TVSquad

It's great to see members of The State getting their due in Hollywood.

Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, founding members of the sketch comedy troupe, have been cracking me up since the early '90s when the State had its own sketch comedy show on MTV. They've been very productive since The State was canceled in 1995, starring and producing Comedy Central's hilarious Reno 911 and writing a number of films, including Night at the Museum and Balls of Fury. Now, the duo is bringing their twisted brand of comedy to NBC.

Lennon and Garant will write, produce and star in a new multicamera comedy for the network, says The Hollywood Reporter. The show is part of a talent deal NBC and Universal inked with Lennon.

When I first wrote about the cast changes for season six of Reno 911!, a few readers were disappointed that their favorite deputies were killed in a tragic taco stand explosion. Clementine (Wendi McLendon-Covey), Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui), and Kimball (Mary Birdsong) all died, and were replaced this season with Deputy Frank Rizzo (Joe Lo Truglio) and Sergeant Jack Declan (Ian Roberts).

Clementine and Garcia were both part of the show since the beginning, and were often the most appealing characters on the show. The racial tension between Garcia and Deputy Jones (Cedric Yarbrough) was a fun plotline, and Clementine's undercover pot bust at a head shop was one of my favorite scenes. Kimball came aboard in season three, and had her adherents, as well.

One of my favorite things that Reno 911! does is to weave in guest stars with little or no fanfare, and to just let them mix it up with the cast. I smile every time I see Patton Oswalt as a role-playing geek running, in full chainmail, from Dangle & Co. Or Paul Rudd as a Lamaze coach. Or Cheryl Hines as trailer trash (there has been a lot of trailer trash).

It's never a big deal, it's never announced to promote the show. It's just people who are good at what they do goofing off and having a lot of fun, which is what the rest of the cast is doing anyway.

Looks like the new season, which premieres Wednesday at 10:30PM, will continue that tradition. Here's a bit with Jonah Hill, uncensored.

There is no better way to get inside a character's head (without resorting to charging up some power cutting tools and laying down some newspaper) than writing in a dream sequence.

Some of them, however, try to explain too much or cover too much ground and end up becoming the kind of dreams that keeps our Paxil dosage high and GlaxoSmithKline's stock price higher.

These are those mindfreaks.

This story hits a little too close to home for me since I'm a native New Orleanian and have spent more time at Mardi Gras parades than most of the floats in the parade. So forgive my impertinence if things get a little too personal in this post.

The Krewe of Orpheus should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for pulling their invitation to Carlos Mencia to ride in this year's parade. Then it should be immediately stripped for not having the decency to not invite him in the first place.

Here's how it works. Three of the biggest Mardi Gras parades called "Super Krewes" invite big name celebrities to ride in their parades the weekend before Fat Tuesday. No, Fat Tuesday is not the nickname people have for your mother's birthday. It's the actual Mardi Gras day.

"Don't get high on your own supply." --Thomas Lennon on how he doesn't have basic cable.

Thomas Lennon, the star and co-creator of Comedy Central's Reno 911!, got to together with Mahalo's Lon Harris to talk about basic cable, the how it's not gay to love Sting in Dune, Christopher Walken's answering machine, and Falcon Crest. He also dishes about the finale of Reno 911! (currently in its fifth season), the Upright Citizens Brigade, and Balls of Fury. Oh, and he might mention something about The State reunion.

Fans of Thomas Lennon and all things Reno 911! will enjoy this interview. Lennon is genius! The video is after the jump.

If Judy Greer was in tears about Miss Guided not being picked up by ABC for the fall schedule, she can wipe her eyes and blow her nose because something else -- maybe better -- has come along. Greer has been cast as the lead in HBO's Suburban Shootout. This is the same comedy that has already been announced with Kelly Preston, Rachael Harris (Notes from the Underbelly) and Kerri Kenney (Reno 911).

The comedy pilot is being directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, best known for features like Men in Black and Addams Family (I'll be kind and not harp on The Wild, Wild West), but on TV is one of the prime players behind ABC's Pushing Daisies (as well as Notes from the Underbelly which is the connection to Rachael). So, you see, Judy may have landed in a project that's bound for glory. Well, we'll see, but it does sound interesting.

Spike TV has ordered six episodes of Factory, a largely improvised comedy revolving around four small-town factory workers who'd rather do anything than work at their boring jobs, according to a Hollywood Reporter story. It will be the Guy Network's first original comedy series.

Set to premiere on June 29 at 10 p.m., Factory is directed, produced by, and stars Mitch Rouse (pictured), co-creator of Strangers With Candy, the short-lived TV series that ran from 1999-2000, as well as the 2005 prequel feature film by the same name.

Rouse has an interesting list of credits. In addition to numerous feature films, he played Dr. Ryan Gibson on According to Jim (come on, there must be someone out there who watches this show), Fireman #1 on Reno 911, and was a regular on Exit 57, a mid-1990s comedy-sketch show.

(S04E08) Yeah, I know the title of the episode isn't really "Episode 408," but the real titles never pop up until a few days after the show airs, at least not on the sites I check. If any of you lovely readers knows where I can find the actual episode titles, let me know in the comments. I'll give you mad props.

As a fan of Reno 911 since the very beginning, it's difficult for me to say this: the show isn't as good as it used to be. Of course, when a show is improvised like Reno, there are always moments of genius, but there are just two many instances of the same jokes, or gags you see coming a mile away. The opening scene with the bomb inside the bus would have been funnier had it not been obvious from the beginning that the bus was going to explode.

• At 7, CBS has a new 60 Minutes, followed by two new episodes of The Amazing Race and a new Cold Case.
• ABC has a new America's Funniest Home Videos at 7.
• NBC has a new two hour Dateline at 7.
• At 7:30, FOX has a new War At Home.
• At 8, PBS has a new Nature.
• Discovery has two new episodes of Planet Earth at 8.
• Also at 8: Food Network has a new Emeril Live, then a new Iron Chef America.
• At 8:30, FOX has a new King of the Hill.
• At 9, ABC has one of those Desperate Housewives "let's take a look back at some memorable moments" episodes. It's followed by a new Brothers & Sisters.
• Sci-Fi has a new Dresden Files at 9.
• At 9:30, FOX has a new American Dad.
• At 10, Lifetime has a new Blood Ties.
• At 10:30, Comedy Central has a new Reno 911.

Check your local TV listings for more.

(S04E07) After taking a week off for the William Shatner Roast, Reno 911! returns for the season finale, and we finally get to find out who it was that murdered Sheriff Chechekevitch with peanuts.

While the gang tries to figure out who did it, they also have to attend to the usually police business, which includes confronting a man at a carnival with a stage built into the front of his pants that hides what he refers to as an albino snake that "grows rigid in your grasp." Jones and Garcia can't see nor touch it though, because it's very sensitive to light and it's really more for women. The officers also answer a call from a pot dealer who's complaining about people trying to buy pot on a Sunday when he's closed. The officers threaten to arrest him for selling pot and the dealer threatens to arrest them for trespassing. When Garcia points out he can see the marijuana through the window, the dealer insists that's only ditch weed, and the good stuff is in the back with the cocaine.

(S04E06) Fans of Reno 911! know there's been a running gag since the first season in which Dangle always has his bike stolen from him in broad daylight, even when he tries to lock it to something. In the opening scene of this episode he thinks he's found a fool-proof way to catch the person that keeps swiping his bike: he uses a special mirror to hide behind a building and peer out at his bike. Unfortunately, just as he gets the mirror adjusted somebody zips by on his bike and grabs the mirror.

After the opening credits we get into the real meat of the episode, which begins with Sheriff Chechekevitch being hauled into an ambulance and telling Dangle to avenge his death. Chechekevitch also appeared in season two during a three-episode story arc when Jones and Garcia were being charged with murdering a man dressed as a milkshake. The deputies all love him, at least, they think he was pretty good for a Polish sheriff. Really, they've had better sheriffs.

(S04E04) After a pre-credit opening where the male deputies try to conduct a "panty raid" and end up face to face with a completely naked and pregnant Wiegel, we cut to the first real scene of the episode where a motivational speaker Dangle found on the internet gives the deputies some rather confounding advice, including this diatribe:

"I ask you, does the belt not go through all the loops? You all see yourselves as brilliant little pebbles just waiting for your code word. Well, what if your code word doesn't come, huh? Are you gonna sit around in your cruiser and wind up ejected from somebody's crazy physics package?"

More profound advice I've never heard. Let's move on.

(S04E03) Typically, an episode of Reno 911! will have some semblance of a plot, but the bulk of the episode will be random scenes involving the officers. This particular episode actually stuck with its main plot of the officers discovering a jet ski once owned by a deceased officer, and only veered from that plot a couple of times.

One of the best "extra" scenes involved Trudi going to Lamaze class, once again with Paul Rudd playing the instructor. The two become rather cozy in front of the class, with Rudd's character showing Trudi the proper way to massage her breasts to get them to produce milk, and ending with her bent over and him behind her for some inexplicable reason. I'm not positive, but I think right before the scene changes you can see Rudd actually starting to crack up. That's actually one of many great things about this show being completely improvised; if you watch closely there are a lot of scenes where someone begins to lose it. Pay close attention to Tom Lennon whenever they do their PSAs, because he's almost always on the verge of completely cracking up.

(S04E02) Paul Rudd is a funny guy, and he should really do more comedy. He appeared in this episode, albeit briefly, as an instructor in Trudi's Lamaze class who informs the women, "your vagina will be ripped in half." That's about all we hear about Trudi and her pregnancy in this episode, though she does have a funny conversation with Williams where Williams explains to her that a baby must be fed everyday and cannot, as Trudi assumes, just have food laid out for it like a cat. Trudi counters with, "If I knew you were going to judge me on my parenting skills I never would have introduced you to my unborn child."

Rewinding to the beginning of the episode, the deputies discuss new policies on when they can and cannot shoot at a person. One of the new rules is that they can only shoot after they've already been shot once. Trudi inexplicably asks if she can shoot people and chickens who come into her yard.