In 2001, “Wet Hot American Summer” was the 252nd most successful movie of the year. “Corky Romano” bested it by 158 spots and $25 million in profits. To call it a box office bomb would be polite. But it was “Wet Hot” that got passed around to friends, family and co-workers. It was the absurd tale of the last day of Camp Firewood’s 1981 season that began a run of midnight showings where fans dressed as their favorite character and shouted their favorite lines. Co-writers Michael Showalter and David Wain (who also directed) went into the woods for a month with their friends to make a movie about summer camp. They came out with the 21st century’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Simply being a beloved cult classic isn’t enough in the 21st century, though. You need sequels, prequels, and maybe a TV series to keep the franchise going. And so, 14 years later, Showalter, Wain, and the rest of the cast are back at Camp Firewood for an eight-episode prequel/sequel.
Getting a cult-favorite cast back together after years apart is difficult. Netflix’s fourth season of “Arrested Development,” produced seven years after the series ended its first run, felt disjointed because the cast wasn’t always available at the same time. “First Day of Camp” faced a similar challenge. When the film was released in 2001, stars Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler, and Bradley Cooper, among others, were relative unknowns. Now, they’re headlining major film franchises, starring in hit TV shows, and winning awards. But the same scheduling nightmares that hurt “Arrested Development” are absent here. In fact, the cast has grown and has attracted other stars, including Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Chris Pine, and Michael Cera.
Telling the next (first?) chapter of Camp Firewood as a miniseries makes sense — the first film was simply a tangle of a dozen absurdist anecdotes following different character pairs and keeping them apart until a triumphant, equally absurd finale. Wain and Showalter stick to that formula in ways both expected and surprising. They would have been foolish to split up Ken Marino’s clueless jock Victor and Jo Lo Truglio’s second banana Neil. They wisely keep their stories in sync as we see the beginnings of their games of perceived sexual one-upmanship. However, the hidden history of unlucky-in-love art teacher Gail (Molly Shannon) and unbalanced Vietnam veteran and camp chef Gene (Christopher Meloni) proves to be one of the best new additions to the story. Shannon’s insecure Gail finally gets to have her crack comedic delivery interact with the majority of the cast. And Meloni — the MVP of the film and the miniseries — helps answer two questions: who was the mysterious “Jonas” that Gail referred to in the film, and where was the best place to perform the Electric Slide in Portsmouth in the late 1970s? (No, I’m not kidding.)
Figuring out how each character from the film first appears in the narrative becomes a game unto itself. Anyone who’s already binged all eight episodes will tell you nothing beats the introduction of Marisa Ryan’s sexpot camper Abby Bernstein. They are correct, and the less I say about the cringe-worthy, uproariously hilarious moment — one of the best of the entire season — the better. While they don’t pack the quick punch of the Bernstein reveal, two of the best back-stories belong to the gritty journalistic double-life of Lindsay (Elizabeth Banks) and the short-film-length spotlight on the stuffy world of academia in which Associate Professor Neumann (David Hyde Pierce) suffers. Both mine the early 1980s for fashion cues and cinematic tropes to great effect. Pierce’s role in the series is smaller than I had hoped, but every note he’s given to play is expertly done.
“First Day of Camp” respects narrative canon while juggling story beats and plot threads about radioactive mutants, high-stakes night-court trials, sexy prog-rock ghosts, and the potential for Kristen Wiig’s snobby rival camp counselor to be a vampire. The extended conversation between camp director Beth (Jeneane Garofalo) and a professional assassin called The Falcon (Hamm) near the close of the series tackles all the plot-holes and inconsistencies in a hilarious bit of meta television.
It’s not all perfect. After Slattery’s magnificent entrance, the writers don’t seem to known quite what to do with a notorious Broadway name dropper who wants you to know that Betty Buckley gave him that pasta recipe. Showalter saddles his Coop character with most of the story’s dead weight, but his roles as Ronald Reagan and Patti Pancakes more than make up for it.
“First Day of Camp” gives me a new hope for prequels. It satisfies diehard fans with its call-backs (or are they call-aheads?) and Easter eggs, but can still serve as a gateway for new viewers. In the original “Wet Hot,” Gene triumphantly told campers to “be proud of who you are.” With this new miniseries, Showalter and Wain should be extremely proud. They honored, retained, and built on their original comedic vision. And still left room for plenty of fart jokes.