During my recent annual Spring vacation, I decided to take on a personal project about a subject that’s been gnawing at me for a long time. Well, all right, I’ve totally lost interest in a rather unsettling number of things I used to be a big fan of…console video games, Flash video games, Pump It Up, bike riding, football, basketball, MMA, fanfiction, anime, Vocaloid, fantasy novels, R&B music, reality shows that don’t have business deals and/or machines being heavily damaged…so it’s not like there’s a whole lot else on my plate.
Son. Of. Zorn. 
To recap: I found out about this hybrid reality/animated show from Kongregate, which was promoting it pretty hard. I watched the first episode and was almost immediately floored by how completely repulsive it was. I managed to tough it out for two more episodes, and a few little snippets after that, before giving up in disgust (I did watch the season finale). I was so completely horrified that I made a thread just to express my concern that there was even a molecular chance it would catch on (this one). Seriously, I cannot overstate how overwhelmingly disgusted I was with every single aspect of this show. There have been shows which became totally repugnant to me after two or three seasons (South Park and King of the Hill being the prime examples) and shows which had some episodes I found infuriatingly awful (The Simpsons, Animaniacs), but never one which drew out such complete, absolute loathing from me from start to finish. All throughout the experience, I kept asking this question over and over: Who thought this was a good idea?
Well, it was cancelled after one season, reportedly because the ratings weren’t high enough to justify the tremendous work it required. Since then, other than using it as my go-to “This actually existed! Someone freaking thought this was a good idea!” reference, I’d largely forgotten about it. But something strange happened…it bothered me that I never got this show. Now, normally whenever an undeserving work of entertainment becomes wildly popular, I just chalk it up to the stupid ignorant public being played like fiddles again and move on to other things. (Hey, I never said a word about Twilight, did I?? 
) But this was a show which was so offensive that I couldn’t imagine anyone with a shred of conscience even tolerating it, much less liking it…and as it turns out, there were viewers who liked it. A lot! You can see it some of them the comments to this and in the mostly positive reviews on the IMDB page. Why? What did I miss? Did things really turn completely around by episode 5? Was I…dare I say…too hard on it?
Of course, since the property was far too marginal to ever get on a streaming service or (ha!) DVD, the only place to watch it was on YouTube, and as it turns out, they charge. Fifteen dollars, to be exact. And that kept me away for a long time. But my nagging doubts wouldn’t go away. I just knew that someday I’d take the plunge.
All right, baseline stuff. I have been on the bottom of nearly every damn totem pole I’ve been on in my life, patriarchy has done jack squat for me, and the conservative white male cishet hegemony has never, ever been my friend. I have massive problems with right wing entertainment (if you’ll pardon the oxymoron 
) and anything that even hints at punching down. I hate jerks, and I really hate jerks that never face consequences. My language is going to get harsh, and I’m not going to shy away from the show’s obvious politics. If this results in the thread being moved, I’m 100% fine with that. I will be covering all 13 episodes. You’re all free to chime in as you wish; just be warned that it’s highly unlikely that you’ll change my opinion. I’ll put up one episode per day, then a big wrapup.
As you are reading these, I want you to keep in mind that the season was a chaotic mishmash from start to finish. Check out the cast and crew link on IMDB; complete revolving door. There was never any semblance of cohesion in the direction or writing. So my viewpoints of the characters and stories are going to jump around quite a bit.
And just so we’re perfectly clear, I am not “hate watching” or “watching ironically”. I don’t have the time or blood pressure for that foolishness. This is a sincere effort to understand why a very large majority liked something I considered impossible to like. Furthermore, I’m not worried that giving Fox my money is going to encourage them to make more of this stuff. I want them to make more of this stuff so they can get it right this time. I’ve followed the Fox lineup long enough to know that this network is capable of quality programming, so the prospect of a renewal or spinoff doesn’t worry me in the slightest.
And…that’s it. Time to dive in. (At least this is going to take less effort than The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, which was what I originally planned to do for my vacation.)
++ Main cast ++
Zorn (Jason Sudeikis/Dan Lippert) [Sudeikis did the voicework; Lippert was the actual warm body that the other actors interacted with. I’ll use this same format for the other cartoon characters.]
Basically what you’d get if you created a person with every single negative trait you could think of, and then someone came by and added the ones you missed. A violent, egomaniacal, infantile, petty, greedy, ignorant, moronic, pigheaded, destructive, vindictive, reckless macho jerk to the bone. The main source of this show’s humor. Does improve over the course of the season; I’d argue not much.
Alangulon (Johnny Pemberton)
“Alan” for short. The hapless, long-suffering son of Zorn and Edie (which makes him the title character, strangely enough). In addition to the normal teenager issues, he’s deeply conflicted about his mixed ancestry, which is the catalyst for most of his stories.
Edie (Cheryl Hines)
Zorn’s former wife. After marrying him because reasons and later divorcing him because reasons, she moved to Orange County and started a new life with Craig because…wait for it…reasons. She spends a lot of time grumbling, mostly about Zorn, and strongly disapproving of this or that. Pretty dishonest and slimy all around. However, she can be moved to take positive action, typically after exhausting all other options.
Craig (Tim Meadows)
Edie’s fiancee and the physical and ideological opposite of Zorn, a wimpy intellectual who detests violence. Spends nearly the entire run of the show trying to become a better man. Cannot hold his liquor at all.
Linda (Artemis Pebdani)
A hopelessly lazy and incompetent Sanitation Solutions manager and Zorn’s boss. Rarely happy, always locking horns with someone, and has some majorly weird desires.
Todd (Mark Proksch)
An employee of Sanitation Solutions. The writers never really nail down his personality. In general, he’s trying to get ahead, he finds Zorn frustrating, and he’s really, really stupid.
), he turns to the other and rattles off his titles, (Defender of Zephyria! Conqueror of the Tribes of Agon! Decapitator of the Dark Herdsmen of something-or-other! Blah blah of blah blah blah blah!) only to be foiled by a pair of headphones.
), he rings the doorbell and is greeted by his ex Edie. “Y’know, I called the flight attendant a stewardess. Bad move. He was not pleased.” I mention this because it’s an almost passable joke, which is a rarity on this show. Shot of a family photo with Zorn cut mostly out of the frame. They chat a bit about their son. Cut to Alangulon’s high school, Fullerton Hills, where he’s talking to his buddy Scott in front of the front steps. We learn that Zorn is a bit of a wild man.
Edie let’s Zorn know that as good as the goat sex was in the past, she’s moved on and Craig is his man. Zorn is not happy about that.
(I’m not going to note every one, but be assured that there are a fricking lot of these), he tells Zorn not to worry about his son, because HM neglected his own son and he turned out just fine. Which, of course, is the cue for HM’s son to get neatly chopped in half in a spray of what was most definitely not blud, which causes HM to instantly 180 and lament that he never blah blah blah ham-handed “high concept” show be ham-handed, you get the drill.
I’ll get back to this. 
Linda asks if he owns a shirt, to which Zorn replies “Does a Grithian herdsman have nine anuses?” which is apparently so screamingly funny that it’s going to be used two more times over the course of the series. 
) Expressing a desire to kill Craig. “The point is, I’m here now. And that…erases everything bad I did.” 
He promises that he will start moving the boxes and, naturally, immediately starts playing Tetris on the Game Boy.
(Just like Homer Simpson used to do all the time!) Of course, Zorn being Zorn, he has to kick it off with a pointlessly violent fantasy, but once that’s over…uh…he says “Once you start to let go and move on, who knows…maybe it gets better.” Mmmmmmmmm. Probably shouldn’t have expected better, but that just seemed flat to me. Alan wants to continue the conversation, but Zorn is too attached to his Game Boy, which he can apparently just summon out of thin air now.
Linda breaks up the eternally-stuck-in-the-past session with a task: copy and overnight a stack of documents. And he will not give the documents to a pigeon this time after mistaking it for a raven. The line between “refuses to adapt to his new culture” and “just plain moronic” is a fine one with him.
Edie suggests something more effective, a Zephyrian punch-countering technique with a really dumb name which I’m not going to repeat here. She demonstrates it on Alan, which puts him in a lot of pain and renders her unable to touch him again without killing him. Y’know, it never really stuck out for me before because it got constantly overshadowed by Zorn’s wholesale mega-fuckery, but Edie is a really crappy parent.
Let’s…oh, no, no, wait, a fight scene would be cool, something which is definitely not allowed to happen on this show, so instead the Vita boss bursts in to break it up. The boss then orders Derek to apologize and walk away, which he does very grudgingly and insincerely, which has Zorn totally bummed because he is now honor-bound to spare his life, which I bet is news to the thousands and thousands of innocents he’s slaughtered over the years.
Buoyed by this endorsement, Zorn decides that he should crash the Thanksgiving party and prove to Edie and Dorothy that he’s changed, then superfast running-vacuum-slams Linda into a wall, in case you were worried that he was actually going become less of a gigantic pile of crap. 
)
Alan tries to play the “freak” card, to questionable success.
). Terrified customers flee screaming in all directions. I remind you all that the whole point of this exercise is to teach his son a lesson. Zorn fires a crossbow bolt into an inflatable Santa, which descends toward Craig. Edie shouts a warning, but Craig refuses to budge…he will conquer his fear!
oh give me a break, I need to have some mindless fun if I’m going to get through this damn season.) Linda finds Zorn spraying toxic goop into the refrigerator and says that he needs to go home. Zorn, now with conspicuous green marks on his face, talks proudly about Radiana. Linda asks if she’s really right for him, and, after yelling something at her which definitely should warrant disciplinary action, rambles on and on about Radiana. Linda manages to blurt out “toxic relationship” before Zorn expels more biohazard.