Adam Pally

Adam Pally's name rests on two sitcom regulars and one small-town deputy. Max Blum on Happy Endings was the slacker in a cast of fast talkers, the one who behaved as though the plot were happening to other people. Dr. Peter Prentice on The Mindy Project was the same instinct in a lab coat. Neither role survives an actor who looks like he is working at it, which is the whole difficulty of them.

The specific skill is derailment. Hand him a scene with a clear job to do and he finds the line that knocks it sideways, usually by taking a figure of speech literally or holding a bit ten seconds past the point where everyone else has moved on. Whether or not any given take is improvised, it plays like it. The Sonic films use exactly this. Wade Whipple is a deputy with total confidence and no useful information, the one character in a children's franchise allowed to be stupid on purpose, and it has carried across three films and into the spin-off series Knuckles.

Around that sits a long tail of American comedy: a promoter in Ang Lee's Woodstock film, a cousin in Dirty Grandpa, a single scene as a diner sommelier in a zombie comedy, a guard in a medieval convent farce. He was also an executive producer on The President Show. The most interesting stretch is the small indie run of the mid-2010s, where directors borrowed the loose comic register for sadder material: a failing improv troupe, a cabin weekend nobody can talk about, a married couple who start a band instead of separating. He is a better dramatic actor in those than the sitcom reputation implies.