Tales of Kids in the Hall Monitors : Television: CBS and the Canadian comedy troupe, whose show airs Fridays, sometimes disagree over the group’s ribald, risque humor.

Canadian Scott Thompson, who calls himself network television’s only openly gay actor, was expressing his comic confusion over why homosexuals are not allowed to serve in the American military.

“Don’t they realize that by letting homosexuals serve in the Army they’re more likely to get killed? That’s the upside,” says Thomas, one of the five men in the Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, which has a sketch comedy series airing late Friday nights on CBS.

“They can let them die in battle,” Thompson explained. “They can send gay battalions on suicide missions.”

Given that sense of humor, shared by all five Kids in the Hall, many people were surprised last September when CBS began airing reruns of “The Kids in the Hall,” a TV series that originated four years ago on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and was later picked up in even rawer form by Home Box Office.

The initial batch of shows turned out to be edited versions of the CBC broadcasts, so the question of how much of the Kids’ ribald, risque humor would make it into the 22 original half-hour episodes that CBS ordered was put off--until this week. They begin airing Friday.

Troupe member Kevin McDonald said in a phone interview from Canada that the relationship with CBS is better than he expected, but skirmishes have been breaking out over some material.

“The things that we’re losing are sort of heartbreaking,” he said. “We think they’re hilarious. We’re sort of innocent morons. We can’t see why anyone would disapprove of these things. The criticism always hits you sideways. You never know what it’s going to be. Sometimes it’s a drug reference, sometimes it’s words they’re not happy with.”

In many ways, the Kids’ problems stem from a clash of culture. Johnson said that while most Americans believe that Canadian culture is their culture, in reality Canada is much more laid-back and tolerant. Standards are so loose at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that the Kids in the Hall members are now debating which one of them will be the first to try to use the “f word” in a CBC broadcast this year.

In contrast, the five Canadians--in their late 20s and early 30s--are finding the American network system a bit more frustrating. In one new sketch the group is now fighting with CBS executives for the right to air, Mark McKinney plays an over-the-top racist who gets his comeuppance at the end of the scene.

“To destroy him we have to portray him,” McDonald said. “So there’s a few racist words. . . . I understand why they object. But we’re saying the words to destroy the kind of people who use them. Hence we think it’s valid. They have their points, we have our points--may the best man win.”

Thompson feels that CBS has the biggest problems with two issues: sexuality and religion. “I’m a little surprised at how square network television is,” Thompson said. “Just because the TV is square doesn’t mean that what comes out of out of it has to be.”

From CBS’ point of view, “there are no problems,” said Rod Perth, chief of late-night programming for the network. “We knew going in with the Kids that we would be pushed by our own sort of self-imposed constraints, and there were obviously going to be some contradictions at times with the highly developed point of view in their comedy.

“But, I can honestly say, there have been virtually only a couple of times when we really had any considerable debate over things. Because I have internally pushed hard to conserve the integrity and the essence of their comedy. We had to bleep out certain swear words, but that doesn’t detract from or reduce their comedy in the least.”

Most of the material in question appears to be from several cherished sketches from the 66 episodes that already exist. After airing an original episode Fridays at 12:30 a.m., CBS will continue to rerun earlier episodes to create an hourlong “Kids in the Hall” block.

Thompson, the only cast member to take his concerns straight to CBS executives, described one 2-year-old skit that the network will not air involving a gay character with AIDS.

The character, a hunky cop who lives his life as a straight man, denying his homosexuality, finally succumbs to the AIDS virus. At the end of the scene, when two mourners standing over his coffin comment that they heard he had died of AIDS, the corpse mutters under his breath: “No, it was cancer.”

“I think AIDS is on all of our minds, and in the end it’s a judgment call,” Perth said by way of explanation. “While their satire is cutting edge, that particular piece is one that we felt simply was not appropriate for network television.”

“The squeamishness from the network about AIDS is appalling, I think,” Thompson said. “Because everybody wants to put a polite face on things. AIDS is not polite. It’s not pretty. The comedy that comes out is not going to be pretty--it’s going to be damn dark. And who better to talk about this than me, a gay person?

“Basically, I think the network has problems with material that relates to AIDS. And in a misguided attempt to protect gay people, maybe, they’re sort of squashing me, and that’s disturbing.”

On the religious front, sources on the show say that CBS will not air at least two sketches lampooning Jesus. One features the Crucifixion of Christ as told by Dr. Seuss, and the other suggests that Christ was not a very good carpenter because everything he made fell apart.

“This is the sort of territory that we explore quite ruthlessly,” Thompson said. “I was under the impression that we live in a secular society, but apparently we live in a Christian society. I didn’t know that. America seems to be a little more religious than Canada. We’re a little more heathen, I guess. Did you see the American Music Awards on TV? Every other winner thanked God on the air--even Bobby Brown thanked God.”

CBS is not paying as much money for “Kids in the Hall” as it might for a similar comedy program made in America. The series is a co-production shot in Canada using CBC facilities, and costs are further defrayed by the basic-cable channel Comedy Central, which will run the new episodes after they air on CBS.

But CBS executives are still taking special interest in the Kids, who were imported to America by “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels, a fellow Canadian. It has been suggested that CBS is looking for a late-night comedy franchise on Fridays similar to “Saturday Night Live” on NBC.

“CBS has been more hands-on (than HBO),” McDonald said. “But it seems like they honestly care. They have a plan, how they’re going to market us, and they think about us. It’s amazing to me that they have meetings about us. I thought it would be horrifying that they’d have a guy here, over our shoulders. But they come down to our tapings and they actually laugh. These people laugh.”