Canada 151 offers a hilarious and uniquely Millennial Canadian take on sketch comedy
I think it’s a fact that a lot of young people don’t always know how to feel about their home country. Canadians of all ages have a love-hate relationship with Canada, but maybe those of a younger generation feel it more. As social justice pushes forward, it becomes harder to uncritically enjoy the history, and current place, of a country that has treated, and continues to treat, many of its citizens horrendously. Everyone can find something to argue and be angry about, and more and more that dialogue is being commandeered by people with radical opinions. Young Canadians walk a tightrope. We want to criticize and dismantle the bad things in Canadian society, but many of us also want to celebrate and enjoy this country.
The wonderfully funny Canada 151 by Toronto’s sketch comedy group Not Oasis seems full of people trying to walk that line. There is a lot to mock about Canada, and the witty Not Oasis do, but there are lots of fine things too. Maybe even things we can simply, uncritically, enjoy. And for your information, Canada 151 falls into that group.
Not Oasis are seven talented young people who understand Canada and comedy. The title lets us know that this is a sketch show about Canada, and it kicks off with a fun, enjoyable musical number that raises questions that hit really close to home on the Canadian psyche, and maybe even more, the millennial Canadian psyche: how can we feel so much shame and so much pride in our country at the same time? And how can we all lust after and loathe Justin Trudeau so much at once? As these hilarious sketches unfold, we realize that Canadians are tugging themselves in two different directions.
The show features about a dozen sketches, ranging in length. Not all of them deal with Canadian issues, but they all revolve around the weird struggles of young people still trying to figure out life—from fitness classes led by a man who sold Facebook users data to a jokey musical number about a quarter-life crisis and how it really doesn’t get better to freaking out after eating expired yoghurt. (Actually though, how much is an expiration date just a guideline?) Most of them touch on some aspect of Canadian society, though, from the uproarious skit about a rich liberal couple who adopt a refugee family fleeing Trump’s America to a rather serious skit about growing up Bangladeshi in Canada and feeling like you don’t belong in either group. Even the sketch about Snow White being dragged off by a bear feels pretty Canadian—our great nature isn’t always cute bunnies and songbirds.
Canada 151 is, in short, a hilarious set of sketches about being a young person in today’s world. From Canadian commentary to Millennial commentary, Not Oasis touches on it all.