“He’s too dumb and I don’t care.”
Bender, Futurama
My favourite The Kids In The Hall sketches are the “Steps” ones, because they really boil comedy down its barest essentials in three characters, being exactly and precisely as complex as they need to be to function. Butch (Dave Foley), Cecil (Kevin MacDonald) and Reggie (Scott Thompson) are three gay men in Toronto who hang out; one sketch has them watching a movie together and another has them calling a phone sex line, but otherwise they’re mostly just hanging out, and they hit what I consider the three basic archetypes of comedy: dumbass, smartass, and comic foil. Reggie, the dumbass, is easy to explain; he interprets things incorrectly and sincerely. Cecil, too, is easy to explain; it’s not that he doesn’t tell jokes, but he takes himself seriously and has goals he’s trying to achieve, to which the other two react.
Traditionally, this makes up all you need for a comic duo; one can look to the classic Who’s On First sketch to see this. Butch is what spices this up and makes it interesting – he’s smart enough to see how dumb Reggie is but uninterested in Cecil’s goals and fails to take them seriously; where Reggie fucks up accidentally, Butch fucks up intentionally because he doesn’t care. I think this trio of characters is what you need to really make a comedy plot work – you can also see this dynamic in something like Futurama, where Leela is trying to push the plot forwards, Fry is dumb, and Bender is apathetic. It means you have three very different kinds of jokes in the one scene, creating something very dynamic.
Centering itself specifically in the queer Toronto scene adds an extra layer onto this – one thing I like is that Cecil is dressed differently from the other two, and you can instantly see both why he’s there and why he stands out. Just because he takes himself seriously doesn’t mean he’s not a little bit foolish; he takes queer issues deadly seriously, which the other two can poke at, and it gives both his goals and the jokes a bit more weight to them and make them funnier for specificity – my favourite joke is when he convinces the others to watch a gay movie and sadly concedes that it sucks. This dynamic could be very easily plugged into anything; plugging it specifically into the Toronto queer scene makes it funnier.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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M*A*S*H, Season Four, Episode Nine, “The Kids”
At one point, Potter laughs at one of Hawkeye’s jokes, remarking he’s always full of comebacks. It feels like a very realistic reaction; certainly the first time I get to know people, they say similar things until they get used to me.
“When have I ever asked for sympathy?”
(This is only funny because Frank said it)
“You know, you really ought to see a proctologist about possible brain damage.”
“Just for that, I’m not gonna tell you the version where the Papa Bear comes home alone.”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about!”
“That makes two of us.”
This one is a very shaggy episode, held together by the eponymous kids; it’s very cheap to have people being cute with kids, but it works here, with BJ in particular being the standout – pure dad energy, especially when he tells the story of Androcles, though Potter is right behind (reminding me of my grandmother). I also like a moment where BJ overhears the injuries kids can suffer and seems not just angry or sad but mournful, as if it wounds him that things like this are possible. There’s also a great moment where Mulcahey, of all people, has lost patience with Frank and manhandles him over to the sink to wash his hands for surgery.
It’s such a perfect character beat that Hawkeye gets invested in BJ’s Androcles retelling and is put out that BJ stops it once the kids have fallen asleep: Alda is so good at playing that kind of open sincerity. (Per the breakdown in your article, which I’m definitely going to hold onto, Hawkeye can rotate easily between these comedic archetypes; doing it as often and consistently as he does is probably tied to the show having dramatic instincts as well as comedic ones.) I can instantly see kid Hawkeye with the dad he still misses.
What I like is that Hawkeye knows he sounds foolish and is having his cake and eating it too – playing up his sincere desire to hear the end of the story into a full-on joke. Again: very influential on my sense of humour.
Poirot, “The Underdog” – I got a free month of Acorn.TV, and there’s almost nothing there I have heard of or want to watch. But hey, at least it has David Suchet’s Poirot (sadly getting ever more lost in a crowd of Poirot reboots). Nothing very special about this one other than some really interesting examples of Art Deco buildings that ground the show well in the 30s, and the use of IG Farben as a distant bad guy tied to the plot.
Elementary, “Enough Nemesis to Go Around” – Why is it that the idea of Poirot reboots seems wrong and the idea of Holmes pastiches is fine? It’s not like we didn’t have as good a Sherlock Holmes in Jeremy Brett as we did a Poirot with Suchet. And yet here I am, a fan of “Holmes in the 21st century in NYC.” But it’s really all about the acting and the tweaking of ideas. Had this just been “‘it’s Holmes in present day New York” and not “drug addict faces his demons and former doctor finds her calling,” I might have not stayed around. Anyway, the third season starts with Joan on her own as a detective (I guess on TV, you only need eighteen months of experience to get a PI license) and helping to stop the widow of a drug kingpin who took over his business (Gina Gershon). Naturally, Holmes resurfaces, having been fired by MI6, and half the episode is him and Joan only barely reconnecting. Plus he’s got a new apprentice. Oh, and there is a locked room mystery that beggars the imagination. The new status quo of competing consulting detective is obviously not going to last, but I give the writers a little credit for trying.
Frasier, “Coots and Ladders” – After a trying day and ever more frustration with his social life, Frasier is inspired by a caller with a klepto problem to steal something from an elderly neighbor. But when he goes to return it, he is stuck there for a surprise party AND learns he stole her Olympic medal. Some funny bits here and there, but again the show feels like it has so little left. Estelle Parsons plays the neighbor. And Helen Mirren plays the caller, the last one ever. The show’s use of famous voices cast creatively was a hallmark of its success, but it was used less and less, as was Frasier’s office life and radio show, and I think the show lost something without those callers. IMDb lists 137.
Widow’s Bay, season 1 finale – Fuck me this is some good drama and HORROR, with Matthew Rhys giving a knockout performance especially at the end, as if the show is giving into the truth of it’s premise – no one gets out of here alive. New England to the fucking core. Tom has tried so hard to make this town a better place to live in part for his son, and the show engages with this Tennessee Williams quote Ruth loves, that (paraphrasing) you must extract love from this burning building of a world, but what is the cost of that love, what if it’s the burning building itself? It’s apparent why this show is a hit right now, the question lurking at the backs of our skulls is what kind of future we can provide in a cursed place and system, and Widow’s Bay holds no easy answers.
Some extremely funny gags even with the darkness: Ruth looking at her photo album: “Oh, he was a great guy until an animal bit him, and then he became that animal”. The Town Hall guy going through old film reels labeled FOR THEM and FOR YOU.
World Cup 2026 – have largely been ignoring this due to the wild corruption and misery on constant display, plus a good proportion of the matches happening in the middle of the night, UK time, but tuned in for England’s first match yesterday night and it was surprisingly good. High energy, lots of goals, two strong teams. I’m still sulking a bit about the tournament itself, and the sport in general, and sport in general, but I’ll probably catch a few more bits as it goes on.
Columbo, “Dagger of the Mind”
A weaker episode that’s not helped by its extra length, which gives it too much time to drag. It’s interesting to reflect on how TV episodes used to serve–and still do, occasionally, but more rarely and to more distant and more rarely seen locations–as a form of tourism: here, Columbo goes to London so the 1972 American audience can go too, and a big part of the episode is about emphasizing that this is all actually happening on location.
I appreciated having John Williams briefly turn up here after having just watched him in Dial M for Murder. The best character, though, is Wilfrid Hyde-White’s butler, who develops late-game dramatic power, going from a source of information to an actual player with his own specific motivations: mysteries that have servants too rarely use them as actual characters like this.
I’m watching for Columbo’s cleverness, but I’m also watching for Columbo’s goodness–his decency is a fundamental draw here–so I’ll admit that him planting the pearl at the end rankles me when obviously it wouldn’t both me on, say, The Shield. It’s to get the breakdown and confession they’ll actually use, since presumably they won’t rely on the “proof” of the pearl itself, but it’s still dirty pool and not the kind of ending I most enjoy with this character; not only could a morally worse cop have gotten this outcome, a dumber one could have too.