VIVA VARIETY

'Viva Variety' was a television show on Comedy Central satirizing European variety shows with characters from the Eastern Bloc. The show starred Thomas Lennon as Meredith Laupin, Kerri Kenney as the former Mrs. Laupin, and Michael Ian Black as "your cool-ass pal" Johnny Blue Jeans. In addition to comedy sketches, the show would feature musical guests and various performers. The show featured many people who were a part of the comedy troupe The State. A few of the people from this series (Lennon and Kenney) went on to do another Comedy Central show, ''Reno 911!'' Michael Ian Black later appeared on the Comedy Central show ''Stella''. Periodically, a troupe of women called “The Swimsuit Squad” would dance much like the “Fly Girls” on ''In Living Color''.

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Sketches

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Sketches

Though Mr. Laupin, the former Mrs. Laupin, and Johnny Blue Jeans were themselves characters, the show did not utilize recurring characters or resort to impersonations. Often, the troupe would address or involve the audience directly; in one theme of this vein, Mr. Laupin and the former Mrs. Laupin would do an old-fashioned plug for their fake sponsor during actual airtime. One in particular had the former Mrs. Laupin asking consumers to ignore or fix errors on their sponsor's products, including a cereal, “Sweety Balls”, in which the second ''e'' was replaced with an ''a''. The other common sketch theme was a game show with an odd premise, such as “Plant or Animal”, where an audience member was asked to attribute a few seconds-long recording to either an animal or Robert Plant. This proved more difficult than one might anticipate. Another sketch of this style was “Klingon or Galliano”, where an audience member was shown runway models in various outfits and was asked if they were wearing costumes for Klingons from the science fiction series Star Trek or made by fashion designer John Galliano. This also proved more difficult than one might anticipate. The participant's consolation prize of a tribble coat, presented by an allergic Johnny Blue Jeans, made light of Galliano's controversial use of fur.

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