My own take on the series (and I own all three on DVD and watched all of them extensively):

Evil Dead is a low budget horror flick, plain and simple. There’s a little comic relief, but not any more than typical for the genre.

Evil Dead 2 is a horror/comedy–it sits squarely in the horror genre, but Sam Raimi has added many more strictly comedic elements (including his statutorily required Three Stooges homages). In effect, it’s a horror flick mocking the genre (but not self-referentially so, like the Scream series).

Army of Darkness is a comedy spoofing the swords and sorcery genre (I have wrapped my mind around the question for a few years, but I can’t bring myself to classify AoD as a horror flick). But for the beginning of AoD (which summarizes ED2 for everyone jumping on the wagon with AoD), there’s not a lot linking AoD to the earlier Evil Dead entries.

ED2 was just a shot-for-shot remake of the original no-budget ED. Some poor souls, though, think that low production values make is ipso facto the better movie.

…it surprises me that Joe would have anything at all nice to say about anything involving Janeane Garofalo.

I have long had a low-level crush on Garofalo. I think she can be charming and funny when she is not being a raving loon. I can understand being passionate about politics but from watching her career I think it is more of an internalized neuroses that makes her the third-rate Al Franken clone she has become today.