Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Let’s Be Real’ On Fox, Where Robert Smigel And Friends Put On A Puppet-Based Current Affairs Sketch Show

In September, Robert Smigel presented an election-themed special called Let’s Be Real, skewering all of the usual political suspects with caricatured puppets. Now he’s back with four new episodes, and he’s expanded his targets to include pop culture icons, as well. In the grand tradition of Spitting Image and other puppet sketch series, do the targets of the satire get nailed or do they just get lightly scratched?

LET’S BE REAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A puppet version of New York governor Andrew Cuomo at a dais with two human aides and a human sign language interpreter. He’s about to have a press conference about a new spike in cases… of people accusing him of being inappropriate.

The Gist: Following up on an election-themed special from last September, Robert Smigel is rolling out a four-episode season of his puppet-based current-affairs sketch show Let’s Be Real.

The format is like many sketch shows on various cable networks and streaming services: The ideas are introduced, then returned to throughout the episode. There are some short one-off sketches as well. Most of the sketches have a political theme but others skewer pop culture.

There’s the Cuomo sketch, where he gives COVID briefing-style slides about all the people who have reported incidents, a phallic-shaped graph that represents “safe” ages and a slide of his old and new moves. In another sketch, Donald Trump goes on Antiques Roadshow to get appraisals on some items he swiped from the White House on the way out, including a painting of George Washington and a ball clicker made from Republican senators’ testicles.

In a Mandalorian sketch, Mando is joined by an extremely woke partner — Chrissy Teigen. The valuable baby they have to save is Baby Fauci, complete with classes, Brooklyn accent and admonishments about not washing hands and double masking.

President Joe Biden is represented in a one-off sketch that serves as more of an intro to the show. A group of celebrities (Zooey Deschanel, Jay Baruchel, Pete Davidson, Laura Benanti, Ed Asner, and more) do a “get vaccinated” ad and are all horrified when O.J. Simpson shows up to say “I did it” (the vaccine, that is), surrounded by brunch. Puppets of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos celebrate Pride by talking about algorithms that automatically out people as gay, whether they are or not.

Finally, there’s a Naked and Afraid sketch where a contestant has to survive in the woods naked in 48-degree weather. But that’s not the worst part: He’s stuck there with Ted Cruz, talking incessantly about his right-wing policies and Antifa and the LGBTQ mafia. But it gets even worse when he decides to join the man in naked solidarity.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take TV Funhouse and make it live-action with puppets and you have Let’s Be Real. An analogue would be Spitting Image, though the Brits’ view of our politics is likely a bit harsher than Smigel’s.

Our Take: We need to preface this by saying we are fans of Robert Smigel; from his SNL work to Funhouse to Triumph, he has been unafraid to take sharp and funny jabs at politicians and inflated pop culture icons. Let’s Be Real has some of those moments, though none as volcanically funny as we’ve seen in his other work. And some moments completely miss the mark.

Comedy sketch shows are always hit and miss, especially ones that rely on pre-taped sketches. It’s really hard to see what will get laughs and what won’t when there’s no live audience reacting. The Mandalorian sketch, for instance, didn’t really land because it makes Teigen out to be this super-woke Instagram addict but doesn’t really capture how silly and funny she is. Even Baby Fauci runs out of gas as he starts to give Mando non-COVID health tips as he’s in a blaster fight.

The Trump sketch works mainly because John Di Domenico does a great version of the word-salad non-orator that we had over the previous 4 years. The O.J. sketch elicited laughs mainly because seeing the puppet surrounded by brunch foods say “I did it!” while all the celebrities wonder why he’s in the ad (and how he can see them). But the funniest sketch is the Ted Cruz one, mainly because it doesn’t go after anything but his overall weaselly personality, including his overtalking and the fact that he’s on this show while Texas is going through its worst hurricane season.

Parting Shot: Cruz tells his camp mate about a fungus in his nether regions, to the camp mate’s horror. He asks the guy to look and puts his foot up on the man’s shoulder to expose all of his taint to the guy.

Sleeper Star: Ed Asner, slowly wheeling away in his office chair during the O.J. sketch. The guy is 91 and looking more and more like his character in Up every day, but he is still funny as hell.

Most Pilot-y Line: The Biden sketch is basically the president saying “We need to return decency to network TV” then swearing. Not a good way of introducing his puppet to the show.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We have faith in Smigel and his writers, to the point that if at least half of each episode of Let’s Be Real‘s sketches elicit laughs, we’ll be happy. The first episode hit that mark, and we hope it’ll get better as we go along.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Let's Be Real On Hulu