Dave Foley

Dave Foley worked The Kids in the Hall as 1980s catalog anarchism: CBC/HBO night-owl weirdness, grotesque and queer turns American network sketch would not mail. Troupe as a language. Foley is one of the faces that made cheap-looking brilliance feel expensive in the head.

Foley does not need a clip package: The Kids in the Hall is 1980s weather, and a new viewer should not skip. The catalog still points at s01e01: #101 is CBC/HBO night one: Head Crusher and Chicken Lady not yet folklore, drag bits without a permission slip, weirdness as language. CBC/HBO/CBS ran it 1988–1995; Foley is why the run still has a person in the frame.

NewsRadio later parked him in a station that treated farce like jazz — overlapping bits, dead-air panic, Phil Hartman’s velvet in the orbit, an ensemble that would rather be weird than warm. On TV Flash Foley is 1980s/1990s craft — the Hall as the named weather, WNYX as the encore, still the reason a sketch and a newsroom share a blink.

Second climate for Foley: NewsRadio. Dave Foley clocks in as Dave Nelson. Start that title at s01e01 — Phil Hartman's velvet deadpan in a radio station that would rather be weird than warm — workplace farce as jazz. s03e01 still shows a later grip: President: overlapping bits at full swing, corporate idiocy still the playlist, ensemble already a band. Foley does not visit this floor; he works it. s02e01 on The Kids in the Hall remains a useful hour: #201 is season two's numbered open: short-form anarchy with long aftertaste, night-owl cult already forming.