Comedy: Maximum Brain Squad

Maximum Brain Squad is a highly talented sketch comedy group based in Charleston, SC. I write a feature about them for the January 10th issue of the City Paper. Space was tight that week, so the article was heavily truncated. Here's the full version.


Industrial Strength
By Nick Smith

Uncle Sam is under attack. Standing tall with his stars & stripes hat and his Abe Lincoln beard, he’s beset on all sides by dark, evil wraiths with logos round their necks. The wraiths represent all-conquering corporations: IT giants, pile-it-high retail outlets, fast food fiends. Inexorably, Uncle Sam is overpowered by the ghouls and becomes their horrified puppet.


This tragic spectacle opens Maximum Brain Squad’s premiere one hour production, A Day That Will Live in Industry! As the dark humor of the Sam-bashing suggests, it’s not your regular Saturday night sketch show. While goofy characters and hit-and-run gags abound, a strong political thread gives the work extra depth and merit.


The Squad are perfectly placed to understand and comment on the commercial pressures placed on today’s youth. The average age of the group (Henry Riggs, Amanda Lester, Gray Robbins, Andy Livengood and Chris Drake) is 22.4. They love their iPods and digital whatnots as much as anyone. But is the amassing of gadgetry worth selling Uncle Sam down the river? Therein lies the crux of the show.


Riggs, Lester and Robbins will be familiar to audiences of Hobo: The Musical, a purposefully rough-and-ready show that wowed the unwashed during this year’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival. Hobo took a satirical look at authority, class and consumer culture. With a deft twist of comedy writing, A Day That Will Live in Industry! takes a satirical look at authority, class and consumer culture – this time using the sketch format.


The theme’s summed up in an observation made by Riggs: “America’s becoming lazy.” In the eyes of the Squad members and their co-writer Matt Perry, our nation is descending a slippery slope of apathy, sloth and an over-reliance on machinery. This is reflected in a show depicting a world one sidestep from our own where everything’s for sale and Apple products are the juiciest of forbidden fruit, lusted after by thoughtless characters who fail to empathize with their fellow human beings. The Squad address their concerns by savaging an era where, in Riggs’ opinion, “technology is accelerating so fast we’re becoming blind to actual human contact.”


Squad founders Riggs, Drake and Perry are anything but lazy. They tuck into the any-genre, any-length freedom that sketch comedy can bring, and they have a knack for creating memorable characters that deserve to return in future shows. There’s Tony Eyebrows, the gangster who’ll slay anyone who draws attention to his hirsute brow; Detective Finnegan, the worst sleuth ever to appear in a comedy sketch, who suspects everyone including himself; and a psychopathic iPhone marketing guy who’ll take your money or your life.


The murderous marketer is joined by a suicidal, bereaved youth, a rock star high on his own success and the overwhelmed Uncle Sam. The sight of his demise is amusing and disturbing at the same time. That ability to unsettle makes the Squad more than just another comedy troupe.


“We take a sarcastic tone, saluting America as the industry capital of the world,” says Riggs. “By taking a lighthearted look at what you’ve created, it makes it easier to analyze or deal with what’s happened.”



For now, that analysis is left up to the audience – the Squad finds the humor inherent in the problems of modern living, rather than providing solutions. But while We the People may have sold out for the sake of cheap consumables, Maximum Brain Squad hasn’t done the same to get cheap laughs.



With on-the-mark satire like Industry!, these comedians-come-commentators show great promise, which bodes well for the next generation of humorists. Perhaps Uncle Sam isn’t doomed after all.