Amazon made a wise choice to give so much love to “The Kids in the Hall.” The revitalization of the five-piece comedy troupe — with a new two-part SXSW documentary, “The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks,” and the series you’re about to read a review of — proves just how in line their humor continues to be with what is funny, and what is deliciously but positively inappropriate, in 2022. Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson, those unabashedly weird Canadians, have returned with a vengeance and some great self-deprecating jokes about their 1996 movie “Brain Candy.” This new season proves they have plenty of inspired jokes to share with a whole new wave of fellow weirdos.
‘The Kids In The Hall: Comedy Punks’ Review: Essential Viewing For Die-Hards Or Newcomers
Full disclosure: I came into this series and the documentary with only a “greatest hits” understanding of their work, without “getting it” as much as I do now. Though I didn’t learn too many new (to me) skits from the two-part documentary (it has no time for that), this new season makes a strong enough claim on its own as to why they warrant their fandom and their legacy of quotability. It is packed with many clever, surprising, character-driven sketches that still show a loving recklessness in their comedy.
My favorite is probably the one where Foley plays a charismatic radio DJ during the end of the world, whose only comfort is a damaged record of Melanie’s “Brand New Key.” The show keeps returning to it, finding new ways to make the stationary character funny and making one appreciate the mad creativity that went into it (it should be noted that the Kids in the Hall collaborate with a writer’s room in this season and, yes, there are jokes about that, too).
These episodes find the Kids in the Hall specifically laughing about their age at times, and they make it a superpower. In a strip club sequence called “Sixty on the Pole,” they own the jokes about the sexual appeal of not being as young as they used to be; at the same time, they also throw in full frontal nudity jokes in other skits to own their bodies and their charisma. The game of sketch comedy series-making skews younger, but the Kids in the Hall boast the unique comic edge they have in being so experienced and so themselves. Unsurprisingly, they also don’t need to use references or parody events that would date the show in a few years.
Of course, it’s sketch comedy, so it’s not going to be 100% successful. But even when I found myself not as amused with a sequence, I still appreciated the production design and budgeting that went into some of these jokes, especially the more style-driven ones. There’s a whole expressionistic idea behind a bizarro skit about “Friends of Mark” — with masked extras and jagged angles and black-and-white — that’s funnier in theory than how it plays out. And when some sketches don’t work for you, it at least introduces bizarre accents or strange costuming that suggests how fun it was to make the sequence. There are no lazy bits here, and that alone feels like something to celebrate.
Watching this new season also made me appreciate how they embrace darkness — there are more hysterical jokes about alcoholic dads, an experience many of them share — without resorting to a mean-spirited edge. The Kids in the Hall have always had forward-thinking values in their comedy, but the new series brings them into an era when comedians begrudge notions of political correctness as some personal attack. Instead of digging in, they openly acknowledge certain cultural tensions, like with a sequence about appropriation involving clown shoes and Dutch clogs. And the series is just as gender-nonconforming and queer as ever, with an impeccable array of wigs and dresses and Scott Thompson’s magnificent femininity in a Buddy Cole sequence about The Last Gloryhole.
One of the best things about this show is that the sketches indicate how much the Kids in the Hall, these punks of comedy, still “get” it. And their ear for modern comedy helps us, in turn, “get” them even more. The Kids are still making things their way — having lost none of their punk and progressive mentalities — and, as a result, their comedy is both relevant and laugh-out-loud great. Funny how that works. [B+]