Sadly I missed the first half of it, but the last half was hillarious.
Sameul L. Jackson cameo (in his first role as a white man?)
“What country you from?!”
Shootout with the store clerk/“terrorists!”
Throwaway Monty Python reference!
And that was just in the last half!
Terrific - and I missed parts of the first half, too. This one had some great layers, and I also liked the cross-racial casting. I wonder how often that happens in animation.
What a wonderful episode. References to Pulp Fiction and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, great jokes, and a multi layered story. The comedy was so harsh I can’t help but be very suprised and overjoyed that it’s even on tv. Before long, I bet we’ll be seeing “Mothers against The Boondocks” websites. I haven’t seen a show that left me hungry for more after each episode since The Venture Bros
I too only saw the second half. I especially liked the Iraqi clerk suggesting that the korean clerk a couple blocks north is who they really what.
I’m afraid I missed the Monty Pyton reference…Could someone spoil it for me?
Putting it in a spoiler box in case someone wants to think about it for a bit - it was in the convenience store…
It’s when Jackson’s character is talking to the cop, after the shooting starts, and tells him something like, “You’re not going to die… in vain.” The cop says he thinks he’s going to pull through, Jackson follows up with how he wouldn’t have been mortally wounded in vain, cop says he thinks he feels a lot better. It’s from one of the battle sequences in HG - I think Cleese delivers the lines that Jackson’s character spouts off.
A really, seriously great episode. If this keeps up, Boondocks* is going to be the star of the Adult Swim lineup.
The Holy Grail reference goes back to the scene just prior to Lancelot’s attack on the wedding party when Lancelot’s squire gets nailed by an arrow with a note attached. The squire says “Message for you, sir!” and proceeds to die. OR DOES HE?
But yeah, the episode was hilarious. Watching Riley get his shit ruined by a white Samuel L. Jackson was priceless. I really hope this show gets some traction. Did anyone catch Aaron McGruder’s interview over at the Onion A.V. Club (as directed by the bumps on adult swim)?
I just can’t get over the way the war parody seemed to come out of nowhere, but developed so brilliantly (down to the one guy’s W necklace, and the other guy looking like Rumsfeld and talking about “evidence of absence”).
I think this episode gets the South Park Hammer on Head award for heavy-handed treatment of a current event.
Not to say I didn’t enjoy it (and I love South Park, too.)
Could someone explain what’s so great about this show?
I just… don’t… getit.
I can’t even say why I don’t think it’s great–the show’s not being too great presents itself to me as a default position. I would have to know why others like it so much before I could say anything as to why I don’t like it so much.
I should mention I’ve only seen two episodes–the one where the little kid shoots his grand-dad’s bosses grandson, and the one where the grand-dad starts “dating” a hooker.
It’s not like I think the show’s terrible. It’s just kind of ho-hum. Tolerable filler between better Adult Swim shows.
By the way, I like most Adult Swim shows. But this in itself may partially account for my non-like of Boondocks. Boondocks just… isn’t… right for Adult Swim. The reason I say this may be illustrated by the fact that I think 12 Ounce Mouse is exactly where Adult Swim has been heading all along, and that people who like SpaceGhost, Sealab, and ATHF and don’t like 12Ounce, it turns out, simply didn’t get (what was great about) the former three shows, no matter how much they thought they liked them.
Anyway, Boondocks seems to me to be completely outside Adult Swim’s style. This is puzzling, of course, since presumably its the Williams Street guys and not myself who get to decide what the “Adult Swim style” is. Yet I stick to my guns on this one.
Of course when I insist on this, I fail to take into account shows like “Robot Chicken” and “Minoriteam,” both of which involve an element of explicit critique of pop culture and politics. Also, “Home Movies,” while containing absurdist elements, still clearly has more of a “heart” than ATHF, SL, SG, and so on. So these shows might be seen as making the entrance of Boondocks into Adult Swim more plausible.
For the record, I love Home Movies, chuckle occasionally at Robot Chicken, and haven’t seen Minoriteam (though I expect to hate it if and when I do.)
Anyway.
Someone please explain.
-FrL-
IMHO (of course) It is the sheer outrageousness of what is being said and presented. As a middle-aged individual, what I find myself saying out loud during the show is, “Can you say that on television?”. So for me, it is the shocking inappropriatness that draws me in. If you are not easliy shocked then I can see where you’d go, “Meh”.
But I haven’t seen anything particularly shocking or “outrageous.”
They use the word “nigga.” Is that it? (Black kids calling black people “nigga” during casual friendly conversation? This isn’t shocking is it?)
Could someone remind me of something from one of the two episodes I mentioned which I should be remembering as “shocking” or “outrageous?”
-FrL-
No, not that, afterall, I did go to public high school in the 70’s
I don’t remember word for word, but Samuel L. Jackson’s character and some of the lines he spoke struck me as wildly inappropriate, making the 10 yr child trapped inside me giggle like, well, a 10 yr old child.
Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. Adult Swim is a network, and it’s not going in any single creative direction (unless you count “animation for adults” as a direction). I can see at least three different trends in AS programming:
Weird-ass stuff with minimal animation: 12 Oz Mouse, Aqua Teens, etc.
Better Animated stuff with more Pop-Culture/Satirical humor: Futurama, Family Guy, Robot Chicken
Anime.
Look at Boondocks as a more politically charged, black centered, Family Guy, and you’ll get it.
Neither of the ones you saw were great. I think this one was way better than any of the others, though I liked the rest. If you’d seen last night’s - and it reruns on Wednesday - you might get what other people like about it.
Oh, yeah, and the whole “There are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns” thing, verbatim from Rumsfeld. And the dimwit cop, who can’t make heads or tails of the whole thing. Then the batshit crazy villians in the scene walk out to applause at the end. Just too absurd.
And half of them were lifted from Pulp Fiction. It wasn’t enough that they had Samuel L. Jackson playing a white wannabe gangsta - he was a white wannabe gangsta who particularly wanted to be Samuel L. Jackson. I’m not even expecting another episode this good.