'The Whitest Kids You Know' is Probably the Best Sketch Show That Currently Exists

So, as I said at the start, only about 4 posts ago, this blog will occasionally be a bit of a collection of different reviews, opinions and ideas about comedy, rather than just a straight journal of our experience in Edinburgh. We've decided this mostly to avoid boredom, for us and you readers, so that the blog itself doesn't become too dry; but also to make sure that we keep up with posts on days when the news might just be something like 'we started having a discussion about a general idea we might think about putting on our flyers today'. So even though it isn't stand up related, WKUK is in my (and I think Ben's) opinion, just an all round fantastic show, and I would still hold it up as an important influence in my comedy make-up.

By the way, the alternative idea for this post was going to be 'you guys, Saturday Night Live is actually really good', because I've only really just started getting heavily into it now that a lot of it is on Netflix. I realise that post would be a bit like writing a post that says 'hey, have you heard of white bread, cause it's tasty guys'. But I probably will end up writing about it at one point.

So Whitest Kids then, is an extremely blue sketch show that runs on IFC - the Independent Film Channel, which you'd pretty much never find, because as they say, it's a channel that only exists in 'deep cable'. But the thing is, the show is incredibly widely available on Youtube; honestly I'm pretty sure every sketch from all 5 seasons is up there, they seem to not be too careful about clamping down on this - which is awesome! The idea of the show seems to be that absolutely nothing is off limits, and in the field of comedy in particular, this can be a difficult point to prove. What the show manages, I think, is to take ideas that should carry an incredible amount of gravitas, and offset them by placing them into a ridiculous childlike fantasy world. This can be seen quite well in this sketch about a genie doing horrible things at the request of a ten year old.

High energy performances, cartoon-like caricatures and unconvincing gender swaps undercut the dark nature of some of the sketches. In this way, as in many others, the show clearly takes it's influences from Monty Python; admittedly, it would be impossible to name a show that doesn't, but I think the anarchy and the format experiments within the show, display more of the python structure than I've seen in much else. I could honestly sit here and link WKUK videos all day long, so I'll only do two more, but this next one shows the way that the show experiments with form really well.

If you couldn't watch the sketch, it follows a long drawn out conversation, then the last line of the sketch tells us the title, which is completely unrelated to any of the rest of the content - even adding, that when we look for the sketch online, we should look for it under that title 'The Popcorn Factory Sketch'. This shows a really fantastic understanding of how their audience absorb their show. They realise that they have a great presence online, acknowledge it and encompass it into the show, rather than trying to battle with internet piracy.

The popcorn factory sketch also manages to display one of their other impressive talents, which is the ability to successfully end a sketch. This is undoubtedly the hardest part of sketch writing, a good premise, and funny dialogue seems to come fairly naturally, but how do you bring all that to a conclusion, or if you can't conclude it, how do you still surprise the audience or end on a high? You only have to watch a show like the previously mentioned SNL to see just how many sketches end with an unfunny, or simply functional last line. Their talk show sketches for example, will often end with a line reading something like 'Thanks for watching, join us again next week'. Yes, this is how talk shows actually end, but it leaves the viewer completely flat, feeling like we've somehow missed the punchline. Even 'the mighty' python employed several techniques for avoiding the end of a sketch; a sketch could bleed into the next one, they would resort the trope of a knight slapping a character with what I think was a dead rabbit, or sometimes they would just start self-referencing and tear down the walls from the inside. But with the whitest kids, I feel like I am consistently impressed with the way that they deliver when it comes to bringing something to a close, or at the very least, suddenly and manically curving the ball. It's worth mentioning, I sometimes think they are aided greatly by the punchy title sting that they have between sketches, acting like a click of the fingers that can bring a number of sketches really snapping together.

I can't realistically name a favourite sketch of theirs,. But I think this next sketch, if nothing else, taught me an important lesson about comedy, and so for that reason exists as a bit of a lasting influence for me.

It's so simple. Sudden, unwarrented anger, is one of the funniest cornerstones of all comedy. Once you realise that, you notice it all over the place, in films, TV and stand up as well. Adam Sandler practically has an entire career based around the idea. And this sketch has it in the shortest and most refined form I've ever seen it in. Sam Brown is fantastic at doing this and seems to be their first choice every time somebody needs to go ballistic (like Cleese in Python). It can be at the very least a useful technique if you're trying to write something, to simply think, 'what if one of the characters just goes nuts at this point'. It's a very easy way to instantly raise the stakes and get to the very heart of what you wanted to get across incredibly quickly without the tedious set-up dialogue.

The performances, the writing and even just the real flair of the show seem to me to be that fantastic combination of being both unique and exceptional. If you've never seen it before, you can learn a lot about sketches from watching it. And if you have seen the show before, watch it all again, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.