Various notes on Kenan & Kel before NBC’s Kenan premieres
Kenan Thompson is not the first Kenan & Kel alum to star on an NBC primetime series. That distinction belongs to Linda Cardellini, who a year after playing the one-off character Becky in Season 3’s “The Chicago Witch Trials” joined the Freaks and Geeks ensemble.
Thompson does, however, stand alone for being both a sketch-series staple and a sitcom title actor on two networks. He and Kel Mitchell only needed two years to make a shared impression on All That before Nickelodeon greenlit their co-titled saga a quarter-century ago.
Now Saturday Night Live’s all-time longest-tenured performer will also be a Tuesday-evening fixture. Kenan premieres this week, giving rise to Thompson’s first small-screen alter-ego since Kenan Rockmore dragged Kel Kimble through various misadventures around Chicago.
However subtly, Thompson was apt to acknowledge his launching pad in a Q-and-A with TV Insider’s Damian Holbrook last week. His new show has him playing another Kenan (last name yet to be announced) who hosts an Atlanta-based TV program.
As quoted by Holbrook, Thompson stated, “It’s much closer to my persona. Being a host of a morning show, as opposed to, like, a real-estate agent, coincides more with what people expect from me. And the writers had an idea to tie in the fact that Kenan was on a kids’ show, so that’s a nice homage to my (past on Nickelodeon’s Kenan & Kel).”
Granted, no NBC viewers should hope for nonstop streams of orange soda or screams of “Whyyy???” And it may be for the best to let each entity be its own show.
But as much as Kenan understandably promises to contrast from Kenan & Kel, its novelty spawns inevitable nostalgia. In that spirit, here is a variety pack of less-discussed observations and factoids on the 9 p.m. SNICK staple that ran from the fall of 1996 to the spring of Y2K.
A cluster of callbacks
The show was a master at testing its audience’s attentiveness and memory. In at least three memorable pairs, an installment from one season came to mind at a later date through a combination of visual and spoken gags.
A throwaway line in “The Pilot” has Kenan admitting a juvenile prank that got a teacher glued to a chair. Season 2’s “Ditch Day Afternoon” shows him experiencing a little back karma from that stunt. When he stands up in class, his desk also rises, apparently unbeknownst to him but noticeable enough to amuse the studio audience.
Season 3’s “The Contest” culminates with a reference to the plot-setting event of Season 1’s “The Tainting of the Screw.” Two-plus years after choking on a screw while watching a televised Bulls game, then suing a tuna manufacturer upon assuming the offending object was in his sandwich, Kenan joins Kel in eating a bicycle as a stunt to win Bulls tickets.
As the two recover from the toll the bike takes on them — in the same positions on the Rockmore living-room sofa as they were during the choking incident — Kenan pulls out a (take a wild guess) that was lodged between his teeth. His tone conveys a touch of disgusted recall as he simply shouts, “Awwww, man!”
Series director Kim Fields appeared twice before the camera as substitute teacher turned principal Miss Horn. Through her debut in Season 2’s “The Crush” and reappearance in Season 4’s “The Graduates,” roses were a minor motif.
In the former, Kenan’s dream about dancing with the teacher involves each partner clutching the romantic flower in their mouths. In the latter, Marc Cram interrupts a discussion to offer one in an implicit gesture of obsequiousness.
Lake Erie to Lake Michigan
Six years before attaining the part of Marc in Season 3, actor Biagio Messina graduated high school in Parma, Ohio. In between, the Cleveland suburb gained a national mention through the first theme song to The Drew Carey Show. Parma also produced Alan Ruck, who played Cameron in another classic work of Chicago teen fiction, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Incidentally, while “Ditch Day Afternoon” was a solid title for the episode where Kenan and Kel are caught up in a bank robbery while playing hooky, “Kenan and Kel’s Day Off” would have worked as well. There is a common Windy City setting and premise of going out on the town in lieu of school.
Sure, the outcome makes it more like an anti-Ferris Bueller living dream, but that contrast would not have detracted from the reference had the writers chosen it.
Home to Hotlanta
Of Kenan & Kel’s six core cast members, Mitchell is the only real-life Chicagoan, or Chicagolander period.
Thompson’s onscreen parents — Ken Foree (Roger) and Teal Marchande (Sheryl) — hail from the capitals of fellow Great Lakes states in Indianapolis and Lansing, respectively. Californian Vanessa Baden (aka Kyra Rockmore) and New Jersey native Dan Frischman (bumbling boss Chris Potter) represented opposite coasts while portraying Midwesterners.
But now with Kenan taking place in Atlanta, Thompson gets Mitchell’s one-time gratification of playing to his real-life roots.
Miscellaneous
Is there a global orange-soda cult in the Kenan & Kel universe? That would be the only explanation for multiple strangers (e.g. the aforementioned Becky and Officer Mansoni from Season 3’s “Attack of the Bug Man”) knowing the “Who Loves Orange Soda?” creed. It would also explain the international orange-soda convention in the fictional European city of Amsterburg.
The episode escapes me, but in one of their prologues, Kenan and Kel welcome “Ladies and gentlemen,” “Boys and girls,” “And everybody in between.” Does that sound like unwitting, ahead-of-the-times wokeness to anybody else?
Per the Internet Movie Database, Season 3’s “Who Loves Who-ooh?” remains Thompson’s only career writing credit. He shared that role with Mason Gordon and another Nickelodeon turned NBC personality in Nick Cannon.
Details on only two episodes of Kenan have been printed thus far, but the new series is the most logical opportunity for Thompson to break his writing hiatus at the 22-year mark, if he so pleases.