I remember that they had an episode of this on a few months ago. Orel was at scout camp or something like that and had an argument with his troop leader over drinking urine to survive. It established that Orel was an innocent, well-meaning kid with a bit too much Christian idealism. Fair enough: the pilot was lame, but showed some potential. As such I was looking forward to the Christmas special that had been described as “David and Goliath meets South Park.”
I disagree.
I was on the phone when it started, so I didn’t get a clear idea of what happened at church. Apparently there was a Jewish family at the service that the congregation was “proud” of and essentially had on display. Afterwards, the preacher tells Orel about the second coming. Have I got it right so far?
After that, I was able to pay attention better. Orel’s dad thinks his mom cheated because the younger brother looks so much different and has behavior issues. Orel overhears their argument and thinks that his younger brother is the second coming of Christ because a) he’s not his father’s son and, misunderstanding what the preacher said, b) isn’t “nice.” The rest of the episode concerns Orel’s futile efforts to treat his younger brother like the Christ child while his family is falling apart. When he confronts his mom about it and tries to keep the family together, she responds by leaving him alone in the town square on Christmas day, telling him to go find his father on his own.
The way his mom abandoned him was downright chilling! Was this supposed to be even remotely funny? What did he say in his prayer at the end? Does it make up for the fact that, as opposed to being tongue-in-cheek, this show was just horribly depressing and even tragic?
And if that really was supposed to pass for humor, what the hell is it with all the original Adult Swim stuff just being a bunch of insultingly unfunny dreck? Tom Goes to the Mayor, Squidbillies, Perfect Hair Forever–is this crap even popular? Last year they broke out with a whole bunch of great anime series, but that seemed to coincide with this decline; did the licensing costs drain their budget? They even took ATHF and turned it into a 12 minute Boost Mobile commercial last Sunday!
Yeah, I saw that last night, and I didn’t fully understand it. It seemed to be lacking a narrative. At the end, he looked through the window into the bar his dad was at, and said “Well, this hasn’t turned out to be the best Christmas ever. But who knows, there’s two more minutes.”
Where you at, dawg? I liked the Boost Mobile commercial… Words! On your phone!
I had something of the same reaction to Moral Orel. Missed the first scout installment, so I had no idea what to expected. I half expected some Robot Chicken characters to pop in at the last moment and chant “Darkest sketch! Darkest sketch!” I even recorded the show again the following night to make sure this wasn’t part one of two. Nope, same show. Best as I can tell, the Adult Swim folks are obviously Christmas-hating secularists…better alert the blogosphere!
Maybe it says something that they ran this show on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning rather than their jackpot Sunday/Monday morning lineup.
Well, they’re getting older. They started with SGC2C 11 years ago. It’s like they’ve used all their good ideas already and trying to find stuff that seems similar to their previous good ideas.
What they should do is start a variety show where they can work in bits from pretty much all of their shows, where each week would be different. So they don’t have to string out weak ideas into full series. Then try and fill the rest of the slots by other promising outside shows like The Boondocks, Futurama etc.
I didn’t get the show either. I just assumed that it was because I am Jewish. I figured that the Christians watching the show were on the verge of wetting themselves from laughing so much.
I saw it for the first time last night. And could only think…there doing this AGAIN!? Or rather, they’re STILL doing this?! That is, setting up the cliched Perfect '50’s style Happy Family (in this case with the Davy and Goliath animation to boot) and then exposing the Dark Underside of sex and abuse and alchoholism. Thereby couragously exposing the cliches as Lies and Hypocrisy. And calling it satire.
Sigh Haven’t we been doing this for 50 years now? Can we agree the Dark Underside has been exposed? Don’t we have enough other Lies and Hypocrisies that could use satirizing?
Talent like Dave Willis and Matt Maiellero did some really great work with ATHF, but they seem to have grown fat off that success and in turn we get the likes of 12 oz. mouse and PHF. It seems to me that it’s more a matter of them now having carte blanche to produce anything they like.
You do have a good point, though, with respect to going with what works. If a little randomness gets ratings, then making shows so incomprehensible you’d need to be schizophrenic for them to make sense would have to be popular, right? And if you don’t like it, then you just must not be very sophisticated.
Words! On your phone!