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Thomas Lennon says 'Reno 911!' jokes based in facts

Left to right, Niecy Nash, Thomas Lennon, Mary Birdsong, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Wendi McLendon-Covey return in "Reno 911!" Photo courtesy of Quibi
1 of 4 | Left to right, Niecy Nash, Thomas Lennon, Mary Birdsong, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Wendi McLendon-Covey return in "Reno 911!" Photo courtesy of Quibi

LOS ANGELES, May 4 (UPI) -- The inept Reno, Nev., sheriff's department is back to bumble its way through a revival of Reno 911!, premiering Monday on Quibi. Thomas Lennon, who co-created the show and stars as Lt. Jim Dangle, said plot lines in the new series are based on real laws and events.

The original series ran from 2003 to 2009 on Comedy Central. The style is faux documentary, like the real police documentary series Cops, as cameras follow the Reno police on wacky misadventures.

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In one episode of the revival, the Reno police officers record a public service announcement saying that posting pornography involving an ex is a crime. The state of Nevada really passed a law outlawing "revenge porn" in 2015.

"I'll spend some time doing a little bit of research," Lennon told UPI in a phone interview. "Like, what's something we can do a PSA about that really feels grounded in a Nevada state thing? So absolutely that's true."

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Another episode has Deputy Clementine Johnson (Wendi McLendon-Covey) perform in a concealed carry fashion show. She's not undercover. She participates in the event, the likes of which also occur in the real world.

"I don't know if you've seen it, but there's fashion shows for women's fashion that you can carry guns under," Lennon said.

One place in Nevada that forbids open carry is the Hoover Dam, so Reno 911! based some jokes around that real-life law, too.

"We have a big piece about please don't open carry your weapons at the Hoover Dam," Lennon said. "It's a real thing."

The Reno 911! revival also addresses new developments in police work since the original series ended. One episode has a group of young videographers follow the Reno police. Lennon based that on the actual Copwatch activist movement that monitors police activity with video cameras.

Life imitated art when the cast of Reno 911! recorded a video for the real Santa Clarita Sheriff's Department about burglary prevention in February after filming the episode based on Copwatch.

"When we were there to go chat and talk to the people in charge, the actual Copwatch people were hanging around with their video camera," Lennon said. "The show kind of blurs into reality quite a bit."

Since 2009, incidents like the Trayvon Martin shooting and Ferguson, Mo., protests over Michael Brown's shooting illuminated issues that surround racial profiling and police violence. The Reno revival opens with African-American Deputy S. Jones (Cedric Yarbrough) responding to a call he believes is racial profiling. The comedic outcome proves him wrong.

Lennon said a future episode deals with police violence head-on. Instead of reducing police violence against African-American victims, the Reno officers decide they should increase violence against white victims to even things out.

"Ultimately, we get a character that we've had, Chris Tallman who plays Gary the Klansman, who's our local white supremacist," Lennon said. "We end up getting him to volunteer to try to be the white guy that we shoot."

Reno 911! was a half-hour comedy on Comedy Central. The cast reunited for a 90-minute movie, Reno 911! Miami, in 2007. Quibi episodes are no more than 10 minutes, and many Reno episodes are under seven.

"I mean this in a good way," Lennon said. "We're like a movie theater candy of a show. We're not supposed to be a meal. We're just supposed to be a weird little treat that gets you high just for a short couple of minutes."

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The cast of Reno 911! -- Lennon, McLendon-Covey and Yabrough, co-creator Robert Ben Garant, Niecy Nash and co-creator Kerri Kenney-Silver -- improvised their dialogue. They still improvise, but Lennon says they are more concise. Gone are the 40 minute improv sessions of the Comedy Central era.

"I don't know if it's the attention span or the new format or maybe because we're literally 20 years older than when we did the pilot," Lennon said.

"We don't improvise for nearly as long as we used to," he said. "The upside of that is I think we're getting more funny material because everybody has kind of honed their improv chops so much."

One thing that has not changed is the pair of short shorts that Lennon wears as Dangle. They have only become more snug in the decade since the Comedy Central series.

"When we shot the pilot, I think I was 29 and I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day," Lennon said. "So I didn't really eat any food very much, because I mostly was just living on nicotine. Now I'm 49 with a 10-year-old, and I just absolutely love Italian food. So yeah, to say that the shorts are a little more snug would be an enormous understatement."

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