The New York Times ran a long story yesterday about the challenges faced by “Saturday Night Live,” which is returning to the air tomorrow night after a long absence caused by the writers’ strike.
In the 1970s, “SNL” ruled the airwaves because it had virtually no competition. And in those pre-VCR days, it was genuine “appointment television” for most baby boomers, because if you missed the live broadcast you had to wait until rerun season for another chance to see it.
Now, TV is packed with comedy that seems more creative and more daring than “SNL,” from “South Park” to “Mad TV” to “The Simpsons.”
Earlier this week, I watched the first four episodes of “The Whitest Kids U’ Know,” a very funny sketch comedy series that began its second season on IFC Feb. 10 and will be running for the next two months on Sunday nights at 11 p.m.
Tomorrow night at 11 p.m. IFC is airing a special edition of “Kids” to mark the return of “SNL” a little later that night on NBC.
“The Whitest Kids U’ Know” is looser and fresher and raunchier than anything on network TV because the performer-creators of the series don’t have to deal with a “standards and practices” censor hacking away at anything that is too racy. Network TV has in some ways become squarer that it was 20 years ago, witness the bleeping of some of the dialogue in the PBS airing of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” Wednesday night (a taping of a 38-year-old Broadway show!).
“Whitest Kids” consists of Trevor Moore, Zach Cregger, Sam Brown, Darren Trumpeter, Jr. and Timmy Williams who came together in New York City in 2003 and quickly gained a following on the Internet.
Live comedy venues followed and a TV series was launched last year (the first season has just been released on DVD).
The five performers play female as well as male characters in the sketches, so they are sometimes reminiscent of the “Monty Python” troupe and the Canadian comics who did “Kids in the Hall.”
But, the five Brooklynites display their own mad originality in such impossible-to-describe sketches as “Jack and Oswald” — a musical set in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 — and “Feeler Doctor,” a comic study of the most delicate moments of a male medical exam.
Some of the sketches are more bizarre than funny, but the members of the “Whitest Kids” company are clearly going places — Moore and Cregger have written and will star in a movie that will be released later this year.
