Years ago I was a camp counsellor in California: the type that makes friendship bracelets, sings by the campfire and helps little girls learn to ride horses. I was a good one, I think, nothing like the majority at Camp Firewood, the setting for Netflix’s new series, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp. But oh how I love Camp Firewood, and all the terrible, weird people who stay there.
Wet Hot American Summer was originally a 2001 film, a satire set on the last day of summer camp. It pulled in a ridiculously high calibre cast including Janeane Garofalo, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd and David Hyde Pierce. In David Wain and Michael Showalter’s fictional camp, nothing was too silly, or juvenile, or just plain gross. So we have a talking can of mixed vegetables, a camper who hasn’t showered all summer, and a counsellor having a post-divorce breakdown.
The joy of Firewood is in the pursuit of the joke, and there is no ego from the now award-winning actors. This makes for hilarious set pieces. The kids play second fiddle to the adults, something I remember very well from my own time at camp. A homesick child is soothed in minutes, but the drama in the counsellors’ cabin? Not so much.
Camp Firewood’s oddness is back on our screens, with all the original stars (an amazing feat) and even more mania than the original. I never made it back to my camp, even though I stayed friends with many of my co-counsellors. But now I can return to Camp Firewood, a slightly twisted way back to a simpler time in my life.
