Comedy Club reboot gives birth to laughter by the rules

No longer glamorous scum, but respectable bourgeois

All familiar faces. Will, Kharlamov, Batrutdinov, Karibidis and other well-deserved comedians. The reboot of the Comedy Club may not be the main event of the season, but for some it is a reason to shed tears of nostalgia for humor from the 2000s.

The look of the comedic veterans is quite peppy. Here, Garik Kharlamov can even sometimes utter words that screech on the air, although he already needs a certain courage for this. In 2005, the first issues of the Comedy Club, against the background of other projects dedicated to humor, resembled a marginal party in the club of noble maidens. It’s as if a punk band has seized on an unexpectedly large audience and is ready to smash the consciousness of the townsfolk to pieces.

Many then, of course, were indignant. Even those humor stars who pretended to have nothing against this youth frenzy, on the sidelines hissed angrily about times and customs. It is possible that now Pavel Volya and Co. are perplexed about the activities of young stand-up artists. Because they can’t do it themselves. And the point is not even in their ability to say funny nasty things from the stage, here they are still able to set the heat, but in the need to filter the market in the current circumstances.

The circumstances boil down to the fact that the stars of the zero are no longer glamorous scum, but respectable bourgeois. They are photographed with their wives and children, are loaded with advertising contracts and simply cannot act the way they used to. All this, probably, allows fans of humor to complain without brakes that, they say, Comedy is no longer the same.

Of course not. There is only one stability here: those to whom the jokes of fifteen years ago seemed not very good are unlikely to laugh at fresh ones. Nevertheless, the new season of the show was pretty lucky with its competitors. Against the backdrop of what is happening now under the KVN brand, comedians can pass for witty and charismatic informals. That’s someone else’s misfortune helped.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28888 dated October 12, 2022

Newspaper headline:
Laughter by the rules