McHale out of the soup, into a new Netflix series
NEW YORK — Joel McHale can’t stop watching Floribama Shore, MTV’s unsavoury spinoff of Jersey Shore.
“There seems to be an endless number of people who live near shores that want to be drunk every night and make some questionable choices,” McHale says. “Thank God. It puts food on my table.”
After 12 seasons hosting satirical E! news show The Soup, McHale moved to Netflix this year with the inaugural season of The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale. Although similar in format to Soup, the new series primarily spoofs reality TV instead of celebrity news, with famous guests and comedy sketches sprinkled throughout.
Six new episodes were released on Netflix this week. McHale chatted about moving to the binge model, go-to reality shows and why “six seasons and a movie” isn’t in the cards for his cultfavourite former NBC sitcom, Community.
Q: You opted to release these new episodes all at once, rather than weekly. Why?
McHale: (Netflix) noticed that with the first 13 episodes that were dropped weekly, some people were going back and bingeing. So they went, “Hey, would you mind doing a binge version this time around?”
Q: What sets it apart from The Soup?
McHale: Well, my sweaters are spectacular — I’m not wearing suits anymore. And there’s so many more things to pull from, including the old standbys like The Bachelor, Survivor and America’s Got Talent. But I really like it when we find weird, little obscure shows that no one’s heard of. We just found that Indiana State University has their own news show, and it’s hilarious.
The show has opened up to international clips and stuff on Twitch and YouTube. We have a thing called “Joel’s International Corner,” where we gather stuff from all the new versions of Jersey Shore in Poland and England, and car accidents (compiled from Korean TV dramas). It’s more of a wrap-up show and capturing things you haven’t seen.
Q: One of the new episodes features a dig at Matt Lauer, referencing his sexual harassment allegations and Today firing. How do you navigate talking about politics and Me Too on the show?
McHale: The Me Too movement is insanely serious and there’s no comedy to be mined out of that. But in that particular clip, it all lined up and the response has been really good. I don’t feel any pressure to joke about Me Too — in fact, I’d say you shouldn’t, because it’s a great movement that is exposing some really awful behaviour and hopefully changing the culture. As far as politics go, the show’s not topical, so if we started covering (that), it’d be like, “Wow, you’re really nailing those issues from May!”
Q: Is there one reality series that consistently produces the funniest clips?
McHale: There’s a number of them. Maury and Jerry Springer get so theatrical that it’s hard to believe. They’re not shows that are trying to be normal, so pulling clips from them is a bit like putting a hat on a hat. Some of them are truly funny, so we’ll do it.
Q: There’s a bit with your Community co-star Gillian Jacobs and Paul Feig, where he jokes that the Community reunion movie has been “cancelled.” Is it really dead, or is there still hope?
McHale: I think there’s a world where it happens. But Dan (Harmon, who created Community) just got picked up for 70 episodes of Rick and Morty, so he’s going to be busy for a long time. And everyone else has stuff going on. If a script got written and there was actual money to make it, then it could go. But at this point, Paul Feig’s right.