Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Would It Kill You To Laugh? Starring Kate Berlant & John Early’ On Peacock, These Characters Were Made For Each Other

Finally, a multiverse where Kate Berlant and John Early starred in a multi-cam sitcom 20 years ago, had some sort of personal and professional falling out, and only the majesty of Meredith Vieira can bring them back together for a sit-down and retrospective on their greatness as a comedy duo! That’s not the only thing this Peacock special has going for it, but what more do you need?

WOULD IT KILL YOU TO LAUGH? STARRING KATE BERLANT & JOHN EARLY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Berlant and Early have their own separately successful careers as character actors. Berlant has the upcoming Prime Video adaptation of A League of Their Own out this summer, while Early co-starred as a detective this year on Apple TV+’s The Afterparty, and each of them starred in their own half-hour showcases in 2016 for Netflix’s The Characters.
They have appeared onscreen together in Search Party, as well as multiple appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (clips of which pop up in the background during this hour!).
And yet, this special’s conceit presents the entirely plausible premise that Berlant and Early have been an inseparable duo for decades, so how could they ever have split up in the first place? In a show within the special, P.O.V. (Point Of Vieira), Meredith Vieira plays herself scoring the exclusive interview/reunion, asking the two comedians what went wrong, can they ever make things right, all while showing clips from their long-ago (fake) sitcom, He’s Gay, She’s Half-Jewish, and cutting to various sketches.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: I mean, have you not already seen Berlant’s and Early’s episodes of The Characters on Netflix?!

Memorable Jokes: There are recurring gags involving an overly long overblown novel, and paying bills with hot caramel. There’s also a Perd Hapley sighting?! OK, Jay Johnson playing a TV anchor, but still. Also, when their walk-through of 30 Rock leads them to rediscover their old sitcom set, somehow fully intact after all these years, we learn TMI about both John’s TV character as well as the “John” playing that John.
Our Take: There’s a rich comedic tradition for overconfident characters who find themselves in way over their heads but cannot seem to get themselves out of the situation without making things worse. See: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson; the movies of Will Ferrell.
Berlant and Early mine this tradition to great effect.
And in the cinematic universe they’ve created for this special, they’re not only able to create surreal absurdist moments that allow for the currency of hot caramel or the existence of big dog families, but also to joke about each other in increasingly meta manners. Whether they’re attempting to one-up undermining each other in front of Vieira with backhanded compliments, or alone in a dressing room questioning the boundaries of their relationship, they prove time and again that as singular as they may be individually as scene-stealers, they’re a powerhouse duo together.
Even if plenty of their sketches find themselves feeling a pinch of imposter syndrome. No, they belong here. They certainly belong here.

Our Call: STREAM IT. As Vieira herself said: “In a world divided more and more every day, there’s one thing we can all agree on: Kate Berlant and John Early are funny.”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Would It Kill You To Laugh? Starring Kate Berlant & John Early on Peacock