sketch show The State, ranging from Wet Hot American Summer to Reno 911!, perhaps none is odder than Stella, a Dadaist sitcom/sketch hybrid that ran for two wild and crazy months on Comedy Central back in the summer of 2005. Created by and starring the formidable trio of David Wain, Michael Showalter, and Michael Ian Black, Stella revolved around three infantile, suit-wearing men—“three guys who act on every impulse,” according to Black—who managed to get themselves into surreal and improbable predicaments each week but lacked the self-awareness and perspective to even realize what they were doing most of the time. To commemorate “the show’s 10-year cancelversary,” Co.Create’s Joe Berkowitz has assembled “An Oral History Of Stella,” which looks at the short-lived, one-of-a-kind series through the eyes of its three principals, all of whom seem to view the project with a remote sense of pride and vague regret over what could have been.
