In some ways you really have to give the standup comedian a bit of credit. It is an arduous traveling from city to city playing in front of half drunken audiences in some late night comedy club. At least now there are more venues than ever for the comic to achieve at least a modicum of success. Stand up specials are constantly being broadcast on HBO in their unedited format a cleaned up a touch for basic cable on Comedy Central. If the comic receives positive feedback in those venues the network just might take s chance and give them a shot with their own series. Sometimes they really catch on like with Carlos Mencia other times the flop hard as was the case with ‘Lucky Louie’ festering Louie CK on HBO. Somewhere in the middle if these two examples you will find an odd, quirky little show called ‘Important Things with Demetri Martin’. Most importantly the show is far enough away from any other series of this type that it works; strange as it may seem the show works and it is funny. Optimistically, the recent relapsed DVD is titled ‘Season One’. So there is hope that Comedy central will continue to support something far afield of the norm. I first encountered Martin in one of the endless standup compilations Comedy Central uses to fill the late night programming slate. This unassuming skinny young man took the stage armed with an easel and marker. Much of his humor is derived from blurring the lines between his drawings and reality; or at least what passes as reality in his skewed and highly imaginative mind. At that initial glance at his act he seemed like a student trying to give a presentation before his classmates. It wasn’t long at all before I was riveted to what he was doing and soon little smirks were becoming laughs.

There is intelligence to Martin’s humor that is refreshingly subtle. Technically he might be called a prop comedian since he does rely upon his marker, paper and a variety of musical instruments but his performance is a long way from that hackney methodology. His props are not the center of the joke; they are punctuations for a well crafted style of humor. Much of his style relies on his having a lot of fun manipulating the language. At the start of a sentence you think things are headed in a predicable direction when Martin sudden alters his course placing the subject in an entirely novel light. In many ways he reminds me of the master of this form of word play, Groucho Marx. Both men are able to contort family language into a sharply barbed, twisted observation of our world.

Unlike so many comedians of his generation Martin is deadpan in his delivery. There is no manic energy necessary to drive his humor he requires an audience with enough sophistication to catch his sly cultural references. This not to say his act is only for the high brow; it has a universal appeal just be prepared to have to think about the jokes. The menu of the DVD is cleaver. After a cartoon version of Martin greets you the menu is a picture of him sitting alone in a room. Each episode focuses on one topic which is represented by something in the room such as ‘Power’ is the light switch or ‘Brains’ points to his crotch. The episodes are recorded in front of a live audience; much better I suppose than a dead audience.

There is a set format to each episode that provides more than the usual stylistic approach. Each episode topic is considered from various comic vantage points. Usually the first of these are in line with standard standup acts. Most of the jokes are only a line or two always revealing Martin’s unique and strangely wonderful view of the world. This is observational humor where the observer just doesn’t’ think within the normal paradigm .The next section of the episode moves to sketch comedy as a format. Here Martin is joined by various guest stars expanding the viewpoint a bit. Then there are the drawings done by Martin the frequently take on an animated life of their own. Finally Martin takes the opportunity to show off his comic musical styling. Once again this section tends to play with the audiences’ linguistic expectations.

In all this is one of the wittiest series to come along in quiet awhile. Since Martin has already begun to move on to films and other projects he might out grow the show so enjoy it while you can.