Key & Peele talks a lot about what it means to be a male feminist and the gender roles of men and women; sometimes it’s through the lens of race, but it’s usually pretty universal. This week’s episode, “Hollywood Sequel Doctor,” ends up having an interesting throughline of masculinity and what that necessarily means, and it all begins with an accidental penis grazing in the opening sketch. Really, more conversations about masculinity should start with accidental penis grazing, but the opening sketch is a good start, keeping it short and sweet. In fact, given the fact that the characters in this first sketch—the Rhinos football team—were a part of such the epic season opening sketch, all that’s needed is something short and sweet.
The premise of Key’s character accidentally grazing Peele’s character’s penis is probably something any guy who’s at least been to high school can relate to, right down to the “you play too much” of it all. Even as a woman, I have witnessed such tomfoolery in my lifetime. There’s always someone who can’t take a hint and pushes through a goof or joke, even if it stopped being fun ages ago—then it usually ends with a “you touched my dick.” In the sketch’s brief screentime, it silently depicts the macho gay panic that can come out of these accidents, and the awkwardness of that panic is palpable. It would be so easy for Key’s character to say a quick, non-stuttering “sorry” and have that be the end of that, especially if they weren’t such “manly” football players. Instead, the characters end up walking a few paces—it gets so awkward that they walk “paces”—away with each other. And in doing so without losing eye contact, they only make it even more awkward, even though Key’s character learns a lesson. “Then perhaps indeed I do play to much,” he confesses, before he says to himself that he “never intended to grab the dick.” This isn’t a PSA on playing too much, but it could be. Mostly, it’s just an overblown macho reaction to an accidentally penis graze, which is pretty awkwardly funny.
It’s also kind of a case of truth being stranger than fiction, which is also the basis for the Gremlins 2 sketch (the Hollywood sequel doctor sketch). After Key and Peele dissect the intricacies of the Tremors franchise in a road trip segment, the show is transported to Warner Bros. Studios in early 1989, where no one is asking the important question: Why is Peele’s Magic Jackson Jr. basically a clone of Hollywood from the movie Mannequin? It’s not that it’s a problem, but since that entire look is apparently on the table, it’s disappointing that Key & Peele waited until its final season to reveal it. In fact, all of the ‘80s costumes are pretty great in this sketch—like the Dwayne Wayne glasses—even with Peele taking up so much of the focus. The sketch is absolutely fantastic for Peele, as he comes in like a whirlwind and “doctors” the sequel to Gremlins. The easy joke to make when it comes to the ‘80s movies process is always cocaine, but here, the only cocaine involved is Magic Jackson Jr. himself, human cocaine. He’s the most flamboyant person in the room, especially compared to Key’s very straight man, and that’s not even necessarily why his ideas suck. He just has really bad ideas, and he’s surrounded by idiots.
“You just said noun and gremlin, like you playing Mad Libs. You just like a child. You have the brain of a child. You do not have a high IQ, but you haphazardly came up with a gremlin that’s just made out of bolts and is zig-zagging all over the room and is done completely in animation. You a crazy person, and your idea’s in the movie! Done. Next.”