Kroll Show: “Finger Magnets”

The laughs-per-minute ratio on this week’s Kroll Show was way up from last week. The sketches were mostly old standards, but they progressed in interesting ways. The newer sketches were pleasingly bizarre in a way that tickled my curiosity—we’ll see what becomes of “The Legend of Young Larry Bird.” Overall, the show was much more satisfying to watch than it has been in the last few weeks.

The show opened with “The San Diego Diet,” which has not morphed into “The San Diego Mindset.” I admire the creativity of the writers on this show for their near-constant evolution of sketches. They seemingly never tire of spinning off ideas into fresh takes and working with new angles.

This was true for “PubLIZcity,” which featured growth in the main and secondary characters: a pregnant Pretty Liz (Jenny Slate) deals with Fat Liz (Kroll) who purposefully ignores the pregnancy out of fear and jealousy: “First of all I’m blindsided by this. Second of all congratulations.” This week the Lizs’ assistant Cassandra gets her own reality show and her replacement, Brenth (Gabe Liedman), keeps screaming the word “lunch” in a way that is both perplexing and hilarious. The Cassandra reality show was repulsive, but it featured extra Cassandra, whose near-catatonic responses drive me wild with delight. She is turning out to be a favorite.

“Rich Dicks” also moved forward. It introduced us to Wendy’s dad (Ray Wise) and had the boys “get jobs” from an Anonymous-style organization run by Brent Gelman. It was particularly fun to see the dicks around people they clash hard with, such as golf-playing businessmen and tech revolutionaries. This episode was worth the watch, hands (full of finger magnets) down.