found online regarding this: “Welcome to the Second City Archives, in which we post an exclusive clip each week of some of comedy’s biggest superstars performing early in their careers on the legendary Chicago stage. Second City has generously given us a glimpse into their extensive archive of live performances, and over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some rare and retro comedy never before seen on the web. This week’s unearthed Second City sketch comes from the famous 1995 revue Piñata Full of Bees. Widely regarded as the show that broke the traditional Second City revue mold, Piñata starred Adam McKay, Scott Adsit, Rachel Dratch, Scott Allman, Jenna Jolovitz, and Jon Glaser before they hit it big; it took place the same year McKay landed a writing job on SNL. In the above sketch “Gump,” McKay plays a company’s personnel manager who calls in the VP (Adsit) to give him the unfortunate results of his IQ test, only to get some unfortunate news from the VP in return.”

This is so interesting! It seems to be a piece of history making, groundbreaking comedy. Here is something else I found online in a forum: Q: I've always heard that Pinata Full of Bees was this revolutionary show. In The Art of Chicago Improv: Short Cuts to Long-Form Improvisation by Rob Kozlowski, he calls it "the show that changed everything" What was it, why was it so important, does anyone have a tape? A: I think anyone who had seen a couple Second City reviews before Pinata would agree that Pinata changed a lot of things at Second City. Before that show, all the reviews followed a pretty clear formula. The show would open and close with a big musical number and the sketches in between would tend to fall into neat categories. You had to have at least a few blackouts (one joke short scenes). Every review seemed to have a sketch that took place at Wrigley Field. You would have two person scenes and some group scenes. You might have one or two runners which returned a couple of times through the show. Every scene was edited by a blackout on the stage and I think a musical interlude provided by the keyboard player. There wasn't ever a real theme to the show, they were always just a collection of the best scenes they could come up with. And the title was always a pun based off a famous play, book or song title, and usually had little if anything to do with the content of the show. Pinata broke all of those rules. First off the scenes were interconnected, meaning a lot of characters and ideas not only came back, but entered each others second or third beats. There was no conventional opening and closing song. Most of the music was not from the keyboard but from clips from actual songs much like the sharp, hard musical bridges that most sketch shows use at the UCB. There were no blackouts. The players changed costumes and move chairs and props in full view of the audience. There was an overall theme to the show and the title was not a pun, but a reference to an actual monologue from the show. It was very consciously like a Harold and looked a lot like the first couple of sketch shows that the UCB put together. This was no accident, since one of the driving forces behind that show was Adam McKay, who had been in many of the early UCB shows and played with Besser and Ian in the Family, the long-running house team from ImprovOlympic. It was his first and last Second City review, since he became a writer for SNL in the middle of that run. For me it was like night and day. Before Pinata, I really had little interest in Second City. Sometimes the reviews would have funny sketches or performances, but the format had always seemed very tired to me. Coming from a theatre background, I was always frustrated that they didn't do more to create a show with a cohesive feeling to it. It was just a collection of sketches. And there was no edge to be seen, the shows catered to a soft suburban and tourist mentality. They weren't challenging in any way--which is sad when you think of the roots in political satire that Second City had in it's early years. Anyway, after that point, the shows in general were far more interesting than they had been. Mick Napier from the Annoyance directed 3 of the next 4 shows I think, and they were all very interesting. In each one they experimented with different things. He inserted some actual improv into the shows (not just the after show improv set). They put time into the sets, the design and the overall idea of each show. It was a huge change going to see a Second City review and not to be sure what was going to happen next. Some of that old format started to creep back into subsequent reviews. I haven't seen one in 5 years, so I don't know what they are like anymore. But for a time at least, there was a real sense that you could try new things and that all the rules could be broken. I'd be interested to know if that has changed much. It also should be noted that it broke one more rule. For many years, each cast of 6 players always included 2 and only 2 women. When Scott Glasier left the cast to write for Conan, he was replaced by Tina Fey, making the cast 3 and 3. She played all of his roles as written. I'm not sure if they stuck with that, but all the reviews I saw after that had a cast of 3 and 3.

Do you have the Earl Camembert episode where he takes a girl on vacation to the Caribbean and Floyd calls her a floosy? 😂

Review from the Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1995. IN `PINATA,' TROUPE TAKES DARING STEP, BREAKS OUT OF SECOND CITY MOLD By Sid Smith and Tribune Arts Critic The intrepid sextet starring in "Pinata Full of Bees" do the unthinkable: They monkey with Second City's format. Instead of the reassuring parade of clearly defined skits, instead of the mythic space empty but for chairs and a few holes in the back wall, "Pinata," the troupe's 80th revue, boasts novelistic interplay among its bits, which keep resurfacing like characters in Lily Tomlin's one-woman shows. The stage, too, is cluttered with detritus-antler ears, a hanging helmet, guitars and overcoats dangling from cloakroom pegs. Most of what goes on is standard trickery in modern comedy and theater elsewhere, fey experiments now commonplace in off-Broadway drama or Annoyance Theatre improvisation. But to see it all incorporated into Second City's normally rigid ritual has the effect of making both the troupe and the shtick seem new. The whole revue is fresher, feistier, more invigorating and scarier-a leap forward in style that manages miraculously to breathe new life into some of the troupe's cherished themes from the past. Liberal academia gets a classic swipe, thanks to an ongoing bit involving Noam Chomsky as a substitute teacher. The finale, effective in part because of the buildup of comic energy that precedes it, is an excoriating diatribe against suburban complacency and contemporary ticky-tack: "Cable TV is still TV," Scott Allman screeches as a nude Napervillian who climbs atop the Water Tower in an act of cultural revolution. God as an office temporary, Rush Limbaugh, casinos, the '50s and AA constitute more traditional targets; a disabled basketball league, a homicidal ferret and an executive who's technically retarded (and given to similes such as "I could crush you like a cloud") are among the novelties. But the magic is in the sly marriage of Beatnik experiment with classic Second City satire. Rock 'n' roll guitar riffs and bongo drums supplement the usual piano; dark, dark subject matter-cruelty, disability and frightful loneliness-are handled adroitly enough to both walk the fine line of good taste and black comedy and yet draw hearty laughs. Tireless onstage comics don't hurt, either. Enthusiasts won't want to miss Allman's finish, funny enough to bring forth tears of laughter and true enough to bring forth the other kind. Another veteran, Jenna Jolovitz, hits pay dirt with her creepy, inventive characterization of an aging, one-time ice skater. Scott Adsit, Jon Glaser, Adam McKay and Rachel Dratch complete this unusual, memorable ensemble.