Even the stars who appear on the E! version of "Michael Essany," which is a show about making "Michael Essany" rather than a rebroadcast of
the show itself, don't quite know what to make of it, which is what makes "The Michael Essany Show" so tense and so funny. Tom Green hears that Jewel wouldn't eat the family stuffed cabbage, so when Michael's mom offers him lasagna, he takes it — "I'm not making the same mistake Jewel made." By the time he says this, after taping the show, even Green may not be sure whether he's kidding or not.
Putting this show on after E!'s "The Anna Nicole Show," the network's deservedly maligned exploitation of a pathetic fame whore makes it seem as if Essany is a younger, thinner version of Anna Nicole Smith. But the producer of "The Michael Essany Show" likely is more sympathetic to her subject; that producer is Leeza Gibbons, one of Essany's first celebrity guests when he started his show as a high school student. And if the joke is on Essany and his parents, who serve as his crew, they so don't get it that they've turned that joke around on everybody else who enters their house/studio.
Comedy, they say, comes from putting familiar things in an unfamiliar setting, which is what makes the idea of celebrities hanging out in the Essany living room such rich comedic material. There is something inherently funny about seeing Kelly Rowland's very large and very black peeps hanging out in a suburban two-story home in Indiana — and seeing Essany hug them all goodbye. (This is in the first episode, before we learn that the Essanys have a black neighbor.)
What throws any celebrity who stops by is the utter Hoosierness of the Essanys and their neighbors. Essany is as obsequious as Jay Leno, but he's genuinely nice, as is his family, and they're so nice — the only demand they make is that guests remove their shoes before entering the house — and unassuming that your first impression watching them is they're either brainwashed or hiding something evil. Indiana is an irony-free zone, which takes some getting used to.
Green's reactions are the funniest TV work he's ever done. For a guy who's made his living sucking on cow teets, Green is remarkably subdued by his Hoosier surroundings, although he pulls out the Green shtick somewhat when a taping is marred by the sound of a neighbor's lawnmower. Green sends himself out to ask the lawnmower man (the aforementioned black neighbor) to stop for an hour or so because a TV show is taping. He is thrown off when the neighbor demands, matter-of-factly, "So what do you suppose I'm to do then?" Green fumbles, "Um, I don't know, watch TV or something?" Green ends up escorting the neighbor to the Essany taping.
Essany makes no secret about wanting to be the next Johnny Carson, right down to imitating his mannerisms during his monologue, but he's no Rupert Pupkin, the stardom-lusting antihero of 1983's The King of Comedy who kidnaps a Jerry-Lewis-type celebrity and keeps him in his basement. He's just a man with an unusual drive who seems to be in his element as a master of ceremonies. (Essany is an only child — read into that what you will.) More than likely, the E! show — which was renewed last week for another season — will be the peak, not the takeoff, of his career, but it's not like Essany doesn't have a backup plan. His major at Valparaiso University is political science. And he's television-ready, comfortable with people, able to make small talk with ease — will we not someday see US Rep. Michael Essany?!
— Bob Cook (bobc@flakmag.com)
