(Editor’s note: Yesterday, Kendon reviewed “Stacks” in the first part of this two part series. I would suggest reading that first.”Stacks” is a sitcom parody from Patrick Stickles, who is the frontman for Titus Andronicus.)
The best thing about television shows is their ability to adapt. Michael Schur, who created “The Good Place” once said that it takes a season for a show to be good. If he could, he’d create an entire season and throw it out, never to be seen. While that’s kind of funny considering the beforementioned show is one of the best sitcoms ever made, this opinion comes as no surprise since he co-created “Parks and Recreation”, which had a terrible first season but became great after that point.
Both of these shows should be inspirational for “Stacks” even if its pilot does happen to be a one-off episode for the sake of marketing. While “The Good Place” has always been great, it constantly reinvents itself from season to season and often from episode to episode. It has been many things and could be anything, and it serves as a testament to the malleability of shows. “Parks and Recreation” shows that, by refining the show until only the good parts remain, a bad show with flickers of brilliance can be a good show with moments of perfection. And it doesn’t need to do either of those things overnight. It just has to work to get there.
In my review of “Stacks”, I wrote a lot about what I didn’t like, so I won’t talk about them much here except when referencing what will replace those parts. Instead, this article will focus on the parts that were good, how the show could expand those parts into the crux of a series and different approaches to humor than the failed attempts in the pilot.
At the end of the pilot, Patrick Stickles’ character Stacks gets a call from Bob Dylan (someone badly impersonating the songwriting legend… for the record) asking if Titus Andronicus wanted to tour with him. The implication here is the next storyline in the show is about being on tour with Bob Dylan. To that, I say sure. That’s a hilarious setup whether Bob Dylan chooses to co-star as himself here or someone impersonates him in the show, but I’d like to add one more element to this.
I absolutely loved the chemistry between Cary Kehayan’s MacKenzo character and Stickles’ Stacks. It’s kind of a treat to have two characters who are insufferable and loveable in their own ways and both always half-right, half-wrong but in ways that never overlap. They are natural opposites, and the one scene they shared together was the one scene that sang (not literally – there was singing and many scenes here). I would double down on that chemistry by having MacKenzo assigned to follow the Bob Dylan tour with Titus Andronicus as the opener.
This could lead the rest of the show down the path of a platonic love chain that starts with MacKenzo and ends with Stacks as well as a hate chain that points from Stacks outward. The funniest version of this show is MacKenzo being infatuated with Dylan but Dylan being obsessed with Stacks as a songwriter. A scene where Dylan asks for Stacks advice about “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and claiming, “I still can’t get this song right. How would you change it?” would be genuinely hilarious as long as Stacks plays it confused but helpful. Obviously, Dylan admiring Stacks would only further fuel any Stacks versus MacKenzo rivalries.
The resulting show would be somewhere in the realm of “Spinal Tap” meets “Almost Famous” in terms of structure with a slight touch of the sitcom “Baskets” in there for the sake of absurdity. But where I really look for source of humor is a little known web series from If You Make It where Eric Ayotte, Dominic Armao and Paul Baribeau (among others) make short films that focus more on being bizarre than traditionally funny.
Let’s look back on the craps games in the pilot. The audience is supposed to react to this by thinking it’s funny that Titus Andronicus is obsessed with craps, but it comes off as nothing more than a distraction to the rest of the show because Stacks sits down for one game, wins and then they practice. No dedication is made to the joke, so it doesn’t ever come back around to being funny. It’s just there, and then it isn’t.
As a contrast, Ayotte and his friends (who, like Stickles, are all in real life bands themselves), go all in on every bit. The craps scene should have resembled something like the video above where Ayotte and Armao’s female roommate heads out for the night, and they have, as the title suggests, a “Boys Night In”. What sells this brilliant dumb concept is they seem genuinely excited to dance together to Jimmy Eats World and hang out. Never in the “Stacks” craps game do we get the feeling that the characters actually enjoy craps or even being together. For a scene that was trying so hard to be funny, it cut itself off at the balls by refusing to commit fully to the bit. The show didn’t take the joke quite far enough.
Another example from Ayotte and friends is “911 Girlfriend”, which is a strange skit where the main character calls his girlfriend, a 911 operator, to ask her to pick up ingredients at the store. The joke here is he calls her at 911 itself because he can’t remember her number. Next, he prank calls her as a fake emergency but ends the prank call but telling her it’s really him and he’s breaking up with her. The punchline is someone dies because the 911 lines are all tied up.
The humor here isn’t derived specifically from the punchline. That’s part of it, but really sells the skit is the bizarreness of Ayotte bugging his clearly frustrated girlfriend so much and then breaking up with her for absolutely no reason other than that he’s mentally deranged. This is an amount of inexplicable weird that Stickles flirted with in the pilot but didn’t seem ready to take to the next step. He seemed ready to fuck. The audience was ready to fuck. Then nothing really happened.
Baribeau gets hit by a car while crossing the street to get ice cream. Why does this happen? How is this an entire skit? Well, who the fuck cares because it goes exactly as far as it needs to go, which is apparently seeing a car slam straight into Baribeau.
Somehow, this one is my favorite. It has the most overtly dumb joke format by using homonyms and abnormal speech patterns to subvert the audience’s built in anticipatory instincts. Ayotte bursts through the door and says, “Hey pal. First off, won… the biggest case of my career…. to…days ago. Two, who is that guy?” and Baribeau responds by using the same joke format and somehow delivering it even better.
Let’s be honest here – nobody in these If You Make It skits are good actors, and none of the jokes they make are particularly fresh either. In the previously mentioned skit, we’re basically involved in a version of “Who’s On First?” where nobody seems to even be aware that there is a joke. What’s surreal about their skits is they create a reality where the audience is the straight man. I would point to “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” as the best example of this and the touchstone for what Stickles and company should study if they want their attempts at strange humor to really pop, but Ayotte’s skits are achievable and just down to earth enough to work within the larger framework of a sitcom.
I’m about 87% sure Stickles would never want to turn “Stacks” into a real show. For as much as I lambasted the pilot in my review, Stickles is a good enough actor and writer that he could make the show into something special if he just altered it slightly. Make the weird weirder. Commit to the dumb jokes. Be judicious with the musical interludes. Foster the character relationships that are actually interesting.
In a way, this is an open letter to Stacks himself to have enough confidence to definitely make this show for real and to double down on any joke that seems funny. The pilot often played it safe, and in doing so, it played it boring. The pilot was mostly boring. Really, truly boring. But it could have been special and the framework exists to make something special in the future if the band so chooses.
I’m sorry for marshing your mellow, Mr. Stickles. It’s that you… won… me over with the last ten minutes of your pilot. To…morrow, you should start work on a series. Three months from now, I’d love to hear that it all worked out.