A New ‘Cool Kids’ Takes the Sitcom from Good to Great

I had high hopes for The Cool Kids from the moment I first heard about it. As a scholar of sitcoms (literally, I took a class on them in college in addition to just being obsessed with them in my day-to-day), a multi-cam show starring those four TV legends seemed tailor-made for me. Martin Mull, Vicki Lawrence, David Alan Grier, Leslie Jordan–those are performers I’ve been laughing at since the days when Lawrence was Mama and Grier was Antoine Merriweather!

So yeah, I had high hopes for The Cool Kids, and the first two episodes were… they were fun. They were fun, but they were just fine. I got a show I was up for sticking with week after week, but I didn’t get the madcap, Golden Girls meets It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia mix I expected knowing the show’s premise and the producers’ pedigree. All that changed after watching a screener of tonight’s episode, “A Date with Destiny,” the first installment in the young sitcom’s life that I would call “great.”

I’ll keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but it’s not like there’s much to spoil plot-wise. It’s a by-the-numbers catfishing episode involving fake dating profiles and dreamed up lovers. From George Glass on The Brady Bunch to Tom Haverford’s fleet of profiles on Parks & Recreation, this is well-trod territory. Heck, this episode features a character named Charlie making an off-putting dating profile just like Always Sunny featured a character named Charlie (played by Cool Kids EP Charlie Day) making an off-putting dating profile in one of the funniest scenes of 21st century TV. This is a classic sitcom premise and it gets by with it because these are classic sitcom actors.

So if we’ve seen similar dating ruses before, what makes this episode special? It’s that cast, y’all! “A Date with Destiny” is the first episode to really utilize all four members of this all-star cast, to really squeeze as many laughs as possible from a group of veterans now operating as an all-new comedy unit. If you’re watching The Cool Kids, you’re watching because you love these actors. This episode, this episode loves its actors.

Playing the poster-boy for crotchety old men everywhere, Grier really gets down and dirty as the way-too-confident Hank. Grier’s Sugarhill Gang celebration gallup is a great bit of light physical comedy, balancing out Hank’s usual top-heavy, blustery posturing. Also bamboozled is the easily bamboozleable Charlie (Martin Mull), who mentions his 27 Vietnam kills in his profile and hopes to meet someone who believes in the same moon-landing conspiracy theories he does. After playing uptight fussbudgets on Roseanne and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, it’s so great seeing Mull play a truly spaced-out, lovable–yet deranged and possibly dangerous?–hippie in professorial garb.

And then there’s Vicki Lawrence and Leslie Jordan as the too cool for the cool kids Margaret and the southern-fried sparkler Sid. “A Date with Destiny” pairs these two to truly uproarious results. Sid’s prone to flights of fancy that leave Earth’s atmosphere, like the truly cinematic and deeply melodramatic backstory he creates for his fake online persona; and Margaret is so grounded she pulls everything back down to earth with a forceful yank, like calling that backstory “a porno version of Gone with the Wind.”

As the sole woman in the ensemble whose defining character trait is “cool,” Lawrence could easily get shoved to the side as the sarcastic straight-man to a bunch of loonies. But just like Kaitlin Olson on Always Sunny, Lawrence gives Margaret’s voice of reason a real bite. Of course it’s no surprise that Margaret wrings laughs out of exposition considering this is Vicki f’ing Lawrence we’re talking about. And Jordan, a scene-stealer in his frequent Will & Grace appearances, should get an Emmy nom for the way he sells the most bawdy jokes with a wink and good ol’ Southern sass (Grindr is “like Postmates, but instead of food you get a man delivered”). Plus, I need a GIF of Sid snapping at Margaret, “Can I live, please?!”

While the plot isn’t anything new, “A Date with Destiny” does heighten in a truly unexpected direction, complete with some non-sequitur gems, one stand-out weirdo guest performance, and a bit of unexpected comedic violence that made my jaw drop (with laughter). It’s too early to tell, but maybe this is the Cool Kids’ sweet spot: taking old plots we’ve seen before out for a spin and then driving them off the road into a ditch, and then fleeing the scene. That sure sounds like something the characters in The Cool Kids would do.

Stream The Cool Kids on Hulu