B&B...the question remains: Why?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It’s been years since Beavis & Butthead got cancelled, and we still seem to be living with the repurcussions. I’ve seen TWO posts in as many days that have quoted B&B, almost directly.

I’ll be quite blunt (since no one else except the usual right-wing knuckleheads seemed to be): Beavis & Butthead was the worst excuse for a cartoon I have ever seen. Its entertainment value was exactly zero. It was the first TV show I’ve ever seen where I could not even come up with a single good reason for its existence. Not simply the fact that I couldn’t bear to watch it (actually, a lot of shows fit into this category), or that it was unspeakably idiotic (so’s I Am Weasel most of the time and it manages to be funny), but that I could not even imagine a reason why anyone at all would want to watch it…except kids, who usually will watch anything.

It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t coherent. It wasn’t topical. It wasn’t sharp or witty (c’mon, how much imagination does it take to come up with “This sucks”?) It definitely wasn’t realisitc. Its title characters did not interest me in the slightest and were endlessly annoying. The episodes didn’t have any point. The music video reviews, if you can call them that, consisted of the same tiresome, inane dialogue that B&B spewed out the rest of the time.

Had MTV tried to release this completely insane project in the 80’s, it would have crashed and burned within a week. Unfortunately, an utter lack of quality is no longer sufficient to destroy a show, and because B&B wasn’t an instant, colossal failure, it somehow caught on. And you should have seen some of the letters from supposedly intelligent people defending the show. I had not seen such blatant spin since…well, the last Presidential address.

It wouldn’t be so bad, though, if those goddam horribly-drawn reprobates would just go away. Howard Stern is no longer a household name, Rush Limbaugh’s career is slowly fading, and Andrew Dice Clay’s 15 minutes went up ages ago. Why not B&B? What’s so compelling about the worst cartoon in history that some people feel a need to preserve its memory?

What the hell am I missing? Anyone?

2

Hate to tell you DKW - Dice has a new album out and he’s gearing up to play Madison Square Garden.

I thought B&B was pretty funny. It ripped on lame music videos, what could be funnier? Sort of the MST3K of music videos. Butthead’s voice just cracked me up. Sorry.

3

uh-huh-huh. You said “but”.

4

Heh-heh-heh-heh, yeah, “but” yeah, heh-heh-heh

5

DKW:

Huh? What dreamworld have you been living in? For your information, his show still has the largest audience of any syndicated radio show around, and he just won his third Marconi award for outstanding syndicated radio personality.

You’re free to disagree with him, but rumors of his demise (wherever you’re getting them from) are extremely exaggerated.

6

Worst cartoon ever? Good God, man…haven’t you ever seen the Flintstones? Scooby-Doo? I could name about a thousand cartoons worse than that.

7

Rexcuse me, ruts rong rit Rooby Doo?

8

oh and any TV show has any REAL value?

oh and Friends has any reason to be on, and all the time too?

wasn’t funny? oh my god it’s freakin funny as hell. it was coherent, they had stories, mostly about sex, but [Beavis] You said “But” [/Beavis]what teenager’s thoughts aren’t on sex? I think you missed some of the better shows, I’m sure people think The Simpsons aren’t funny either if they only watched one or two. Sometimes the reviews were the best, I just loved it when some crap came on and they just stared and couldn’t even move.

a whole lot of fun. How can you not like Cornholio? or when Butt-Head chokes? boy did you miss out.

9

I must largely agree with the OP on this one. I’m pretty sure that high school kids could come up with something better than that drivel. The fast food “fryer” incident was about as funny as it ever got. I was forced by a friend to watch many episodes and it still wasn’t funny. I also managed to see a lot of the movie and it wasn’t funny either, unless you’re the kind of person who thinks that third grade bathroom humor is Shakespeare.

10

My favorite B&B exchange came when they were watching a Poison video, and the discussion turned to Bret Michaels.

“He used to boff Pamela Anderson.”

The response…

“Give him boobs, and he’d kinda LOOK like Pamela Anderson.”

I must have laughed for about five minutes. For the most part, B&B was incredibly stupid, but every now and then, you’d get a gem. That was one of them.

11

The reason I found B&B funny was not because their jokes were funny but because they thought their jokes were funny. I think that was the point. “Huh huh uh huh…you said butt,” is not funny. Watching someone who is idiotic enough to think, “Hun huh uh huh…you said butt,” IS funny makes me giggle.

12

I laughed for five minutes at this. Second hand! I didn’t even see the episode. I did see many others, though, and I have their movie on video. Nobody mentioned it, but Beavis & Butt-head do America was well scripted and well executed IMHO. The TV show catered to the lowest common denominator, which obviously resonated with a lot of people. It filled a niche that the comparably highbrow King Of the Hill does not (although my Boomhauer impression usually gets laughs–four hours into a kegger).

13

Memo to self…when starting a thread about something, do not bring up other things. [writes note] Okay, got it.

Thankfully, the responses so far have been better than I expected, and at least someone was kind enough to provide an actual answer. It appears that I’ll have to clarify my position somewhat (what else is new).

Soup - Well, at least he’s not robbing convenience stores. ;). Even if the concert is a success, however, he’s definitely no longer a household name (unlike, say, Dennis Miller), and I think he also toned down his act, which was the very thing that made him famous in the first place So while the guy isn’t destitute, it’s safe to say that the party’s over.

CMKeller - Look…he hasn’t had a bestselling book out in ages, he’s lost his TV show (don’t remember the reason, think it was lack of sponsors), a Marconi isn’t exactly a Pulitzer, and he’s now one of the most frequently discredited pundits around. Certainly seems like a few steps down to me. I said it was a SLOW fade, and I don’t doubt for a second that he’s going to go kicking and screaming. No matter how many facts he screws up.

voguevixen - In retrospect, The Flinstones was pretty insipid and Scooby Doo was mostly hit-and-miss. However, neither was as completely unbearable to watch as B&B, and no episode of those classics ever got so aimless that I couldn’t even see the point. B&B was so unspeakable, I couldn’t bear to watch for a minute. This never happened with any other show…not Ren & Stimpy, not the absolute worst of South Park or The Simpsons, not Married With Children. It was truly in a class of its own.

Edward the Head - Please explain to me how “You said ‘but’”, “this sucks” and “huh huh huh huh” are funny in and of themselves (which is pretty much as far as it got). I know that there are a lot of TV shows out there that aren’t that good, but at least they try to be entertaining, rather than tossing out any old thing and expecting us to laugh. If nothing else, TV should at least be entertaining, something which B&B failed to do for me in any capacity.

As for Friends…well, I think it’s a very good show overall, because the characters are engaging, the situations are usually quite funny, the interactions are often very funny, and in general it’s a lively, fun program. More relevant to the OP, though, I don’t have to deal with Friends references popping up at random in message boards or casual conversation, and there hasn’t been a lot of Friends merchandise. It’s pretty much just the TV shows. So I can easily avoid the overkill, which was not always the case with B&B.

Renton_Ivr: Eh?

Seriously, I know there’s such a thing as “stupid funny”; I just don’t see B&B as it. Now if the show had at least one intelligent, savvy character as a regular who got as much screen time as B&B (a la I Am Weasel), I could see their stupidity being played for laughs. As it was, it was just stupidity for its own sake, and I don’t see any humor in that.

Zenster: Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I was seriously worried that I was the only one. (Who wasn’t a diehard right-winger, of course.)
Okay, I’m willing to concede that there may have been a few moments of brightness, but overall the cartoon just stank, and whatever good jokes there may have been were wasted on this morass. Yes, there have been some subpar music videos, but I hardly see how making completely moronic comments about them qualifies as a witty retort (or something worth watching at all). Was TV so abysmal that we had nothing better? Is there some humor value in monotonous chuckling and witless commentary that I’m missing?

14

I think Beavis and Butthead was pretty damn funny. It was an exercise in pointless and stupid vulgarity. A show about two total dumbasses doing total dumbass things while wasting their life watching MTV of all things. What made me laugh the most was how clueless and how crazy Beavis was. Every once in a while he would completely spaz out and I would be laughing histerically.

But I can’t explain to you “why” Beavis and Butthead. Humor is such a subjective thing. Try and explain why a joke is funny to someone sometime. It just doesn’t work. I’d have to admit I’m a fan of pointless vulgarity, so that might explain it.

As far as Beavis and Butthead being worthless, here’s an argument against it. B&B showed quite a few videos that mainstream MTV would never play. So by watching the show I saw quite a few videos playing music I’d never heard before, and I went out and bought them. Or a band’s video I never saw, but really like, would show up on the show. Also, it was widely accepted that White Zombie got their big break by being deemed “cool” by Beavis and Butthead. Make your own judgement about the quality of both, but entertainers need their publicity where they can get them.

15

Actually, I’m a right-winger AND A Beavis and Butthead fan. (For what little it’s worth, series creator Mike Judge is currently a fellow Austinite).

There’s no point arguing about whether the show was funny. It cracked me up constantly, but so what? Humor is an individual thing. A hundred Harvard professors explaining why Woody Allen is funny STILL wouldn’t change the fact that he’s never made me laugh. If B & B didn’t make you laugh, there’s no way I can persuade you that it was funny. We chalk it up to differences in taste, and leave it at that.

Interestingly, the right-wing Bible National Review gave Beavis and Butthead a glowing review! Now, liberal B & B fans will not approve of this insight, but NR found B & B a remarkably CONSERVATIVE show.

To NR, Beavis and Butthead represent the logical end result of MTV culture and non-judgemental adults like the hippie-dippie teacher Mr. van Driessen. As NR put it, “You cannot like Beavis and Butthead and simultaneously approve of what MTV represents.”

16

I’ve only seen the show probably about 10-15 times or so, but I found it to actually be pretty good. Yeah, it’s a “dumb” show, but it is simultaneously making fun of its own dumbness. I once read that Beavis and Butthead is an example of one of the first “meta-comedies,” where you aren’t laughing at the show itself, you’re laughing at the kind of people that would like the show itself at face value. I think once you scratch the surface, you will find there is a lot more comedic value in B&B than a superficial glance suggest.

17

Well, at least you admit the obvious: You don’t get it.

People don’t get Howard Sern, people didn’t get Sam Kinneson.

Some people see these things and see gratuitous sexual innuendo, physical humor, and/or just stoopidity.

Other people can watch these people/shows and see the satire that is there.

You know what? I never thought that Bob Newhart’s stand-up was all that funny, and I don’t get a lot of what Woody Allen has done in movies. Isn’t Dennis Miller getting all kinds of shit because laypeople don’t get Sylvia Plath getting pepper sprayed being analogous to a coach who cried a lot?

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Five months, three weeks, 15 hours, 13 minutes and 38 seconds.
6985 cigarettes not smoked, saving $873.17.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 3 days, 6 hours, 5 minutes.

*“I’m a big Genesis fan.”-David B. (Amen, brother!)

18

Well Friends does the same thing B&B doesfor you, nothing. Every time I see this show I just have to turn it. As for how “You said “Butt”” is funny it just is. It can get old after awhile, but still funny. I’ll admit I didn’t like the show when I first saw it, but it grew on me. I like watching people get into screwed up situations and then to watch B&B get even more screwed up is even funnier. B&B for me was very entertaining.

19

B&B was very funny to me. It was the only show that played the “Dumb and Dumber” genre right (Jim Carrey and Chris Farley notwithstanding). “Beavis and Butthead Do America” was a very funny movie as well. I’ll admit that the show is an acquired taste.
I do believe that Mike Judge, with this show, ‘Darla’ and ‘King of the Hill’, has proven to be one of the best animators in America today. If not graphically, then certainly content-wise.

20

I don’t think Mike Judga has anything to do with “Daria” the show, other than having created the character.

Cordially,

Myron M. Meyer
The Man Who
“Hey, that’s a great radio name! Oh, it’s your real name?”