Doomed Laughs

By James Poniewozik

Take a cast of edgy comics and stars-to-be--Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Dick and others--give them cameras and a network budget, and what do you get? The lowest-rated show of the 1992-93 TV season--and a classic of sketch comedy. The Ben Stiller Show was an attempt to reclaim Saturday Night Live's creaky format for the kids. But it reflected a Gen X ambivalence about youth culture as a marketing concept, as in "The Grungies," a sketch about a Seattle grunge band modeled on the prefab '60s act the Monkees. ("We're not trying to be friendly/We just want money and fame/We're the X Generation/We just like to complain.") Collecting all 13 episodes, including one never aired, the two-disc set reunites the original cast and writers to reminisce about the doomed effort. Says Garofalo of one inspiredly weird skit (The Bride of Frankenstein remade in the style of Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives): "Even as we were doing it, I was wondering why we were doing it." For the DVD, Janeane, for the DVD. --By James Poniewozik