10 Best Ken Marino Movies & TV Shows, Ranked
Static Media
Ken Marino’s career as an actor, writer, and director has been largely defined by two things: comedy and collaboration. After establishing himself via the MTV sketch comedy series “The State” with the comedy troupe of the same name (comprised of his closest friends and creative confidants), he went on to work on some of the funniest, most brilliant, and underrated TV and film projects to come out of Hollywood in the last two decades.
Much of his work is the result either of his own creative will or that of his former troupe-mates, the group having spread through the industry to wreak hilarious havoc. They often explore absurd angles on popular genres such as medical dramas and reality dating shows. At the same time, he’s a familiar face on a smorgasbord of network sitcoms, as well as a few audacious dramedies you’ll certainly want to add to your watch list.
Honorable Mention: The State
MTV
It’s impossible to compare a sketch comedy show like the 1994-1995 MTV series “The State” to anything else in Ken Marino’s work history, and we debated including it all. However, it is without a doubt the most impactful show on Marino’s career, showcasing his work as both actor and writer alongside an ensemble that would support and elevate one another in the decades that followed its end.
In addition to Marino, the ensemble included several comedians who would later be responsible for even larger projects. Some standouts include actor, writer, and stand-up comic Michael Ian Black, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” director Michael Patrick Jann, “Reno 911!” stars Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney-Silver, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s” Joe Lo Truglio, and “Wet Hot American Summer” creators David Wain and Michael Showalter.
When asked by Bullz Eye in 2009 if the series ever revealed any partnerships he preferred over others, Marino marveled that the answer was no. “No, I mean, it was always fun working with everybody in the group,” he said. “That was the thing. It’s amazing to think about that now: we all got along. … There’s something about those guys and gal for me that I loved creating with them, and I always did.”
Axe Cop
FX
Based on the cult webcomic of the same name, Fox and FX’s animated action comedy “Axe Cop” is pretty much what it says on the tin — a wild story about a cop who uses an axe. If that sounds like an idea only a five-year-old could come up with, that’s because the comic’s story scribe was indeed five-year-old Malachai Nicolle (with his adult brother, artist Ethan Nicolle, turning Malachai’s ideas into fully drawn comics).
The series was adapted into a TV show seemingly due to the fact that so many in Hollywood were legitimate fans of it in their private lives — Ken Marino included. “‘Axe Cop’ was a graphic novel that I just felt was the best thing out there,” he told Variety in 2013, further describing it as “inspired and pure and real.” Opposite Nick Offerman as the titular hero, Marino voices Flute Cop, his partner in crime fighting.
Black Monday
On Monday, October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by a whopping 22%, heralding one of the largest stock market crashes in history. Worldwide, traders lost over $1.7 trillion in the span of a few hours. It was a financial disaster so sudden and far reaching it was thereafter known as “Black Monday.” Though economists across the globe have plenty of theories about why this crash happened, there has never been a single official explanation — which is where writers and showrunners Jordan Cahan and David Caspe come in.
Together, they wrote and produced “Black Monday,” a Showtime comedy that imagines what several key, fictional people in the financial industry might have done during the year leading up to the real Black Monday. At the center of this hidden history is Maurice “Mo” Monroe (Don Cheadle), a rockstar stockbroker who’s as ruthless and experienced as he is unpredictable and chaotic. After accidentally spilling a bag of cocaine on an aspiring trader named Blair Pfaf (Andrew Rannells), effectively ruining the young man’s career before it begins, the pair form an unlikely and very toxic partnership. The main cast also features Paul Scheer and Regina Hall as similarly unscrupulous Wall Street players.
While Ken Marino does not star in the series, he appears in many episodes playing the dual roles of Larry and Lenny Lehman — yes, as in the Lehman Brothers, the massive banking institution which was brought crumbling down during the Great Recession. “Black Monday” is sleek, full of energy, and surprisingly insightful, eliciting laughs one moment before leaving you in stunned silence the next. In a crowded market, it’s a hidden gem of prestige TV that you’d be crazy not to invest in.
Marry Me
NBC
Speaking of David Caspe, he and Ken Marino collaborated several years before “Black Monday” (the series, that is) on a very different kind of show. NBC’s “Marry Me” stars Marino and Casey Wilson as a couple struggling to maintain momentum in their relationship after getting engaged. Though they are deeply in love, romantic life has been consumed almost entirely by mundane frustrations and petty arguments that call into question their long-term compatibility.
“Marry Me” is best looked at as a modern network sitcom done really well, made with comforting consistency, laughs, and plenty of heartwarming moments. It’s sort of a spiritual successor to Caspe’s previous project “Happy Endings” (which also starred Marino, Wilson, and many of the “Marry Me” supporting ensemble), but it’s perhaps worse off in some ways due to its significantly shorter tenure. After all, how well can a traditional sitcom perform its role if it disappears from your life after less than 20 episodes?
All the same, Marino shines in one of his few starring roles, given plenty of room to show off the comedic charm that makes him such a memorable actor. If “Happy Endings” made you smile, then “Marry Me” has plenty more to offer.
Veronica Mars
UPN
Created by Rob Thomas and starring Kristen Bell, “Veronica Mars” was a hit when it premiered on UPN back in 2004. Mixing the coming-of-age and teen genres with the intrigue of crime noir, it’s all at once light on its feet, engaging, and shocking.
Ken Marino recurs throughout the series as Vincent “Vinnie” Van Lowe, at first an arch force in the Mars’ private investigation enterprise. Like Veronica and her father, Vinnie is a detective himself — though his interests lie less with solving cases and helping people and more with getting as much money as possible. His loyalty can be easily bought (having literally abandoned an investigation to help its target simply because of a potential payday) and his moral compass points exclusively toward his own wallet. This often makes Vinnie a frustrating presence in Veronica’s life, though his predictability has allowed her to dispatch with him as simply as writing a check. At the same time, the more the two interact, the more Vinnie develops respect for Veronica as a peer and a decent human being, occasionally leading him down a slightly less self-centered path.
Sadly, “Veronica Mars'” later seasons never fully lived up to its first outing (though they’re still enjoyable to watch). It was canceled after three seasons, after which Thomas produced a decent feature film sequel that bombed at the box office. Hulu revived it briefly for a fourth season that was as good as the show has ever been, but it was ultimately canceled a second time. Still, Vinnie and Marino were brought back for each succeeding iteration, showing how much of an impact they both had on the series.
Children’s Hospital
Adult Swim
In the Adult Swim parody series “Children’s Hospital,” Ken Marino joins creator Rob Corddry and reunites with “The State’s” David Wain (as well as Jonathan Stern of “Wet Hot American Summer”) for a hilariously disconcerting send up of hospital dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “ER.” Marino is part of the core cast as Dr. Glenn Richie, the love interest of Lake Bell’s Dr. Catholomule “Cat” Black. He first played this character in Wain’s anthology film “The Ten,” though Wain has since said that “Children’s Hospital” could be considered a loose prequel to the events seen in his movie.
Starting with Season 4, Marino began serving as one of the series’ co-executive producers. This allowed him to have a hand in the creative direction of the season, which took “Children’s Hospital” down a more ambitious road than it had previously sought. “[In Season 4] everything kind of seems like it’s breaking away and we’re doing something slightly special, you know, like they were all special episodes,” Marino told Daily Actor back in 2012 while comparing the style of the season to the special “Do The Right Thing” homage from the one previous.
After nodding to “Community” (which also did ambitiously hyper-stylized episodes and even featured Corddry frome time to time), he opined that the absurdity of the series meant they could take risks other shows wouldn’t. “I mean ‘Children’s Hospital’ just kind of does anything, we have the freedom to do anything on that show, because you don’t have to emotionally connect to the characters,” he continued. “It’s simply there to be funny and to be ridiculous and so that’s the goal each time we write a script or perform it.”
Reaper
The CW
Unless you were paying close attention to genre TV when it was on the air, chances are you haven’t heard of “Reaper.” That doesn’t change the fact that it’s one of the best supernatural comedies ever produced for the medium.
The basic premise is that a college dropout and all-around dead-ender named Sam Oliver (Bret Harrison) learns on his 21st birthday that his parents essentially sold his soul to the devil (Ray Wise) before he was born. Now that Sam is of age, Satan himself has come to collect on the deal by turning him into his own personal grim reaper. Imbued with special powers and given enchanted “vessels” with which to capture spirits, he is charged with returning wayward souls and spiritual entities to the fiery pits from whence they came.
The pilot episode was directed by Kevin Smith, who revealed to us at the time that it fulfilled a career curiosity of his. “I’ve always been curious about trying my hand at directing something I didn’t write,” he said. “Never had an interest in doing that on the big screen, but ‘Reaper’ presented an excellent opportunity to give it a go in a smaller, yet, ironically, far larger, pond.”
The series flew under the radar for the most part and was unceremoniously canceled after two great seasons. The cast was packed with genuine comedic talent, includin Ken Marino as Sam’s neighbor Tony, a kind-hearted Demon who hopes to one day defeat Satan and his armies. His character is married to Steve, played by “The State” alum Michael Ian Black. In 2009, Marino expressed passionate interest in playing Tony again in a hypothetical “Reaper” movie, despite the extensive demon makeup involved.
Party Down
STARZ
After the cancellation of “Veronica Mars,” Rob Thomas was anxious to get started on his next idea — a straightforward comedy series about Hollywood hopefuls making ends meet as the begrudging employees of a hectic catering business. To do so, Thomas gathered a group of his funniest friends, including future “Glee” sensation Jane Lynch, future “Parks and Recreation” breakout Adam Scott, and “Veronica Mars” alums Ryan Hansen and Ken Marino. They shot a homemade pilot in his backyard for the series — now named “Party Down” after the titular catering company — and wound up with a season order from Starz.
In the “Party Down” ensemble cast, Marino plays team leader Ron Donald. Unlike his coworkers (whom he treats as subordinates), Ron’s dreams lie squarely outside the entertainment industry — in some part because the high-speed Hollywood lifestyle nearly killed him. Speaking to Awards Radar in 2023, Marino described Ron as someone desperate for respect and/or to be seen as a success, even though he’s constantly a victim to his own actions. “Much of Ron’s essence or much like the stories that we see of Ron, he takes one step forward and then he takes 17 steps backwards,” he told the outlet. “He’s got this enormous black cloud over his head. He’s his own worst enemy.”
The talent involved with the series wound up being somewhat of a drawback, as Lynch and Scott were soon much busier thanks to “Glee” and “Parks and Rec.” Combined with low ratings, this caused Starz to cancel the series after only two seasons. It was revived in 2023, however, receiving positive reviews while potentially opening the door to future seasons down the road.
Wet Hot American Summer
Focus Features
A little over five years after “The State” went off the air at MTV, its members got together to make “Wet Hot American Summer,” a film that extended everything about their series into an instant classic. Directed by David Wain and written by Wain and Michael Showalter, it follows a massive ensemble of “teens” who play like caricatures of the protagonists of 1980s sex comedies. In addition to Showalter, Michael Ian Black, Joe Lo Truglio, and, of course, Ken Marino, it stars much of the comedic blockbuster talent that continued to dominate the 2000s and 2010s, such as Elizabeth Banks, H. John Benjamin, Bradley Cooper, Judah Friedlander, Janeane Garofalo, Amy Poehler, and Paul Rudd. Marino plays Victor, a counselor at Camp Firewood whose struggle to lose his virginity becomes his central character trait.
Compared to the cinematic results of other sketch comedy shows (even those that notably air live on a certain day of the week), “Wet Hot American Summer” has had a unique staying power — so much so that Wain and Showalter have been able to successfully spin it off multiple times in the late 2010s. “They were always talking about [a spin-off],” Marino told Under the Radar Mag, “was it a movie, was it a prequel, was it a show? Was it flashing forward ten years into the future, like the one part in the movie? … I don’t think it ever really became fully realized until this wave of Netflix and Yahoo! and these internet companies that are maybe a little more open to letting people’s creative ideas come to fruition as opposed to trying to rework it.”
The Other Two
Max
Ken Marino’s body of work contains a truly upsetting amount of TV shows that, in our view, just didn’t get their due time in the sun. Of all these funny and innovative projects, “The Other Two” was arguably the most baffling to see ignored by so many. The series was certainly successful in its own right, even getting to jump from Comedy Central to HBO Max, where it had a better chance to make waves as the high-concept streaming dramedy it always was. But for a series that so perfectly captured social media culture and what being famous means in the 2020s, it can’t help but feel as though it deserved at least a few more followers.
Created by former Saturday Night Live writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, “The Other Two” tells the story of how two adult siblings (Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver) react when their waning dreams of stardom are suddenly disrupted by the overnight social media success of their kid brother (Case Walker). His opportunistic new manager Streeter Peter Peters is played by Marino, in a performance that may or may not be unconsciously channeling the energy of infamous music industry executive Scooter Braun. Though his character is squarely focused on the success of his new teenage client ChaseDreams, Marino felt the show had a lot to say about how a family might be affected by this new world.
“To me, I never saw [“The Other Two”] as being about [Chase],” he told LA Mag in 2023. “It was always about the effect his trajectory had on the family.” The series ended that same year, amid some controversy, but it went out with a decisive finish that needs to be witnessed in full.
Burning Love
E!
“Burning Love” might be one of the most bizarre love stories ever put on TV. It also might be one of the best.
Directed by Ken Marino and written and created by his wife Erica Oyama, this passion project is basically a high-fidelity spoof of dating shows like “The Bachelor.” In the first season, Marino stars as Mark Orlando, a sexy and superficial firefighter hoping to fall in love (or at the very least hook up) with one or more of the 16 contestants vying for his affections.
“I have to admit that [Oyama and I] watch a lot of reality TV,” he told Collider in 2012. “My wife was pregnant with our first child… She would watch marathons of ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette,’ and then she just got this idea. She wrote this fake teaser of a show like that, that she said she thought would be funny to do for the web.” Several of their funny friends (including Adam Scott and Jonathan Stern) read the script and were immediately sold. They then helped put together a sizzle reel that sold Yahoo! on the concept as well.
Like most projects Marino is involved in, “Burning Love” is on fire with comedic talent seemingly due to the fact that folks just like working with him. In addition to Scott (who plays Mark’s psych doctor), the series features the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Kristen Bell, Michael Ian Black, Michael Cera, Ken Jeong, Nick Kroll, Natasha Leggero, Kumail Nanjiani, Paul Rudd, Paul Scheer, and Seth Rogen. Ben Stiller, who also produces, appears in several episodes as the series’ first eligible bachelor. The show as a whole captures the essence of who Marino is as an artist — irreverent, suitably goofy, wonderfully collaborative, and quietly genius.
