Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Declare war on somebody, and the battle stops with a winner, a loser, or a truce. Declare war on something, though, and recent history tells us there is no surrender. Over the past century, America has launched the War on Crime, the War on Poverty, the War on Terror, and in 1971, then-President Richard Nixon announced the War on Drugs.
Nixon’s 1971 press conference opens the trippy first Netflix special from the Lucas Brothers: On Drugs. The camera cuts to present day, or rather night, outside the Bell House in Brooklyn, where Keith and Kenny Lucas light up a joint, take a puff, and enter through the crowd to the strains of “Hail to the Chief,” where they’ll stand onstage alongside photos and cardboard cutouts of the disgraced late president.
The brothers half-jokingly declare war on Nixon with an obscenity, but full-on mockingly make light of the government’s 46-year attempt to crack down on illegal drug use by calling it “the war on n—ers who just want to have fun.” They add: “If white women can have fun, why can’t we?”
Of course, the ramifications and consequences haven’t been so fun. Lucas Father went to prison when the brothers were toddlers. An onscreen graphic at the special’s opening references how America’s drug laws imprisoned many more black men over the decades, including “five uncles and several cousins,” too.
But don’t expect a lecture here. Perhaps a pie chart illustrating black happiness. But no lectures.
Identical twins in stand-up comedy are rare. Rarer, still, the twins who refuse to identify themselves at all. At least the Sklar Brothers have their own looks and refer to each other by name. Kenny and Keith Lucas never say their names onstage, choosing simple pronouns of “you,” “he,” and “him” over proper nouns to acknowledge the other in a bit. Even a joke at the expense of their relative poverty posits that they hold a joint bank account. They both dealt drugs at one point. They both attended law school. They are one and the same, for any differences that may become apparent offstage, on it they are simply Lucas Brothers.
Inseparable, they joke about doing mushrooms in front of each other, the joys of watching Deion Sanders music videos, the not-so joys of working, how their favorite wrestler inspired their public school homework, and the silliness of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson jokes that still hold up all these years later.
“Law school was worth it, just for this moment,” one of the brothers says. “Netflix already paid us, right?”
In an era where police brutality and Black Lives Matter has more stand-up comedians weighing in on the matter, Dave Chappelle joked that his star status elevated him above the fray. For the Lucas twins, being arrested together certainly helps, and appearing briefly onscreen in 22 Jump Street even more so.
The only time they refer to each other by name, it’s not their own names, but rather Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley as they imagine the phone call in which Jordan convinced Sir Charles to take a supporting role in the movie, Space Jam. On Drugs ends with a loony tune of the Lucas Brothers own making, as the stars/creators of the animated Lucas Bros. Moving Co. interact with the animated ghost of Nixon.
They do flirt with the idea of accomplishing something more, suggesting: “You can’t just smoke weed and listen to Deion Sanders hip-hop videos. That can’t be life.”
For 49 minutes or so, if you want to hit pause on life, Lucas Brothers got you covered.
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.
