Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crank Yankers’ Season 5 On Comedy Central, Which Is Still Full Of Puppets Making Crank Phone Calls

The mid-’90s through the early-’00s were the Golden Era of prank phone calls as entertainment. Remember the halcyon days of The Jerky Boys, Captain Janks on the Stern show, and Jim Florentine’s Touch-Tone Terrorists? How could you forget? In 2002, Jimmy Kimmel, when he was still in Man Show mode, and Adam Carolla, who was in peak Adam Carolla mode, took some of Florentine’s work and built on it with some pretty complex puppetry. The result was Crank Yankers, which ran for 4 seasons from ’02-’07. Twelve years later, it’s back, but in a completely different pop culture world. Does it still bring the funny?

CRANK YANKERS SEASON 5: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Let’s just mention the intro here; behind a seemingly-sweet theme song that talks about making calls to strangers, we see puppet accidents and other puppet mayhem.

The Gist: After a 12-year hiatus, Crank Yankers is back, and it’s now in CGI. Nah, we’re just kidding; it’s exactly the same show that was on for five seasons in the early 2000s. Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel and some of their comedy buddies make crank phone calls to various businesses, and then the calls are immortalized in puppet form. The only differences? Some of the puppets are using smartphones and social media, and some of the voices and puppets are new.

One of the old voices, Tracy Morgan, slips back into his Spoonie Luv persona and calls some park rangers, complaining about the birds pooping on him while he’s having public sex with his bae. Another one, Carolla as Mr. Birchum, calls a yoga studio and tortures the receptionist by getting sidetracked while giving her the spelling of his name. David Alan Grier comes back as Landalious “The Truth” Truefeld, calling a senior community looking to field a football team full of “old folks.”

There are also three new voices: Aubrey Plaza plays an air traffic controller who calls a party story complaining that their helium balloons caused her voice to permanently change; Thomas Lennon plays an ex-convict who calls the Wizard of Oz museum thinking the place is about the HBO prison drama Oz, and Chelsea Peretti plays a girl who thinks she should get a job at a Hooters-style restaurant because she’s a “10.”

Our Take: Considering that we’re talking about a show that is completely the same now as it was when it was on from 2002-07, the way to approach this review is: Does Crank Yankers, this time with Jimmy Kimmel’s brother Jonathan in charge, still work in the #MeToo, more “woke” world of 2019? The answer to that is an unequivocal yes. And an unequivocal no.

How can it be both? Well, it really depends on the character and how the call happens. You have to realize, everyone making these calls is improvising to an extent, based on the reactions of the real people on the other side of the phone (how can they record these calls, you ask? They do it in Nevada, where only one side needs to give consent). And everyone is an expert at rolling with the reactions of the people on the other side. But it feels like the newer characters, and the newer comedians, have a better idea of how to shape their characters than the regulars do.

OK, Spoonie Luv was pretty funny. But Tracy Morgan can read a grocery list and be hilarious. Carolla’s and Grier’s calls, though, lasted way too long, of course due to people on the other end who had no capacity to hang up. The same could be said for Peretti’s sketch, which continued after the last commercial break when she called back to say she was made ugly by a falling wrench. Lennon and Plaza had the funniest sketches, because they effectively raised the stakes when they responded to the person on the other end. We especially liked Lennon’s bit, where he gets the Oz museum worker to describe the classic 1939 movie, and he interprets it as more violent than his favorite HBO prison show.

What the show did do is avoid any stereotyped characters, like Jim Florentine’s Special Ed, or Kimmel’s impersonation of Karl Malone. And, despite this not being the golden age of prank calls, when the calls work, they’re still more funny than cringe-inducing.

Sex and Skin: Spoonie Luv is having public sex with his bae in a park, remember?

Parting Shot: Peretti’s now-“ugly” character posts her new mangled face on Instagram and we see some of the more vile comments.

Sleeper Star: The various puppeteers and set designers don’t get enough credit, not just because the characters they create are spot-on, and that they accurately mimic the exasperation of the people on the receiving end of these calls, but they add little details that are at times huge jokes. One example, the Oz fan writing “I Heart J.K. Simmons” in his notebook.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we can pick out.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Does the world need new episodes of Crank Yankers? No. But if you’re tired of watching the latest heavy, thinky Peak TV show, puppets making prank calls is a good way to rest your brain.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

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