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What is funnier, ultimately, than the slow march of time toward inevitable death?
Death, Kids member Dave Foley says, is inherently funny, because it negates everything else.
Death is the one thing that should remind you that absolutely everything else about life is absurd.
What if that nervy, surreal absurdism is blunted by nostalgic fondness?
The Kids, now around 60 years old, are still obsessed with absurdity and the inevitability of endings.
If anything, theyre even sillier and darker than before.
The revival knows that there are expectations that need to be met.
Beloved characters have to come back.
Someones head needs to be crushed.
A Mark McKinney secretary character returns, now scandalized by Zoom misconduct.
There are ornamental callbacks everywhere.
But the new sketches manage to surprise amid the wash of familiar allusions.
Who is that joke for?
What is it about?
Either version is glorious.
This is your friendly neighborhood DJ, Mike Motormouth Mulcahy!
Foley intones, his voice that perfect DJ blend of warm and empty.
If there is nostalgia here, there is also a fascination with mocking that same impulse.
In the best moment of self-referentiality, Foley and Kevin McDonald start into an M.C.
Oh yeah, this sketch, the McDonald store-clerk character says.
Unfortunately its not too popular anymore.
There are a lot of Kevin McDonald sketches in the world.
There are some worst cases of self-referentiality, too.
Not every sketch is a home run.
Even that wildly bizarre Shakespeare sketch feels like a beginning that never found an end.
But the successes far outweigh the missteps, and its hard to come away feeling anything other than grateful.
As the man in the towel would say, hell has frozen over.
The Kids are back.
