5 Reasons Reno 911! Is A Classic (& 5 It Didn’t Age Well)

Reno 911! is pretty much one of the biggest names there is when it comes to edgy comedy mockumentaries, even though Thomas Lennon had a really hard time actually landing a pilot once he had finished his work with The State.

The show had a pretty long run, reaching nearly 100 episodes, and even managing to get a movie deal that there have been rumors about a sequel to. Unfortunately for the cast and fans, the show has fallen into a bit of obscurity since it finished airing, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing when looking back at how rough the show was occasionally.

10 Classic: The Main Cast Is Great

Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Niecy Nash, Wendy Mclendon-Covey, Cedric Yarbrough, and Carlos Alazraqui make up the ensemble cast of the show, and they do an incredible job at portraying the absolute idiocy of their characters.

Each one of them embodies their character extremely well, making for a tight-knit net of a police department that pretty much deserves all of the awful events that come their way throughout the duration of the show.

9 Hasn’t Aged Well: The Jokes Don’t Always Land

One of the biggest things the show is notorious for is its constantly racy humor. It’s not necessarily a bad thing because that’s kind of what the show is known for, but it definitely goes overboard occasionally, making jokes that come off as racist, referring to sexual assault in a manner that tends to make light of it, and also makes fun of LGBTQIA+ characters every once in a while.

It usually doesn’t do anything like that in a way that’s just 100% unforgivable, but it definitely uses how edgy it is like a crutch occasionally.

8 Classic: The Premise Is Genius

Perhaps one of the best parts of Reno 911! is the absolutely ridiculous absurd premise of the show itself, which is an absolutely genius idea. It was originally conceived as a parody of the television show Cops, which was an American show that followed various police forces around the country, filming their interactions with potential criminals.

The show does the same thing, but from a comedic standpoint with pre-written sketches in which the dialogue is usually improvised. There are also references to the fact that the police know they’re being filmed, adding another layer to the comedy.

7 Hasn’t Aged Well: It Could Have Been More Of A Satire

One of the things that makes sense about the show in a certain light is that it doesn’t really take a stance on police as a whole, but merely makes fun of how stupid the characters presented in the show are, frequently shown being idiotic and getting into trouble for it, even to the point where they pretend like the people who are making the “documentary” about them are specifically cutting all of the parts that present them in a positive light out of the finished product.

It could have done more to satirize, even without taking a stance, rather than relying on lampooning the characters.

6 Classic: There Are Some Wonderful Repeat Guests

Aside from the main cast that generally absolutely crushes the script, there are also a lot of really great guests that show up and add to the insanity of the relationship between the characters. Some of the best of them include Terry, a roller-skating man who trades “favors” for money and speaks in mostly gibberish slang, in addition to running his own gang, referred to as “The Grape Slushies.”

There’s also a really early appearance from Charlie Day who’s known mostly for his role as Charlie Kelly in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in addition to Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who plays The Waitress in the show.

5 Hasn’t Aged Well: There Are Some Terrible Ones Too

One of the main issues with the show is that instead of focusing on the dynamic between the great costars of the show, it frequently decides instead to have repeat guest stars that don’t quite hit the mark, either in feel or in their presence on the show.

One such example is at the beginning of the third season when the force decides that they’re going to include a new member on the team. It’s played for laughs as a meta “jumping-the-shark” type moment now that the show has found its footing, but it feels stale and derivative.

4 Classic: Lt. Jim Dangle Is Iconic

Thomas Lennon, who is also one of the creators of the show and had previously starred in other comedies such as his work with The State is pretty much the lynchpin that holds the show together.

Lt. Jim Dangle is an absolutely classic comedy character, who’s funny not as much for his ambiguous sexual orientation as he is for his flamboyant personality and absurd life choices. He also spawned the classic “New Boot Goofin” meme, which is just a clip of the show that’s been widely circulated in which he prances around in some ostrich leather boots.

3 Hasn’t Aged Well: The Reboot Doesn’t Really Work At The Moment

The big thing about doing this show at the moment is that it’s incredibly difficult to navigate with all of the awareness of police brutality that’s being raised recently after the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, in addition to many others.

The show does a fairly okay job at navigating this territory, while occasionally even delving into satire territory about how police departments work. The only issue with this is that occasionally the jokes can seem a little cold, and even though they’re coming from a place of criticism, it doesn’t always feel okay. Sometimes reboots are great, but it might not be the time.

2 Classic: The Improv Is Unbelievable

One of the best things about Reno 911! is that most of the dialog in both the show and the movie consists largely of improvisation. That means that the actors are given a rough outline of the concept behind the sketch, in addition to how it’s most likely to end up, and then it’s all edited together later after they say and do whatever comes to mind.

One of the biggest examples of this is the scenes in the briefing room, which were usually recorded at the beginning of a season for roughly a 10-hour day, and then cut later.

1 Hasn’t Aged Well: Have The Comedians Actually Grown Up?

While the show now does its best to tackle legitimate social and political issues surrounding police departments around the world, but mostly in the United States, it doesn’t always hit the mark as we discussed earlier. They attempted this in the earlier seasons, but it’s increasingly prescient now.

That being said, as much as they do their best to tread carefully on that territory, there’s also a joke about how many genders there are these days in one of the briefing room scenes said by Jim Dangle, but that could be chalked up to the discourse about his sexuality. That being said, it’s really hard to tell when the humor is ironic, and when it isn’t.

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