At Bad TV Ponderings, we reserve the right to look at shows that aren't necessarily bad.
Finally caught the debut episode of The Boondocks. It aired Sunday night on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, but seeing as how I’m old and grizzled, I taped it and watched it at a more hospitable hour.
For those who haven’t heard of it, Boondocks started as a newspaper comic strip written and drawn by Aaron McGruder. It features two young black kids - Huey and Riley Freeman - who move from the inner city to live with their grandfather in the suburbs. The strip (and the cartoon) features often scathing commentary from the Freeman kids, and McGruder has caused some hyperventilation in the past by daring to take on such sacred cows as Jar Jar Binks, materialistic hip hop artists, and America’s post-9/11 patriotic fervor. It's not great art, but that's probably beside the point.
The show finds Granddad, Huey, and Riley attending a garden party thrown by a nearby banker. It was intermittently amusing, but nowhere near as shocking or controversial as people were touting/fearing it would be. Asserting that Jesus was black or Ronald Reagan was the devil just isn't very out there these days, and the funniest part for me was the song by the banker's servant, Uncle Ruckus, warning the white party guests not to trust those "new niggers."
I suppose I could see the uproar if this show was running in a prime-time TV slot, but the kind of people watching Adult Swim on Sundays at midnight are also the ones who were fans of TV Funhouse and Family Guy reruns, the latter featuring plenty of tasteless gags without the benefit of even shallow social commentary. The “N word” and – more importantly – race itself, are still pretty touchy. Even more so when it’s a black guy making the jokes, I guess.
It's just too bad The Boondocks wasn't that funny. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but too often the cartoon seemed to rely on mild screeds with only minor laughs to offset them. Maybe McGruder's still getting his feet wet and will punch things up as time goes on, or maybe the voices threw me off (Huey and Riley are both played by Regina King, who is nowhere near how I heard them when reading the comic). Either way, I'll keep watching to see if it improves and to see if any of his more vocal critics get special treatment.
I'm crossing my fingers for a Frank Cho appearance.
Compared to the lo-fi aesthetic of some of the internally produced Adult Swim shitfests, this is great stuff. That idea of pacifying Whitey with cheese had me chuckling for days.
Viva John Witherspoon!
Yeah, I won't even watch Squidbillies or Home Movies for fear of blinding migraines.
As I mentioned on the Curmudgeons, the outstanding achievement of The Boondocks is that it's simply beautiful.
Late to the party, but let me know what you find out. I was disappointed that I missed the debut of the show (less so, after reading this) as I'm a fan of the strip.
In other news, there was a preview attached to HP: Goblet of Fire for Over the Hedge, which I completely did not recognize until they revealed the title at the end. Great comic strip, hopefully not butchered (much) in becoming a Zanzibar (Saharah? Tanzania? Oh - Madagascar!) -like movie.
I TiVo'ed The Boondocks and so far have watched half of the first ep. Not bad, but not Earth-shaking. I'll give it a few weeks to hit its stride.
I will give the Cartoon Network kudos for at least trying to bring this strip to the small screen.
Now, if we can just get John Kricfalusi to make some animated music videos of Frank Zappa's tunes...