The Sketchersons: Sunday Night Live

Comedy Bar, Toronto ON, March 6

BY Julianna RomanykPublished Mar 7, 2016

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The Sketchersons' Sunday Night Live show is one of the best weekly sketch shows in the city. Featuring alumni from Torontonian greats like Get Some and Panacea and accompanied by a very tight house band, the massive sketch troupe delivered an enormous show in the style of Saturday Night Live that was fresh and funny.
 
The Sketchersons not only create a 90 minute show each week, it's pure, uninterrupted comedy, free of musical guests or ads. Given this monstrous, time-limited task, it would be understandable to see a good deal of inconsistency in their sketches, but nothing they performed was below average.
 
In fact, a few parts of the Sketchersons' show were exceptional. Their version of the "Weekend Update" segment was steadily hilarious, both in its one-liners and its characters. Most memorably, their comparison of one of their troupe members to a description from a pedophilia warrant was brutally funny, particularly because the joke was a complete surprise to the troupe member who fit the description, and he couldn't stop himself from laughing and breaking character. Similarly, their interview with Don Cherry in which he defended the reputation of Canadian hockey was top notch, especially because his fake goatee seemed to be made of white toothpaste.
 
In addition, the Sketchersons performed a sketch involving an enthusiastic creepy ticket salesman was very funny despite the fact that it got a bit repetitive towards the end, an amusing scene where a broken man decided to go back into the well he was rescued from, and several solid topical bits. Their scene in which a girlfriend tried to convince her boyfriend that there would be a lot of orgies during the zombie apocalypse mocked The Walking Dead with impressive unconventionality. Likewise, their sketch where a group of friends failed to escape danger because they all they could think of was random life hacks was clever, plus it garnered two big laughs when it became clear that one character was weirdly obsessed with putting pancake batter in ketchup bottles. Conversely, their scene where a woman who expressed disappointment in the new Ghostbusters trailer on Twitter felt very relevant, but it merely reflected society's stereotypical view of internet culture instead of delving deeper to find something comically original.
 
Lastly, there were a few small low lights in this massive variety show. The Sketchersons' scene in which Tony Hawk avoided being charged for a murder because the police were too busy quizzing him about his skateboarding was forgettable, as was their sketch in which a belligerent drunk man latched onto a woman's birthday celebration.

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