Adult Swim
Tad Ghostal, where are you?Does anyone at Adult Swim not have their head up their asses? Five years ago, it was just a late night Sunday lineup with Space Ghost: Coast to Coast a top billing at midnight, bracketed by Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman, The Brak Show, and Home Movies. That was some good shit. Sure, it was only fifteen minutes each, but the surreality made it seem to stretch endlessly into the future, like Dr. Quinn and Stormy locked in a time loop. Sure, there was some anime that came on at 1 AM, but I never cared about anything on that late before a Monday.
Shortly before I stopped watching it, they introduced the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Yeah, it was awful then, but I figured, it's only one show- who cares?
This is the new standard in edgy humor.But now it seems so different. They've now given Adult Swim a full five days- Sunday through Thursday, from 11 PM to 2 AM. You'd think that having all that extra time would give them plenty of room to fill it up with good stuff... but no. Their top biller is now Aqua Teen, and they've supplemented their lineup with fifteen different anime shows, all of which suck ass. Granted, they still have Sealab 2021, but it's only on twice a week, compared to Aqua Teen which spans the whole schedule. Besides, Sealab just isn't the same without Harry Goz. And yes, they always start with Family Guy and Futurama... and while those are funny as hell, they don't have the same pacing that the fifteen minute shows do.
And now they're promoting the hell out of the new Tom Goes to the Mayor show. Funny concept, lousy execution. The blurb from the Adult Swim website says Tom and the Mayor "develop a number of pointless ideas that never seem to go anywhere." Well, that's exactly what each show has done so far: been pretty pointless and not gone anywhere. Besides that, the show's creators (and Bob Odenkirk is executive producing it, shame on him) think that they've found the new Squiggle-Vision in their combination of Photoshop filters. I've got news for you, guys- a color dodge from an inverted posterized photo does not make comedy. Go back to the drawing board.