Review: Steve Lemme & Kevin Heffernan, “The Potential Farewell Tour”

Spoiler alert: Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan aren’t leaving comedy anytime soon.

In fact, they co-star in a brand-new truTV comedy series premiering this March, Tacoma FD. Roll the clip.

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that when Lemme and Heffernan went on tour together to record last year’s “Potential Farewell Tour,” that the potential was far greater than it is now. This was the second tour for the duo (they also produced a full Broken Lizard live show years before that).

The duo’s previous special landed on Comedy Central. This time around, they’re selling it everywhere first via Comedy Dynamics.

Their first 10 minutes together onstage is mostly just for jabbing each other, as they pop-quiz their audience as to which one of them may be wearing Spanx, which one pees sitting down, and more. All of which leads to a perhaps inevitable beer-chugging contest.

Then they take turns with solo monologues onstage. Heffernan’s turn pokes fun at his weight, and how having kids now makes him unable to show them any of his movies. Of one infamous scene, he observes in retrospect: “I don’t know when that becomes age appropriate.” Lemme jokes about how having an older Argentinian father meant he got away with watching lots of naughty movies and magazines as a kid. And he tells a legitimately funny story about just how old and stubborn his father has become now, no matter what he gets served for breakfast.

But this special really only plays to an audience of loyal fans who have watched their Broken Lizard movies already countless times, enough to know the stories they’re telling about making them and the inside jokes between the sketch comedy troupe’s members.

I recommend watching Super Troopers or Beerfest first.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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