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Class Clowns

Fuse TV's Whitest Kids U'Know have some growing up to do

UCB-spawned sketched group Whitest Kids U’Know has been rushed to television before they’re fully developed, with their new show on cable channel Fuse that plays too much like what you might cook up with your buddies on a weekend rather than something that grew organically out of reality.

Whitest Kids first three episodes had a few good moments -- as in one dark sketch where group leader Trevor Moore (he’s head writer and director of the show) plays a kid left to his own devices on the heels of a preamble sketch where a teacher takes pleasure in tormenting the children with guessing games about whose mom just died in a car accident. The kid goes on a spree, pouring chocolate syrup into malt liquor and chugging it down, for one thing.

Moore throws in a couple song parodies that are also a little thin -- they have on joke and just rinse and repeat with it -- “Let’s Wake Up The Neighbors” both uses booming rap and is about that; another “Hey Kids” with its refrain “Get a new daddy” pictures a kid getting his way by framing dad as a child molester, and replays that over and over as a chorus.

Whitest Kids almost get it right when they do absurd takes on history -- like Lincoln really getting killed because he’s heckling the actors at the play -- it’s just the denouement explaining that it was never told how it really happened because it would have been embarrassing to America falls a little flat and isn’t really needed. Another sketch of proper British soldiers picked off as their commander argues rules of engagement is amusing but obvious.

While its admirable to see sketch groups getting more forums, with YouTube fueling an exponentially greater amount of sketch groups committing work to film, there are plenty of groups with far stronger and more solid material that could have done more with the forum Fuse is offering.
  

   

     

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