The State (TV series)

About the show

The State is not only the name of the television program, but also of the comedy troupe that made up the cast of the show, as they have continued to successfully work together on film, television and in the world of journalism in various groupings. A book, State by State With the State was published in April, 1997 but is currently out of print. An album titled Comedy for Gracious Living was recorded for Warner Bros. but was shelved for unknown reasons. After being unearthed from the Warner vault, it was finally released in September 2010 by Rhino/Handmade via rhino.com. With liner notes written by the troupe, the packaging is notable for having, perhaps, the longest printed booklet ever included in a CD package.

The show's style of humor revolved mainly around the cast members' character acting and high energy, and featured a broad range of comedic styles from satire to forays into absurdism, although the absurdist element was not played up as much until the third season. Notable examples include "The Animal Song" and "The Howard Report". In addition, a common theme of the show's humor was to introduce a sketch with a "straight man" character caught in a ridiculous premise, then turn the sketch around by making the premise turn out to be correct. An example of this is the "Nazi War Criminals" sketch, in which a quiet suburban family is accosted by the FBI on suspicion of being Nazi war criminals (despite seemingly being well under 30) due to information given by the family's nine-year-old son. However, when the boy claims that "moon people" are about to invade earth, it is revealed that everything he has said is in fact true, and the family drops their ruse in light of the impending danger.

Despite being limited by having only one female member, Kerri Kenney's energy and acting range (portraying anyone from an average housewife to Nancy Spungen) led the cast to describe her as "the only girl we need". In sketches that called for more than one female role, Kenney would usually portray the character that needed to appear the most "feminine", and the other roles would go to male cast members who would wear drag. In a number of sketches with a female character, Kenney does not appear. During the "James Dixon: Power Priest" sketch, James weds a young couple in which the bride is played by Michael Ian Black, and on the DVD commentary for this sketch, the cast jokes that "this is another instance of 'why didn't Kerri play the girl?'". In one unaired sketch, "Drag Dad", Kenney actually played a male character, but it was done purposefully as part of the running joke of the sketch.

"Contrary to popular belief", says the troupe's official FAQ, "the show was never canceled." For a variety of reasons, including network television politics, The State decided to pursue other interests and "establish ourselves as an entity that exists apart from any particular employer or TV Network." However, CBS optioned to buy the show after its second year on MTV in hopes of increasing viewership among younger demographics and potentially providing competition against NBC's Saturday Night Live. CBS intended to test the waters with The State's 43rd Annual All-Star Halloween Special, which aired in prime time in 1995. The special received generally good reviews (including some from critics that gave them harsh ones earlier), but due to little promotion, it received low ratings. The show was not picked up for further broadcasts. On the series' DVD commentary, cast members revealed that MTV had offered contract for a guaranteed 65 additional shows, but the cast turned it down to leave to CBS, against their agent's advice.

The entire cast was featured (or made a cameo) in 2007's David Wain-directed film, The Ten. On March 15, 2008, most of the cast reunited for a special reunion sketch show at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles.

The State DVD release

A DVD release was eagerly anticipated by fans of the show. However, MTV remained reluctant for many years to distribute the show until a complete DVD set was released on July 14, 2009.

One of the factors that delayed the release of the series was that the troupe used many popular songs as background music in the original broadcast versions of nearly every episode. The State was produced during a period when MTV had deals with various record labels, via which the network could easily use many songs that had a video aired on the network in their original programming without having to pay royalties to the labels; The State used popular music as the background music for countless sketches, utilizing hits like The Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!", The Breeders' "Cannonball", Liz Phair's "Supernova" and Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing". Due to the large royalty fees each company would likely demand, the soundtrack as originally aired would have cost many times the amount that video sales would recoup, so The State was forced to re-record much of the backing music with different, sometimes sound-alike, songs.

The first season of The State, digitally re-mastered along with a new musical score, was made available on Apple’s iTunes Store on September 26, 2006. Several episodes were also made available on Amazon Unbox as well as the Xbox Live Marketplace.

On March 10, 2007, David Wain announced at a screening of The Ten at SXSW that a DVD of The State was in production. At a later Philadelphia screening, he claimed it would be available in the fall of 2007. On May 18, 2007, during the 24-hour Human Giant marathon on MTV, Michael Showalter announced that a DVD set containing the entire series would be released by MTV sometime that year. He stated the set would contain every episode (some re-scored), commentaries, extras, and some sketches that never made it to the air.

The State's official website reported in November 2007 that the DVD set was completed, but that their distributor, MTV, has "chosen not to release the set at this time. We don't know why." On January 29, 2008, Showalter confirmed that MTV was still delaying the release: "They have it. We've made the DVD, and it exists. It's out of our hands, and I know who has it, but I don't know why they're waiting... we've done the commentary and the deleted material and all that stuff, but I just don't know when it's coming out. "

In 2009, some episodes of the series were made available in a free streaming format on the video website Joost. As of mid-April 2009, three episodes were added to the site.

In an April 2009 interview with scifiwire.com, Thomas Lennon reported a DVD release date of July 14, 2009, a date which was also verified on thestate.mtv.com. To promote the release of the series on DVD, Comedy Central, MTV, and MTV2 all aired select episodes of The State.

Reviews

In January 1994, the Daily News TV guide called the show "so terrible it deserves to be studied". Entertainment Weekly called the show "significantly less than sporadically funny" and gave it a C- rating. TV.com says many of The State's "sketches remain funny to this day and — unlike most shows of the age — would not be considered dated or stale... Even the few mediocre sketches on the show are better than 99% of today's sketch comedy."

The State film

In 2008, the group was reported to be "reuniting for a movie about American history" for Comedy Central, but the movie was delayed at the time "because of the writers' strike" of 2007-2008. The working title is This American Sandwich.

The State album

Recorded at Compass Point Studios in 1996, "Comedy For Gracious Living," an album by The State cast members, was finally released by Rhino Records on September 20, 2010. The 25 track release features cuts such as "Skip This Track (They Were Drunk)" and "Kerri's one Second Noise."

Cast list

Theme song

The opening sequence was set to "Boys and Girls – Action" by Craig Wedren of Shudder To Think and Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys. The song is built around samples of The Nation of Ulysses songs "The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken By Storm" ("Boys and girls!") and "The Hickey Underworld" ("Action! Action!").

Recurring characters

The cast (notably David Wain) have said that they were not interested in creating recurring characters, but were repeatedly pressured by the network to emulate Saturday Night Live in this manner. In turn, some of the recurring characters were made as satires of recurring characters (notably, "Louie" was made to satisfy network pressures for both a recurring character and catch-phrases, according to the casts' DVD commentary track).