Given the amount of abuse which has been heaped on Paul Scheer’s character on FXX’s The League during the fantasy football sitcom’s soon-to-be-ending run — not to mention the retina-searing outfits he has to wear on the show — it’s amazing the comedian has any fond memories of playing plastic surgeon Dr. Andre Nowzick. In fact, Scheer says that, after EW asked him to choose his five favorite episodes, he felt spoiled for choice. But, unlike so many of Andre’s doomed schemes, this quest actually ended in success.
Below, Scheer reminisces — occasionally in a risqué fashion — about his personal League highlights.
1. “Thanksgiving”
PAUL SCHEER: One of my favorite episodes of the show was the Thanksgiving episode with Jeff Goldblum as Ruxin’s dad and Sarah Silverman as my sister. Just seeing Jeff Goldblum get into this role of being oddly, overly sexual with her. And I think we’re eating a gerbil that actually gets stuffed into a turkey — so, yeah, that’s going on as well.
2. “Rafi and Dirty Randi”
SCHEER: Another one of my favorites has to be the Dirty Randi-Rafi episode that gives you the Beverly Hills Cop-take on their lives. One of their friends is killed, and they go out to Los Angeles, and you get to see them for a full 30 minutes. I know there are some people who love Dirty Randi and Rafi and some people who hate them. I am on the love side. It just becomes a whole different show with those two characters. And that one has gun violence, fires, and [laughs] Jason (Mantzoukas, who plays Rafi) gets killed at the end. So that was a pretty amazing episode.
3. “The Anniversary Party”
SCHEER: Another episode that I’m partial to, is an episode that I actually wrote with Nick Kroll called “The Anniversary Party.” We used this episode to bring back Leslie Bibb, who we love. She obviously came back for this season, but she was busy in the first couple of seasons, and we found a way to bring her back, which is to invite her to Ruxin’s anniversary party, which Ruxin was forced into having by Taco. She brings her new boyfriend, who is a very old man. There is a bunch of stuff in that episode that I love. There is the “toilet cubby” — which is the cubby that you should have outside every bathroom, so you don’t have to bring your cell phone or anything into the bathroom. It’s kind of a safe place, so your stuff that doesn’t get disgusting.
Anything around a dinner table is really fun to me. It’s, like, My Dinner with Andre — I mean, not Andre, me, obviously, but the movie. I just love the tension that can build around that. They’re the biggest pain in the ass to shoot but, once you see them, they always look quite good.
4. “Carmenjello”
SCHEER: I really love “Carmenjello,” which is the episode with Keegan-Michael Key. Basically, Andre mistakes the company name — Carmenjello — on a janitor’s smock for the janitor’s name. Andre’s gotten himself into racially charged situations a few times. He doesn’t mean to, he is not racist, but he falls into it. So, he insults this African-American janitor by calling him Carmenjello, because he assumes that that’s his name. And then, in an effort to prove that he’s not racist, he continually tries to become this man’s friend, but then puts his foot in his mouth.
That episode has one of my favorite images of all time. Kevin buys some bad paint, and in the middle of getting a blow job from Jenny, the paint cans explode and create a silhouette on the wall of Jenny giving Kevin a blow job. Of all the images on the show, that is always embossed into my head.
5. “The Block”
SCHEER: An episode that I’m really excited about is an episode that I wrote that’s coming up this season. It’s called “The Block.” It’s about this obsession that the entire group gets into because their favorite show, The Block, is ending and they all get obsessed about where they’re going to watch the finale. Pete has never seen an episode, and decides to cram every episode of every season the week leading up to its finale, which causes him to go absolutely insane. So, you go into the mind of binge-watching and how it takes [over] your personal life, and your sanitary habits, everything. How your whole life goes to s— when you start binge-watching a show. I thought it was really fun to be commenting on the finale of a show when we were [close to] having a finale for our show.
It has the distinction of being the most expensive League episode to shoot because it has a lot of different effects in it. The Block is kind of like Blade Runner-meets-The X-Files. So, we had to shoot that show, which is this really futuristic show, so you have all of that. Then you have the cast getting together to watch it at a finale party. We also have Casey Wilson in this episode — who you know from Happy Endings and Saturday Night Live. Casey plays my somewhat psychotic Über driver, who Andre has a one-night stand with. It goes, at first, great. And, then, horribly wrong.
The League airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FXX. “The Block” will air Nov. 11.
You can see a teaser trailer for Wednesday’s episode, “The Yank Banker,” below.