A HISTORY OF SKETCH COMEDY

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Keegan-Michael Key & Elle Key have written A History of Sketch Comedy which not only traces the specific form of comedy, but also explains how it relates to other forms of comedy. Key's experience with The Second City and Key & Peele, naturally give his voice weight in the issue of sketch comedy, but he also lays out additional credentials, including his graduate degree, to establish that he has more than a practical knowledge of the form. Rather than providing a simple, "Hey, remember this sketch, wasn't it great?" commentary, the Keys are able to provide a guided tour through sketch comedy, including Vaudeville, radio, films, television, improv, and other forms.

Told in ten chapters, which include sidebars from a variety of other comedians including Laraine Newman, Jim Carrey, Ken Jeong, and Mel Brooks, the book provides some autobiographical information about Key and his career, a history of comedy, focusing on sketch comedy, a discussion of what comedy is an how it works, and examples of successful sketch comedy performed by everyone from W.C. Fields and Monty Python to The Second City, the Groundlings, and various internet content providers.

The book is written in Keegan-Michael Key's voice and he often addresses the audience. While this gives the book a personal feeling, it also makes it a more casual exploration of comedy and would probably work better in audio than as a text. Another reason for listening to the book on audio is that Key often quotes comedy sketches. In many cases, the humor from sketches comes less from the words spoken as it does from the rhythm and inflection of the speakers. While A History of Sketch Comedy does not appear to be available as an audio book, it is based on a podcast the Keys produced for Audible. On the other hand, many of the sketches Key describes, such as the Tim Conway/Harvey Korman Jaws parody from The Carol Burnett Show can be found on-line. Throughout the book, Key encourages the reader to make a list of sketches and comedians to track down.

At times, the Keys move slightly away from strict sketch comedy, but their definition is broad. They point out that there are many films and television shows, such as the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers or Reno 911 which are not strictly sketches, since there is on overarching narrative, but the individual scenes can be broken out and watched as stand-alone sketches, meaning they each form a short vignette with a beginning, a middle, or an end. The Keys also note that sketch comedy evolves, noting that Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, presented sketches which originally don't appear to be linked, but which they provide subtle (and not-so-subtle) callbacks throughout the episodes to tie the individual sketches together in unexpected ways.

Expectations and the undermining of them are important in comedy and each chapter ends with a section the Keys refer to as "Hey You Can't Do That" in which they discuss a sketch which completely blew their minds when they first saw it (and possibly on subsequent viewings). These are skits that not only subverted the audience's expectations but did so in a manner which was original, such as Key & Peele's "Celebrities." These sections put a nice button on the end of each chapter, offering an example of the types of sketches they have been discussing and giving the reader highlights of some of the sketch comedy of the past hundred years.

For those readers who fail to follow the Keys' emphatic advice to maintain a list of comedians and sketches to watch, there is an index which not only lists the comedians discussed, but also the titles of the sketches, so if you forgot the title of Funny or Die's "After the Credits," the index can be used as a reminder of the sketches covered throughout the book without the need to flip through to find the descriptions and titles of the sketches.

Written in a chatty and lighthearted tone, including jokes and samples of sketch comedy, A History of Sketch COmedy is a celebration of the art form. Readers will come away energized and wanting to watch sketch comedy, both those desribed in the book and new work being performed locally, on television, and the internet. At the same time, it is clear that the Keys were not interested in looking at the conflicts and nuts and bolts of creating sketch comedy. The History of Sketch Comedy can be paired with works such as Sheldon Patinkin's The Second City or Jeffrey Sweet's Something Wonderful Right Away for a more rounded, although also more focused, exploration of the world of sketch comedy.

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