 It might be veering into hyperbole to
suggest that The Kids In The Hall changed
the face of sketch comedy, but it’s fair to suggest
that their influence on the sketch comedy that followed is
probably greater than the still-kicking uncle dying from cancer
of sketch, Saturday Night Live. Sure, the
later is the grandpappy everyone is forced to acknowledge
as an influence, but it’s the Kids’ style that
we see more often creep into modern sketch. While SNL still leans on the same formula after 30 years, these days
drilling B-grade characters into the ground in painfully unending
sketches – something this once great show has been doing
for at least 10 years now - The Kids In The Hall relied not so much on time-tested formula, but on doing whatever
the fuck they wanted.
And
what they wanted was often bizarre, surreal, and all over
the map.
Spiritual
oneness with your dog. Cannibalism. Gay men who style their
hair during emotional distress. Cabbies turned doctors. Just
a few of the oddities featured in their fourth season. Unlike SNL, they didn’t invent a small roster
of distinctive characters and return to them week after week
after week in skits that bore amazing resemblance to the skits
from the week before. Hell no. As Dave
Foley told us, they wanted to do something they had never
seen before. And that usually meant it was something the viewer had never seen before.
I
confess, when The Kids In The Hall first
hit the airwaves, I didn’t know what to make of it.
Some of the sketches didn’t seem to have a punchline
or joke or gag. They were just kind of there. Some were just
plain weird. And they still are! What the hell was
going through their heads? I still don’t know. What
I do know is that somehow, some way, they made it work.
Season four opens up with a sketch featuring Bruce McCulloch,
one of the five core Kids – Scott Thompson, Dave Foley,
Kevin McDonald and Mark McKinney are the others – and
a dog. Bruce McCulloch and a dog, on a couch, watching TV.
And then they look into one another’s eyes, the lighting
goes soft, sweet music plays, and McCulloch dances around
giddily. The end.
 Do
you not quite know how you’re supposed to respond? That’s The Kids In The Hall.
But once you sit down and allow yourself to enter their world,
you realize that this stuff is funny as hell. It doesn’t need to have a big, obvious punchline or zinger at
the end. It doesn’t need to rely on some recognizable
and familiar character (because you’ve seen him or her
in a sketch a week every week for five years) in order to
work. The Kids just take these often outlandish, nonsensical
ideas, throw them up against a wall, and see what sticks.
Season 4 follows in the footsteps of the previous three,
offering tons of surreal, cross-dressing, blood-spurting,
off-kilter, rule-breaking, flamboyantly gay humor that fails
as often as it succeeds, but is all the stronger for it. By
this time some internal strife among the comedy troupe was
slowly making itself known – their film, Brain
Candy, was a nightmare for most of the Kids thanks
to this in-fighting – and some of the freshness from
the earlier seasons is a bit drained since by now we knew
what we were getting from them (sort of), but in the end what
you have here is a season of sketch comedy that stacks up
against just about anything else out there.
Toss in the fact that these are the uncut, uncensored episodes,
not the neutered versions seen on Comedy Central, and you
have yourself a winner
 Presentation
This
was a TV show, so set your expectations properly. It looks
quite good – decent picture, no major flaws on the print,
probably a touch better than broadcast quality – but
it’s also far from a revelation as far as DVD quality
goes. As with any television set, it is what it is. And what
this is, is a very nice transfer of a sketch comedy show.
Adjust your expectations accordingly and you’ll be pleased
with what you have.
On the sound front, well, it’s pretty much the same.
Maybe a bit better. Dolby Digital stereo, nice and clear,
though not something that will get your subwoofers thumping.
But then, it’s a sketch comedy show from late 80s/early
90s TV. What else would you expect?
Extras
A very nice batch of extras on this
set really adds to the value. We’ve got some new audio
commentary recorded in 2005 by the Kids, very informative
and funny stuff that really helps put what they were trying
to do in perspective. No, it’s not on every episode
– in fact, on just a few
– but it’s something every Kids fan will want
to hear. A pair of "Best of" compilations brings together some favorite sketches from Season 4. Normally
this sort of thing feels like a really cheap, throwaway extra
(as a rule I hate “highlights  from
the season” bonus features), but because of the skit-based
nature of the show this works perfectly. Nice selections and
a solid bonus. We’ve got a bit of archival footage of stuff that wasn’t broadcast that should be of interest,
and rounding things off are the usual picture galleries and trailers.
The Bottom Line
They honed their craft in Canadian
clubs, hit the airwaves a few years later and would have had
us scratching our heads in befuddlement if we weren’t
laughing so hard. To this day the legacy of The Kids
In The Hall is felt in the surreal, scattered and
indefinable comedy we see on Comedy Central and MTV, as well
as posted on the Internet by people with too much time on
their hands. More than 10 years later, it not only remains
fresh and funny, it’s still better than Saturday
Night Live.
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