->''"[[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext Hiring you boys based on your performance in the potato sack race was the worst decision I ever made!]]"''
-->-- '''Some C.E.O.'''

Watching ''Stella'' is a jarring experience. Featuring three guys from ''Series/TheState'', one of whom teaches romantic comedy screenwriting at NYU, one who is a permanent fixture on VH-1's ''ILoveTheExties''' series, and another who plays The Warden on ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'', you can only watch it expecting a very specific, very strange sense of comedy. Stella is about as close as American television gets to absurdist {{Britcom}}s like ''Series/FatherTed'', ''Series/BlackBooks'' and ''Series/{{Spaced}}'', while still maintaining its own sense of pseudo-Borscht Belt Vaudevillain shtick that only Americans can appreciate fully. The comedy of Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black and David Wain is definitely not for everybody, and if it's for anybody at all, they're not really enough to keep a television show [[ShortRunners running for very long.]]

''Stella'' did not start out as a television show, but as a live stage variety show with the three comedians performing small segues between acts. Eventually, they began filming short films on their own starring the characters of themselves ''not actually as'' themselves, and they developed a demand. Most of the shorts feature [[TheCameo cameos by]] well known comedians and future stars such as Creator/BradleyCooper, [[BlackComedy deeply disturbing humor]] and plenty of HoYay. Not surprisingly, the show had a single ten-episode season on Creator/ComedyCentral, a slavishly devoted cult following and a reputation for being one of the most intellectually stupefying experiences ever made for American television.

The concept is simple: Michael, Michael and David are wacky, surreal versions of themselves who live in a fabulously well-appointed Brooklyn apartment, dress in business suits in all occasions and don't appear to do anything at all to pay for it. They spend their time in wacky sitcom plots, most of which are derived from 1980s era culture, and spend 22 minutes per episode making most other artists of SurrealHumor look like amateurs. They are [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist not meant to be likable characters at all]]. [[TheyPlottedAPerfectlyGoodWaste That is exactly what they planned]].

This show is ''about'' deconstructing tropes, so this list is far from conclusive. Just about any trope that applies to sitcoms, romantic comedies or '80s teen flicks is used in ''Stella'' to some degree. In this regard it is similar to the 2001 comedy ''Film/WetHotAmericanSummer'', which the trio and many of their fellow ''Series/TheState'' alumni are also responsible for.

Not to be confused with the British TV Show [[Series/StellaUK of the same name]].
----
!!''Stella'' provides examples of the following tropes:

* AnAesop: Every single episode is ultimately about the power of friendship. Seemingly subverted, but also played oddly straight, every time.
* AlterEgoActing: Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black and David Wain as "Michael Showalter", "Michael Ian Black" and "David Wain".
* AntiHero: Black tends towards this. He's usually the first to suggest illicit activities.
* AsideGlance: The most over-the-top, lampshaded versions of all time.
* BreadEggsBreadedEggs: "Write a song or build a bridge or write a song about a bridge."
* BreakingTheFourthWall: In one episode, the guys approach the camera to talk their dilemma over with the audience. During this, it cuts to the other characters looking baffled at their behaviour, not seeing a camera or hearing the viewers respond.
* BritishBrevity: The show had a total of 10 episodes, and is unlikely to ever be picked back up.
* ButtMonkey: David Wain's character. That he's the ButtMonkey AND TheCasanova is deliberate.
* TheCameo: Tons, with a particularly big role from Creator/SamRockwell.
* CatchPhrase
** After locking eyes with a woman, David Wain will whisper, "What are we doing?" to prompt some immediate face-sucking.
** Showalter's "We don't ''have''... this money."
** "I want you inside me." (always from a guy)
* ChekhovsGunman: At the end of the last episode made, "Amusement Park", it is revealed that [[spoiler:all of the characters that Phil Lord played in previous episodes (which were at first just a case of YouLookFamiliar) were actually all the same character, observing the three to prepare a "virtual reality" friendship test for them, that was commissioned by the girls.]]
* {{Cloudcuckooland}}: No other characters manage to out-crazy Michael, Michael and David, but they all seem to share the same fragile grip on reality, and even the ones who seem relatively normal never notice or remark on just how weird the guys really are.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: The whole damn show, all the time, never turning off.
* CursedWithAwesome: David's bafflingly well-appointed, incredibly successful coffee shop making him miss his friends.
* DeadAllAlong: Turns out to be the case of the mountain man in "Camping", after the guys mistakenly believe that they killed and ate him. The ranger informs them at the end that they were actually eating burgers and french fries ([[MST3KMantra just roll with it]]) and that they really ''did'' kill a guy, but he was just some loser backpacker, so nobody cares.
* {{Dissimile}}: "I like my coffee the same way I like my women: Strong, black, and proud."
* DistaffCounterpart: Jennifer, Stacy and Amy, the girls that live on the lower floor. They're slightly more functional compared to Michael, Michael and David, but they have a similar dynamic between them and can be just as immature.
* DontYouDarePityMe: Showalter's general response to aggression, literally.
* ExtremelyShortTimespan: The guys are capable of going through plot points in the space of an afternoon, from start to finish, that could support an entire season on most other shows.
* TheGhost
** A running gag in the stage show is for one member to make an offhand reference to "Marcus." Another member asks, "Who the fuck is Marcus?" The original member just shakes his head in equal bewilderment, saying, "I know, I know!"
** Gary Meadows starts out at a ghost, but shows up several episodes later played by Creator/SamRockwell.
* GreenAesop: About the dangers of over-farming land. Wait, no. Over-farming the ''floor of your apartment.''
* HealingFactor: The guys.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: The extremely rare ménage à trois version, no less.
* HorribleCampingTrip: The "Camping" episode nose-dives wildly into this within ''less than a minute'' of entering the woods.
* IncrediblyLameFun: When the boys couldn't go to the amusement park, they decided to improvise fun rides with what they had at their home; naturally, their alternatives don't quite match up to the real thing, but they make do.
* IneffectualLoner: Michael Showalter, nine times out of ten.
* ItMakesSenseInContext: Most of the show. Unless it doesn't, which happens quite often as well.
* LookBehindYou: A novelist with writer's block manages to distract the guys and steal their manuscript by shouting "Oh my gosh! A baby deer!", despite the fact that they weren't even outdoors. Long after she's gone, they're still discussing whether or not there really was a deer.
* SorryILeftTheBGMOn: Used oddly when David starts macking on the real estate agent to [[{{Sexophone}} the sultry sax refrain from "Baker Street"]]. No source is provided for the music in-show, but it's apparently still diegetic; when we cut to Michael and Michael arguing on the patio, the song can still be heard blaring from inside the condo.
* MadeOfIron: In the RuleOfFunny sense. They sometimes get themselves or others in accidents that would kill them in real life, but they don't miss a beat in the show.
* MoneyToThrowAway: The guys fantasize about being wealthy enough to toss wads of cash out of a moving limousine. They later become rich off their farming and do just that, and then immediately regret it when the bank forecloses on their apartment/farm because they threw away ''all'' of their money and couldn't pay off their loan.
* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: And David Wain, to the point where some instances swap his name with a different one (see the end of "Paper Route").
* OneSteveLimit: Averted. There are two guys named "Michael", but they're easy to tell apart.
* PornStache: Fake ones, purchased from a mustache seller played by Creator/SamRockwell.
* RuleOfFunny: The only consistent rule.
* ShortRunners: One season, ten episodes, the end.
* ShoutOut: Twice to ''Film/WetHotAmericanSummer'' in the Janeane Garafolo episode.
** When David and Black [[StartMyOwn start their own "coffee shop"]], the stand is in front of a building that says "Gene's Two-Way Radio".
* StartMyOwn: Michael Ian Black and David's response to Showalter working at a coffee shop.
* SurrealHumor: The constant use of the RuleOfFunny helps too.
* {{Tableau}}: [[ItMakesSenseInContext How the guys answer the door]].
* {{Troperiffic}}: Largely the point.
* ThrowingOutTheScript: Parodied in the second episode.
-->"You know, I was going to come up here today, read this fancy speech I had written, then I was going to stop in the middle, crumple it up, throw it away, start speaking from the heart. But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to read from my prepared remarks instead."
* TwistEnding
** As it turns out, [[spoiler:their landlord is really Mengele. The Nazi one]]. May also count as RefugeInAudacity.
** And that's just The Pilot. this trope is later parodied further in "Camping". Throughout the episode, they befriend a wise mountain man, but wind up "accidentally" killing and then eating him. At the end, the ranger reveals the twist that the mountain man was DeadAllAlong and that they had only met his ghost; his explanation is accompanied by hilarious altered flashbacks which show the mountain man wearing a white sheet signifying he was a ghost, as well as the trio eating hamburgers and french fries instead of the mountain man's cooked remains ([[BreadEggsMilkSquick they really did kill a guy, though]]). Finally in the last episode made, "Amusement Park", it is shown that the entire episode's events [[spoiler: were part of a virtual reality friendship test that was "so real, it was reality", as well as the accompanying revelation about Phil Lord's character shown under Chekhov's Gunman.]]
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Played with. The guys cause all sorts of mayhem and most of the time they barely even notice, let alone care. Other times they feel terrible about it and do their best to fix the problem, as seen when they accidentally run over a young paperboy and take over his route to make it up to the kid while he recovers (they also gift him with an antique harpsichord). Whether they try to make amends or not, however, [[KarmaHoudini things always work out for them in the end.]]
* VitriolicBestBuds: Michael, Michael & David and the girls in the apartment beneath theirs alternate between busting each other's chops and going to surprising lengths to do nice things for each other.
* WeaksauceWeakness: When she corners the trio, we find out the weakness of Janeane Garofalo's character is baloney from a sandwich Showalter had been carrying. Not to be outdone, she stops them from chasing her by hanging an "Out of Order" sign on their rickshaw, knowing they'd be too afraid/stupid to call her bluff.
* WordSaladTitle: The comedy group changed their name from Midnight Expressions to Stella, named after the unborn daughter of the club manager who gave them their first gig.
----