Hello…Shovelhead!’s highly anticipated return to the Boston College comedy scene came this weekend with their recent show entitled “Local Beauties,” which graced campus on Friday and Saturday. Shovelhead cultists and comedy enjoyers alike packed Fulton 511 with high expectations, eagerly looking forward to another outstanding performance.
As the lights dimmed and projector screens descended, the crowd fell into a hush. The intro video for this semester’s second show was titled “The J-O-B Word” and featured members of the group embarking upon various kooky financial endeavors to raise their production budget.
The shenanigans included a trip to Jersey Mike’s, a bikini carwash, a Rugrats CD collection stream on OnlyFans, tariffs on Lower Campus, and more. In typical Shovelhead fashion, the comical exploits were as diverse as the lineup of sketches.
The first sketch featured a hard-working father conducting a business call. While discussing “last year’s quarter,” and dropping other business buzzwords, his kids nefariously decided to pester him, until he eventually shouted, “Santa’s not real!” only to see a white-bearded man clad in red right behind him.
The momentum continued into the second and third sketches, which had both relatable premises and perfectly timed jokes. The second sketch saw a resident assistant conducting a room check, which soon was revealed as an undercover FBI agent searching for a bomber. In the third, college students were faced with an expensive bill and devolved into an intense game of credit card roulette—until the waitress told them they could split the bill.
The fourth sketch featured various pop-culture bears being attacked by a park ranger and two fearful Boy Scouts. The sketch was a play on the common phrase, “If it’s brown, lay down; if it’s black, fight back; if it’s white, goodnight.” Among the bears were Paddington, Ted, Freddy Fazbear, and Po the Dragon Warrior.
The first digital sketch was next, titled “Mic’ed Up.” As the name suggests, the sketch consisted of two commentators interviewing a quarterback after winning MVP, who was unknowingly mic’d. The broadcast shows a sequence of the quarterback’s in-game “remarks,” resulting in the network losing all of their sponsors and “Betty,” the replay assistant, quitting her job. The audience was roaring, and the cheers were thunderous when the video ended.
Up next was a sketch about a high-school English class, which had Yoda among the students being continually insulted. The typical jock name-calling and beration ended with Yoda force-choking his abuser. The various quips styled in Yoda’s distinct dialect got lots of laughs beyond the initial, hilarious premise.
NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa’s red beret appeared in the next sketch atop Gordon Sliwa, who was running alongside Mike from Greenwich and a Crazy Rich Asians referencing mahjong lover.
TheFatRat’s “Xenogenesis” (colloquially known as the TikTok outro song) was the punchline for the following sketch, where a self-dubbed “busybody” shuffled through a playlist to find the perfect song to accompany his sandwich-making. The sandwich was finished, and the crust was removed right before the song’s beat drop, to the great relief and delight of the audience.
Shovelhead’s last digital sketch, “The Cologne Bros,” was one of the highlights of the night. A riff on cologne reviewer Jeremy Fragrance, the characters kept the same uniquely European energy and insanely chaotic visual aesthetics. While convincing the audience to buy various BC-inspired colognes, the video showed clips of explosions, shark attacks, and Sergio Agüero’s game-winner vs. Queens Park Rangers. Audience members were tearfully rolling in laughter long after the video ended.
Paul Revere’s iconic line, “The British are coming!” was the backbone of the ninth sketch. Revere warned George and Martha Washington about the impending invasion, to which they were indifferent, as George’s stockings were damp and the drummers needed rest.
When King George III and his crew of redcoats arrived and saw Revere’s lunacy, they too decided to postpone the battle as their drummers were also tired. “Lest we kill without music!” the cast declared.
Another highlight, the tenth sketch, went behind the scenes of a soap opera, “Hearts of Time Beating Rapidly,” culminating in the lover, once thought lost to a baking-soda volcano, suddenly and comedically reappearing. Shovelhead’s physical gags matched its situational humor, escalating from absurd spit takes to a final pie in the face.
The eleventh sketch contemplated capitalism’s origin in the context of the cavemen, who “diversified their assets” of stick and stone and crushed small businesses. The final sketch’s logic—a French Bulldog from CVS, ibuprofen from France, a Belgian waffle from CVS, and tampons from Belgium—was a clever way to end the night.
With a slate of sketches that ranged from razor-sharp to delightfully chaotic, Shovelhead proved once again why it remains a staple of BC’s comedy scene. The troupe continues to push its own boundaries, pack in the laughs, and remind everyone that sketch comedy at BC is alive, well, and absolutely unhinged in all the best ways.