Drunk History on Comedy Central (show, actors, character, episodes)

[legalsea]

We have started to watch "Drunk History" on Comedy Central; they are beginning the second season this week, and they have been rerunning season one (one can also view on Amazon Prime).

An extremely funny show. The premise: a drunk person sits and, to the camera, explains some history (each episode focuses on one city and some history associated with it). For instance, for Atlanta, we have a drunk girl explain how Coca Cola came about, and another about J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King.

While the drunk talks, actors recreate what the person is saying. The actors do not speak, but mouth what the drunk is saying. Needless to say, the drunken guy reciting Martin Luther King's 'I have a Dream' speech is mangled and funny, as is the actor portraying the words (in front of a crowd, etc).

They have some 'known' actors in each episode thus far, such as Jason Ritter and Kristin Wiig.

Jason Ritter was portraying some guy named Stetson Kennedy (whom I have never heard of, but he apparently infiltrated the KKK and then 'exposed' their secrets; the drunk claims he did so on the radio show "Superman"). At one point the 'drunk' began to sneeze and hiccup. Jason's character does the same, during what is suppose to be a pivotal moment at a KKK meeting (with the flap of his white hood flying up with each sneeze, and the other KKK members looking back at him. Blasted funny).

I will note that I somewhat doubt that the 'drunks' are 'real people' pulled off the street or out of a bar. For instance, one segment had a drunk woman named Artemis, who looked remarkably like the Artemis that appeared in several early episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadephia".

Nevertheless, a very enjoyable show.

Edited to add: I'll be darned: the Stetson Kennedy story was true, including the part about the exposure on Superman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stetson_Kennedy