Sketch Comedy Monday: “Broads Behind Bars”

I haven’t done one of these in awhile, but I was thinking about this sketch the other day, and lo and behold, it was actually on YouTube.This “Broads Behind Bars” sketch is a “hard-hitting melodrama brought to you by the Anti-Marijuana League of North America.” It’s a parody of 1950s anti-drug films from the comic geniuses behind SCTV, starring Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, and John Candy.

So much about this sketch is perfect: the immediate changes in behavior shown by Eugene Levy and O’Hara when they get one small whiff of marijuana, the idea that “one small shtick of the shtuff” can lead to a crime spree, and the melodrama, especially surrounding Kitty’s cigarettes. “I want you to have these – I won’t be needin them where I came from!” I also think this is a great sign of O’Hara’s talent as a comic actress – it would be so easy to fade into the background and let Martin as the prison lesbian and Candy as the warden completely steal the show (and they are hilarious), but she holds her own and is quite funny showing her character’s slow corruption due to “one small shtick of the shtuff.”