Year: The Future. Two astronauts lightyears away from home make a terrifying discovery: a shapeshifting alien is aboard. Tensions run high, the astronauts don’t dare turn their backs on one another. What can they do to pass the time? Watch sketch comedy.
This is the framing device for “KCCAT Presents: The Weirdos Comedy Hour 2”, a public access inspired sketch comedy review special. Astronauts Forest Kinsey and Sadie Teel show each other a collection of sketches and have brief conversations introducing each one. Think the host segments of MST3K mixed with some of the flavor of SkyCorp Home Video.
The sketches themselves are of fluctuating quality. A scene of a man with an alien living in his tooth is bizarre and hilarious whereas a western where the outlaws play sudoku gets old essentially as soon as it starts. At its best “The Weirdos Comedy Hour” found ways to continually innovate and entertain, at worst a sketch would repeat variations of the same joke over and over again.
One interesting thing to note is that all sketches featured were shot digitally and transferred to VHS for the special. I mention this because I saw a couple of the sketches prior to their inclusion on the special, and I think the framing device and the VHS format make the sketches better. They invoke a scrappy sense of play, one that was almost certainly present in the making of these sketches but isn’t nearly as pronounced in a digital format.
Ultimately “The Weirdos Comedy Hour 2” is very charming. It’s not perfect, and it’s not for everyone, but it was never trying to be. This is the kind of passionate local artistry the KC Fringe Fest is all about.
