LincolnBack

Grade: C

This sketch has some hilarious lines and is based on the funny premise of taking the bringing something back idea in SexyBack as some sort of necromancer activity. It was playing on a song just old enough at the time to not be timely or retro funny, which is a strong reason why I think the parody was a surprise (aka funny). Also the choreography was surprisingly tight and interesting. So, why do I give this the mediocre grade of C? Because of why people laughed and liked this sketch. With 10k fully packed with adoring, probably intoxicated college students the actual lyrics of this sketch that tread on history and absurdism in a really interesting and clever way were not heard. Instead people were simply excited that we were singing and dancing, a skill thought, incorrectly, to be tantamount to comedy.

We spent one night fully choreographing and rehearsing that dance number and it took barely any creative energy to do so. The sketch was written during one or two listenings to the song Sexyback. Writing lyrics that sort of fit to the pacing of a somewhat popular song that is a little old is not hard. Moving in an organized fashion repeatedly is not hard. Being funny is hard. As someone who has watched a lot of open mic nights and seen some shitty sketch comedy, it is not an easy skill. The one part of this sketch that was interesting: the devolution of Lincoln becoming not just a freer of slaves but also a power hungry zombie obsessed with sci-fi fantasy movies of the 90s, which becomes interestingly meta as the Abraham Lincoln goes from the person we know from the penny to an absurdist comedian to a stand in for the author and his love of nerdy 90s pop culture, was completely overlooked. People were too busy cheering because they recognized a song that they liked to hear to realize the genius of a zombie Lincoln demanding that there be “waffles every day.”

This sketch would have done better as a video where the lyrics could have been more clear and there could have been visual clues to supplement lines like “harness the wind” and “breed tiger-man.” Instead the visual stimulus was Rhett’s intense dancing power, which is fine and dandy, but I used to see it every party I went to.

Best Actor: The absolute best part of this video is after the sketch ends and the lights go down and come back up. Rhett feels it his duty to bow for a job well done, then realizes the awkwardness of him bowing as though he was the star of a show he was only really featured in the last sketch of and tries to make up for it by bowing with everybody hard core. Just because he thought he was the sole reason for the standing ovation for a split second, I’m going to give this award to Rhett, he obviously thinks he deserves it. Best Line: “Why aren’t there dinosaurs yet?”