Animation
Mar092005
Filed Under Animation
A while back I boggled at the possibilities of an Animated show featuring radio genius Phil Hendrie and Sarah Silverman. I recently downloaded the pilot (at least the part that was animated) via BitTorrent through MySpleen.
First off, it looks amazing. The animation style is incredibly charming. Sadly, only the first act was fully produced, obviously as a test to see if Fox would go further. The rest of the episode is available as audio only. As for the plot, though it covers pretty average sitcom territory for Phil’s home life (a stepdad dealing with kids not his own), it does a great job integrating Phil’s radio characters into the story and the outrageous conversations that they have with live callers. If you get a chance, download it. Or better yet, subscribe to Phil Hendire’s site, where you get it, his NBC pilot and access to a massive archive of his radio shows. Really worth the $6.95 a month.
Mar022005
Filed Under Animation
Caught two episodes of Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken. It’s pretty uneven and for a show that’s less than 15 minutes, it still has sketches that can’t sustain their length (a sketch where a cybernetic Walt Disney wants to consume Elian Gonzalez seemed particularly directionless).
However, the abbreviated runtime allows you to see how unnecessary some set-ups are. One sketch from the first episode is X-Span, crossing TRL with C-Span with all the wonkiness of policy discussions and all the screaming and “woo!"-ing of celeb-obsessed teens. If it was a sketch on SNL and MAD-TV, you might have the announcement of “You’re watching X-Span” right up front to announce to a viewer right away “We’re crossing there two things - jokes to follow.” It’s done to make sure everybody is following along.
Instead, because Robot Chicken is cramming in material here, they just get right into it. A senator action figure talks for a little bit and a little window pops up of a teen praising the senator a la MTV. You’re in the joke right away, rather than being set up for it. Very nice. Right now, I read that they’re packing 20 sketches into what runs about 11 minutes plus change. However, I’d love to see them double the sketches. Ramp it up and cut out every extraneous detail possible. Make it a show you have to pause your TiVo to get every joke. The show already courts a geek audience with Cylons, Voltron and other artifacts of childhoods spent too much indoors. You don’t need to lead these people by the nose to get references. And if they don’t get one, they’re gonna look it up. Even if the sketches stayed uneven, the short ones will go by so fast, all viewers would remember is the hits. I really believe the Adult Swim audience would reward such a gambit.
Jan272005
Filed Under Animation
The Onion’s AV Club features an interview with “Family Guy” and “American Dad” creator Seth McFarlane, which he asserts among other things, that the “Simpsons’ staff hates Family Guy.” Just to make sure he wasn’t exaggerating, I typed the phrase into Google, and voila. He’s right. Cited as a reason is “Family Guy” dad Peter looking like Hank Hill ate Homer, implying there’s more than a few coincidental similarities.
I don’t think “Family Guy” took anything from “Simpsons” but lessons on how to do an animated show (and it still took them a little while to figure that out). But anyone who suspects Seth and the other “Family Guy” writers are ripping “The Simpsons” off, should check their blog chronicling the show’s return for any telltale signs like “Pitched story about how Peter originally acquired Brian at the dog track after losing family Xmas money. Went over big!”
Jan112005
Filed Under Animation
Always heartening to see the culture war has more factions than red & blue. After a family watchdog group denounced South Park for an episode featuring one particularly extreme denouement, conservative blogger Tom Meyer gave the context for the scene.
Sure, Mr. Slave inserts Paris Hilton into his anus, but why he does it is to show that worshiping “stupid spoiled whores” is a bad thing. Mr. Slave condemns his own actions immediately after. Meyer points out that South Park is really a standard barer for strong families and communities. It good to see people get that comedy isn’t anti-family, even if the funny stuff isn’t family friendly. Besides, if we treat everyone in our culture like children, how are we going to have any good adults? Satire is a tonic for extreme parts of our culture, even when it’s extreme itself.
Dec242004
Filed Under Animation
Matt Groening has asked Ricky Gervais of “The Office” to not only add a voice to a “Simpsons” episode, but also a script. Gervais is, of course, embarrassed and flattered, commenting: “The Simpsons is the greatest TV show of all time. I can only make it slightly worse.” Can’t wait to see what he does with the show. Of course, we’ll have to, since with animation it’ll probably take until 2006 to make it to air.
Sep232004
Filed Under Animation
A short time ago, Todd of OddTodd.com announced that the Comedy Central version of his unemployed adventures would not see the light of day. He described himself as “OK” with the whole thing, since the show really wasn’t what he wanted nor what Comedy Central wanted. No hard feelings. So what happened?
OddTodd recently gave a more satirical Flash cartoon account of his development experiences which seems to put the blame on another producer who moved the show into a traditional sitcom style… wacky neighbors, angry landlord and all. The show that came out of the collaboration is stiltedly reenacted with a dumb laugh track inserted so you know where to groan. Todd states he didn’t even like his own show. But still no hard feelings at Hollywood execs, though the translation of “very promising” is rather amusing ("Pack your shit and go").
Sep032004
Filed Under Animation
Caught Father of the Pride. Nothing really funny about it, sad to say.
Father looks amazing. Dazzling animation doesn’t make for good jokes. The camera and animators often get in the way of the humor. One joke where an overly-cute panda takes a seat on the lead’s lap rather than a chair is shot as a close-up, making it impossible to tell what just happened, killing the gag. Sure the fur effects look fantastic, but if the show was funny, I wouldn’t be noticing how nice everything looked. I’d be laughing.
Much has been made about it being an “adult” show, with references to virgins, bestiality and the like. I could care less if kids get corrupted by the show, because jokes like “It may be 9 o’clock in New York but here it’s Mountain time” aren’t “adult,” they’re immature. Kids already make jokes like these, with only slightly less wit. You can usually determine the trailblazing shows from the followers by what they consider adult humor. Sex jokes are great, but without the social and political satire that other highly sexual shows like South Park, Seinfeld and The Office (among many) also aspire to, you look like a giggling adolescent. (To Father’s credit there’s one New Yorker reference, reflecting a well-read giggling adolescent.) Sex isn’t everything about being an adult and definitely not the only way to appeal to them.
The animation, the sex jokes and setting are just camoflague for the same old shit: bumbling husband, put-upon wife, cranky father-in-law, rebellious cubs. When you’re working in territory this well-tread, you’re not allowed to make fun of Billy Joel being bland. I can’t imagine Father of the Pride will last long. At it’s core, we’ve already seen it before several times on Nick at Nite. And done better.
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