The Return of America's Best Sketch Comedy Group

It's been almost 10 years since their show went on television last century, but their weirdness is utterly timeless. With no laugh track or live audience and a minimal soundtrack, the Upright Citizens Brigade had a half-hour television show mixing real-life pranks with filmed sketches and for three years managed to sustain a straight-faced run of inspired surreality. Yesterday, four years after the release of the first season, the Powers that Be finally saw fit to release the second season on DVD.

The Upright Citizens Brigade gained their greatest fame as a television act, but they make their bread and butter as an improv institution. They have opened their own clubs in New York and L.A., training new improv and sketch comedians, including the troupe Human Giant. And, since the cancellation of their own show, the UCB cast members have all stayed in comedy, Amy Poehler on SNL, Matt Walsh on The Daily Show and Man Bites Dog, Matt Besser on Crossballs, and Ian Roberts on an extended guest run on Arrested Development. (Poehler, whom I've written about before, was hilarious on the Upright Citizens Brigade show as a writer and performer in a way she's never able to be on Saturday Night Live, though she gets far greater exposure on NBC.) Whatever their current project, their great collective legacy remains the television show, as subversive and bizarre as consistent hilarity has ever gotten on television. It really hasn't aged a day.

The format of sketch comedy has exploded on television in recent years, while televised improvisational comedy has stagnated in the family-friendly format of Whose Line Is It Anyway? But sketch and improv comedy are closely related, and often cross-pollinate each other's formats, jokes, and cast members. More than Monty Python's BBC-style British absurdism, the original cast of Saturday Night Live set the standard for the genre in North America. It was closely followed by SCTV and Kids in the Hall in Canada. SCTV was from the Toronto outpost of Chicago's Second City improv troupe, the Tabernacle in the Salt Lake City of improv, and Second City supplied numbers of members to both SNL and SCTV. The members of the Upright Citizens Brigade all started out at the ImprovOlympic, the second-most venerable improv club in Chicago. When they got the gig on Comedy Central, they moved from improv to sketch comedy for the half-hour format. Though they haven't been on TV together since the new millenium started, through their show and their theaters, they're one of the pillars of modern comedy.

So what is sketch comedy? Short answer: it's what they do on Saturday Night Live. Long answer: unlike improv, where jokes are made up on the fly, generally from an audience prompt, sketch comedy groups perform short written skits, often making liberal use of impressions, funny voices, bad language, and parodies. (Full disclosure: I was in a sketch comedy group in college with Nick Antosca and this guy, among other future leaders of the free world, and committed all the above indiscretions.)

The Upright Citizens Brigade stage shows are legendary, but even on cable television they shy away from nothing, no matter how violent, crude, silly, or utterly bizarre. The high-concept premise of the show casts the group as a subversive underground organization dedicated to subverting the status quo. Their most famous sketch, "Ass Pennies," comes from the first season episode "Power Marketing." Two businessmen, brothers, are playing golf. The older, wealthier one confides the secret of his success: sticking 30 dollars worth of pennies in his ass every day and then spending them. Over the years, he explains, because so many people have handled his ass pennies, he has a mental edge over them. His younger brother ends up running away in horror after noticing that he has a few pennies in his pocket. The sketch ends with the older brother shouting defiantly at the audience and at the Brigade who are watching him on a screen, "Your pennies have been in my ass!"

Comedy is a delicate profession: when done well, there's nothing that feels better to witness or create. But when done badly there's nothing more deadly. Comedy can break through the walls of political correctness, uncover the uncomfortable truth, heal all wounds, and express thoughts and emotions that wouldn't otherwise be acceptable. And it can make you bust a gut and giggle yourself silly at private moments of downtime in a cubicle farm. The Upright Citizens Brigade are comedy at its best. See them on stage if you can. Enjoy them on TV. Watch your quality of life improve.

Comments

[FatJoe]

Don't forget In Living Color! It was a lion among sketch comedy shows.

[gro]

I fondly remember SHE TV from ABC about twelve years ago. It only ran five weeks in the summer, but some of the sketches were outrageous. It probably got in trouble by portraying too many famous people in odd situations - Michael Jackson getting bitchy with wife Lisa Marie, Rush Limbaugh with his dummy Hobo Bob viciously backtalking him. Also little things like the sketch where the devil is meeting his date's friends ("Evil? You say that like it's a bad thing!").
There is a lot of live sketch comedy out there. Check it out! It may surprise you.
LA Sketch Fest.com
Chicago Sketch Fest.com
SF Sketch Fest.com
Sketch Fest NYC.com
Sketch Fest.org (Seattle)

[CitizenLulu]

Yes, Firesign Theater is a whole different thing. First, while they sometimes did/do live shows they were/are meant to be heard rather than seen. They mostly came from radio and many still do voice overs or radio drama when not doing Firesign stuff. I love UCB and Mr. Show but my heart belongs to Guy Caballero of SCTV.

If you like Firesign Theater, check out Bob and Ray.

[rektruax]

I don't feel being seen is necessarily a criteria of sketch comedy.

I'm quite familiar with Bob and Ray.

SCTV rules...

[Quaoar]

"the original cast of Saturday Night Live set the standard for the genre in North America. It was closely followed by SCTV and Kids in the Hall in Canada."

Sorry, but the Kids in the Hall far outclassed SNL except for perhaps some of the classic late 70's material.

[davidly]

Of course, this is a matter of taste, but the SNL era when Adam Mckay came onto the writing staff holds up the best for me. The seventies stuff was new (for the seventies) and has its place.

One should remember that The Kids in the Hall, like Monty Python was taped and edited, which makes a difference in the overall quality.

Anyway, the origin of television comedy has its roots in sketch, thereby improvisational forms.

[rektruax]

"But as much as I liked the Sid and Marty Krofft parodies"

parodies? I only remember one. To the uninitiated, you make it sound like that's all they did.

You also say the Firesign Theatre isn't sketch comedy - "they're a whole nother thing entirely.

What might that be?

[AlexRemington]

The Firesign Theatre didn't so much break up as fade away. But they did go an entire decade without an album. (And they're not really sketch comedy; they're a whole nother thing entirely.)

The State (which begat Stella), Mr. Show (which was begotten by the Ben Stiller Show) and Exit 57 (which begat Strangers with Candy) were all fine shows with fine comic pedigrees. Get a Life, another show from the Ben Stiller Show era, also deserved a much better fate than it got, but its cult is much, much smaller than Mr. Show, and it's nowhere near DVD. Sadly, while the stars of all the above shows were able to recover and have good careers -- including the Ben Stiller show's Andy Dick, for Heaven's sake -- Chris Elliott never really got any bigger than he was in 1991, and has been trapped in perpetual career limbo ever since.

Mr. Show is a fine show, and it's nice that it attained such a large, devoted audience. But as much as I liked the Sid and Marty Krofft parodies, I don't think it holds up nearly as well as Upright Citizens Brigade.

[armthehomeless]

Humans rule! Dolphins can suck it!!!

[Ginzaman]

And you know who they have to thank for leading the way? Q5 and Monty Python.

[rektruax]

When I first read the headline I thought... Wow! I didn't know Firesign Theatre broke-up in the first place!

As far as TV goes though, I'm with Bob and David too. Nothing touches them in terms of relevance. After that SCTV.

There's never been an America network TV sketch comedy show worth a second look. You have to go to cable or HBO or another country.

[LumberingOaf]

I guess you don't watch a lot of sketch comedy. The State was better. Heck, even Exit 57, which was an even shorter lived series than UCB, was a better group.

[Weston Esterhazy]

Sorry, but the best sketch show in America had to be Mr. Show. UCB was great, don't get me wrong, but Mr. Show had more of a point of view and that's what clinches it for me. Though I will admit that I enjoyed UCB's episode cohesion with the crossover of characters/theme from one sketch to another better than Mr. Show's stream of conscious progression.