What to Binge This Weekend: We Love the '90s and 'The Ben Stiller Show'
Although CW Seed has been around since 2014, chances are you hadn’t heard of the network’s official streaming service until earlier this week, when they made all four seasons of Fox’s late, great teen soap The O.C. available to a viewing public hungry for mid-‘00s indie rock and Wonder Woman cosplay. That’s a great coup for Seed, and we’re psyched to have a one-stop shop for our O.C. fix. But then the service did itself one better by picking up the streaming rights to The Ben Stiller Show, the one-season sketch comedy wonder that aired on Fox from 1992 to 1993. While the series vanished quickly from the airwaves, it left a lasting impact on modern-day comedy, not only giving its titular star his big break, but also opening doors for an incredible ensemble of writers and performers, including Janeane Garofalo, Judd Apatow, David Cross, and Bob Odenkirk.
It should be noted that the Ben Stiller Show that’s streaming on Seed is the Fox version and not its earlier incarnation as an MTV production that aired from 1990 to 1991. That iteration of the show remains unavailable in its entirety, with just excerpts surviving as DVD bonus features. But Stiller was able to translate the show from cable to network with his creative team and vision largely intact. Instead of using Saturday Night Live as a model, The Ben Stiller Show goes the Monty Python route, assembling a loose collection of sketches around a seemingly random, but actually highly self-aware throughline. (That’s the approach that Odenkirk and Cross would later borrow and run with on their own cult ‘90s HBO series, Mr. Show, which is getting its own streaming revival in the form of Netflix’s upcoming With Bob and David.)
One element that Stiller and his writing staff did borrow from SNL rather than the Python boys was a high degree of pop culture awareness. The star originated his killer Tom Cruise impression on the series (Cruise returned the favor decades later by making a hilarious cameo in Stiller’s Tropic Thunder) and also took on up-to-the-minute targets like U2, Bruce Springsteen, and Cape Fear. The guest star list is ‘90s yearbook material as well, with Rob Morrow, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Flea all stopping by to join in the fun.
Funnily enough, the show’s then-admirable timeliness is the biggest stumbling block to appreciating The Ben Stiller Show now. Anyone born after 1995 will likely struggle with the period details and references, and even those of us alive at the time are going to feel that slight twinge of shame as we think, “Yikes — was that really a thing?” But there’s still great joy to be had in watching this young, hungry ensemble shoot for the moon, even in the face of network (and ratings) indifference. “No proper citizen should miss Stiller’s exhilaratingly meanspirited parodies,” wrote Yahoo TV’s own Ken Tucker in Entertainment Weekly after the show’s 1992 debut. Thanks to CW Seed, that won’t be a problem for future generations of red-blooded, laugh-starved Americans.
The Ben Stiller Show can be streamed on CW Seed.