Clone High
created by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Bill Lawrence
starring: Will Forte, Nicole Sullivan, Michael McDonald, Chris Miller, Christa Miller and Phil Lord
description: Clones of historical figures attend high school together. A parody of teen drama’s, Clone High hits every trope and cliche and parodies them mercilessly. The comedy comes in both zany physical gags and dialogue dripping in self awareness. Every plot is a cliche taken up to eleven, hence surpassing the cliche and becoming something else entirely. The jokes range from intelligent to low-brow to absurd. Every character is broad, but it’s that type of show. The animation is extremely stylized and very energetic. Much more free than most adult animation, which helps set the quirky, self aware tone of the show.
strengths: Writing. This is one of those shows written for writers. Also, the voice acting. The cast is great and the line reads themselves can get really funny.
F is for Family
created by: Bill Burr and Micheal Price
starring: Bill Burr, Laura Dern, Justin Long, Debi Derryberry and Haley Reinhart
description: This show follows the everyday lives of the Murphy’s, a lower middle class family living in the early 1970′s. Frank is a Korean war veteran who gave up his dream of becoming an airline pilot to raise his son and quickly marry his girlfriend, due to her unplanned pregnancy. The show is far more subtle compared to it’s contemporaries such as the Simpsons or American Dad. It reminds me a lot of Married With Children, actually, if it was played a lot more straight. It is in kind of a similar situation. Where as Married With Children was born of people being sick of the overly idealized sitcom families at the time, F is for Family seems to be a subversion of the over-the-top dysfunctional animated family. Much like Married With Children, it is trying to be something more relatable. The show has a slow, more realistic pace focusing on everyday aspects of life, heavily character and relationship based. But don’t get the impression this show is quiet. The arguments, for example are highly volatile and realistic.
strengths: Writing, character, dialogue based humour, mundane but unpredictable stories.
Duckman
created by: Everett Peck
starring: Jason Alexander, Gregg Berger, Nancy Travis, Dweezil Zappa, E.G. Daily and Dana Hill
description: Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man follows Eric Duckman, a put upon private investigator and recently widowed husband and father. Along with his dry-witted and multi-talented partner Cornfed they solve crimes… Well, Cornfed solves them… I mean, honestly that aspect of the show isn’t really what makes it stand out in any way. What really sets it apart is the fast-paced animation, and the dialogue. Whether that’s Duckman’s rants, Cornfed’s dry quips or Charles and Mambo’s cynical sarcasm. The show very much has it’s own unique rhythm and style when it comes to the characters and how they interact with one another. This relic of the early nineties is often described as “ahead of it’s time”, although I find it to be very much a product of it’s time with perhaps a little more freedom than the average network show. This description likely has to do with the fact that many of the issues satirized in Duckman are still relevant, if not more so, today.
strengths: Writing, big time, in terms of humour and character. Duckman’s personality leaps off the screen and the comedy is quirky and strange enough to not feel stale, even after such a long time. I personally find the stylized art and fluid animation to be a large strength as well.
Moral Orel
created by: Dino Stamatopoulos
starring: Carolyn Lawrence, Scott Adsit, Britta Phillips and Tigger Stamatopoulos
description: A stop-motion deconstruction of small town Christian America. The series follows Orel Puppington on his quest to be a good christian. Basically, the show plays on the idea of the towns populace seeming perfect at first glance, but slowly (or sometimes not so slowly) we see the facade slip. Season 1 mainly follows a simple episodic formula with very broad humour typical of Adult Swim (at least at the time). Season 2 is where the more realistic tone and character based plot sets in, season 1 sets it up however. By season 3 many consider the show “too good to succeed”. Personally, I think Moral Orel never really found that balance of comedy and realism we see in F is for Family or Venture Brothers. Still, even while much of season 3 was too depressing to be sustainable, some of these episodes are so good, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not seeing them.
strengths: Character, character, character! Character development is by far it’s biggest strength. The show also has a very cute art style which is not only visually appealing, but perfectly contrasts with dark subtexts.
Venture Brothers
created by: Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer
starring: James Urbaniak, Patrick Warburton, Michael Sinternwiklaas and Christopher McCulloch
description: This action/adventure/sci-fi/comedy show started as a send-up Johnny Quest type shows of the 60′s and 70′s, though by the second season it really became less of a parody and more of an entry into the genre itself, only with copious effort and talent actually put into it. If you like character development, stories that unfold sporadically throughout seasons, weird unexpected characters being killed off and dialogue based humour this is the show for you. Venture Brothers is the type of show you have to watch a few times to get everything out of an episode. Rarely is anything spelled out to the audience, this is a show that loves subtext and referencing previous events without reminding you of it beforehand. It’s episodic in a way, but it’s really more of a mosaic.
strengths: Writing, character development, animation, continuity, character driven.
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