McHale and Hearty

Joel McHale makes a living as a professional snark artist. He is the razor-tongued host of E!'s addictive clip show The Soup, which has become, in its five years on the air, the gold standard of pop-culture mockery -- dirtier than Best Week Ever, classier than TMZ, it's the Daily Show of smutty reality-TV clips. McHale stands in front of a green screen and recounts the week's most egregious tube moments, all the while tearing into Ryan Seacrest, Oprah and Dr. Phil, and entertaining a cast of recurring Soup characters such as a dancing maxi pad and a cat eating spaghetti. No channel is spared, from QVC to local newscasts -- but it's all part of McHale's master plan to improve the world. "It's my small service to society," he says.

Though he spends most of his days waxing smart about Tila Tequila, McHale is a classically trained actor whose dramatic chops will be on display in Steven Soderbergh's new thriller The Informant, in which he plays an FBI agent alongside Matt Damon, and on Community, a new NBC fall comedy about a ragtag group of community college students and professors. Still, he says, The Soup is his first love: "As long as we have insane and morally bankrupt television, this is where I'll be."

Styling by J. Everette Perry * Makeup by Nikki Uberti at Artists by Next * Hair by Johnny Stuntz for Photogenics Beauty @ Smashbox/Bumble and Bumble * Joel wears a jacket by Oakley, sweater by Shades of Grey and a shirt by Endovaneara.