Hey there! Welcome to Millennial Misremembers, where I look back at the content I consumed in my childhood. You know, those works we fondly remember but maybe weren’t that cool? This time, I’ll be diving into The Kids in the Hall.
The Kids in the Hall premiered with a 47-minute pilot special in October of 1988 on CBC and HBO. The show premiered with “Season One, Episode One,” a whole year later, on both networks. That’s the episode I’ll be rewatching.
Now, the actual kids of The Kids in the Hall have been a sketch comedy troupe since 1984! Lorne Michaels of SNL “discovered” them and put the show together; the rest is history.
* Warning — unfortunately, this article includes discussions of Black face. *
What I (mis)remember
I was a bit of a Canadaphile back in the day. I’m not ashamed to say that Kids in the Hall and Degrassi were a big part of why I almost went to the Great White North for university. If I believed in regret, I’d probably regret that I didn’t end up going.
I wasn’t the only member of my household obsessed with The Kids in the Hall. My brother and I were probably super annoying about our shared love of it. He was a freshman my senior year of high school, and we had drama class together, so we performed sketches from this show together. They were not … appropriate. Nor did our classmates understand them.
The one I best remember was us as two Vaudevillians who secretly kinda hate each other, and then one admits to the other that they’re “f***ing” the other’s wife. We got a lot of stares that day. Beyond that, we often pretended to “crush” each other’s heads as one of the kids’ recurring characters does.
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Also, I think the fact that this show was a bunch of men dressing in drag, sometimes kissing one another and featured a gay man, Scott Thompson, kinda exploded my young brain. In a good way. Thinking back on it, I’m sure a lot of The Kids in the Hall went over my head, but it felt like a safe space. A safe space I could enjoy with my brother.
So, naturally, I could not have done this Millennial Misremembers without including my brother! Upon the rewatch, I’ll explain each skit briefly and then insert screenshots of our live commentary. I’m on the right, and he’s on the left.
Let’s rewatch!
The cold open is Mark McKinney and Thompson dressed in 80s teenage girl garb, screaming on the phone. They’re super excited because they’ve called each other simultaneously. Their phones didn’t even ring!
Then, we get the theme song!
Next sketch! We’ve got Bruce McCulloch as a masked squash player who calls himself “The Eradicator.” He runs around trying to intimidate his opponents. Joke’s on him, though, ’cause he sucks at the sport.
Moving on, McKinney plays the headmistress of a ballet school. Here, he breaks a young, talented girl’s heart by telling her Kevin McDonald‘s fumbling ballet dancer has more spirit than her and will take her place at the academy.
In a great twist, the sketch ends with McKinney’s character laughing and saying it’s all a joke. These guys are good at completing their skits.
Next up! The head crusher. I don’t know how to describe this, so here’s a picture:
That’s basically the whole concept.
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Then, Dave Foley takes the stage to tell us some important news. During rehearsals, the kids have discovered the cause of cancer. McCullough then joins Foley to apologize for having caused all that cancer. He won’t do it again!
Next sketch! Things get strange in the way only a Thompson sketch can. He has a nightmare of slicing a pear. He wakes up in bed with McKinney (as a woman), who asks him if he had the pear dream again. She comforts him. Then he wakes up with McCullough, who does the same. Repeat, but with Foley (as a woman) and McDonald at the same time.
Finally, Thompson wakes up next to a pear. This time, he comforts the pear.
And then, oh dear god, no … I’m not even going to recap the following sketch. Just read our commentary.
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That’s finally over. The episode ends with the head crusher smushing a small child’s head, only to regret it.
Does it live up to the nostalgia?
All that said, it was super fun to have this bonding moment with my bro! I’m still cautiously excited to watch the reunion season of The Kids in the Hall next month. It’ll be nice to see their irreverent humor with what is, hopefully, an updated sensibility.
https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/our-flag-means-death-turning-red-fantastic-beasts-who-are-stories-for/
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