Episode two of Key & Peele‘s fifth season aired Wednesday night, offering both new and familiar characters for us to hang out with. Here’s a recap:
RADIO HOST ZINGER
Oh, caricatured radio personalities! This quick opener for Key & Peele’s latest episode shows us the hidden personalities of radio deejays. Turns out, this morning crew is composed of crafty intellectuals, and they use their off-air time to paint still life portraits and read classic novels. I love these short openers. They may not have the long-term appeal of character-driven or socially relevant sketches, but the rapid set up/breakdown format allow the writers to mine any topic for inspiration. You just never know what you’re gonna get.
Nice Touch: Key’s Sherlockian pipe. Can someone bring that trend back?
DON’T DEFY THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Here, K&P continues to mine the increasingly treacherous process of air travel for jokes. What we have here is a showdown between flight attendant and passenger. Key plays a man hell-bent on relieving himself, despite the “fasten seatbelt” sign being illuminated. Peele is a nasally flight attendant crushing Key’s dreams of bathroom salvation. It’s a classic Western film premise—rogue man vs. the law (“Is it against the law?”)—taking place on the narrow aisle of a commercial jet liner.
Am I weird because this sketch stressed me out? Probably. The sense of twisted anguish I feel when Peele’s flight attendant “wins” the battle gives me serious doubts about my emotional stability. That said, I can appreciate an epic mid-air showdown when I see one, especially when it involves some stunt guy getting tossed in the air again and again (and again). Sidebar: Where is that off the wall anti-terrorist duo from last week? That would’ve added a nice dimension to this bit.
Nice Touch: Peele’s dead stare while strapped into his jump seat. That focus—so admirable!
WHAT’S THAT IN YOUR EAR?
At some crossing in your life, an older man (it’s always an older man) leads you to believe that you could dispense cash money from your ears. Or, maybe you played along in an awkward I’m-too-old-for-this-but-will-roll-with-it offensive. After playfully pulling a quarter from a boy’s ear, an elderly man (Key) notices something odd: the edge of a hundred dollar bill carefully tucked in said child’s earhole. Pulling them like tissues from a box, Key removes bill after bill, before running off with the child altogether.
A simple vignette that could easily work as an episode opener, this is a pretty tame bit that works nicely as an interstitial sketch. Its aim isn’t poignancy, but who says that’s a bad thing? It’s an odd twist on a familiar premise that takes us to a place we weren’t expecting. There’s a little more to it than your average internet meme, but there’s a similar sense of instant shareability.
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