Hey Ken Marino, Is A Hot Dog A Sandwich?

God, I loved Party Down.

And Veronica Mars. And Children's Hospital, Agent Carter, and Eastbound & Down. Burning Love, The State, and all the Wet Hot American Summer properties. These things all have one element in common, and it's this guy:

Ken Marino, who memorably played the unlucky Ron Donald in Party Down, swooped in to antagonize Veronica from time to time on Veronica Mars, and has done many other memorable things on many other memorable shows, and has got another winner on his hands in The Other Two. Here's The A.V. Club's Erik Adams on the freshman (and recently renewed!) Comedy Central series from Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, both former co-head writers at Saturday Night Live:

It's as good as a freshman TV comedy gets... Not since the glory days of Arrested Development has a sitcom so excelled at maintaining such intricate, extended threads while also using them to connect callbacks that span the entire season.

The Other Two isn't sketch. It's a thoughtful, layered, and very funny look at things like grief and fame and family, brought to life by a top-flight cast who, like the script, always seem to make the more interesting choice. And that's as true of Marino—who plays Streeter, the agent of viral tween music sensation ChaseDreams—as it is of the rest of the cast.

"That's my favorite place to be when acting," Marino told me in Los Angeles last month. "I like playing kind of extreme characters, but I always enjoy trying to find some sort of depth or humanity, even though they're ridiculous at times. And there's a lot of ridiculous here."

There's a lot of ridiculous here, too. Here's a a piece of it: I asked him if a hot dog is a sandwich.

The Takeout: Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Ken Marino: Huh. Well, I think a sandwich is something that's between two pieces of bread.

TO: Okay.

KM: But the way they cut most buns, they fall apart when you open them up. So to me, that's two pieces of bread.

TO: So, sandwich?

KM: Yeah, if you're putting something between two pieces of bread—be it a hot dog, or a sausage, or, I don't know, a slice of bologna—it doesn't matter. It's a sandwich.