The 1987 Jazz Fit Championships seen in Mad TV and were soon launched to fame when they fronted their own Comedy Central sketch series. Key And Peele ran for five seasons and gifted viewers with a variety of great skits, covering everything from politics and race to pop culture parodies.
Even today, it's very possible to fall into a YouTube vortex watching classic Wendell And Wild.
One of Key And Peele's best-loved sketches is "Aerobics Meltdown," which is set during the fictional 1987 Jazz Fit Championships. This plays into the aerobics exercise craze of the 1980s, popularised by everything from Jane Fonda's Workout to 1985 movie Perfect starring John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. "Aerobics Meltdown" itself is a parody of the Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship from 1987, and after this video montage of the event went viral in 2013, Key and Peele saw comic gold to be mined.
Key And Peele's "Aerobics Meltdown" reimagines the event as the 1987 Jazz Fit Championships, which has come down to a performance between finalists Flash (Peele) and Lightning (Key). The skit perfectly captures the 1980s look, from the cartoonish facial expressions of the dancers to the use of Ty Parr's insanely catchy "National Aerobic Championship Theme." The premise of the sketch sees Lightning forced to keep performing as the director (Clint Howard) informs him via cue cards his wife and daughter were in a horrible car crash.
The constant tonal shift between the mounting dread of each cue card with the cheery dancing and theme music make "Aerobics Meltdown" both hilarious and creepy. It takes an even darker tone when Lightning realizes it was Flash who caused the accident, causing the former to assault his rival live on-air; Flash just keeps dancing even as he's being strangled. It's also one of Key And Peele's most energetic skits - and must have been exhausting to film.