He stirs ‘The Soup’

Joel McHale hosts “The Soup” on E! Entertainment Television. Not “Talk Soup,” the E! clip show that poked fun at talk shows in the ‘90s. That show that’s been making you crack up on Friday nights for four years? That’s “The Soup,” people. Are you listening, KTLA?

In the Nov. 14 episode, McHale showed a KTLA Morning News segment in which weather anchor Jessica Holmes and a correspondent called the show “Talk Soup” three times as they presented T-shirts and panties with McHale’s picture on them. At the end, the reporter (jokingly) asked her favorite host to phone her.

Always a gentleman, McHale responded this way on the air: “I tried calling you, but 555-Nutbag Dye-Job gets a busy signal. Notice I didn’t say ‘Talk Nutbag Dye-Job.’ It’s ‘The Soup,’ not ‘Talk Soup.’ ”

Then as McHale was listing Greg Kinnear and the other “Talk Soup” hosts, -- the show’s most popular character -- appeared in his striped bikini top and added “and Hal Sparks,” dropping his jeans to reveal boxers with Sparks’ picture on them. Mankini (producer Dominic DeLeo) skulked away, muttering, “I’m sorry, Dad.” McHale laughed so hard he couldn’t get the words out to introduce the next clip.

When he’s being serious, which is not often, McHale, 37, doesn’t really mind if people refer to his show as “Talk Soup.” The comedic clips show jump-started Kinnear’s acting career, which is what prompted McHale to audition for the gig in 2004. The strategy seems smart now. McHale is on a national stand-up tour and will voice Elliot the mule-deer in “Open Season 2” (Ashton Kutcher did it the first time around) in January, and he plays a key role as an FBI agent in “The Informant” with Matt Damon next year.

But the way McHale sees it, even if the original show had been a dead end for Kinnear, having people call his show “Talk Soup” is better than “What the ? Awards,” which is what the reprise was called for its first five episodes.

“People were like, ‘What?’ How bad of a show is it when people have to go ‘What?’ when you say the title,” McHale said while getting his hair styled and makeup applied before a taping. “It was a terrible travesty. Thank God, when Ted Harbert became the new president of E!, he changed it to ‘The Soup’ to give it the name recognition and legacy.”

McHale’s show doesn’t just focus on talk shows, though it’s hard for the writers to move away from mocking Tyra Banks when she insists, for instance, on broadcasting programs about a woman who was auctioning her virginity. The network’s second-highest-rated show, “The Soup” covers all things pop culture, including reality TV (watch out, Paula Abdul), news shows (read: Ann Curry of “Today”) and celebrity debacles.

“We try not to further the gossip that is celebrity news because most of it is awful and horrible,” McHale said. “We try to more cover the coverage of the gossip.”

To that end, the Nov. 14 episode opened with a clipapalooza of coverage of Jennifer Aniston’s profound “It was really uncool” reaction to Angelina Jolie’s admission that she and Brad Pitt began their love affair while he was married to Aniston. One major ding for “Entertainment Tonight” was a story on an upcoming porn DVD called “Dirty Facts of Life” based on the ‘80s comedy “The Facts of Life.”

“It’s never ‘Webster’!” screamed McHale on the show. “Why is it never ‘Webster’? Thanks a lot, ‘ET,’ for letting us know when the porn is gonna hit stores. Especially at 7 o’clock before the kids go to bed. I would have forgotten to tell them.”

Sarcasm comes naturally to McHale, whose sharp-tongued, fast-paced performance makes it seem as if he’s just rattling off the first thing that came to his head. But the truth is it takes a lot of TV watching, writing and rewriting to pull off the weekly half-hour show. A team of 13 writers, production assistants and producers spends hours, zipping through the TV universe, looking for embarrassing, weird or insane moments. If that sounds like a dream job, put yourself in the shoes of associate producer Ian Milne, who watches the entire four hours of NBC’s “Today” show every day and is responsible for uncovering Curry’s “Good morning, good morning, everybody in the news this morning, good morning,” 2007 slip-up.

“We just revel in the absurdity of our jobs,” said executive producer Ed Boyd. “We don’t take it seriously. The stuff we joke about on the air is the stuff that the staff jokes about with each other.”

The only shows that are off-limits are other comedies. Even E! shows and personalities, such as Ryan Seacrest, are up for grabs. McHale often teases Seacrest’s height challenges.

“We don’t do funny for funny’s sake,” head writer K.P. Anderson said. “If somebody else has presented something with the intention of getting a laugh, then that’s their found comedy and we won’t go there. Even if it’s not funny, we don’t want to comment on that because we’re comedic writers and we don’t want to feed off that.”

With clip gems that never stop giving, like Pickle Girl -- the “Supernanny” toddler who loves a good pickle -- the now famous Spaghetti Cat, and RFDTV’s outdoor cooking show “Dutch Oven,” McHale says he’s just getting paid to do what he would be doing anyway: “Sitting around in my underwear, yelling at the TV.”

What if the tables were turned and someone used McHale as a punching bag?

“Someone makes fun of me and I just start crying and pee myself,” he said.

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maria.elena.fernandez @latimes.com