Adult Swim grinds my gears. This late night cartoon block is the prime example of a sell out. Once upon a time, the shows on Adult Swim were witty. This was back when it only came on two nights a week - anime on Saturday and comedy on Sunday. Back in these days it had a modest little line up of hilarious, low budget cartoons including Space Ghost, Brak, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Harvey Birdman, and the awesome Sealab. This incredible line up was complemented by a cheesy scene between commercial breaks in which there were several elderly people swimming in a public pool. The pool scene was funny both because it had the elderly engaging in pool activities (hence Adult Swim) and because it reflected a terribly low budget.
Then the guys on William Street (the studio that does AS) got greedy. They moved their line up to every night of the week save Friday. They ditched their witty adult centered shows that played off of Hannah-Barbara cartoons and decided to appeal more to pop culture. I guess the loyal underground following they had was not enough. When they dropped all of their good shows (except Aqua Teen and Sealab) they began to merely rely on perverted sexual humor and foul language to get their ratings (which was previously present in a more moderate and humorous way). Now they decided to go over-the-top and to appeal to the immature high school kids. This grew to a point to where they featured Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Saved By The Bell in their line-up.
Presently Adult Swim has degraded to the point to where most of their ratings comes from programs that come from Fox network, including Family Guy and Futurama. Their original programs are absolutely horrible, no more entertaining than watching a blank screen. Just watch Saul of the Mole Men and you'll understand what I'm talking about. My theory is that Adult Swim fired all of the staff that was present at their genesis and hired a staff of high school students.
Adult Swim - once the best block on television, now its most creative shows are provided by another network. What happened?
1 comments:
I whole-heartedly agree with you. A.S. is junk now. It's not even fun to watch anymore. Saul of the Mole Men, and the Tim and Eric "Awesome Show" are an abomination of comedy. Honestly, how can anyone think that garbage is funny? It's nothing clever at all. It's as if A.S. thinks that anything they put on TV will be accepted as funny because it's so weird and far out and makes so little sense that it has to be funny.
Post a Comment