If you recognize Ed Helms' face — and let's be honest, nearly everyone does — it's most likely from the many seasons he spent playing paper salesman and a cappella superfan Andy Bernard on "The Office," without any serious doubt the most beloved sitcom of the post-"Seinfeld" TV era. It's also plausible that at some point you've inhaled Helms' presence in the somewhat raunchier "Hangover" movies, a smash-hit trilogy exactly coterminous with the latter years of "The Office." Both, in different ways, feel like products of a different time.
Well before that, longtime viewers of "The Daily Show" knew Helms as a regular contributor from 2002 to 2006, whose dry, affable and more than slightly nerdy persona (it's a word Helms embraces, people) often seemed to take the edge of his pointed political satire. In the years since he and fellow "Daily Show" alum Steve Carell closed down "The Office," Helms has appeared in numerous films and TV series without quite landing on a long-term project, and also become a regular on the bluegrass circuit playing banjo, guitar and piano with his band the Lonesome Trio. (He literally co-authors a bluegrass blog, and if that's not embracing nerdhood, then nothing is.)
