"I ain't gonna touch it, but the title alone gets two snaps up!" - Damon Wayans as "Men on Films" Critic Blaine Edwards Reviewing "Great Balls of Fire"
In Living Color: Season One DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
When television broadcasting began almost sixty years ago, only two networks and a handful of shows were on the airwaves. In the ensuing years, countless channels were added, each with twenty four broadcast hours to fill each day. With so many shows being produced, it is almost impossible for television to come up with a totally new idea. As an audience, we have seemingly seen everything.
On paper, In Living Color may seem like nothing special. A show featuring a troupe of comedians performing skits and sketches? Sounds like a retread Saturday Night Live or Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. It has a special emphasis on pop culture parodies? Add a bit of S.C.T.V. to the mix. A group called "The Fly Girls" performs energetic dances to hip hop music between sketches? Okay.throw in a smidge of Soul Train. When the show joined Fox's lineup on April 15, 1990, however, it quickly proved that something new could be minted out of even the oldest of concepts.
In Living Color's producer, co-writer, and ensemble member Keenan Ivory Wayans achieved this freshness in an ingenious but simple way: he saw to it that the ensemble was made up predominantly of talented black performers (including Kim Coles, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier, T'Keyah "Crystal" Keymah, and his siblings Damon and Kim Wayans) along with a couple of token white performers (future film star Jim Carrey and Kelly Coffield). The makeup of his cast allowed the show to tackle the same types of sketches that might show up on SNL, but it also allowed the series to explore concepts and ideas that predominantly white shows could not.
In Living Color: Season One collects the series' first thirteen episodes, which were originally broadcast over the spring, summer, and early fall of 1990, in a three disc set. Revisiting old sketch comedy favorites is always a difficult proposition as these types of shows often do not age as gracefully as standard sitcoms. Does In Living Color: Season One hold up? The answer is yes.and no.
One flaw of these episodes is that the humor is extremely topical. In an audio commentary accompanying one of the episodes, cast member Tommy Davidson reveals that episodes were often filmed on a Friday night and then broadcast that very weekend. This allowed it to be cutting-edge and timely in 1990, but the result is that much of the show feels dated fourteen years later. The first sketch on the first show, for example, is a Love Connection parody featuring host Chuck Woolery (Jim Carrey) as he mediates a post-date discussion between boxer Mike Tyson (played by Keenan Ivory Wayans) and his then-girlfriend (and Head of the Class actress) Robin Givens (Kim Coles). This sketch was sidesplitting when it premiered - the studio audience roars appreciatively throughout - but it is now mostly amusing for its nostalgia value. Tyson has become an ear-munching, tattooed freak, Love Connection is remembered only by Game Show Network viewers, and Givens probably isn't remembered even by her old Head of the Class castmates.
This problem is, unfortunately, not limited to one sketch. One in which a sycophantic Arsenio Hall interviews Washington DC's crack-head mayor Marion Barry about his "new film" (Barry was videotaped by federal agents in a hotel room as he cavorted with hookers and took drugs) seems biting only in an historical sense. Mostly, however, it evokes warm memories like "Hey, I remember Arsenio's Posse. And the dog pound!"
Still, for every hopelessly dated sketch, there is at least one that remains on target. The "Men on." sketches, featuring Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier as the world's gayest critics are bluntly humorous (but also repetitious - each "Men on." sketch is exactly the same). An Oprah parody starring Kim Wayans perfectly captures the host's doe-eyed empathy and her explosive eating habits. "The Buttmans," "Della Reese's Pieces," "Snackin' Shack," "Ray Charles in Charge," "Ted Turner's Very Colorized Classics - The Kid" (featuring Damon Wayans as Red Foxx, Kim Wayans as Aunt Esther, and Tommy Davidson as Webster's Emanuel Lewis) are just a few of the other not-to-be-missed sketches.
While the entire cast shines, perhaps the strongest are Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey. Wayans' deadpan "Homey the Clown" is extremely funny. Wayans is also adept at gross-out comedy in "This Ol' Box," showcasing his scuzzy homeless character Anton. "The Exxxon Family" with Jim Carrey as the disaster-prone captain of an oil tanker manages to overcome its topicality, mostly thanks to Carrey's brilliant physical comedy. Carrey's "Vera DeMilo, Bodybuilder," also makes a welcome appearance. The rubber-limbed Carrey also performs an astounding commercial introduction in episode four in which he contorts his body and his face in seemingly impossible ways.
For a complete breakdown of In Living Color: Season One's sketches, visit the disc summary page.
