They sit in judgment. Well, actually, they sprawl in judgment, their sneers at the ready. Beavis and Butt-Head may be the best TV critics ever, at least for a certain kind of TV. In the ’90s, they dissected the visual signs and verbal disconnects of music videos with the rigor of semioticians (Beavis and Butt-Head and Barthes). READ FULL STORY »
South Park returned for its mid season 15 premiere, picking up where the show left off, with the malaise of “You’re Getting Old” having deepened heavily. Stan’s morose conviction that the world has become filled with, ah, excrement is only increased when he faces a fall filled with Terra Nova and Ashton Kutcher in Two and a Half Men, both of which were mercilessly ridiculed. Oh, and he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. READ FULL STORY »
The new version of ThunderCats that premiered Friday night on the Cartoon Network is both faithful to the original 1980s-era, charmingly schlocky cartoon series, and a rather canny rethinking of a series that probably didn’t take a lot of thinking to conceive in the first place. READ FULL STORY »
One of the little miracles of pop culture, South Park proceeds with its obsessions about the nature of freedom and the (im)precision of language, its mass-culture insults and its cult-culture shout-outs. It doesn’t care whether we get all the references, or take offense at the jokes, which only makes us love it all the more.
And which makes us masochists far happier than Kyle and the two people who were yoked together and made to form the “HUMANCENTiPAD,” the title and subject of the season premiere. READ FULL STORY »
Sunday night’s edition of The Simpsons was advertised as an awards-show satire, with Homer and Bart nominated for an Oscar, and guest-voices from Halle Berry, Ricky Gervais, and Russell Brand. None of them were very funny, but READ FULL STORY »
After seeing the second-season premiere of Archer, I think the primary question to be asked is: Is this the best adult-aimed cartoon on television right now? You can have your Bob’s Burgers and your Family Guy (please, and please); South Park is very hit-or-miss. But Archer, taking full advantage of FX’s mature-content flexibility, isn’t just funny — it boasts solid plotting, vividly distinct characters, and some of the most unexpected punchlines and sight-gags in prime time. READ FULL STORY »
Alex Anderson, the cartoonist who created the famously pun-loving 1960s cartoon characters Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, has died. He was 90 and died Oct. 22 in Carmel, Calif. He had Alzheimer’s disease.
Many people, included me, have long thought that Jay Ward was responsible for the creation of Rocky and Bullwinkle, whose media-savvy adventures made them READ FULL STORY »
