There is one thing that Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, the new prequel series to the cult classic movie that Netflix started streaming on Friday, has that its predecessor never did: anticipation. When WHAS arrived in theaters in 2001 the only really recognizable cast members were David Hyde Pierce – who was starring in Frasier at the time – and the alumni from MTV’s too-short-lived sketch comedy program The State. No one cared that it was coming and it was a huge dud, at least at the box office.
In the 14 years since, several of the actors – Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks and Amy Poehler chief among them – have become huge stars and the movie has only grown in reputation with repeat viewing on DVD and, of course, streaming on Netflix. (It also seems to be no coincidence that the estimation of the movie has risen in tandem with the legalization of recreational marijuana use across the country.) It’s a shock that co-creators David Wain and Michael Showalter convinced every last one of them to return for a victory lap.
So does this new eight-episode series live up the to the original? Absolutely, and it might even be better. While WHAS took place on the last day of the summer at Camp Firewood, First Day of Camp starts on the first day of camp. If you guessed that right, you get a merit badge in basic literacy.
We see Ben and Suzie (Cooper and Poehler) planning a musical to start off the camp season and assessing their relationship, head counselor Beth (Janeane Garofalo) having an affair with the camp owner, Andy (Rudd) trying to score with Katie (Marguerite Moreau) and striking out royally, and mild-mannered chef Gene (Christopher Meloni) excited to marry arts and crafts maven Gail (Molly Shannon). Of course anyone who remembers the original movie knows that Ben is gay, Beth ends up with a physicist (Hyde Pierce), Andy is cheating on Katie and Gene is a psycho with PTSD from ’Nam.
That is the joy of the series, knowing where it all leads but finding out just how we got there. With that in mind, one doesn’t need to have watched (or particularly remember) the movie in order to enjoy the series. The talking can of vegetables was completely surreal in the movie, and it is completely surreal in show too, except now we know just how that can of vegetables got a voice in the first place.
The storylines are just as outrageous, spoofing the outsize dangers that befall the campers in this genre of summertime movie. This time around it has to do with a pool of toxic sludge rather than a missile aimed at the camp, but it’s the same sort of bonkers danger. But because of the source material, the parody here doesn’t seem as sharp. First Day of Camp seems derived from this old movie rather than a fresh product mocking camp movies like Meatballs, Little Darlings and Friday the 13th.
The biggest change story-wise is that Coop (co-writer Michael Showalter) has a new love interest, Donna (newcomer Lake Bell), who sends signals so mixed they could cause a train collision. There are a host of famous new co-stars, but they fit seamlessly into the established cast. There are also several stories featuring the pint-sized campers that will make you chuckle, even if they are the most conventional part of this camp movie.
The wisest choice First Day of School makes is that instead of trying to gloss over its limitations, it decides to exaggerate them, making them a part of the joke rather than a hindrance on it. There is no way that anyone in the cast, some well into their 40s, can get away with playing teens, so the wigs, costumes and makeup they wear make everyone look older rather than younger, playing up the disconnect. Also, it’s ridiculous to think that a whole musical can be staged in an afternoon, but the passage of time only adds to the absurdity of the concept. Oh, and as for breaking into a government computer with a 10-digit password from deep within Gene’s memory, that just seems totally natural.
For fans of WHAS, the funny comes fast and often and the callbacks and Easter eggs only deepen the experience. My one problem with this show is that, well, it’s not really a show. Since it is basically just a collection of loosely connected stories smushed together, there is no reason for this to be episodic rather than just a four-hour movie.
That is what is said of many of these Netflix shows or programs on other internet streaming providers that encourage binge watching. But if you look at a show like Transparent, which could feel like a six-hour movie if you watched all the episodes at once, there is still an episodic structure to each half-hour block, with a beginning, middle and an end, and common themes among the characters that trace through every episode.
That is not true of First Day of Camp, which seems cut up almost arbitrarily. A storyline ends in one episode, and is picked up in the next one right where it left off with our attention shifting from one group of characters to the next. All of the arcs are throughout the whole series – will they perform the musical, will Andy get Katie, etc – rather than progressing through a series of beats in 30-minute chunks.
For most people this criticism doesn’t matter at all. The stories are fresh, the jokes are funny, the cast is excellent – who the hell cares about the structure? Well, this is symptomatic of creators not knowing how to make things for these new media. Is this thing meant to be watched episode by episode or all at once? Since it’s technically television, is it eligible for the Emmys? Will it compete in the comedy categories or the limited series categories? Should it compete at the Oscars instead if it seems like a movie?
What would have been really spectacular would have been finding a way to use the way Netflix creates and distributes shows and letting the format play into the function of the show. Arrested Development, when it returned to Netflix, tried this a little bit when it featured a different character each episode.
Maybe that would have worked here, giving each character his or her own mini-movie and have them intersecting in crazy ways that would only make sense once viewers had watched the whole series. It would have been even more genius if the episodes were completely interchangeable and could be watched out of order.
But that is next-level thinking. All First Day of Camp had to do was figure out how to transition itself from being a movie into being a television show, and it doesn’t manage to do quite that. But it’s no big deal because the movie it was (and is) is quite a good one. But if Netflix is going to start doing this kind of programming all the time, it is going to have to learn the lessons from the first day of camp for its new dawn.
