Kroll Show's Pawnsylvania Celebrates One Of America's Most Distinctive Accents

I'm not going to sit here and act like Canadians don't talk funny; if you've ever heard the Extra Hot Great podcast, you've heard the weird southern Ontarian/Welsh mess coming out of my esteemed colleague David T. Cole. But I kid! My own hoser-y vowels assert themselves in unexpected ways that cannot be pleasant to listen to. (It's not quite Terrance and Phillip, or at least, not all the time.)

My point is that I have no real basis for criticizing the way anyone else talks, but here we are.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I had the balls to call bullshit on Buffalo natives Marc Evan Jackson and Christine Baranski for talking too fancy, in the course of which rant I had the further balls (so, a third and fourth ball, I guess) to cite a couple of American accents I find particularly objectionable: Long Island and south Philly. As to the former: I defy you to sit through twenty seconds of Bravo's Princesses: Long Island if it ever comes back without wanting to tear out all those monsters' tongues. As to the latter: this episode of Catfish was rendered even more uncomfortable to watch than the norm due to the client's sometimes incomprehensible Philadelphia accent, you noo?

Since my esteemed colleague Sarah D. Bunting has family in the area and does a good, affectionate rendition of the Philly accent, I have tried to put a lid on my criticism of it. But I am not responsible for the content of Kroll Show: my only job is to love it. AND I DO.

The whole episode is great, obviously -- you can't go wrong with Oh, Hello -- but I spent this half-hour drumming my fingers waiting for the show to return to Pawnsylvania. I loved that producers felt they needed to include a behind-the-scenes segment noting the fact that several of the show's performers and writers hail from the area, so that it could claim the very weird accent was based on real word pronunciations they've heard in their lives and that this whole thing (including selected subtitles) is not a hate crime. And oh my God, there's barely a word I wasn't delighted to hear. "Yinz"! "Double yoi"! "Stillers"!

Someone more knowledgeable will have to say if there are distinct Philadelphia and Pittsburgh accents that Nick Kroll and Jon Daly are, respectively, doing. But even if one or both of them is cheating, I don't care. The world needs to share my marvel at this incredibly weird accent. And if you talk this way, I'm sorry I ever made fun of you. Please come to my tun, visit me at my huss, and tell me all about your life in your own words.