Back to the closet

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Broken / Dim the Lights / Music / Comedy Back to the closet

Posted By Miles Raymer on 03.21.12 at 05:00 PM

R. Kelly as Sylvester in Trapped in the Closet

R. Kelly as Sylvester in Trapped in the Closet

Lots of folks "enjoyed" Trapped in the Closet in a snarky, condescending way—which severely bums out the people who, despite the high likelihood that they hold a very negative view of the man himself, consider R. Kelly's catalog to be some of the best R&B music ever made. But I think everyone can agree that the wildly surreal, 22-part dramedy remains one of the weirdest—and thus most compelling—things to happen to pop music in the past couple decades. (And as a successful attempt to turn the public perception of Kelly from "guy who pees on underage girls" to "wacky conceptual stuntman," it's one of the all-time spin-control coups in public-relations history.) The IFC, which had a ratings bonanza with Closet, has announced that it will air 32 more episodes of the "hip-hopera," which is just an obscene amount of wish fulfillment for anyone who's wondered where R. Kelly would take his James-Joyce-on-bath-salts tale if given even more space than the already ludicrous first installment.

I spent an entire bus ride to the Genius Bar and back today pondering exactly that. Below the jump are some of my guesses. Note: though these are like 98 percent jokes, there's still part of me that wonders if, given an entire 32 more chapters, we might end up seeing at least one of these.

—More midgets.

—More pies.

—An alien abduction sequence with jokes about anal probes and a guy making a goofy "oh no I'm getting anally probed" face.

—One chapter that's all product placement for Doritos Locos Tacos.

—A vicious wolverine interrupts the action. It removes its wolverine mask to reveal that it is actually a midget. It removes the midget mask to reveal that it is actually a vicious wolverine. It disembowels Rhonda, the 54-year-old woman who works at White Castle and has been taking night-school classes to earn her realtor's license.

—Sylvester (portrayed by R. Kelly) provides detailed instructions for adding a deck to your home.

—A midget is forced to perform enhanced interrogation techniques on another midget, who has information that's too important and time-sensitive to be extracted through traditional methods.

—One chapter that's all product placement for the tons of boxes of Best of Both Worlds CDs in R. Kelly's garage.

—Sylvester removes his overcoat to reveal that he's actually three very small midgets standing on one another's shoulders. One of them makes a fart joke.

Tags: R. Kelly, Trapped in the Closet, IFC, midgets, Doritos Locos Tacos, Image