On “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” Thede builds her jokes with patience, taking time to establish the world of her character before spiraling into the surreal. The second season of “ Three Busy Debras,” which just began on Adult Swim, is one example. Perhaps because of the lasting influence of Tim and Eric, the trend in sketch comedy has been for scenes to get absurd quickly. It was more topical, celebrity-obsessed and wavering in its comic voice than “A Black Lady Sketch Show.” But what both series share is a delight in oversize personalities like Hadassah Olayinka Ali-Youngman (Thede), a political radical whose overly enunciated delivery is a cousin to Damon Wayans’s Oswald Bates from “In Living Color.” Thede has talked about her love for the wildly popular if far too forgotten 1990s sketch show “ In Living Color,” which featured a talent-rich, mostly Black cast and a constantly changing writers’ room often filled with white staff members. It might change the way you look at small-town antique stores. In my favorite sketch this season, Thede plays a Midwestern-nice woman with a “Fargo” accent whose affection for stitched inspirational quotes and cutesy mottos shifts from benign to twisted. This show can veer toward darkness, but horror is a tool rather than the point. Tying the sketches together are scenes with the cast in a story line that involves an apocalypse you never truly believe is real. In these familiar premises, Thede, whose parents named her after Robin Williams, foregrounds character and improvisations, allowing room to riff and improvise, never letting seconds go by without a joke. The comedy here usually offers new spins on classic territory: sportscasters providing color commentary on mundane events, or spoofs of vampires, zombies and marginal figures from the time of Christ. You see this not just in the obscure references to “A Different World” or the meticulousness of a “227” parody, with Thede as a deliriously spot-on version of Jackée Harry’s Sandra, but also in the nudge-nudge casting. What marks the sketches are formal pivots (in a common twist, a scene is often revealed to be an ad or documentary) a light, joyful touch and a comedy-nerd sensibility deeply versed in the history of television. Its first season, still its best, featured the writer Amber Ruffin before she started her talk show, and the cast member Quinta Brunson before she left to create the hit sitcom “ Abbott Elementary.” But this only gets at a small piece of the show’s impact. In his new memoir, “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama,” he writes about his considerable experience brainstorming, acting and producing sketches, concluding that ultimately “performance matters more than writing and ideas, loony behavior trumps clever constructions.”Ĭreated in 2019, “A Black Lady Sketch Show” announced its point of view about representation in its title and also in who it hired, becoming the first sketch series with a cast and writing staff exclusively made up of Black female talent. Take it from no less an authority than Bob Odenkirk (“Mr. Quick and broad strokes are at the core of the fun, and that can’t be entirely manufactured in a writers’ room. The truth of sketch comedy is right there in the name. When she maneuvers across the room like a member of the Ministry of Silly Walks, the whole expensive-looking production becomes part of the joke. Her physical comedy, kinetic and rubbery, constantly shifting and shameless, italicizes everything. And yet, its polish merely supports what really makes you laugh: the flamboyant goofiness of Thede, who commits to preposterousness with deadly seriousness. It’s a stylishly executed genre spoof, with a solid premise and slick split-screen editing. She picks fights with conspirators during a heist, wears a glittery silver wig that isn’t exactly inconspicuous, and, before stealing a diamond, takes a selfie and posts it to social media. In this Friday’s episode of “ A Black Lady Sketch Show,” Robin Thede, its charismatic showrunner and star, plays the world’s worst thief.
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