Now that they are returning with a new show, it’s time to revisit some of their classic bits to prepare. Whether someone is an original fan or a curious new one, there are plenty of great Kids in the Hall Sketches to revisit.
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An absurdist musical sketch, Daves I Know has Bruce McCullouch singing about all the Daves that he knows. Bruce wanders the streets leading the camera to all the Daves that he has encountered in his life. There’s a Dave that works in his dad’s store, a Dave that he has known since he was 6, and of course Dave Foley.
The Daves all join in explaining their relationship and clarifying whether they are Davids or Daves. They also clarify that they have their own hands and have separate mothers. The thing that really pushes this over the edge is McCullouch’s questionable singing and extremely questionable dancing.
Any movie buffs’ worst nightmare, the ‘Citizen Kane’ sketch has two men in a café discussing a film one of them watched but can’t remember. Dave Foley plays the forgetful friend while Kevin McDonald plays his increasingly irate friend. Foley and McDonald begin by talking about a movie that Foley watched the previous evening. Foley describes in detail a film that is very clearly Citizen Kane.
As the sketch goes on and Foley recounts more and more of the plot of Citizen Kane while vehemently denying that the film he watched was Citizen Kane, McDonald becomes more and more outraged over the 5-minute sketch. Without spoiling the end for new viewers, it’s safe to say the situation escalates culminating in an argument about an ambulance.
This sketch features Kevin McDonald as Donald and Bruce McCulloch as his soon-to-be suffering wife. Opening on Donald proudly holding up a fish that he appears to have caught and berating it for a photo. The camera zooms out, and it’s revealed to be a rent-a-fish for a photo booth. It only gets more absurd from there as Donald decides to grow a vacation beard that he can’t bring himself to get rid of.
As he returns to daily life, the beard returns with him and slowly starts to take over his life and alter his personality. Donald gets more and more disheveled and continues to wander around his office shirtless listening to vacation tunes. As with many KITH sketches, it descends into dark absurdity and violence to great effect.
Buddy Cole was a recurring character played by Scott Thompson. The story behind the character is actually kind of sad. Thompson, gay in real life, fell in love with a man who was the basis of the character. The character only came to life after the man who was the inspiration passed away. Buddy Cole was a character that just wasn’t seen at the time. It was the height of the AIDS crisis and opinion was decidedly split on the LGBTQIA community.
It’s hard to pick just one Buddy Cole sketch, but “I’m Canadian” just beats out the rest and clinches the top spot. Thompson waxes poetic about the struggles of being gay, and even worse, the struggles of being Canadian to a delighted crowd. Buddy also manages to deftly lambast Americans along the way while poking fun at his native country.
Long-time fans of KITH will have expected this outcome, and perhaps many non-fans as well. Head Crusher is the ultimate example of the brilliance of the comedy troupe. Somehow both relatable and surreal, Mr. Tyzik aka Head Crusher is a man who vents his frustrations on the world by lining up the heads of far-off people with his pinching fingers before proceeding to pretend to crush their heads. It really is that simple.
Played by Mark McKinney, Mr. Tyzik is a man with a vaguely Eastern European accent and thick glasses who crouches in bushes on Wall Street to crush the heads of traders. He also comes across a rival called the Face Pincher with whom he does battle, and he even crushed heads at the disco. A standout Head Crusher skit, however, is “Rehab” where Tyzik is found crushing the heads of some local workers and has his crushing hand broken. From there a distraught Tyzik ends up at rehab where the audience is shown a suitably ludicrous rehab montage.
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