Season one of Comedy Central’s “Important Things With Demetri Martin” instilled a certain feeling of dread at first. Part of it was Martin, a gangly 36-year-old Yale graduate with a conditioner-commercial mop top. He’s what National Public Radio hosts wish they looked like. He’s the hipster girl’s perfect date to a Wes Anderson movie. His style includes hand-drawn “play” buttons to transfer between segments, an acoustic guitar and harmonica and a large pad on which he draws with both hands, putting together an ambidextrous drawing and title while singing, “This is a sketch (yes it is)” with snaps and claps in the background.

What saves Martin from these precious affectations is that he doesn’t expect you to be wooed or charmed by his act. He’s cute, but he doesn’t want you to think so. He’s no comic in disguise. For two and a half hours, there will be no “exploring” of “important” things, just bite-sized bits of brilliant silliness.

OK, though, gags about David Copperfield and the DeBeers diamond commercials? Haven’t we seen these? Nope.

Devin Cottonfield, with much gelled hair, smoke, whispers, jazz hands, black vests and waving of white scarves, prepares to perform … an “emotional escape” from a monogamous relationship. “It will be my most daring escape ever,” Cottonfield murmurs, waving his hands over a dollhouse-scale model of the restaurant the breakup will take place, then snapping suavely to make the lights turn off in a puff of smoke.

Then, there’s the soothing voice of the pitchman urging you to buy a ring … to commemorate the engagement ring. And the registry ring. And the honeymoon ring. “You do want your love to last forever, don’t you?” Just when the commercial seems over, the shadowy figures are shown going deep into debt from their ring habit. “Why not break the news,” the fancy script asks, “with … diamonds?”

Or “Creedocide” (for when you’ve tried trapping, poisoning and bribing your rats). Let’s just say there are evangelizing rats. The only failing of this sketch is that Scott Stapp’s band Creed was not cide-ed as well. These are silly laughs — silly, make you laugh like one of Jeff Dunham’s Achmed the Dead Terrorist puppet jokes. But after it’s over, you won’t feel like the jerk who called the kid in a wheelchair a tacky name.

These days, it’s almost statistically impossible to tune in to a funny episode of “Saturday Night Live,” unless it’s Norm McDonald, phony commercials from the Carter-Reagan years, the Celebrity Jeopardy! spoofs, or Rudy Giuliani in drag. It’s a chore to watch “SNL.” The D-list hosts (Taylor Swift?!) The feeble parodies (Fred Armisen’s anemic Obama impersonation makes the real Obama look positively Samuel Jackson-like). The dumb, raunchy parody songs (being on a boat and throwing things on the ground are not punch lines, even if you repeat them for five minutes).

Somehow, “SNL” is still the heavy in the sketch-comedy room. But its shortcomings come into high relief when you come across a sketch show that works (R.I.P. “Mad TV”) — even more so when you come across one like “Important Things,” one that works as a one-man sketch show, even more so when the show has to stick to a theme and yes, even more when the themes are as absolutely lame as “safety” and “chairs.”

Martin has two things in abundance that humor shows in general lack: brains and the good sense to keep his sketches short. Cut a sketch short and you might leave the audience wanting more — but that’s damn preferable to boring them.

Ashley O’Dell reviews things that aren’t in theaters anymore or never were.