‘Key & Peele’ to End After This Season
July 26, 2015 10:14 AM   Subscribe

“This is our final season – and it’s not because of Comedy Central, it’s us,” said Key. “It was just time for us to explore other things, together and apart. I compare it to Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. We might make a movie and then do our own thing for three years and then come back and do another movie.

“Key & Peele” won a Peabody Award for what its organizers said was the ability to “tackle racially charged issues and ideas like no one else on television.” - NY Times
posted by riruro (23 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Too bad for us, but better to end on a high note.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:24 AM on July 26, 2015 [19 favorites]


Such creative, talented, entertaining guys! Success will follow them wherever they choose to go. As will their fans.
posted by Sir Rinse at 10:38 AM on July 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


....I wonder if either of them will end up as DAILY SHOW correspondents now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:55 AM on July 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Last season had a few duds, this season it has been mostly spinning wheels, but those two are so incredibly talented I'll put that to fatigue over the sketch-show format and having one the highest floor levels in TV lately.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:08 AM on July 26, 2015


"We might make a movie."
=
"We're definitely making a movie; a script and financing exist, and we're just dotting I's and crossing T's at this point."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:11 AM on July 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Yeah, and apparently that movie is a Police Academy reboot. Uh... well, I hope they get paid well.
posted by skewed at 11:12 AM on July 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


I dunno. There's a lot that you could do with a Police Academy movie that would be loads better than the original, which was a half-assed Stripes rip-off.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:48 AM on July 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


But can Key or Peele do those special effects with their mouths?
posted by ckape at 11:50 AM on July 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Their nod to the originals should be to have Michael Winslow come back as Commandant Lassard.
posted by fatbird at 12:22 PM on July 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


Yeah, and apparently that movie is a Police Academy reboot. Uh... well, I hope they get paid well.

Remember when the majority of discussion of the then-pending Battlestar Galactica reboot was over whether Starbuck should be a woman?
posted by Etrigan at 12:54 PM on July 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


But can Key or Peele do those special effects with their mouths?

Yep.
posted by LEGO Damashii at 2:09 PM on July 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm mildly sad, but better to go out on a high note as someone said and... Well. I'm choosing to take the "yeah we'd love to work with the same crew for another network or whatever" thing as a positive sign that we've not heard the last of this team.
posted by sparkletone at 2:43 PM on July 26, 2015


Aw! I am usually not a fan of sketch comedy shows because they tend to be so inconsistent in quality, but K&P has been solid to genius. I particularly love the way that some of their sketches extend past the obvious ending into something really goddamn *weird*.
posted by tavella at 3:12 PM on July 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


We might make a movie

Oh, wow! That will be great! Any movie with those two will be funny as hell! I can't wait to see that!

skewed: "Yeah, and apparently that movie is a Police Academy reboot."

Yeah, maybe I'll catch it when it's on Netflix or whatever.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:18 PM on July 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


They have a lot of buzz right now, it's surprising they'd wrap it up now. They must have really felt like they were just done.

Has it really been five seasons? That's a lot of comedy to crank out in three years! There seems to be kind of a consensus that they peaked early and have been tapering off, and I wonder if they'd still be going strong if they'd slowed down the pace a little. It kind of seems like Key and Peele just got here, but those guys had been in the Mad TV trenches together for years. From their perspective they've been constantly doing sketches together for like 10 years. No wonder they might get a little restless.

The same thing happened to the Mighty Boosh guys in the UK. They seemed to come out of nowhere, but they had been a steadily working team for literally 10 years before they hit it big with their own show. All of these guys got acclaim too late. By the time the world is finally paying attention, the team's ready to split up!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:35 PM on July 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


There seems to be kind of a consensus that they peaked early and have been tapering off

Really? I'm only in the middle of season four, but I would say that they have generally gotten stronger. Specifically, some of the early seasons had sketches that really ran on too long, or ran jokes into the ground. Later seasons, they'll do that deliberately because they are going to take away the ground, so to speak -- things are going to very weird.
posted by tavella at 4:07 PM on July 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sketch is a finite resource though, that's why SNL has to replace 100% of its players every 5-7 years too. There are only so many good sketches that one can truly dredge out of your deep subconscious. Unless you're Bob Odenkirk.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:07 PM on July 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


*engages in progressively sillier one-upsmanship with thread*
posted by bleep at 4:23 PM on July 26, 2015


They never did get around to that Star Trek: The Next Generation parody I've been hoping for ever since their Daily Show interview.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:34 PM on July 26, 2015


Unless you're Bob Odenkirk.

Who? Oh, you mean Bah Bodenkirk.

People often get that wrong.
 
posted by Herodios at 7:02 PM on July 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


And what's Odenkirk doing now? A show that's a serious character study of someone who started out as a very sketch-comedy type of character.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:42 PM on July 26, 2015


Really? I'm only in the middle of season four, but I would say that they have generally gotten stronger.

I'm just going by the stuff I've seen online. I've still gotta catch up with this new season, but they get a lot more B+ reviews than they used to.

Just recently I'd been hearing about the sketch comedy renaissance Comedy Central was having, with Kroll Show, Key and Peele and Inside Amy Schumer. Now Kroll's gone, Key and Peele are wrapping it up, and I get the feeling Schumer is probably going to fold up her show to go focus on movies.

And what's Odenkirk doing now? A show that's a serious character study of someone who started out as a very sketch-comedy type of character.

He's also working on a Mr. Show reunion thing with David Cross!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 9:23 PM on July 26, 2015


Just recently I'd been hearing about the sketch comedy renaissance Comedy Central was having, with Kroll Show, Key and Peele and Inside Amy Schumer. Now Kroll's gone, Key and Peele are wrapping it up, and I get the feeling Schumer is probably going to fold up her show to go focus on movies.

Comedy Central is in for some rough days ahead. Not only they lost Kroll Show and now Key and Peele, but also Colbert (Nightly is bad as often as he's good) and is on the last days of Stewart, and not a chance Noah will avoid a huge drop in audiences because other than getting Brian Williams, Tina Fey/Amy Poehler or some other "wait, what's he/she doing here?" replacement, everyone would be replacing the face of fake news. Losing Oliver was a big blow (same with other long-standing contributors at once, such as Bee and Jones), and they might be running low on the own-show ready talent.

They have a good thing going with Another Period (Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome) and Review (Andy Daly) starts the second season this week and there's still Broad City (although like K&P and Schumer, not a chance Ilana and Abbi won't get a higher calling once contract is up), but what I'd expect to be the real highlight of the Summer, the Hannibal Burgess show, is... well, complete shit, reeking of "contract obligation".
posted by lmfsilva at 6:14 AM on July 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


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