100 Favorite Shows: #39 — Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp
“He saved friendship with his song!”
In 2001, one of the greatest cult comedies of all-time was released when Wet Hot American Summer entered the world. Written by David Wain and Michael Showalter, it was the natural cinematic conclusion of their work on The State in the 1990s, which introduced a new brand of absurdist, surrealist humor to the comedy landscape. Wet Hot was a failure on every level, sans fervent fandom, and it existed in perpetuity as a time capsule for a number of actors on the precipice of fame. Eventually, after Wain and Showalter notched a number of acclaimed comedies under their belts (Stella, Childrens Hospital, They Came Together), the Wet Hot fire was reignited by Netflix for an eight-episode prequel series, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp. This series brought back the entire original cast for a laugh riot that fans could have never anticipated and loved, in some cases, more than the 2001 film.
(Spoilers for the Wet Hot American Summer cinematic universe (the WHASCU) are included in this essay. There are also Community spoilers.)
There’s a moment in the third episode of First Day of Camp, “Activities,” when McKinley (Michael Ian Black) is playing with the shofar he received from Yaron (Wain). The scene comes to an end and transitions away from the shofars when a faint line can be heard from McKinley. In a half-baked French accent, he exclaims, “You stabbed me with your dick-like shofar!” It is a moment in the show that is so deliriously funny to me — and I have no idea why.
Many of the jokes throughout the show are hilarious and also make perfect sense as to why they make us laugh. For example, it never got old whenever the characters would refer to themselves as being sixteen years old (Showalter’s Coop being the funniest), considering they already looked too old when they made the movie in 2001 and the series was filmed 14 years later and set a couple months earlier. But the shofar joke, I don’t quite get. The best conclusion I can come up with is that it’s pure silliness and any further attempt to unpack it would be killing the precise joy of Wet Hot. Don’t dissect the jokes from Wain and Showalter; just bask in them. It’s enough to be laughing at the silliness at all. (Not to mention, the random accent work returns later when characters juggle their pronunciations of “burnt bread,” in southern style voices.)
First Day of Camp is filled with faint, throwaway jokes like the shofar one and each one just tickles me. There are tons of comedic moments that are a bit sharper and a bit more noticeable on the first watch, but my favorite moments of humor in the Wet Hot universe are always the jokes that are soft and in the background that they almost seem like they could be ADR (in a way, they’re the natural extension of the recurring pottery smash sound effect from the original film). There’s a dick-like shofar, but there’s also McKinley putting a visor on in “Electro/City” and making a big deal about it. Ben (Bradley Cooper) asks, “How do you come up with that stuff?” as the camera begins to move away from their costuming interactions before the big show. McKinley can be heard softly responding, “It’s just improv.” It’s funny on its own, but it’s funnier when it’s not the focus of the scene. (The same is true in “Day Is Done,” after Eric (Chris Pine) is killed and Lindsay (Elizabeth Banks) makes an impassioned declaration of her love for him. J.J. (Zak Orth) attempts to alert her to Eric’s death by gun and tank a few moments prior when she rebukes him and J.J. tiptoes away, muttering, “Okay, I’ll tell you later.” Or when students at Henry Neumann’s (David Hyde Pierce) university witness him wrestling with his colleague, Brodfard (Rob Huebel), and they ask, “Are those our professors?” They’re all tiny acknowledgements of the larger absurdity at play in the Wet Hot world.)
The absurdity is what makes the show so delightful. The eight episodes are so jam-packed with dense story lines and myriad plot developments that it hardly seems plausible for them to occur in just one day (a notion buttoned by Coop in the finale). This is, of course, part of the joke. Bringing back the entire cast (complete with two brief appearances from Pierce to make sure the gang’s all here!) and then doubling the ensemble with a number of performers who fit right in (Jon Hamm, with his boundless love of comedy, obviously aligns, but he also tows Mad Men pedigree with him, including Rich Sommer, John Slattery, and Bruce Greenwood. Marguerite Moreau, returning as Katie, doesn’t quite count, but she still has the Mad Men legacy attached to her), this was the top priority of Wet Hot. Time, space, and logic has never mattered to this comedy troupe, nor should it. It’s way more fun to have the characters do exactly what the story requires them to at any given moment. (Beth (Janeane Garofalo) tricks the parents of summer camp children into thinking that Mitch (H. Jon Benjamin) is a scarecrow, when he is, in fact, a can of mixed vegetables. Lindsay pulls a typewriter from nowhere when hearing J.J.’s story about Eric. Hamm’s Falcon reveals himself to be a double agent with no explanation for his past crimes (it’s a double agent plot twist that is as absurd as Genral Hux’s in the Star Wars sequels; the difference is that it’s intentionally so).
The absurdity also blends neatly with the show’s surreal elements. Matching the heightened reality tones of the movie, the show was allowed to deepen its tangled interpretation of a reality that doesn’t quite match ours. Ronald Reagan (Showalter) is not just a featured character in the series. He’s the most powerful man in the world and someone who knows McKinley by name and views Camp Firewood as being just as important as the Pentagon (in conjunction with Slattery’s Claude Dumet and Amy Poehler’s Susie seeing it as just as vital as Broadway). The zoot suit (with a hokey song that would be vastly underwhelming to most campers) is the esteemed talk of the entire camp as some sort of big, show-stopping costume. In that zoot suit’s musical, “Electro/City,” J.J. and Gene Jenkinson (Christopher Meloni) sing along to every song, despite its premiere coexisting with the first day of camp.
These surreal elements helped craft the show as something more than a parody. Wet Hot is an obvious descendant of Airplane! and the Jim Abrahams/Zuckers brand of comedy. However, in Airplane!, some characters were intentionally goofy and obviously belonging to a parody (Otto, Johnny). Throughout First Day of Camp, every character acts completely straight. It’s a parody of teen sex comedies, summer camp movies, political thrillers, and class commentary-based narratives (you don’t have a rumble without J.J., after all. Dally would know), but not one character acts that way. They are all such sincere (and subsequently cartoonish) depictions of their respective tropes.
The entire conceit behind Beth (Garofalo is also a physical comedy genius, with her exuberance opposite Black, lackadaisical discarding of the can of veggies, and collapse when the U.S. government steamrolls the camp) and Greg’s (Jason Schwartzman) mission to force Xenstar (along with Michael Cera portraying the long-gestating Jim Stansel character) to clean up the toxic sludge outside the camp is perfectly aligned with a prevailing notion in classic films. They embrace the fact that most summer camp stories either revolve around a machete-wielding murderer or an effort to “save the camp!” The characters round out all the characters you’ve seen before in these types of stories.
There are the preppy douchebags from the opulent Camp Tigerclaw across the lake (Sommer, Eric Nenninger, Kristen Wiig, and Josh Charles as Blake, who sports three popped collars at a time) who have the hobby of tearing money in half. There are the sex-crazed, Porky’s “studs” (Ken Marino as Victor and Joe Lo Truglio as Neil) who brag about the size of their dicks (to the confusion of some of the other campers, who then have their attention directed to the can of mixed vegetables that can suck its own dick). In “Auditions,” when The Falcon arrives at a convenience store on his way to infiltrate Camp Firewood (in the form of Weird Al Yankovic’s robot hypnotist, Jackie Brazen), he’s ambushed by a group of local “punks” and “street youths.” Decked out in rainbow suspenders and colorful mohawks, the group resembles the River Bottom Nightmare Band as they trash the store and demand more candy before The Falcon sweeps them all with one leg and lights the store on fire.
And, of course, no Wet Hot story is complete without the foul-mouthed, bad boy boyfriends who are the obstacles for the camp’s “good guys” in dating the girls of their dreams. In First Day of Camp, they came in the form of camper Drew (Thomas Barbusca) and counselor Andy Fleckner (Paul Rudd). (When Andy shows up, sporting his iconic jean jacket look, J.J. greets him with, “Andy fuckin’ Fleckner.” Andy replies, “J fuckin’ J.”)
Drew is the self-proclaimed “Burp King of Westchester.” Andy is the cool kid from a working class background. (When accusing Katie of keeping her head in the clouds, he asks if she eats “filet ming-ong” up there.) Both go far beyond these traits, though. Drew screams at Kevin (David Bloom), “Eat my dick, Captain Fuckpants!” after Kevin tries to call dibs on another girl at camp. Andy frequently calls Katie a bitch, brags about his “long, greasy dick,” and, when Blake says that Andy’s dad cleans his family’s pool, retorts, “He isn’t cleaning your pool when he’s sucking on your mama’s big ol’ pancake titties.”
On the one hand, these moments of severe profanity delight me in how no other character in the Wet Hot universe reacts to them. Typically, comedy comes in the reaction to a punchline, rather than the punchline itself. But most of Wet Hot’s humor is derived from the fact none of the children, teenagers, or camp counselors are phased by the types of swears that would typically warrant outright expulsion from the camp. (It’s not just Andy and Drew, either. Susie gets into a “Fuck you!” screaming match with Logan St. Bogan (John Early) during the auditions for “Electro/City.”)
Furthermore, the characters (amalgamations of tropes from films like Porky’s, Animal House, and Meatballs) exist in a plane of reality separate from those types of comedies. (How bold is it to parody a comedy in the first place?) If anyone from First Day of Camp was plucked out of the Wet Hot world claw machine-style and dropped into one of those Ivan Reitman films, they would shock the characters with whom they came into contact.
Similar to how the G.I. Joe action figures react when Jeff Winger kills the Cobra Commander in the “G.I. Jeff” episode of Community, the characters from the 1980s comedies would not be able to handle the visceral potty mouthery spewing from the Wet Hot gang at all times. The Reitman archetypes were raunchy for their own time, but Wet Hot is a whole other level that would shock even the biggest horndogs and bullies.
Ultimately, the jokes are just dumb fun. Beth and Greg run away from The Falcon (practically running in place), who can’t choose how to kill them (orange, banana, or gun?), giving them enough time to flee. Katie sings “Heart Attack Love” in her audition to floor Susie and Claude, who met genuinely moving performances with vitriol. (Andy’s performance of “Champagne Eyes” is very endearing, as well.) Andy channels his inner McConaughey to wax, “Trees look weird if you squint at them.” Greenwood’s lawyer character, Bill, retrieves an iPhone to make a call, to which Greg (still living in the 1980s) asks, “What’s that metal thing in your hand?” It’s not that the show is inaccessible to non-fans; it’s that there’s no appeal for those who don’t already jive with the goofy sensibility of Wain and Showalter. Once you get down with the stupidity, you can give yourself over to how fun it is.
The whole thing really is insanely fun. The summer of 2015 was an enjoyable one, especially during the half-week-long stretch when I plowed through the show (and a number of Freeze Pops). It’s fun to watch how the prequel answers a number of lore-based questions about how the Wet Hot crew came to exist in the form we always knew them. (Jonas Jurgenson becomes Gene Jenkinson with a few lingering touches on his refrigerator along the way. Ron (Judah Friedlander) decides to stay behind with Gail (Molly Shannon) after Reagan’s infiltration.) It’s fun to see how the series dispatches the characters who don’t exist in the movie. (The brutal assassination of Greg and Jim Stansel was still shocking upon the rewatch and heartbreaking when Greg, with a bullet in his brain, chokes out some dying, heartfelt words.)
It’s also fun how genuinely thrilling the climax of the series is. Each episode builds to the opening credits with a steady volume increase of “Jane” by Jefferson Starship and the show builds on this hype with slight teases of “Higher and Higher,” Craig Wedren’s epic theme song from the 2001 film. Eventually, the show builds to a momentous clash of characters (Gene fights The Falcon. Reagan fights Camp Firewood. Andy fights Blake. The camps battle in a Ralph Breaks the Internet-esque combination of characters’ skills) that rivals the third act of Avengers: Endgame.
The camp had just been saved by Beth, Greg, and Jim Stansel when Steve (Kevin Sussman) provided the court case-saving “evidence” that was apparently all the judge (Hugh Dane) needed to rule in favor of Camp Firewood over Xenstar. (This results in everyone in the courtroom silently agreeing to do the Cabbage Patch dance in unison to celebrate.) But the real saving that needed to happen was for friendship, which is what Eric brought to the camp when he performed “Higher and Higher” in what is a genuinely adrenaline-inducing moment. Victor lets the power of the song course through him, Andy makes amends with Katie and Blake, McKinley and Gail play instruments to accompany Eric. It’s one of my most rewatched TV moments ever because the show was not just silly and dumb; it was also capable of generating palpable hype.
Ultimately, this moment helps bring the first day of camp to an end as all is right with Camp Firewood. (That is, except for the immediate death of Eric. Of course, he’s not truly dead. No one is in the Wet Hot world. In the follow-up series, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later it’s revealed that Eric (and Greg) faked their deaths in convoluted and simplistic manners, respectively.)-p- The 2017 series set in the future when the campers reunited also continued the joke of Bradley Cooper’s tight schedule and lack of availability by turning him from DJ Ski Mask into Adam Scott. It wasn’t quite as good as First Day of Camp, but it was still cut from the same denim jacket. (And we got to see Mark Feuerstein pretend that he was part of the gang all along with a recurring, never-before-heard, “Walla walla who! Walla walla hey! Kim-chu-ay! Chu-ay!”)
After all, who would ever say no to more Wet Hot? It’s relentlessly funny, impressively dumb (and lovably so), and perpetually thrilling. I genuinely think that First Day of Camp might top the first film, but I’d never truly pit them against one another. They’re all just Wet Hot and to me, they’re all of a piece with one another. Between this series and the revival of Arrested Development, Netflix has long been in the business of making deep comedy fans’ wildest dreams come to life. Fourteen years later, the Wain and Showalter troupe were more than happy to reprise their roles, showing that reunions are easier to pull off today because our creators come from places of kindness and collaboration (people like Rudd, Poehler, Marino, Lo Truglio, and more never stopped working with them). Whether we were witnessing Andy Fleckner walk into a field of crops or feeling impossibly satisfied from Eric’s rousing rendition of the camp’s unifying anthem, it felt like we were part of the troupe, too. The show was made for us Wet Hot fans, but we were all in on the joke.
