A Minute With Stan Hooper

Norm MacDonald knows how to write a crackwhore joke. Unfortunately, when he got booted from the SNL news desk, he floundered in sitcom hell (R.I.P., The Norm Show), serving up lifeless one-liners for John and Jane Crackwhore. Ready to try again, Norm plays Stan Hooper, a TV editorialist who reports on the nuances of Anytown, USA. And if the relentless laugh track is to be believed, then dairy product jokes are fucking hysterical. Things get cheesy when Hooper (MacDonald) and his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) move to Wisconsin to connect with the people he exploits. But soon he discovers that small-town folk aren’t so different from their urban equivalents. Fred Willard delivers jokes with his trademark earnestness as a local cheese baron, and the supporting cast gets quirkier as the roles get smaller. While he still struggles with the sitcom format, Norm loosens short flurries of his off-color humor that hint at a potentially bright future for the show. If MacDonald’s allowed to test the limits of Fox censors, Hooper could settle into a nice comedic mold. If he’s not, it’ll get shredded like mozzarella.