criterionforum.org

I'm a huge fan of the Adult Swim stuff put out by Cartoon Network. Even though a lot of it is popular in fraternities, and therefore bad, I still laugh my head off at Family Guy (on DVD), Aquateen Hunger Force (on DVD, with very interesting extras/menus/package design), Harvey Birdman (coming soon to DVD), and a few others.

Mr Show is also a big favorite, and I aim to get Freaks and Geeks (if there's ever a decent sale on it) and The Office (neither of which I've seen, but have heard enough about to blind buy).

I'm a huge fan of the Adult Swim stuff put out by Cartoon Network. Even though a lot of it is popular in fraternities, and therefore bad, I still laugh my head off at Family Guy (on DVD), Aquateen Hunger Force (on DVD, with very interesting extras/menus/package design), Harvey Birdman (coming soon to DVD), and a few others.

Ditto, harri...in fact, it's really all the (pre-DVD) television watching I do nowadays. Family Guy has its moments, but I can't get my head around how completely derivitive it is of The Simpsons, right down to recycling some of its jokes; it's probably my least favorite. The rest of their line-up is drop-dead funny, and not counting some of HBO's line-up, is the funniest comedy being written for television. Aqua-Teen is also a favorite around here, but in a close second is the drastically underrated and deadpan Home Movies. I think their newer creation, The Venture Bros., is wonderfully cinematic and chock full of great film homages. IMO, it's the most entertaining, creative, and viewer-friendly television being made today.

Now, if they'd just bring back Space Ghost...

neuro wrote:Aqua-Teen is also a favorite around here, but in a close second is the drastically underrated and deadpan Home Movies. I think their newer creation, The Venture Bros., is wonderfully cinematic and chock full of great film homages. IMO, it's the most entertaining, creative, and viewer-friendly television being made today.

Yeah, I really like Home Movies, but it seems relatively inconsistent (when it's good it's drop dead hilarious though). Venture Bros. is a favorite, and out of the adult swim lineup it seems to be singularly developing some continuity. Every episode I've seen has had some kind of Bowie reference, which just makes me want to send money to someone and get the DVD already.

Birdman though... some of the best voice work in animation. How can you go wrong with Stephen Colbert and Gary Cole? You can't.

Birdman though... some of the best voice work in animation. How can you go wrong with Stephen Colbert and Gary Cole? You can't.

Oh, I totally agree. Tell that to my co-workers, who are entirely sick of me saying, "Multiple entendres!"

"Birdman! Good News!"

I love it. This new show Tom Goes To The Mayor seems like a comedy jackpot as well.

oldsheperd wrote:Harri, you can get the Freaks and Geeks series at DVDpacific for 28 bucks. I probably stand alone, but I'm totally hoping Roseanne makes it to dvd soon. By far my favorite show ever.

While I don't think I'd buy it, I agree that Roseanne was something very special. When I see it now I spend the whole time feeling profoundly small for hating it when I was a kid. Stupid, stupid viewer.

Also, add me to the list of Adult Swim obsessives. Home Movies is probably my favorite, inconsistent or not. I've also bought Space Ghost and Sealab 2021 and just started watching Venture Brothers, which has commenced rocking my world. Anything with Patrick Warburton's voice in it is a good bet.

Random fact: at a posh cocktail party in some fancypants country club in the mountains of North Carolina, I met the creator of Sealab 2021. He was deeply, deeply odd in the best possible way. Everyone else there was scared of him, but since I was scared of them, it worked out really well.

Could've used more cooks.

Jesus that was fucking terrible. The same people who thought Synecdoche New York was brilliant are prob jizzing all over this trash. It couldn't even be bothered to emulate any of things it is mocking/"shaking up" beyond the behavioral, when aesthetic recreation is prob the only thing this might have had going for it in the midst of all the po' man's po-mo

So, you didn't like it?

No go fo' sho

Domino is speaking of people like this

I'll go ahead and go against the grain and say I loved it. Certainly not something I'll watch again anytime soon, but exactly the sort of thing that should be on the air at 4 in the morning.

Bojack Horseman is a better skewering of the 80's sitcom, and it featured a rather fucked-up sequence of it's own in one of the episodes.

I don't think it's skewering or satirizing or deconstructing anything. I think the piece succeeds simply as a series of trap-doors constantly opening up on eachother. The benign sitcom credits simply provides a musical rhythm to the whole piece. Beyond that, it could arbitrarily be any piece of late night TV ephemera providing the framing.

I pretty much loved "Too Many Cooks," though the pacing felt off. It parodies and riffs on the credit sequence, probably the only element of the classic sitcom left that hasn't been singled out in a parody. Comparing 11-minute comedy video to a 2-hour dramatic film with satirical elements is overkill. Between that and last week's episode of John Oliver Tonight -- the best, most consistent one yet -- I had more hard laughs in one night than I've had in a while.

Thanks for sharing, Narrator Returns!

If you thought Too Many Cooks' premise had already been done, that's because it was already done (including the same punchline) over ten years ago

That one definitely has better "endearing character moments," though it's sorely lacking in people-credits screaming in agony.

I think Adult Swin is extremely hit-or-miss but I'm not ashamed to say I love this. I've watched it at least ten times now, and I find it strangely hypnotic. Also, the aforementioned people-credits screaming, plus Smarf the cat (?) puppet-thing dragging his bloodied self across the floor to the tune of an eerie, slowed-down version of the theme song, plus the endless 360° dinner-table pan, plus the out of nowhere but dead-on Law & Order parody replete with slo-o-o-w pan up from dead body to investigator who then is swiftly machete'd, plus the sheer weirdness of the sitcom living room being packed full with ALL of the previously-seen characters -- police, aliens, etc. -- just before the dad comes home at the end, plus the slasher-movie girl being found out in the closet because her credit is glowing... I can't stop laughing. And I hate Synecdoche New York, for the record.

I stand corrected. If I'd seen the Mad TV sketch first, it would've definitely dampened some of my enthusiasm. Though the squirm-inducement of the endless stream of credits and actors in "Cooks," before it morphs into a cop show (which got the biggest laugh from me) and the mayhem starts, exposes credit sequences in a more subtle and conceptual way.

Michael Sicinski gave a rundown of a (possible) avant-garde lineage for "Too Many Cooks" on Twitter.

I appreciate the link, Alex. This short may be both lighter in spirit and have a bit more on its mind formally than its detractors would admit . And I have to say I agree with oh yeah, Cold Bishop and the others who found "Too Many Cooks" funny and can't see the connection between its singularly strange, almost Bunuelian organizing principle of one seemingly random thing after another (tradeThe Phantom of Liberty's sniper for a slasher) -- all those defiant non-transition transitions -- and the pretentious heaviosity of the recursion in something like Synecdoche, New York. The Mad TV sketch is not bad, but it's very much a sketch -- a quick one-joke bit that would really have jumped flyonthewall's shark if it dared to keep going for two or three times as long without turning into something else.

I mostly liked the tracking static at the bottom of the frame throughout. And the insane moment of the reversal of the character names with the actual people themselves!

Being unfamiliar with the MadTV sketch, my first thought was to see Too Many Cooks as a considerably embellished take on Chris Elliott's Action Family, which starts off as a slightly off-kilter sitcom parody (Elliott's "wife" is old enough to be his mother; the teenaged daughter walks around the house nude) but turns into a hard-boiled crime show whenever it goes outside. It never gets so dark or weird, but the two strands eventually meet for a black-comic finale. Naturally it's on Youtube too.