When my brother Nathan was home over the summer, he called me over to the computer one day to show me a YouTube video of a performance of a band he had recently discovered. It was a pair of New Zealanders, one a big, bulky, familiar-looking bloke with thick glasses, the other a delicate wisp of a young man with a quiet air about him. "Wait a minute," I said. "Is this Flight of the Conchords?" It was. I'd heard of the duo from Entertainment Weekly, which hailed them as comedic geniuses, but I'd never actually listened to one of their songs, let alone seen their show, which aired on HBO.

So Nathan offered me an introduction. Their names were Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, and as I watched, they embarked upon a rambling musical conversation reminiscent of the scene from Ghost in which Oda Mae tries to convince the bank employee that they met previously at a party. In the song, Jenny, Bret is the titular woman who recognizes the man portrayed by Jemaine. Though he doesn't recognize the lady and nothing she says is making much sense to him, he goes to ridiculous lengths to play along, making wildly inaccurate guesses about every insignificant detail of their supposed shared history. (Her: We watched a movie. Him: Oh, yes, I remember. It was something like but not necessarily Schindler's List. Her: It was Police Academy 4.) I was in stitches within seconds, and I laughed my way through the whole song, which is about six minutes long. I knew that Nathan and I had found another shared passion.

I couldn't shake the feeling that I recognized Jemaine, with his big glasses, deep voice and seemingly permanent expression of confusion. It bugged the heck out of me until I realized that he was the guy from the Outback commercials I'd so enjoyed. A dim bulb with a broad smile and inconveniently healthy ego, he showed up in a series of ads talking about why he loved the restaurant so much. Like the Pace Picante Sauce commercials of yesteryear and the Jimmy Dean ads of today, I looked forward to seeing one whenever I turned on the television. If I did, it automatically made my day a little brighter.

Once that connection was made, then, there was no turning back. Nathan and I watched several of their performances on YouTube, mostly guest appearances on late night programs singing for the likes of David Letterman and Craig Ferguson. Though Jenny remained my favorite despite a lack of a discernible tune or rhyme scheme, I grew steadily more familiar with their repertoire. I even was able to watch an episode of their TV show at a friend's house, which was more than Nathan could say. I decided that we both needed a more intensive education into this quirky pair.

For Christmas, I got him season one of Flight of the Conchords, and during his break, we watched all 12 episodes. In the semi-autobiographical show, they play dopier versions of themselves, trying to make it big in New York City with some help from their enthusiastic but clueless manager Murray Hewitt (Rhys Darby), who holds their band meetings in his office at the New Zealand Consulate and would like to think none of his co-workers know what he's up to.

In real life, Flight of the Conchords has found great success as a folk-parody duo, but as a pair of wannabe rockers in the show, Bret and Jemaine are pretty pathetic. One can't help but wonder how they can even afford to rent an apartment in New York City when they only have one fan - the goony, stalkerish Mel (Kristen Schaal) - and no day jobs. Well, Bret does land himself one of those in one episode, but it doesn't last long, and Murray's idea of a windfall is earning 50 cents in royalties from the sale of greeting cards that play a Flight of the Conchords midi.

Jemaine and Bret are entirely out of their element in the Big Apple, but I get the impression that it's less because they're from New Zealand than it is because they're just naturally hopeless. Jemaine is a dumb lummox who has a very high opinion of himself, while Bret is more soft-spoken and timid. Both of them are piercingly awkward, apparently lacking any innate sense of how to interact with others. It would be painful to watch their missteps if it weren't so incredibly funny.

Every half-hour episode features several songs, some of which are more directly related to the storyline than others. Although Jenny never turns up, several older songs do; I'd estimate that about half of the songs were pre-existing, while the other half were written specifically for the show. There's quite a variety of styles on display. Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros, like Saturday Night Live's Lazy Sunday, is an attempt by two nerdy white guys to sound like hard-core rappers. Bret channels Shaggy in She's So Hot - Boom!, in which, in his infatuation with a fellow sign holder at his new job, he imagines himself as the seductive "boom king." He's more like Donovan in the trippy Prince of Parties, which has him prancing through the forest in a get-up that recalls the little Starburst lad who loves berries and creme. Jemaine, meanwhile, spends large chunks of one episode as a very glittery David Bowie. In another, he adopts his best Stephen Hawking voice as a robot in the future declaring, The Humans Are Dead.

Thanks to Peter Jackson, whenever I hear anything about New Zealand, I think of Lord of the Rings, and I know I'm not the only one. Bret and Jemaine acknowledge the thirst for Tolkien references with the music video Frodo, Don't Wear the Ring, in which Mel and Murray put in appearances as Arwen and Gandalf. A bizarre tribute in three distinct parts, it pokes fun at the excesses of fandom while recapping some of the trilogy's most memorable moments. Bret, incidentally, knows a thing or two about Middle-earth, since his angelic features earned him a spot amongst the Rivendell elves in Jackson's trilogy. You have to be quick to catch him at the Council of Elrond, but in Return of the King, he's much easier to spot as the elf who tells a vision-struck Arwen, "We cannot delay."

Because the show aired on HBO, which isn't subjected to the sorts of restrictions found on network television, I wasn't sure what to expect of Flight of the Conchords in terms of objectionable content. Refreshingly, there's very little profanity, a reflection of how very square our protagonists are. Both men, but especially Jemaine, are preoccupied with women, and barely an episode goes by that doesn't somehow involve their dating escapades, which sometimes involve the shedding of clothes, though viewers never get a clear view of anything, and even when Bret and Jemaine are successful in their conquests, their clumsiness trumps their virility. The freakishly devoted Mel, a psycho psychology professor, follows Bret and Jemaine everywhere and always seems ready to throw herself upon them while her hapless husband Doug (David Costabile) watches helplessly, but while they are nice to her, they never accept her advances.

The show basically revolves around Bret, Jemaine, Murray and Mel, but other characters help to create comical situations. SNL's Will Forte drops by as an overzealous actor who causes a lot of trouble for the band, and John "I'm a P.C." Hodgman shows up as the owner of the greeting card company interested in buying a Flight of the Conchords tune for a musical card. Their friend Dave (Arj Barker) provides laughs, as do a series of love interests and casual acquaintances.

Though the DVD set doesn't have anything in the way of extras, the show itself is pure gold. It looks like one of the most low-budget shows on television, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the funniest. Whether they're singing or just sitting around doing nothing - which seems to be their primary occupation - Bret and Jemaine are gut-bustingly hilarious, and I hope they continue to take flight for many years to come.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD