Before Zach Galifianakis ever sat between two ferns, he sat across from Michael Showalter.
Over three years ago, on one of the first episodes of Stella’s very own, The Michael Showalter Showalter, Showalter talks to the post-Dog-Bites-Man-pre-The-Hangover comedian about dipping tobacco and Fiona Apple. It’s a silly conversation with a deadpan facade that’s always on the verge of cracking should one of them get a case of the Jimmy Fallon giggles.
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With the help of CollegeHumor, Showalter went onto release nine more installments of The Michael Showalter Showalter, firmly establishing himself as a progenitor of the now very popular faux-comedian-talk-show genre of web series. But the last Showalter episode was released nine months ago, and a certain class of comedy nerds – the kids who, in the wild days before YouTube, bootlegged VHS copies of The State and followed the former MTV sketch troupe’s diaspora to Comedy Central shows like Viva Variety and Reno 911 – want to know what he’s been up to since.
Babelgum has some answers. The web and mobile video platform tapped Showalter for a four part series dubbed, Michael Showalter Presents the Making of…. The first set tackles popular television commercials and what goes on behind the scenes, starting with those Intel spots sung by United Colors of Benetton choir. And it’s kinda sorta not really all that funny.
Showalter’s Showalter thrives on unpredictability and the presence of one of my favorite comedians of all time. The Making of… has neither. Maybe I’ve developed some spidey skills from being exposed to too many pop culture, sketch comedy spoofs, but you can tell in which direction the episode is going from its first fake interview with an Intel systems analyst. Plus, Showalter is nowhere to be found.
It’s great marketing to have a web series created by one of the members of Stella premiere on your network, but it’s a missed opportunity if the guy doesn’t show up on camera. Here’s to hoping Showalter’s fiendish grin gets on screen soon.
