Though it’s only early August, it already feels like summer’s ending.
If that makes you as sad as it makes the Watch With Us team, we’ve got the perfect TV (and movie) remedy — by watching the Wet Hot American Summer series on Netflix.
The two spinoff seasons of the cult classic movie are irreverent and ridiculous, combining tongue-in-cheek humor with over-the-top storytelling.
In the original movie, a character famously says, “It’s always fun to get away from camp, even for an hour.” Here’s why we think it’s always fun to go to Camp Firewood as often as possible.
‘Wet Hot American Summer’ Plays With Time — Just Not in a Sci-Fi Way
The original Wet Hot American Summer movie follows a group of counselors on their last day of the summer at Camp Firewood. The cast — a who’s who of future stars but relative unknowns at the time — were all in their late 20s and early 30s playing 16-year-olds, and that was definitely part of the joke. But when creators David Wain and Michael Showalter got the chance to return to the characters for a Netflix series, they leaned even harder into the ridiculous age discrepancy and made the first sequel series about the first day of camp, turning it into a prequel to the original movie.
That means actors like Amy Poehler, Ken Marino and Showalter himself are still playing the same teenagers while in their 40s and 50s — and it’s self-aware and silly in the most irreverent way possible.
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The second season of Wet Hot takes place 10 years later, meaning the characters are now mostly of an age-appropriate range. However, the time jump allows the series to parody the trends of the ’90s and feature wild cameos from real-life figures, including Ronald Reagan (Showalter) and George H. W. Bush (Michael Ian Black). The goofy time jumps are all part of the fun.
The Series Combines Comedy Veterans With Newcomers
In the original Wet Hot movie, cast members like Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks were rising stars rather than household names. The Wet Hot spinoffs combine the original cast of veteran comedic actors (like Janeane Garofalo, Joe Lo Truglio and Marguerite Moreau) with relative newcomers like Skyler Gisondo (who just appeared in Superman) and Maya Erskine (Pen15 and Blue Eye Samurai).
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The whole collection is a constant grab bag of comedy cameos, and every star of today and yesterday brings something unique and entertaining to their role.
The Plot of the Original Gets More Absurd With Every Installment
We definitely recommend watching Wet Hot American Summer in release order — start with the movie, then watch First Day of Camp, then Ten Years Later. (If you’re rewatching, maybe go in chronological order just to change things up.) What’s so entertaining about these spinoffs is that they each make the story of the original movie even more insane.
For example, First Day of Camp reveals that Banks’ character Lindsay was an undercover reporter all along — implying that in the original movie, she was actually a 20-something playing a 20-something playing a teenager. A monologue from Showalter about softball in the first movie is teed up perfectly in the prequel series.
Ten Years Later also builds off the original movie in equally nonsensical ways. The ending makes you wonder whether the whole thing was just a dream — but it also contrasts that interpretation many times over.
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Wet Hot American Summer doesn’t make sense, but it’s not supposed to. What it’s supposed to do is make you laugh — and if you like absurd, heightened humor, ridiculous numbers of cameos and exaggerated ’80s and ’90s nostalgia, it’ll do exactly that. Which brings up our final point:
‘Wet Hot American Summer’ Parodies Every Kind of Movie
Coming-of-age stories. Government conspiracies. Training montages. Rom-coms. Sci-fi, musicals, teen comedies, horror and more. Name any trope you can think of, and it’s going to get mocked mercilessly somewhere in this series. The Wet Hot trilogy isn’t just a spoof of summer camp movies — it’s a spoof of every genre there is, which is why we can’t get enough of it. And hopefully, neither will you.
Watch Wet Hot American Summer, WHAS: First Day of Camp, and WHAS: Ten Years Later on Netflix now.
