Скачать или смотреть Вечерний Квартал/Evening Kvartal - 03/11/2007 - The Ca-don't Corps

This sketch seems to have been a victim of 'mixed-drafts' syndrome. Pikalov and Lapukhin introduce it as "Cokety" (Coquets) instead of "Kadety" (Cadets); however, the word used in the sketch itself is "kabzdety". That weird neologism derives from a slang term "kabzdetz", which is a very elaborate way of saying "total disaster". Something like "yikes on bikes" meets "SNAFU".

This term absolutely defies translation - I invite any Russian-speaker here to prove me wrong, because I tried. Lordy how I tried.

It's equally unclear (perhaps because we are so far removed in time from the actual series being parodied) whether the cadets in question are supposed to be gay (contradicted immediately by the discovery of a girl in the barracks), metrosexual, or just self-involved spoiled candyasses who are so into themselves no one else seems datable. I incline to the third option.

Other notes:

Yuri Krapov, who plays the long-suffering officer trying to mold these cadon'ts into something useful to the army, is in fact a graduate of the very military academy that is being parodied (Suvorovskoe uchilische), which had a Krivyj Ryh branch. Apparently, he finished it with top honors, but then decided army life was not for him.

This seems to be the first instance of a Kvartal sketch where Ze and Zheka play up romantic attraction as two men. Before that, their 'couple' sketches usually involved Zheka in very specific drag parodying Katya Pushkareva from the then-popular show "Not Born Beautiful".

the girls they dance with in the end are supposed to symbolize their white horses on parade. In Russian, a tall girl is often called a horse, or a draft horse. It's a sort of complisult, complimenting a woman's height at the expense of her (more sexually desirable) femininity.

I am like 85% sure Zheka brought that chihuahua from home