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A Man My Age Shouldn’t Be Looking For Gatorade Streams In The Backyard

Funny thing about reunions: everyone gets excited about the slight possibility of them happening, but everyone also expects them to suck. And, with rare exceptions, they always do (actually, Dinosaur Jr’s stunning return to form after a bitter breakup and 15 years apart is the only exception I can think of right now. And don’t say the Pixies – sure the skills are still there but the fact they obviously loathe each other makes it profoundly depressing ). Nevertheless, any news item like ‘Diamond Dave to rejoin Halen???’ sends me people into a frenzy of emailings the link and wondering if just this one time, it could be as good as it once was. Besides being unrealistic, this is also unfair to the reuniting acts themselves, who by and large don’t expect to be as good as ever, but hey; our memories of how great they once were is the reason anyone cares they are reuniting in the first place. It’s inevitable. If you’re like me, you have a mental shortlist of reunions you’d love to see: mine includes the original Guns N Roses, Pavement, the Silver Jews (new addition), WKRP In Cincinnati, Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty, and the Kids in The Hall. So what was I expecting when I found out the boys were putting the dresses on one more time, in a murder mystery comedy set in Northern Ontario?

Well, you’d think comedy reunions might have a better chance at success then the rock n’ roll variety. So much of rock music is about youth (the performers, sure, but mostly our youth reflected through them) and immediacy, two things that don’t really age well. Theoretically, comedy should be fine. But comedy often dates faster then milk in midsummer (check out a 1970s SNL sometime); and the enormous amount of effort developing material (ask a comic how much work goes into a ten-minute routine sometime) makes comedy even more a game for the young guns. Hell, rock n roll has Neil Young, Tom Waits, Levon Helm… have you seen a Robin Williams movie lately? Steve Martin? This is one reason I think so many comedy stars abandon standup and later abandon comedic roles – it’s not just more respect, it’s a helluva lot less work.

Moreover, the Kids in the Hall always had the energy of a rock n roll band, something Bruce McCulloch has alluded to in several interviews. The one time I was lucky enough to see them live, in Montreal a decade (Jesus!) ago, it was pretty much like seeing a kickass band put the crowd through it’s paces.

All of this is a rambling, overlong way of saying that when I watched Death Comes to Town last night, I was really excited. And I was pretty sure it was gonna suck. The good news first: unlike the zombies stumbling through “all-star jams” at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, the guys who gave us “Reg”, “Screw You, Taxpayer”, and “Running Faggot” haven’t gotten all respectable on us. The show delighted in tipping sacred cows and firing howitzers at the stupid and venal. Unfortunately, it’s just not that funny. Not yet, anyways. The difficulty with an opening episode dealing with at least a dozen characters in a half-hour is that everything gets rushed, with no time for any situation to develop before zipping off to the next zany character. And it’s absurd situations, not zany characters (Chicken Lady, Gavin, and the Headcrusher excluded) that produced the Kids’ funniest work. It’s no coincidence that the bits that were specifically written to get their point across in 30 seconds (the Shuckton Olympic intro and the news team promo) were easily the sharpest. Hopefully, as the series develops, so will the characters, and so will the situations.

The bigger problem is that the writing was mediocre, often resorting to hackneyed gags about ignition locks and inappropriate making out that have been done to death. There were almost no memorable lines or exchanges, which is pretty disappointing coming from a troupe whose writing was always staggeringly accomplished. Again, pilots are often the weakest episode of a run, so I’m willing to wait and see; I still think the premise is tremendously promising. Hell, the show’s miles funnier than anything else on CBC, except maybe watching Garnet Exelby play defence.

(PS Stay tuned for a somewhat-special ZY KITH tribute post coming soon)

This was written by goddtill. Posted on Thursday, January 14, 2010, at 1:09 am. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

A Man My Age Shouldn’t Be Looking For Gatorade Streams In The Backyard

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A Man My Age Shouldn’t Be Looking For Gatorade Streams In The Backyard

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