Anyone who has watched a Michael Schur program, excluding The Office, is more than a little familiar with the work of Jason Mantzoukas. The lunatic characters he plays steal every scene they're in, but fans of The League were very much aware of this long before Schur fans were. And if viewers think Mantzoukas gets weird in live-action series, they should see what happens in Close Enough.
For a lot to fans, their first experience with Jason Mantzoukas was on The League, a semi-improvised sitcom that focused on a group of friends in Chicago who ran a fantasy football league. It featured an incredible array of funny people like Nick Kroll, Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Brie Larson, Seth Rogen, Will Forte and Jeff Goldblum. Mantzoukas played Rafi, a deranged freak with a never-ending supply of hot dogs in his pants, and that was his least frightening quality.
Mantzoukas would go on to be a recurring character in three different shows that Schur has been involved in. On Parks and Recreation, he played Dennis Feinstein, a violent, self-indulgent perfumer. On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, he's Adrian Pimento, a former detective whose 12 years undercover turned him into an unpredictable lunatic. Then, there was Derek Hofstetter on The Good Place, a character that meant well but was created from nothing by an omnipotent AI.
Naturally, this is all just the tip of the iceberg for his incredibly active career. Most recently, Mantzoukas popped up on the animated series Close Enough. Created by J.G. Quintel, the mind behind Regular Show, Close Enough tells the story of a young family sharing an apartment with a divorced couple. One half of the divorced couple is Alex Dorpenberger, a community college professor who is incredibly passionate about Vikings.
Much like any classic Mantzoukas character, Dorpenberger is somewhat unhinged. He seems to have little regard for his health and has a serious impulse control problem. At one point, he tried to teach his students a lesson that involved jumping and/or riding a bike off of a roof. If nothing else, Dorpenberger is a dedicated teacher who's willing to go the extra mile for his students.
This isn't Mantzoukas' first foray into the world of animation, either. Mantzoukas has provided voices on a variety of series over the years, including being one of the main characters on Netflix's Big Mouth. But there's something about Dorpenberger that's more reminiscent of Mantzoukas' live-action characters, being the first time an animated series has fully been able to encapsulate the absurdity that makes him so hilarious.
Dorpenberger may actually be his strangest character, due in no small part to the fact that it often feels like you're watching an animated version of Mantzoukas. Dorpernberger is what would happen if Mantzoukas wasn't impacted by the limitations of reality on a day to day basis. He shouldn't leave live-action roles behind by any stretch of the imagination, but his incredible voice acting talent is certainly worth exploring further.
Throughout the first season, there are moments and lines that you could actually see Mantzoukas doing in a live-action series. They're familiar in the best possible way, which is a testament to the quality of the show and the talent of the actor. A show like Close Enough needs that level of weirdness to make it work, and, fortunately for the producers, weirdness is the stock of trade for Mantzoukas.