So let's talk about Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming. No, not what they run now. What they ran in 2001...
7. Home Movies - This show originally aired on UPN before it was cancelled by them. Maybe it should have stayed cancelled. The animation was the same as the horrible Dr. Katz and it made everyone look like they were constantly having seizures. The only good thing I have to say about this show is that Coach McGuirk was voiced by H. Jon Benjamin who would go on to become Sterling Archer.
6. The Brak Show - The Brak Show is a spin-off of the parody talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which is itself a spin-off of the original 1966 Space Ghost TV series. Yet rather than being a talk show parody, this one was a 1950's sitcom parody. Was anybody really begging for a 1950's sitcom parody? Look, the show was funny and all... but this might have just been one spin-off too far. I don't even remember too much of it other than Brak's Killbot neighbor, Thundercleese.
5. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law - Early Adult Swim was really obsessed with taking old, forgotten Hannah-Barbera properties that nobody really liked and "refreshing" them with crazy new twists. In this twist, they took an old boring superhero and made him a lawyer (as you can guess by the name). Harvey Birdman did have a number of hilarious episodes, but overall this just wasn't as good as the similarly absurdist Space Ghost or Sealab reboots. Points for having Gary Cole and Steven Colbert as the main voice talents here though.
4. Space Ghost Coast to Coast - SGC2C is the mother of Adult Swim. There would be no Adult Swim without Space Ghost. It actually predated Adult Swim by many, many years as the first truly original Cartoon Network-created content and helped to launch many of the other original Adult Swim shows that would come. While the Brak Show is an obvious descendant of Space Ghost due to its use of many of the same characters - even other shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force had their roots with Space Ghost (proto versions of the characters came from the "Baffler Meal" episode). In this show, former (presumably dead?) Superhero Space Ghost now interviews celebrities as a talk show host. The great thing about this is that he actually interviewed real celebrities like they were going on the Tonight Show or something. The even greater thing is that half the time the celebrities had no idea what the hell was going on or what their publicists got them into. Every once and a while the celebrities were young, cool or "hip" enough to be part of it and play along with the surrealist insanity -- but the show was always best when the celebrity was like a deer in headlights.
3. Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Speaking of surrealist and absurdist, this show was completely bat-shit insane. It's about living collection of french fries, a shake and a ball of meat who sit around and do absolutely nothing but annoy their neighbor Carl and everyone else around them. It was so much more "a show about nothing" than Seinfeld was. Although they are a "Force," they aren't a force that seems to do anything but bicker at each other and occasionally be cursed by mummies or fight moon men. Still, this was the only one of the Adult Swim shows that was able to transfer from TV to a feature length film (admittedly, nobody actually saw that film and it wasn't that good).
2. Cowboy Bebop - Cowboy Bebop is unlike the other Adult Swim shows in that it wasn't original programming produced just for the block, but instead the English-language dub of the 1998 Japanese anime series KaubÅi Bibappu. It also wasn't primarily a "comedy" like the other shows were - but a futuristic space action/drama. Still, different as it is was it was still thrown up (at the midnight hour, if I recall correctly) as part of the bloc of shows. The show follows the lives of space bounty hunters on a spaceship called "Bebop," is set to great bluesy music, and explores philosophical concepts including existentialism, existential ennui, and loneliness.
1. Sealab 2021 - The idea of taking an old, mediocre animated show with no apparent value (in this case, the highly forgettable and boring Sealab 2020, a 1970s show about environmentalism) and re-hashing it as an absurd comedy was already old hat by the time Sealab 2021 debuted in 2001. This was already what Space Ghost C2C was all about. But, in my humble opinion, none of the shows ever quite brought the ludicrous, surrealist, satirical insanity that Sealab 2021 did. In the case of this show, it's almost based along the premise that about one year after the events of the original show - the crew had been living underwater in their habitat and had gone completely insane. Although to say the show had any "premise" at all is an overstatement since the episodes hardly ever had any narrative consistency, story arcs or connection to one another. Characters were brutally killed off and the entire lab itself was completely blown up several times - only to be completely forgotten about or ignored in following episodes. This show could have gone forever as one of the greatest and funniest absurd things ever. Alas, the voice actor who played the main character, Captain Hank Murphy (Harry Goz) died in 2003 and attempts to keep the show going without him quickly unraveled as he was the most hilarious part and the glue that held the whole thing together.
7. Home Movies - This show originally aired on UPN before it was cancelled by them. Maybe it should have stayed cancelled. The animation was the same as the horrible Dr. Katz and it made everyone look like they were constantly having seizures. The only good thing I have to say about this show is that Coach McGuirk was voiced by H. Jon Benjamin who would go on to become Sterling Archer.
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| Three hams will fill him, three hams will thrill him. |
5. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law - Early Adult Swim was really obsessed with taking old, forgotten Hannah-Barbera properties that nobody really liked and "refreshing" them with crazy new twists. In this twist, they took an old boring superhero and made him a lawyer (as you can guess by the name). Harvey Birdman did have a number of hilarious episodes, but overall this just wasn't as good as the similarly absurdist Space Ghost or Sealab reboots. Points for having Gary Cole and Steven Colbert as the main voice talents here though.
4. Space Ghost Coast to Coast - SGC2C is the mother of Adult Swim. There would be no Adult Swim without Space Ghost. It actually predated Adult Swim by many, many years as the first truly original Cartoon Network-created content and helped to launch many of the other original Adult Swim shows that would come. While the Brak Show is an obvious descendant of Space Ghost due to its use of many of the same characters - even other shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force had their roots with Space Ghost (proto versions of the characters came from the "Baffler Meal" episode). In this show, former (presumably dead?) Superhero Space Ghost now interviews celebrities as a talk show host. The great thing about this is that he actually interviewed real celebrities like they were going on the Tonight Show or something. The even greater thing is that half the time the celebrities had no idea what the hell was going on or what their publicists got them into. Every once and a while the celebrities were young, cool or "hip" enough to be part of it and play along with the surrealist insanity -- but the show was always best when the celebrity was like a deer in headlights.
3. Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Speaking of surrealist and absurdist, this show was completely bat-shit insane. It's about living collection of french fries, a shake and a ball of meat who sit around and do absolutely nothing but annoy their neighbor Carl and everyone else around them. It was so much more "a show about nothing" than Seinfeld was. Although they are a "Force," they aren't a force that seems to do anything but bicker at each other and occasionally be cursed by mummies or fight moon men. Still, this was the only one of the Adult Swim shows that was able to transfer from TV to a feature length film (admittedly, nobody actually saw that film and it wasn't that good).
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| Bang. |
1. Sealab 2021 - The idea of taking an old, mediocre animated show with no apparent value (in this case, the highly forgettable and boring Sealab 2020, a 1970s show about environmentalism) and re-hashing it as an absurd comedy was already old hat by the time Sealab 2021 debuted in 2001. This was already what Space Ghost C2C was all about. But, in my humble opinion, none of the shows ever quite brought the ludicrous, surrealist, satirical insanity that Sealab 2021 did. In the case of this show, it's almost based along the premise that about one year after the events of the original show - the crew had been living underwater in their habitat and had gone completely insane. Although to say the show had any "premise" at all is an overstatement since the episodes hardly ever had any narrative consistency, story arcs or connection to one another. Characters were brutally killed off and the entire lab itself was completely blown up several times - only to be completely forgotten about or ignored in following episodes. This show could have gone forever as one of the greatest and funniest absurd things ever. Alas, the voice actor who played the main character, Captain Hank Murphy (Harry Goz) died in 2003 and attempts to keep the show going without him quickly unraveled as he was the most hilarious part and the glue that held the whole thing together.
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| Daddy needs his feel-good juice. |
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