From his time as a lynchpin on MTV’s antic sketch show The State up through regular supporting roles in films including Role Models and cult TV series like Party Down, Ken Marino has occupied an almost singular niche in pop culture. Contented as a character actor and always game to subvert his beefcake stature, Marino excels at playing mostly likable putzes who teeter precariously between sympathetic earnestness and manic self-absorption. It’s a high-wire act that’s somehow fallen under the radar of household-name recognition, making it even easier for the 54-year-old stalwart to slip in and out of memorable personas.
As overeager talent-manager Streeter on Max Original The Other Two, Marino has stolen scene after scene since it debuted in 2019, anchoring the often-surreal showbiz satire’s gifted ensemble cast in comedic best practices—no small feat when Molly Shannon is among the regularly featured players.
In the currently streaming third season, which airs its finale on June 29, Marino’s workload has only increased. He’s by turns the dysfunctional Dubek clan’s perennial fifth wheel; erstwhile manager of its youngest family member, pop idol Chase (Case Walker), along with Chase’s narcissistic sister Brooke (Heléne York); and live-in boyfriend to Oprah-level famous matriarch Pat (Shannon). Played with typical, affable lunacy by Marino, Streeter is simultaneously omnipresent in the Dubeks’ lives and tempting to take for granted — precisely how the character views himself.
In an effort to bring Marino’s contributions to The Other Two their proper due, here are four instances where his presence heightened the show’s humor and pathos, and made yet another case for giving the man his flowers.
Streeter Saves Brooke’s Day… and Chase’s Armpit (Season 3, Episode 2)
Now that Chase is turning 18, he is — much to Streeter’s delight — legally allowed to show his whole armpit in press photos. Snapshots of said pit have been purchased by Rolling Stone for exclusive publication, which means Brooke has to chauffeur a flash drive of the hot cargo cross-country to the mag’s L.A. offices… in an incognito grocery delivery truck. Danger surfaces as a charming trucker at a mid-America dive bar reveals himself to be a GQ staffer stealthily trying to snatch Chase’s pit pics. Fortunately, and not at all creepily, Streeter has been tailing Brooke as a precaution and appears just in time to foil the thief’s plans — though not before fumbling the truck keys multiple times, nearly losing his balance recovering them, and gathering himself to deliver the world’s least-cool kiss-off: “And now, if you’ll excuse us, we have an armpit to deliver.” It’s Streeter as knight-in-rusted-armor, belying his physical strengths with a nominally heroic intervention. A Marino masterclass.
Streeter Sabotages, and Saves, a High School Dance (Season 1, Episode 5)
Midway through The Other Two’s first season, we get full-spectrum Marino when Streeter double-books Chase at a fan’s high school dance and a liquor-launch party for Lil Wayne. His solution? Hire a decidedly unbelievable middle-aged woman named Lorraine (the inimitable Jackie Hoffman) as a Chase decoy, and provide a decoy backing track for the decidedly untalented Chase to lip sync to while he performs at the dance. Neither con proves very convincing, though it does facilitate the sight gag of Marino styled in an all-white suit topped with a matching cap, making it even more hilariously heartbreaking when he wells up with shame for letting Brooke down. As Streeter rides off to see Lil Wayne with Lorraine-as-Chase in tow, he shrugs off his glum expression, glances at Lorraine and deadpans with a deluded, “I’ve still got it” self-confidence only Marino could muster that her likeness to Chase is “uncanny.”
Streeter Chases His Fatherly Dreams (Season 2, Episode 5)
Episodes of The Other Two generally jump from one character’s situational hijinks to the next, but “Chase Gets Baptized” places Chase, Brooke, their aspiring-actor brother Cary (Drew Tarver), and Streeter in the same circumstance for its runtime. And of all places, it’s a pool party/baptism bash hosted by megachurch ChristSong (a thinly veiled proxy for an infamous celeb-magnet megachurch) and its too-cool-for-Sunday school pastor, Jax Dag (Adam Thompson). Streeter is, invariably, envious of the fatherly love Chase receives from Jax, especially now that he’s bedding Chase’s mom and has visions of stepdad status dancing in his head. While Cary and Brooke fret over whether it’s a bad look to be associated with ChristSong, Streeter disappears deeper into his fixation with Jax, volunteering for a baptism just so he can hex him with an underwater evil eye. That’s before using a permanent marker to tattoo his upper body with asymmetrical angel wings (or “goose wings,” as he declares them), a random Roman-numeral sequence, and other meaningless symbology to try and rival Jax’s self-righteous body ink. It all culminates with Streeter sanctimoniously admonishing Jax and his flock that they “should take a good long look in the mirror” — oblivious to his own self-authored foolishness. It’s a classically screwball mini-monologue only Marino could make fresh.
The Ballad of Streeter, Table for One (Season 3, Episode 4)
In season three, Pat has ascended to a level of fame that requires her to live like a complete shut-in and eventually masquerade around Manhattan in full prosthetic makeup just to spend quality time with her kids. This leaves Streeter going stag anytime he leaves their suburban mansion. At the conclusion of “Brooke Gets Her Hands Dirty,” Streeter sidles up to a seat at the same bar where Pat happens to be reading a book in her “Grandma D” drag, thrilled at her anonymity. That is until Streeter orders up an “adult Shirley Temple” (the line delivered dryly enough you almost miss the joke) and waxes lovelorn to the ambivalent bartender as if he was the protagonist of a black-and-white Hollywood romance. “I wish she could be here,” he laments, un-ironically musing about how, “I guess she could be here, if she was in some sort of elaborate disguise, or if she got four hours of prosthetics to look like a different person.” Only when Grandma D abruptly leaves the bar in tears, brushing up against him, does he crinkle his eyebrows and mutter, “Pat?” And somehow, thanks to Marino — as is so often the case when he’s onscreen — we want to harangue and hug him all the same.
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