Friday 7 February 2020

The Adult Swim Infomercials I



In 2009 Adult Swim, a cult adult-orientated night time programming block for Carton Network, broadcasted the first of the "infomercials", an umbrella term for these short films which are designed to catch people off-guard late at night, becoming a staple into the current day. One, the first I am covering Too Many Cooks, even got cross over interest with the mainstream.

Starting in 2001, Adult Swim is an utter obscurity for me, a curious sidebar of Cartoon Network that has become its own institution as work for adults who craved something weird, anti- or post-ironic humour. For every title I am personally interested in like 12 oz Mouse (2005-7) to popular titles like Aqua Teen Hunger Force (2000-2015), they have however shown the dangers of post-irony when they were bitten by Million Dollar Extreme Presents World Peace (2016), which was created by a comedy troupe revealed to be alt-right in politics and before the show's cancellation had caused enough outrage in Adult Swim to have people wanting to leave.

The infomercials I've covering here, thankfully, do run a gamut instead of innovative, creative and proudly weird to the point the ghosts of the surrealist movement would be delighted with these, particularly the first...


Too Many Cooks (2014)
Director: Casper Kelly
Screenplay: Casper Kelly

The "infomercials" are named after the concept of paid commercials, a concept that on public access television in the United States could entitle any strange broadcast that abruptly appears at late night, something which Adult Swim ran with through these shorts produced by various little groups and released annually. Ironically the most well known of these Too Many Cooks isn't really a strange broadcast like an advert, but instead a satire on the engorged and mad spider's web of American television that gets weirder and weirder as it continues.

Too Many Cooks is effectively depicting the era when The Flintstones abruptly introduced an alien only Fred Flintstone could only see in a later series, something The Simpsons mocked in an episode in the day, or when medical drama St. Elsewhere (1982-1988) ended entirely by being all revealed to be the dream of an autistic child, playing merry hell if you believe in the theories as characters from Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-9) crossed over, and then proceeded to appear in the likes of The X-Files and Law & Order. The idea is an opening credits of a drippy and lame looking American sitcom...only for the cast credits to get increasingly longer as the cast keeps expanding and expanding, even throwing in actual cooks in for the jokes. What happens has to be spoilt to explain, that this will develop into entirely different genres including a cop show and an animated G.I. Joe parody.

I've already mentioned examples in the previous paragraphs, but before the Golden Age of Modern Television, TV had hits but also producers trying to sustain shows to the point a term "jumping the shark" were created by literally having a Happy Days character called the Fonz leaping a shark on jet skis. Suffice the say that, in among the show that never begins eventually even having a cat puppet named Snarf who can fire rainbows out of his hands appear, a serial killer picking off cast members is not the oddest thing in the entire short. The killer is arguably the weakest joke as his is just there for shock value, for sick amusement and startling the viewer with the gore and cannibalism, but Too Many Cooks doesn't conclude on him and keeps going more for a greater reward. The program does begin as mere mockery, an ever unending opening credits of cast who get their names onscreen and wink to the camera, the short revealing its hand slowly with literal chefs or the nubile young woman who appears permanently topless, close to when Not Another Teen Movie (2001), which parodied the late nineties and early 2000s sex comedies, had a European foreign exchange student character who just wandered around completely naked.

The jokes do get weirder as already mentioned, and they riff on actual programming in American television history, as even the aforementioned Snarf is not that broad a joke when ALF (1986-1990) exists, a show that was popular in the eighties and was about a cat eating alien living with a human family, made even more weirder as in 2001 the titular puppet even got his own talk show that tanked after seven episodes. The tangents into other genres and even animation is abrupt, but genre shifts could happen in the real life work the short is parodying, and the short to its credit is immaculately produced, so even that continuous theme song changes the tone for each change on a dime.

Adult Swim also laces its premise with quirky touches like Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's cameo as a pie or when credit texts and cast change places. The best joke for me is when the Too Many Cooks theme becomes a contagious disease, and the short does even get a apocalyptic vibe as it becomes almost a hellscape its cast cannot escape, something which is probably been reduced as a joke as the internet has used it way too many times in parodies, but is acceptable here as there are so many bizarre moments of note crammed into this short's length.. Certainly, for a short I was ambivalent about originally, it has grown on me just for the ambition.

Abstract Spectrum: Surreal/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None):  None


Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep (2016)
Director: Kieran O'Hare
Screenplay: Joe Pera
Cast: Joe Pera

Out of the four infomercials I have watched, this was such a surprise as whilst there are dark moments of humour (and one answer phone message being stopped) this is an abruptly mellow and pleasant short. There are no shocks, no twists, no mockery of the titular Joe Pera, just a persona of the comedian who comes off as Mr. Rogers if he was permanently sedate.

The character got a series from 2018 on Adult Swim, so details here suggest there's a bit of a joke about this character being a little dull, a piano teacher with a really quiet slow voice helping you to sleep. Pera however also comes off as a sweet figure in character, contemplating a justification for Stephen Hawkins to commit infidelity on his wife, in lieu of his scientific theories on the infinite nature of the universe, only to change to contemplating how the same theories question why he should've betrayed the one woman who loved him too. Between this and his views of baseball being therapeutic, it's a nice counter to the other shorts I have seen and offers that, in reference to the controversy with Million Dollar Extreme, it shows that Adult Swim can have different sides, providing a nice warm mug of (charmingly messy) animation providing the twist of a complete lack of twist.

Abstract Spectrum: Sedate
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None):  None


Broomshakalaka (2013)
Directors: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Screenplay: Justin Becker and Steve Clemmons
Cast: Michael McCafferty as Denny; Randall Park as Mark; Jean Villepique as Eileen; Ava Bianchi as Jenny

Broomshakalaka is playing up to the infomercial format, in which the titular object is a broom equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife, breaking physical reality by having anything from a blender blade to a tattoo removal laser in its numerous buttoned options. Obviously, it goes amiss in the three person cast, the seller and two bemused spectators, as Adult Swim can get away with gore and many of the attachments are sharp and cumbersome to use on the Broomshakalaka.

Where the infomercial improves is when these shorts have a habit of being usually over ten minutes, one of their blessings as that time scale allows a one note gag to change drastically into something more esoteric and unpredictable. In this case, apparently, sells of the Broomshakalaka can resurrect the dead, which is unexpected as the punch line and goes to show these Adult Swim productions have a very good habit of undermining expectations for more idiosyncratic jokes. The cast (especially Randall Park as the rational man going through an existential crisis as this all transpires) deliver the material as deadpan and seriously as need be, gamely performing and helping the joke.

Abstract Spectrum: Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None


Alpha Chow (2014)
Director: Dave Green
Screenplay: Justin Becker and Steve Clemmons
Cast: Alan Ritchson as Kent Ross; Curt Neill as Brian; Justin J. Randall as Alphie

With that in mind, the last to be covered is the weakest, just because at only six minutes, an ad for body building health diet for canines that only gets past the initial joke and little else. The result is a dog related infomercial with roided up humanoid dogs that even includes a costume furries would be proud of. It is funny when man's best friend desires humanity to roll over now, actor Alan Ritchson as the stereotypical health nut body building host perfect, and it's a very weird combination of The Island of Dr. Moreau with Planet of the Apes by way of a format that is idiosyncratic to tell the tale with. It has darker layers too; the poor guest who realises what he is involved with slowly even catching in earshot that the diet is based on 1930s research, suggesting a really twisted reference to Fascist ideas.

If anything, Alpha Chow could've become a longer product. That its only six minutes, when the others escalate to weirder levels, is a detriment to it. It is nonetheless fun and a nice way to end this review. All four of them together definitely show the best in one of Adult Swim's most well regarded trademarks fully.  

Abstract Spectrum: Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None):  None

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