Send in the Clowns

Mike Myers returns as … well, a lot of different people.

THERE IS NO DENYING the endurance of the humble poop joke. Next to death and sex, it stands constant. Jokes about race and gender may rise and fall. Jokes about marriage and politics and pop culture wash in and out like waves. But the human body remains, so the poop joke does too. (Or maybe it does … two?)

This certainty is not the sole basis for Mike Myers’s new Netflix series, The Pentaverate, but it’s a central pillar. Twenty years ago, Myers’s career was at its peak, thanks to his SNL characters, his Austin Powers movies, and his voice performance as Shrek. Myers and his personae were appealing comedic enigmas, with his incredibly rude humor and mild Canadian self-presentation, a kaleidoscopic range of characters and physical transformations, raucous offensiveness and an obsession with the gap between surface appearances and what lies underneath. He was everywhere. Was this his shtick? Was this his art? Could both things be true? Then, around 2010, he mostly disappeared. While he could still be seen doing the occasional project—like creating a character to host the revival of The Gong Show—he seemed to be taking a deliberate break. So the question of what new Mike Myers work might look like is a fascinating one, the kind of fascinating that tips over into concerning. Resurrecting a megapopular comic sensibility years later is a scenario primed for disaster. And yet, for the most part, The Pentaverate manages to dodge calamity.