It's hard to believe that Kenan Thompson, currently on Saturday Night Live, has been a television fixture for more than 25 years, starting with Nickelodeon's All That. Thompson and frequent collaborator Kel Mitchell were popular enough to warrant a spin-off series, which launched in 1996.
Kenan & Kel sprang from the mind of Kim Bass, co-creator of Sister, Sister, and featured a theme song performed by rapper Coolio. No, you wouldn't get any of the goofy "Good Burger" skits from All That, as that led to a movie all by itself. Instead, Kenan worked at a supermarket, whose boss (Dan Frischman, ex-Head of The Class) was leery of Kenan's get-rich-quick schemes, which included converting the market into a nightclub.
To that end, it made sense that Kenan & Kel often opened the show doing an Abbott & Costello-style routine, with Kenan as Bud Abbott opposite Kel's Lou Costello. Kenan's character was a amalgam of Abbott, Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason), and Sgt. Bilko (Phil Silvers), none of whom ever really succeeded with their schemes, either.
The boys were also in high school, as we'll see......
Post-series, while Thompson moved on to SNL, Mitchell has landed movie and TV roles, but nothing significant, save maybe for a part in Ben Stiller's superhero spoof, "Mystery Men". While Thompson landed the lead in the feature film adaptation of Bill Cosby's Fat Albert, where was Mitchell? I guess he didn't want the one part that would've been offered to him. Dumb Donald.
Kenan & Kel merits a B.
No comments:
Post a Comment