Comedy Central’s new series Stella is of an interesting breed. You’ll either find it extremely high brow comedy or hate it for making no sense.

Do we recommend it? Depends on how much you like surprises.

“NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!”

Then maybe not for you.

The show writers, creators and stars – Mike Black, Mike Showalter and David Wain – play with expectation alot.

A comedy series defines it’s funny by how far fetched a punchline is from a set up and the structure of that relationship. Family Guy goes a logical mile from set up to punchline. Peter’s sad, so to cheer him up Brian dons a banana suit to sing the Peanut Butter Jelly song. Nothing about the first condition leads to the consequence.

Seinfeld jokes follow closely to the set up. Kramer starts sun bathing in butter and begins to smell like cooked meat. This is stretched over several punchlines as he becomes more and more food-like until Newman sees him as a roasted turkey.  A transformation of humor.

Stella breaks with having a set style. It’s alt-comedy. Some punchlines go way beyond what you’d expect while others make so much sense they aren’t punchlines.

Presto the Magician does very simple tricks, but the punchline is in the guys half horrified reaction to such simple tricks (at 1:27). When he actually makes the cake vanish in the end, they’re sad cause the cake is gone – not super impressed.

Can any TV comedy that requires this much explanation be really funny?

Probably not.

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