Wet Hot American Summer: Season 2

When Netflix announced that they'd reunited the cast of Wet Hot American Summer for an eight-episode prequel some fifteen years later, I was thrilled. Who wasn't? And the resulting series was delightfully stupid and wink-wink nudge-nudge about the whole concept of forty-something actors, most of them still successful and working today, reprising their roles as teenage camp counselors. And now, two years later, we've got Ten Years Later, a completely unexpected follow-up that reunites the same cast (with one notable exception) for a 1991 ten-year reunion of sorts, all based on a throwaway joke from the movie. (Although frankly, come on, which of those jokes weren't throwaway jokes? The whole movie was a throwaway joke, and it knew exactly what it was, and that made it all the better.)

Of course, diminishing returns are a real bitch, and as thrilled as critics were in 2015 to reunite this all-star cast for a Netflix miniseries, here in 2017 there's an unmistakable whiff of "oh, really? again? we're doing this again?" from certain corners of the Internet. So I was worried, going into these eight newest episodes, that I'd be bound for disappointment. Fortunately, no! Not at all. The show's as dumb as First Day of Camp and the original movie ever were, but also just as funny and in exactly the same ways.

See, the movie was great in large part because it was so clearly not taking itself seriously on any level. Intentional continuity errors were thrown in and made explicit. It treated its own existence as little more than an excuse to get a bunch of funny people together and string together what were essentially a bunch of independent bits and sketches. At the risk of ruining the humor by explaining it, I mean, it works on multiple levels. What's going on within the movie itself is, sure, funny. But the juxtaposition of all the different plot lines against each other is also funny. And the actors breaking character in the middle of certain scenes reminds us that they are in fact actors, and the writers bending over backward to create and then deftly step around plot holes reminds us that he movie has been written, and the camera panning to the right and catching several of the actors standing motionless, facing a wall after exiting the frame previously reminds us that there are cameras. It's not quite accurate to say that Wet Hot American Summer breaks the fourth wall - no one ever looks directly into the camera or references the fact that they're in a movie - but so much of its humor relies on that mutual creator-consumer recognition of that wall. They're making fun of the process of making a movie by making it intentionally bad and broken and flawed, but you know it's all a joke, and they know you're in on the joke, and it's just no wonder at all that the original movie was such a cult classic. Plus, again, come on, have you seen that cast?

So at any rate, the first Netflix season was no different. But now there was an added layer of humor in the same vein, which was, "come on, these people are way too effing old to be playing teenagers and way too effing successful to be making this show." And, of course, they have fun with it, over-explaining character absences and intricately setting up plot points that would become dumb throwaway gags during the show. Things like "Jon Benjamin voices a talking can of vegetables." How do you explain that, uh, "mystery" from the movie? Well, obviously, in your prequel, you take a real human character played by Jon Benjamin and you have him fall into some radioactive ooze or whatever, while holding a can of vegetables.

All of this long-winded joke-explaining leads me to this - the biggest joke of all in Ten Years Later is the idea that Ten Years Later even exists. Not only is it absurd that a bunch of former camp counselors would reconvene ten years later - it's absurd that the actors would do so. And this inherent absurdity leads to a number of great gags, which I'll walk through below, because at this point, fuck it, why not?

• The aforementioned notable missing cast member is Bradley Cooper. He was just too busy to make it back for a second season after barely being in the first one. In my heart of hearts I do think Cooper wanted to make it work, but just couldn't. Fine, makes sense. But don't think they wrote him out or anything. No, just as they got around his absence for large portions of the first season by having his character wear a ski mask for no reason in a few episodes, they've wink-wink-nudge-nudged their way into simply replacing him with Adam Scott this time around. The different appearance is explained as a "minor nose job to fix a deviated septum." Everyone who makes any reference to it at all tells him he looks almost exactly identical, and if anything, a little better. Which is of course absurd. Which is the joke!
• Several actors just disappear for multiple episodes in a row, and if you thought the ski mask was blatant on Bradley Cooper last time around, get a load of what they did with Joe Lo Truglio this season. When his character, Neal, gets back to camp, the first thing he does is lie down on his old bunk and say something to the tune of, "oh man, I took so many great naps on this bunk! Let's see if she's still got that magic." He promptly pulls a bed sheet all the way up over his body and is next seen waking up drenched in sweat several episodes later. Now, look at the poster above. There are like twenty-five people in this eight-episode season of TV. There's no reason to explain the absence of Joe Lo Truglio from half the season in such an absurd way except to explicitly call attention to it. It's the whole joke! Get it?
• Elizabeth Banks isn't absent or anything, but her character is off on her own arc in New York City, never crossing paths with anyone else until the very end of the season for one scene. I'm assuming she had scheduling conflicts and couldn't actually be there with any of the rest of the cast, but still wanted to be a part of the season. (Her character even says, "Sorry I missed the reunion, guys, but I had to work!") If this is true, I mean, good for her. But also, why? What is the point of doing another season of this nonsense (instead of, uh, "work") if you can't even really be part of the nonsense? Which all leads me to believe that her inclusion here - off on her own arc entirely - is itself a joke. The show knows that I know that it makes no sense for Elizabeth fucking Banks to be part of this without actually being part of it, and as such, that's exactly where it went. (No, I won't Google any of these theories to see if I'm way off base or not. It's more fun this way.)
• Chris Pine and Jason Schwartzman both reprise their roles despite being killed off in First Day of Camp. Pine's non-death is at least believable, as he was shot at night from a distance in the body and fell backward off a building. Schwartzman, on the other hand, was shot directly through the head (by Jon Hamm, of course - sadly absent this time around). When a character asks Pine how he survived, he explains in intricate detail, complete with flashbacks, how he fell off the roof but landed just right, and then paramedics were able to rush him into surgery, and now he's basically half cyborg. He then details how he spent the next ten years making it big as a music producer before having a moment of catharsis. "And how about you?" Schwartzman is asked - to which he responds by just waving his hand back and forth and saying, "eh, you know. Something similar."
• Paul Rudd, who's notoriously ageless and handsome in real life, looks like a total bum and a burnout here. His character is 26. I almost believe Paul Rudd put on some weight and grew out a bit of a beer belly just to look older and uglier for the first time ever. To play a 26-year old. Come on, that's amazing.
• Lastly, there are two new main characters who the show just pulls a Nikki and Paulo with. It pretends they were there the whole time during the original movie, just part of the gang, all of their exploits simply happening just off screen. They're even edited, poorly and obviously, into the scene from the movie that inspires the ten-year reunion. "We'll be there," they say. Goobers, all!

Here's the problem. I never hoped for a second season of Wet Hot American Summer. But now that we have one... I have no reason not to want more! And perhaps even to expect more. Give me Twenty Years Later, set in 2001 and where the campers are all somewhat roughly believably the age of the actors portraying them. Or if that's too obvious, give me Fifty Years Later, set in 2031 with everyone aged up instead of down. Shit, I dunno, maybe this well's gone dry after all. Well, either way, I've enjoyed the ride while it lasted.