Key And Peele's "Mr. T PSA" sees the icon warn children about the dangers of making fun of... well, Mr. T. While not every Key And Peele sketch was a classic, they had a habit of producing fantastic skits. Even now it's easy to fall into a trap of watching one sketch and then wasting an hour revisiting their best videos. Some classics include The Shining-inspired "Continental Breakfast," "The Hollywood Sequel Doctor Tackles Gremlins 2" and "Nooice."
Key And Peele ran between 2012 and 2015 and the careers of the title duo have since gone in very interesting directions. Keegan-Michael Key has cropped up in the likes of The Predator and Friends From College while Jordan Peele famously swerved into becoming a horror icon, thanks to writing and directing Get Out and Us; he's also the producer behind the upcoming Candyman legacy sequel.
Mr. T became an instant pop culture icon in the early 1980s after playing Clubber Lang in sequel Rocky III. He quickly followed up with a lead role in action series The A-Team where he played B.A. Baracus, with the character emerging as a fan favorite. In the middle of this period, he appeared in motivation video Be Somebody... Or Be Somebody's Fool! This was intended to teach children good moral values like honoring their mother and to not bully others, but while the message of the video is a positive one, it hasn't aged very well and is somewhat easy to parody nowadays.
A case in point would be Key And Peele's "Mr. T PSA," which seems to be a direct skit of Be Somebody... Or Be Somebody's Fool! This PSA casts Key as a young boy and Kate Micucci as his friend Scout, who are taught valuable life lessons from Peele's Mr. T. The problem is that Mr. T is very selective about the lessons he imparts, as they only seem to be ones that apply to him personally. So when the two youngsters talk about drinking alcohol or getting into a strangers' van nothing happens, but when they make fun of each other's names or hairstyles, that's when he pops in with oddly personal advice.
On the hair issue, he appears before Key's young boy and proclaims "A person's hair is the artwork they present to the heavens!" before launching into a song about hair and the mean comments he's received about his, which is apparently a rare form of male pattern baldness. While Key And Peele's "Mr. PSA" isn't the show's strongest skit it's still a great one. From the grainy VHS look, Peele's perfect impression of Mr. T and the fantastically tuneless "Hair" song, its an example of the duo taking a niche topic and mining comic gold from it.