Timing is, as they say in this business, everything. Which could work for or against the latest from Second City. Here we are just a few months after Wall Street burned to the ground, taking Bay Street and so many McMansions with it, and the more media-savvy among us are already looking askance at the dubious recession stories that glut our news and entertainment.

I think The Globe and Mail's recent piece about the recessionomics of comfort food might have been the last straw.

Yet, as no laughmonger has failed to point out, hard times can turn out to be high times for comedy — the Great Depression being the by-now too-frequent example. I suppose that means vaudeville will make a big comeback in 2010 if housing starts don't bounce back by the next quarter.

Second City's 0% Down 100% Screwed wisely opens with a nod to the over-coverage and dubious finger-pointing that has followed the meltdown, with the cast lined up as a chain gang, breaking rocks to the call-and-response rhythms of what I'll assume is called "Blame it on the Crisis." Murder? Testicular cancer? Having to move to Oshawa? It can all be pinned on the Fed.

But things go south after that, into a slump from which 0% Down never entirely recovers. The new show seems burdened by a deficit of imagination and by a number of sketches that — even on opening night, playing to a crowd well-stocked with Second City alums — overstayed their welcome.

Though his immense energy was in full force, Reid Janisse's bit as an overcharged American saddled with hosting a dull political show in Canada was, well, kinda dull once the flash and dazzle of his kinetics wore off. (To say nothing of that pixel board belt buckle — a nice touch, truth be told.) And yet it went on, into a repetitive and by-the-numbers beat-down of MPs from all five parties.

Likewise, new arrival Caitlin Howden made an inauspicious debut with a song made up of hockey players' names that seemed to cover the entire Eastern conference. And Leslie Seiler went on at some length in her solo turn as a suicidal senior put back to work at Wal-Mart.