2 out of 5

Created by: Keegan Michael-Key, Jordan Peele

Key and Peele are occasionally very, very funny.  Sometimes they’re willing to just get weird, and then some brilliant times they can combine this weirdness with their race-relations humor to hilariously biting effect.  But, equally as often in any given episode, the team will betray their MadTV roots and just fall back on timely humor or impressions, the pinnacle of which – despite how good the impression is – are the frequent bits with Peele’s Obama.

An hour-long special that lambastes the Super Bowl and sports would be pretty good.  Unfortunately, K&P seem to like the sport and the teams and the players a bit too much to actually take it to task, and so instead we fall almost fully on the MadTV side of things, the episode coasting on tiresome impressions and an overall silly vibe but no real direct jokes.  That several minutes can go by – like a half-time show that is conceptually funny but, uh, actually a half-time show – without a real laugh is damning, but you know it will work for football heads because chuckle chuckle it sort of looks like stuff they watch only with goofy music hyuck hyuck.

The pair’s commitment to their parts keeps it moving along, and even though the final gag goes on for minutes too long, it’s what bumps the special up a star, as they finally get weird with things and start thinking outside of the box instead of just how to make the lowest common denominator laugh.