Neighbors from Hell review/TBS Mini-retrospective

Believe it or not, but back in the late-2000s, I used to watch TBS, and since it was around that time, I caught their more interesting programs. Since a lot of these are live action shows that normally don't get cleared for free viewing online, it's best I sum them up right away.

TBS at this time were all about sitcoms, which were somehow more grounded than what you'd find on the major networks. Did you know there was a TV show based on an Ice Cube movie from years ago starring Terry Crews? Are We There Yet? Because that happened. I remember it happening and for some reason I remember the conclusion of two episodes, one where the dad and his son got into a bet relating to sports and the other where he walks in on his kids using night-vision goggles. The fact that I only remember fragments of it should say numbers.

There was also The Bill Engvall Show, which gives me the idea that TBS were all about familycoms back then. Bill Engvall is one of those lighter-hearted country comedians, and that sentiment extended to his show. If that aired today it wouldn't make it past the pilot, then again Last Man Standing not only survived but thrived, and Roseanne only got knocked off because of someone's case of racial dysphoria.

Then Tyler Perry, Tyler Perry Tyler Perry... One wasn't enough, so we got two. House of Payne, which is ongoing, on BET. There's also Meet the Browns, which tied into the Madea films. I suddenly have the desire to see an episode of The Boondocks where Tyler Perry's shows are confronted directly, at least Thousand Dollar Bee was on an obscure network.

Aside from those shows, all else I had to look forward two were reruns of The Office and Family Guy.

And for those who're gonna inevitably (but unlikely since I typically only get feedback when I cover what people know) ask if I've seen TBS' latest, I'll just sum it up, because I don't have the interest. There's one show that, for the life of me, I can't remember the name of, but the trailer didn't wow me.

There's also Final Space, but if that's ongoing, it's best I get my philosophy on binge-watching out of the way. I don't do binging, I just can't make that kind of commitment. I hardly watch television anymore and I don't use Netflix (because there're no shows I want to watch on there.), plus if it's continuity based, that means I have a whole arc to get through just to know what happens and if I just go by one episode, I'm bound to piss people off.

And there's the big one, for those who know how much of a coronary the creator and his other work gives me. Close Enough. Now let me ask, does anyone even know that show exists? I've only seen one video in my recommendations so far of a single trailer. I'm no fan of J.G. Quintel's style, so I'm just gonna skip it. Hey, would you rather I do everything in my power to trash it, or do you want me to just say I'm not interested?

Now, there was one other show I watched the hell out of back when it was new, and that's what I'm gonna be covering.

Neighbors from Hell

On the air, I had seen all but the first episode, I think I was busy the day the show debuted, but yeah, I was around for plenty. I actually did catch the first episode later on down the line, and, not ashamed to admit, I've recently caught a few select episodes online for one straight constant viewing. I don't know if it was because of nostalgia, but the fact that I never ducked out at any point means the show had something special, but I can't tell what it was.

The show was spearheaded by Pam Brady, a producer who got her start (well, start after a stint on The John Larroquette Show) working with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. She worked as a writer on South Park for its first two years and helped write South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Amy Winfrey, the creator of Making Fiends, also worked on the film as an animator, interesting piece of trivia) and Team America: World Police. Her latest work after this was Lady Dynamite, who she created alongside Mitchell Hurwitz of Arrested Development fame and Sit Down, Shut Up infamy.

Brady created and produced this show, accounting for her Wounded Poodle vanity card, which she also used for The Loop, another notable on her part. The show was also worked on by DreamWorks of all companies, but under a pseudonym, MoonBoy Animation. For those of you who watched this show to the end when it first aired, if you caught this logo, the first thing that may pop into your head is "Is that a DreamWorks reference?"

Apparently the story behind this is that as DreamWorks was better known for producing animation for younger audiences, they needed to keep their name separate from something dedicated more to adults, hence why this is the only time we see that logo. But I'd like to remind you, DreamWorks also produced Father of the Pride, and had their logo unobscured. Maybe it's because both shows had different styles or because DreamWorks was so hurt by Father of the Pride's suckage that they felt their name would be a big jinx? Or maybe it's because both shows used radically different animation.

Father of the Pride was done in CGI, and this was done in flash, and not by them directly. They outsourced the animation to Bento Box Entertainment, of the first season of Bob's Burgers fame and all else infamy. The show lasted for a single season of ten episodes, and for those who see red flags, the amount of episodes in the first season depend solely on network orders. Sometimes they order as little as six episodes, sometimes they order as much as twenty two.

Every episode aired on TBS at least once. I don't know if the ratings were good enough to warrant a full airing of the season, or maybe TBS was the kind of network that would follow through on their promise to air a show in its entirety, or perhaps people were looking forward to seeing something that didn't have Tyler Perry's name.

Premise

I'm not going to focus too much on the characters, aside from some for the sake of context. I'm just gonna go over how they handle the sitcom schtick with its characterizations. In this, they go for a half and half approach, half of the characters are swapped by character types, others are played straight. The former half has the husband being the more levelheaded one, Balthazar and the wife is the one who causes trouble due to her own selfishness and borderline naive behavior, Tina withstanding. In the latter half, we have self-absorbed teen daughter Mandy and the fat idiot savant Josh. Perhaps to bring it full circle, we even have a talking dog who's voiced by Patton Oswalt. Kurtwood Smith is also in this as Balthazar's sadistic boss, and you know what? I'm okay with that. It's a step-up from Squirrel Boy, and Smith is in his element here.

This show is essentially 75% raunch and edge, with the remainder being a semblance of coherency. The main characters are demons from hell sent to Houston, Texas to destroy a drill that'd go down into hell and destroy it. I'll give it this, with a premise like this I can't say I saw something like this before, and for the record, Hell in this show is portrayed as being in the center of the Earth. And the only reason they're sent to Earth is because Balthazar technically has more knowledge of the human race than other demons due to watching television.

Right off the bat, I think my least favorite aspect about this show is its raunch and edginess, well in most areas. At worst, Tina and Balthazar make out at random and we get a lot of testicular jokes, and I mean A LOT, but at best, they're negligible. I mean, the show itself isn't necessarily... racist? And it's not, some people of ethnicity get hurt, but I imagine it would've happened to anybody in the show. I think the show is after a much grander prize, the entirety of humanity.

Almost every human in this show is portrayed as uncaring, often sociopathic and batshit insane. Think of the show as a mix between The Oblongs and God, The Devil and Bob, the latter having a personification for a deity from either heaven and hell, and the former representing the upper class exhibiting mass apathy for the lower class and the world.

This show is a misanthropic wet dream for those who hate the human race, they're portrayed as animal killers who give no shits about anything unless it'd further them in the fiscal food chain. Be prepared to see a lot of dead animals and animal abuse. I would say PeTA got this cancelled, but if they were involved, the show would've been taken off sooner.

On the surface, this just seems like a "mean spirited" show, but I'm detecting some subtext. In a way, this seems like the perfect pro-environmental show. Just hear me out. Rather than punishing humans for how they treat the environment, we see first hand what would happen if massive environmental mistreatment goes unchecked. Do you want to witness such carnage in the real world? Another big hint for this... why are the demons green? Green is like, environmental. So while the chaos is featured predominately, it's not necessarily encouraged. It's like an over-the-top PSA done right.

Although I imagine this would be muddled with the inclusion of one certain character. Marjoe. To sum up, she has a dog that wants to kill himself over how she treats him, and you guys obsessed over how Ren treated bugs and a frog, at least there we get that he was a sociopath. Then again, Marjoe might just be incredibly airheaded, and, blasphemous for me to say, actually kinda likable. She's annoying, but maybe she's used for a point. All I know is that while some people may single her out, I didn't find her to be that unbearable. Then again, I don't react to Adult Party Cartoon the way other people do.

Then there's the matter of how offensive it is on a religious scale. Based on the episodes I've seen, I didn't catch any knocks at Christianity, Satan is portrayed as threatening (though borrows a bit from Alan Cumming's version from God, The Devil and Bob)... I can't say it's any more offensive than Mr. Pickles, and if you think that's a knock on the quality, that show's meant to be offensive, it just comes off as repetitive on an impression basis.

They might've been going for something here, but on the off chance you can't see it, it's incredibly edgy, but it's not even the worst show to feature hell-vibes.

But wait, I almost forgot, pop culture jokes. These come in the form of then relevant musicians and movies. We got references to the Twilight films, Coldplay, Dane Cook, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. These would date the show but... it didn't necessarily happen yet. Coldplay's still playing and I'm sure Lady Gaga is, Britney Spears may return, Dane Cook is still performing, and Twilight may still get covered in retrospective reviews.

Okay, now I'm reaching. This is a universal sin, if you include pop culture references in anything, it'd date your show. How does this show carry these out, it's like "oh this is bad, he likes this, what a douche." Admittedly, I didn't take offense to them smearing musical taste, I mean, I only like one Coldplay song, and I'm sure they were going after their post A Rush of Blood to the Head releases. Also Guitar Hero and text messaging. We all still use our phones nowadays, and I think people are dodging Guitar Hero because... Activision.

Animation

Not bad

As mentioned before, this was done in flash, so I can't really hold this to that high of a standard, and it doesn't matter as long as it looks good. Allow me to pick one of my favorite buzzwords that isn't nuance, interesting. It doesn't look horrible by any means. When it comes to gratuity, there should be some focus toward the other extreme. It's a look at the worst of humanity with a visual style that's easy on the eyes.

Look at Legend of Chamberlain Heights and then complain to me about how bad this show supposedly looks.

Overall

I think there's more to this show than it being a raunchy feast for the eyes. One reason I'm not as hard on comedy is that at times, they can give you a lot more to think about. But if you're still not convinced, it's not as cheap as Legend of Chamberlain Heights, it's somehow less raunchy than Brickleberry, and somehow, I'm willing to sit through any of its episodes.

Am I insane? Or is there something special about this?

Spike TV's Animated Shows

The Paramount Network through its inception alone is very interesting. Would you believe me if I told you Paramount had been struggling to make a television network since the beginning? Originally owning a stake in an old broadcast network, they would later try to make their own network in the 80s, but failed. Along with owning some broadcast stations, they would later get their wish with UPN, but given that there's more bile on that network than gems, maybe it wasn't for the best.

But hell, before Paramount Network, its predecessors had an interesting history themselves. They started out as a country-oriented network before it began to try and compete with other cable networks, and then it became Spike TV. Now, I tend to show interest in animated shows airing on networks that predominantly show live-action, but during the time Spike launched, they attempted a dedicated animation block to original cartoons, and I'm gonna discuss the impressions I get from one episode of each, along with some background trivia.

As an aside, I'm going to talk about Spike shows that made it to air. I'm not going to discuss Immigrants since that came out as a movie.

Stripperella

Stripperella was brought to us by the late and great Stan Lee. This wasn't based on a pre-existing IP, this was the character's first introduction to the world. If this would've come out today, everyone's heads would've exploded, or someone would've decapitated Lee's corpse. I'm going to use images to separate the sections, but that's only because I wanted to give you an idea on how the show pushes sex appeal.

The show stars, and somehow I figured it would, Pamela Anderson, of VIP fame. We also have Biff Tannen, Mark Hamill, Joey Lauren Adams, Tom Kenny, Jill Talley, Vince MaMahon, Kid Rock- Okay, either Stan Lee was a national treasure, or maybe they had the money. The show was produced by The Firm, a talent management company that would later merge with Michael Ovitz's Artists Management Group. Among the producers are Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert, best known for writing and producing All That and Keenan and Kel, among other misc. Nickelodeon shows. They also wrote a majority of the episodes of this show.

Okay, so cleavage and midriff exposure aside, she's a stripper who happens to be a superhero. All plotlines involve crimes against the beautiful along with some knocks against crappy villain plans. The first episode is a two-parter, so I'm gonna jump to the third episode. I still have three other shows after this.

First few seconds in, I'm getting some Batman-parody vibes. The show's animation is decent, and its art-style screams Batman: The Animated Series. I'm forever grateful it doesn't scream Teen Titans. The episode in question centers on a criminal who mugs low-price stores. The joke coming into this is that why would he rob a store with affordable prices? And the villain's name is... Cheapo. Okay I'm not expecting high art, but I suppose this is a step above what you'd get in modern parody films.

Now, as you'd expect we'd get a lot of, ahem, stripteasing in this, and this is amplified in the opening sequence. All I know about her so far is that she's a superhero who's day job is stripping. Luckily, since the animation is good they can pull it off.

Post intro, we get into another aspect of this show, double entendres. We get an anus joke the moment we hear Pamela Anderson speak, no, we don't see her ass she's just plugging an animal rights group with an unfortunate acronym. Anyway, we get a little political jab, where Cheapo got out due to the government's lenience toward criminals, dropping a hard "liberal" too. I would say this would've been perfect during the H.W. Bush administration, but it would only do so if this were set in Massachusetts and if Michael Dukakis won. But whatever the case, it's refreshing to hear a political joke that doesn't involve... can you guess?

Believe it or not, but this is the first I ever heard of a villain like Cheapo. The guy basically has no money and works on a budget. Come to think of it, this is the first I heard of a superhero who works as a stripper. That, combined with its humor, as well as the fact that this is the first time I've ever seen an animated show set in a strip-club. I may be nicer to this regardless of what comes next, this so far seems like the most original thing I've ever seen. I can't post many images of this show, you can see why.

The sting behind Cheapo's ultimate plot is to not only steal a diamond, but an imitation of it. If you wanna play a character, you gotta follow through, so I commend them for that. I reserve the same comment for Stripperella's focus on strip-club terms and erotic dancing. If they didn't have that it'd just be reduced to pointless trivia. However the episode plays out, I'm just glad they followed through. Also Stan Lee makes a cameo in this.

I went into this, expecting the sex appeal to get in the way of action, but there is a decent balance. The strip scenes play out where they're appropriate, and they don't forgo the action too much. We still get a cohesive story out of this, a cohesive story with snarky dialog to mend it all together, along with occasional stabs at superhero show cliches. I actually liked the episode I watched, though something tells me I'd be in for a gamble if I see more.

So to sum up, it's like Batman if Batman was a stripper. It has action, it has tits, but it combines them well. Whatever the case, I prefer this to Mosaic, never heard of Mosaic? Of course you never heard of Mosaic. As for whether or not this could be considered sexist, we still have a kickass heroine who doesn't answer to a man and stay in the kitchen all day.

Before I move on, I'd like to bring up a strange factoid. RowdyCMoore did a review of this some time ago. I only bring this up because me and him are contributors to Manic Expression on some level. Then again, I wouldn't want anything to do with Rowdy, and he'd gladly return the favor.

Gary the Rat

Right off the bat, this show is interesting in terms of who was involved. The show was created by Mark and Robb Cullen, and this is honestly the first I heard of them. Apparently they were behind a garbage UPN series that I may need to look into someday.

Aside from that, the show stars Frasier and Sideshow Bob himself, Kelsey Grammer. Grammer also produced this show, so it has to be good with that level of faith, right? Wanna know who else produced it? Cheyenne Enterprises, which if you didn't know was Bruce Willis' production company. Well sorry to deceive you, but the company was also ran by Arnold Rifkin, who produced this show.

This show technically predates what would follow, it originally began as a series of shorts on the web in the year 2000, but came to Spike in 2003.

The series centers on Gary Andrews, a detestable defense attorney who turns into an anthropomorphic rat. This show would do for furries what Stripperella did for horny guys. Anyhow, like Stripperella, the premise isn't abandoned, he does try to find the reason for his transformation while maintaining his reputation, and adjusting to rat-like habbits.

I get a James Bond vibe from this, going by Gary's mannerisms and overall appearance, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing if they do something original with it. Well when was James Bond ever a rat who converses with his mom on the phone and dabbles in law? Then again, if you wanted to see Frasier do funny stuff while maintaining a straight face and disposition, they got this in spades.

The animation isn't as good as Stripperella. As mentioned before this began as a series of flash shorts, and it shows here. But when it comes to more comedic and commentary oriented shows, the animation should be the least of anyone's problems. I mean... it looks pleasant, the art style is at least original, it's not like 40% of everything's CGI and the rest is filled with characters who mug the screen without even trying, and I'm not making a Cans Without Labels reference for nothing, you'll find out soon enough.

Another thing about the show is that Gary's landlord wants him out and hires an exterminator to get rid of him. This could easily be used as an allegory for... I dunno, racism? Or property politics? But at least we get a clearer idea into why Gary changed. The guy's a schmuck, but isn't aware of it. That's my takeaway. Along with the fact that this takes place in New York. Also, he gets right to the point and accepts his predicament, he knows he's a walking circus attraction.

I guess this is also a commentary on how people are marginalized based on their issues, going for the Dilbert/Clerks/Stressed Eric approach where people are portrayed for their ineffectiveness and there're few sane voices in the crowd. Or perhaps it's just the ways Gary tries to find help, in that people are either apathetic to his plight or they give him an answer and it goes well over his head.

Looking into this, I expected the show to be a bit darker, and well, traditionally animated for some reason, so I was caught by surprise when I found out about what it actually was. At best, it's like Frasier, but with a slight legal slant and a touch of fantasy. Kelsey Grammer's sophistication, mended with some rat habits, makes for an interesting show. The character's well realized, and even for the animation, it has an interesting style.

This seems like the kind of show you need to follow on an episode-by-episode basis, so for me, if I ever have the time, maybe I'll check out the rest of the show to see what gives.

Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon

That's right, you knew this would be coming up. Unfortunately, for the sake of historical context I may need to defy my philosophy and give the obvious.

Right after John Kricfalusi was kicked off of Ren and Stimpy, and well after the show bit the dust, he got involved in a revival. Given that he's no longer bound by the standards of children's television, he essentially was able to do what he wanted, and the rest is history. It tainted the prospect of Ren and Stimpy being involved in future Nickelodeon properties, aside from a cameo in Attack of the Toybots and whatever else I'm missing, and this was John K.'s last television series, the stints on Adult Swim don't count as they were one-time shorts.

Believe it or not, this was my first exposure to Ren and Stimpy, at all. I used to watch Spike TV with my dad as a kid and I saw the characters in commercials. Now no, I never saw the show as a kid, but I imagine it would've had some kind of impact. No joke, I saw an episode of The Sopranos as a kid and it left an impact. It was Member's Only, and somehow I filtered out what happened in between most scenes in the final act.

Believe it or not, I actually saw two episodes prior to this review, the first and second ones, and since those were aired on Spike, it's a win win situation. But wait, the second? Does that mean I saw Ren Seeks Help? Yes.

Just to make this clear, I don't consider the show to be very good, and I'm gonna view it as someone who had no nostalgic background with Ren and Stimpy, which amounts to everyone who went after it. My biggest issue with it is how it's executed. Their attempts at gross-out and edgy humor comes off as desperate at best. Jokes drag on for longer than they need to, plus swearing.

The first episode revolved around Ren and Stimpy ingesting bodily fluids that enter a spittoon they move into, previously living in a homeless guy's mouth (which I remember catching in a commercial), then Stimpy kisses a rat's ass. It's like a sideshow attraction detailing some cornerstones in gross-out humor. For those that like it, it comes off as incredibly shallow. When you think about it, it happens for the sake of happening, and you can see it happening from a mile away. Oh, they're in a spitoon? Well I'm sure some joke will revolve around what goes into the spitoon. Also, Ren whips potatoes, and someone considers it a national offense... I'm glad I had no major background with the original show.

Then there's the big one, well big in that Mr. Enter covered it a long time ago and people latched onto it. As someone who never grew up with Ren and Stimpy, how did this episode go for me? Well I just saw a boy with an uncheck cased of sociopathic tendencies, and apparently frogs are like humans too. My biggest issue with this episode is edge for the sake of edge. It felt like they were throwing whatever they could at the wall to see if it would stick.

And to those who complain how the parents did nothing, that's just a part of Ren's descent into sociopathic hell. If his parents were ordinary, we wouldn't be here right now. His parents play a part into his psyche, where they were hardly there or are passing down a torch in some regards. People hate this in that they had a history with Ren and Stimpy, but as someone who, well, wasn't, it's a generic look at a man's depleting sanity, snapping when pushed too far.

There is a bright side to this, the animation, for what it's worth, is very good. The designs can be off-putting, but it amplifies the atmosphere the show's going for.

But there is one remaining question. Is this worse than Cans Without Labels? Absolutely not. For one, again, this had the most effort in terms of animation, and it was well before John K. got slaughtered by the grooming scandal, plus it didn't have a Kickstarter blunder behind it. It was just an edge and gross for the sake of having edge and gross show. I can't recommend this to anyone, aside from its use as an endurance challenge. Can you make it through all six episodes?

This Just In

And you'd think Spike dropped out cold turkey after Adult Party Cartoon, but they didn't, and I don't blame anyone for not know about this either. This Just In came out in 2004, essentially becoming Spike's very last original animated series. It's not exactly easy to find info on this show or at least I couldn't. The show lasted for four episodes before falling into obscurity.

I had to use the screencap above because it had the Spike bug on it, just to prove this aired on that network. Regretfully, only three episodes of this show are available anywhere, the first one is lost, and it's unlikely anyone recorded it or is aware of its rarity.

I also used the screencap because I needed to put one name on blast. Steve Marmel. You may recognize Marmel from The Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom, but I know him nowadays as the average Twitter user. Stacks upon stacks of tweets cluing us in toward how political he is. Also he's on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stevemarmel

Why am I bringing up his political views? Because this was a political show, and it was a conservative-leaning show. Now that's irony in the sincerest sense of the word. Even more so when you realize the protagonist Marmel voices has that lean.

Unlike the previous three entries, I'm gonna go over the animation first. The show, like Gary the Rat, was done in flash. Gary the Rat had a bit more detail, while this show is more simplistic. This was done primarily so they could get episodes out in time while the issues they discuss are still relevant. The animation is automatically better than Our Cartoon President's animation, as the latter made use of a lazier form of software.

The show centers on the exploits of reporter Brian Newport and his daily life... outside of the office. A prime point of interest is the bar, where Brian interacts with his henpecked friend... friend. And his black friend... black friend. Okay their names are stated in the episode, but I couldn't be bothered to remember them.

The conflict is always framed around something within a social-political basis. The one episode I saw of this was the second, where Brian's bar was taken over by a waitress, and he doesn't hold back. He showcases the toxicity of more radical feminism, at least toxic for the time. There's even a knock at the culture of the middle east.

But don't get me wrong, he knocks the right side too. The Cuban bartender is thrown into jail following a terrorism allegation, and Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in this too, portrayed as a total dolt. So I can conceivably see liberals and conservatives finding something to enjoy about this show.

Marmel was, in his own words, a raging moderate. But nowadays, with his left lean he essentially sold out. Now look, I don't want to knock on anyone's political views, but if you go about it a certain way, having to stress and go into things without thinking it through... I don't even want to know you.

Basically, we need this kind of show nowadays, a show that pokes fun at both sides. I am sick to hell of this one-sided bullshit, this is some George Wallace/Strom Thurmond level bullshit. Wanna know why conservatives call their movement the new punk rock? Well because they're rejected en-masse and only rebels would bother to promote their views, plus, guess who's holding the reigns?

See this is why I hate politics, you can't help but succumb to shelling your views out. And before you think it, I'm a center-left authoritarian, given my political compass results anyways.

Final Thoughts

However you feel about Spike's animated shows, it's not hard to see how interesting they are. We had a Stan Lee cartoon centered on a stripper who happens to be a superhero, we got to see Frasier act like a rat, we got some trauma in the least likely place along with a good idea on how bad John K. truly was, and we even got a glimpse into Steve Marmel's political history before he became retarded.

I'm certain someone covered all of these Spike shows in some kind of retrospective, but have they ever covered all four? That aired directly on the network?

Free For All review

It has come to pass that Showtime isn't the place for high quality cartoons, whether it be an offensive show that has no idea who it want to piss off or pander to, or the epitome of partisan bullcrap that makes it ever more hard to see the other side of the coin. But we shall rest easy knowing that we never had more cartoons on that network, especially between those two.

Okay that's a big fat lie.

Free For All was produced for showtime in 2003, making it the first animated series produced entirely for the network. I only referred to Queer Duck as a Showtime program because the network's branding is used the most prevalently. For most episodes available you can actually catch a Showtime warning bumper at the start, showing how authentic it is. Also apparently, this was the first animated show to be broadcast in high definition, among the first at least, as well as the only traditionally animated show to air on a primetime network. And yes, I got that wholesale from the show's Wikipedia article, but that's only because it's incredibly generous.

The show was created by Brett Merhar, and based on a comic strip series he made beforehand from 1995 to 1998. You might've never heard of it, but trust me, it exists.






There's a big chance none of you knew about this comic series, and nobody knew it better than Merhar. When he pitched the show, he claimed the strip was ongoing.

But that leaves one fairly big question. Why pitch this to Showtime? Well, as it's a premium network, you can get away with a lot more than you would on more mainstream channels, and believe me when I say they take full advantage of the freedom.

Among the staff involved, the show was developed by Merriwether Williams, a name you may recognize from SpongeBob SquarePants and... Adventure Time. I got blocked by figures in the animation review community on deviantArt over thing that shouldn't have been said, but if it wasn't for that, they'd block me for throwing shit at Adventure Time, among other shows. Other people who worked on this William Reiss and C.H. Greenblatt, no need to specify who the latter is.

Along with Merhar who voices what I assume to be a self-insert or someone who couldn't do the character justice, we have Jonathan Silverman from both Weekend at Bernie's movies, Sam McMurray who played Courtney Grippling's dad at some point in As Told by Ginger and... Juliette Lewis, using judgement that landed herself on Natural Born Killers, one of the worst political films of all time, made by someone who looks like he'd rape every female member on whatever organization he'd weasel himself into. He looks like the ugly lovechild of Francis Ford Coppola and Harvey Weinstein- forgive that tangent.

After this, Merhar co-created a YouTube webseries called Beverly Hills Anger Management alongside Gabor Csupo, of Klasky Csupo, of all people, and, sad to say, he was killed in 2016. Williams would sell out and work on Camp Lazlo (which was shit in hindsight, you can't tell me otherwise), and the rest is history.

Premise

The show centers on Johnny Jenkins, caught in the center of a dysfunctional family, an ever-so typical dysfunctional family. What've we got? A drunk-crass dad? Quagmire if he were an ancient woman? Okay in principal it's not that unoriginal, because this show was, for a lack of a better term, no-holds-barred, it's kinda different.

Another point of focus is Johnny's best friend Clay Zeeman, a money-obsessed man who feigned a back injury and won a settlement in a lawsuit. The show portrays him as someone incredibly evil and one who throws Johnny into turmoil, but as someone who has seen every single episode at least once... I've seen far more antagonistic friends. Maybe it was more within the comics, I'm not sure.

Clay, to me, is like a mix between Randall Graves from Clerks and Dogbert, one is apathetic to what happens in the world, the other seeks grander things in life and knows just how to get away with it. He also has a drug-obsessed ferret named Angus, who represents the more desperate edgy jokes and is a focal point to drug-induced hallucinations, a high point to the character. Admittedly, these two premises aren't so original on their own, but it's not common for me to see them together.

Oh, and there's Paula, Juliette Lewis's character. She's the only one in the comics I've seen to have gone through a radical design change. I don't know if the rest of them did, but I'm beginning to wonder. Basically, most characters in comics published by King Features Syndicate (who also published Free For All), tend to have conjoined eyes. That's the ultimate tell when you're looking for their adaptations.

All of the characters don't have the conjoined eyes, except for Johnny, and here's how that looks compared to others.

Seamless

There isn't much to the premises of each episode, aside from their attempts at edginess. Key examples include a point-blank crack about dogs in heat, sterility, ferret mating, sex at an ice cream social (but that wasn't shown, just implied for conflict), STDs, transvestites, they pulled out all the stops, at least the major ones.

The episodes themselves were entertaining at the very least. I found myself going back to most episodes a lot. I'd chalk it up to good execution.

There is one thing I noticed about this. As the show went on, it felt like Johnny became noticeably dummer, and I don't mean a radical downgrade, I mean like he showed less and less awareness to key situations, and to be fair, that kinda helped the show in the long run. As cruel as his grandmother and father can be, at the very least it doesn't lead to severe emotional trauma, enough to lead to an angry mob embellishing aspects that don't need to be embellished. Anyhow, the first episode has grandma trying to get Johnny's room so she could move out of the basement, but this gets abandoned until partly in the 6th episode where she agrees to quit smoking on the condition Johnny moves out. I take it the first episode was meant to help with pitching the show, and right after assurance was granted for more episodes to air, Merhar would showcase his true intentions.

So to sum up, the show made use of edgy jokes that they couldn't make on other networks, I'd like to refer to this show as an experiment of sorts to see what the creator could get away with. You may find some jokes that may not make sense, but is saved by good delivery. Nothing is ever really ran into the ground. If you're into that kind of humor, I would recommend this over Drawn Together, a show even more desperate and deprived.

Animation

Either I found enjoyment from the story and/or jokes, or I was mesmerized by some impressive animation.

I brought this show's animation up in my review of Fatherhood, but just to give you an idea here, Free For All was made with traditional animation, but animated over 3D landscapes. The 3D effects are only visible through more complicated camera movements. For more ambitious shots, the 3D is pulled off very well. The 2D animation is a little iffy, sometimes most movements are choppy, but that's only in select scenes. The rest of the time it's standard.

Let's be frank, hybrid animation for TV shows doesn't always go well, with many of them using one or the other sparingly. So sometimes you gotta keep your standards low. MP4ORCE did hybrid animation, and it still sucked. For a relative obscurity, the show looks good. Damn good.

Overall

Regardless of what you think of the edge factor, this is easily the best animated Showtime program. What's its competition? A schizophrenic cartoon that doesn't know who it wants to offend? Our Cartoon President? Sane people don't enjoy those kinds of shows.

Frankly, by the inception alone, this show is interesting. First there's the fact that Merhar had to pull the wool over the eyes of the executives to get a show made on a long cancelled comic strip made. Next, there's the fact that this show was produced for Showtime. Finally, the fact that he got Gabor Csupo to work with him on something for YouTube. I'm only singling that out because it was around that year Csupo was at his busiest. Previously, he directed Bridge to Terabithia, and I'm still surprised he was behind that film, and it was the same year he was working on Immigrants.

For the record, that was meant to reflect my surprise on how Merhar was able to do things that would ordinarily be unlikely. Merhar you would've made an excellent mentor on negotiations, while your work isn't as remembered these days, you'd be happy to know that I'd consider you to be the highpoint of Showtime's original shows. That and Soul Food: The Series.

Best part is that now I covered every Showtime animated show, and this isn't a set-up for a future review, this is the last in a coverage of every notable animated program made for Showtime. I reviewed Our Cartoon President a while back and I'd consider that to be up to my preferred review standards, I did Queer Duck not too long ago, and here we are with Free For All, aka a sweet note.

Tentacolino was the work of North Korea

With the title, you'd imagine that was an incredibly exaggerated way of saying this movie sucks, but no, it's true. While the movie was produced in Italy, the animation was outsourced to North Korea.

While Tentacolino, and the other animated Titanic movies, are overdone topics, I feel that I can bring something new to the table by going over whatever trivia I could find, and theories as to why these films came out the way they did.

The North Korea Thing

The animation was outsourced to SEK Studio, based in Pyongyang. While the studio had recently expanded to Beijing and had done work with China previously, and it makes sense as China is North Korea's closest ally, they obviously have a bigger foothold in their homebase. SEK, obviously, produced a hell of a lot in North Korea, they were behind Squirrel and Hedgehog, one of few North Korean cartoons to be covered by someone on YouTube, and I bring them up as a point of reference on the overall art direction.

You may expect SEK to remain within North Korea, given their militance, and you'd be wrong. As a matter of fact, animation is the closest anyone has to a stable interaction to the country. In addition to domestic work, they also aided in animation services. For notable examples, they aided in the production of The Simpsons Movie, and that favor even extended to Futurama, where they aided on Bender's Big Score. In addition, they did an episode of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, and an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

One of their biggest contractors happen to be Mondo TV, the producer behind The Legend of the Titanic and Tentacolino. I'd just like to get this out of the way, if you want to contact the founder of this company, Orlando Corradi, who also helped produce those movies, he died in 2018.

To get the elephant out of the room, a lot of their works parallel those by Disney. But hold up, they're protected by the Goodtimes principal. While these are similar properties, they all go by the fairy tale, itself not protected by copyright. If these were illegal, then New Line Cinema would've been rendered bankrupt for distributing their take on Pinocchio.

Then there's Simba the King Lion, which people would complain about regardless of the explanation I gave above. Now yes, that came out in 1996 while The Lion King came out in 1994, but then, oh yeah, Kimba the White Lion. I don't care what technicalities you bring up to me here, they're both guilty.

Mondo TV primarily produced content that had a Japanese influence, this was implied in the company's history section on Wikipedia. The first thing I saw on their take on Cinderella was an anime-esque poster. If I were to look into all of their works, we'd be here all day.

Why did the animated Titanic movie suck?

First off, I'm not gonna compare this to the James Cameron film, I want to look at the film on its own merits, and Titanic: Legend Goes On is more worthy of that comparison. Second, I'm gonna refrain from senseless bitching, I am trying to find something new to say about these films and in a new way.

Remember the Japanese influence I mentioned? I think what they were going for with the moonbeam stuff was some typical magic schtick associated with more fantasy-oriented anime, or perhaps they wanted to incorporate fairy tale aspects, given they spearheaded cartoons with this schtick. The big issue is that while it's easy to piece together why the heroes can do this, it's not as easy to do the same for the bad guys. If I had to guess, I imagine the evil ones were able to get the magic going a different way. Maybe one of them spat into the ocean, and it had the same effect as a tear.

But whatever the case, even by fairy-tale and Eastern-influence standards, this comes off as incredibly forced. Like they hammered in every single cliche from both influences they could. Speaking of fairy tales, that's also why we have a focus on talking mice. To close off on the fantasy aspect, I'd chalk it up to Top Conners trying to tell a crazy story to keep his kids entertained, screwing with them by claiming the story was entirely rooted in truth.

That isn't to say it's entirely forgivable. It feels like a tale someone tells to their kids to prevent them from getting traumatized over the events. Come to think of it, I think the writers made this as a coping mechanism, hence nobody dying in the end, and a giant octopus, and talking animals, and surprising reliance on whales. I would try to explain why they glorify whales, but I imagine they were just along to help, only to get over-promoted for no reason.

So overall, this movie is essentially like a watered down retelling of what happened on the Titanic, from the perspective of someone who's scared to death of telling them the truth, less they want the listeners to get traumatized. If they changed the whale to a government allegory, this would pass for entertainment in North Korea.

Why did Tentacolino suck?

Just to make this clear, I still hate these movies. I just want people to sleep easy knowing there might be a reason why these movies are ass.

I think the biggest issue behind this film is its anachronisms, i.e. the bathysphere used at the start, even though it still would've been a few years before they became widely used. There's a big chance these people weren't history buffs, but to save trouble, look for historical context based on what's used to make sure what you put in fits the period.

Also, I have nothing to say about the batshit insanity that occurs throughout the movie. They just fucked up. As for why most characters were suddenly altered out of nowhere, I've yet to see the original Italian cut. Maybe it was because the English cast received a bad translation of the script? It would make sense, but we had some mainstays from The Legend of the Titanic, you'd think someone would've said something before getting into it, but I imagine they just wanted a paycheck, so they wanted to get done with this as soon as possible.

I think it's here where the North Korea aspects really come to shine. Firstly, the director, Kim J. Ok, I know nothing about him, but every major North Korean I've ever heard of, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il, Kim Jung-Un, Mr. Kim, had Kim incorporated into the name, plus it's a typical Korean name structure. Case closed.

Then there're the bad guys. Since I've got North Korea on the brain, these make sense. In Squirrel and Hedgehog, they use specific depictions of countries they're against. Just the fact they go by stereotypical depictions may suggest a geopolitical slant, but then again, I know of a Sweedish cartoon that got away with a point-blank stereotypical depiction of an Asian girl. Then we have the escape party, which may be a stab at people who want to disobey the government, with our heroes being unconditional supporters of said government, getting inducted without a second thought.

Think about it.

As for the ending being a proverbial bird to what happened in the first film, I think I have an idea. They actually died while in the bathysphere, with the Atlantians actually being angels to take them into the afterlife, Atlantis being it. The rat army are actually various depictions of Lucifer, marking his departure as one of God's angels and evolving into the devil.

But that gets fucked over by the humans above and the sharks, so there goes that theory. Then again, I think we all would've wanted these schmoes to be dead.

I do have one last theory. They realized that Titanic: Legend Goes On was actually better than their previous movie and tried to cash in on it however they could. How else can you explain the radical tone shift between those movies.

All else I can say is, "Pick up those bits of broken china at once." If I can understand what that wicked stepmother said in Legend Goes On, maybe that's why I understood why these movies sucked so hard.

MP4ORCE revisited

A while back I did a review of MP4ORCE, a cartoon from the mid-2000s who's history is shrouded in mystery. I was only able to get in a few minutes before I quit. The more I thought about it, I felt this show needed to be seen, it's perfect for a negative review, I practically struck gold, but when I thought about it, my previous review of this wasn't the best in hindsight, and it was unfair of me to judge it based on a few minutes.

So, I sacked up and decided to try and see the episode through to the end. Aside from cutting out to answer messages on deviantArt and Discord, I found it hard to get through the first episode in one sitting. It was just so uninteresting, and it was practically unashamed of it. So, let's hope this'll be my definitive review of what I'd consider to be the worst cartoon show of all time, or perhaps one of the most mediocre shows out there.

History

Yeah, sorry, but I need to make sure I get everyone up to speed on a contextual basis.

It isn't exactly easy to find info on this show. Episodes are available, but its inception is a mystery. Even basic research is impossible. You won't find anything on Wikipedia, aside from an entry on their German site which only gives a slight sliver on where it aired.

The show was produced in 2006 for a typical 13 episode season, but didn't come out until 2014. While it seemed like I was able to get a clue on what network the show aired on in Germany, out of three, I'm stumped on all fronts. This apparently aired on eoTV and Fix and Foxi domestically, but another network identified was Your Family Entertainment, a holding company responsible for managing the works of one of the principal producers.

I don't know for sure if this ever aired in the US, but an English version exists, provided it's not the only version that ever existed. While I got an idea on where this aired in Germany, it was said this got released (at least according to TVTropes) in the US. But no network was ever specified on there, plus the nearly eight year window opens up more questions. If I had to guess, had this actually come out in 2006, maybe Nicktoons would've got it as around that time they were acquiring shows from around the world.

And she couldn't possibly blame her brother for that as it'd be a cartoon and not a sitcom.

If this wasn't released on television in the US, maybe it got a worldwide release on DVD. The one promotional image I found of it looks like it'd belong on a DVD case. Also, in the US this is referred to as MP4ORCE Beyond Real, and there's more to that come the actual episode.

The studio behind this was Berlin Animation Film. You may recognize them as one of the studios behind the relatively forgettable film Happily N'Ever After. The show was backed by the studio's owner, Berliner Film Companie (or BFC Entertainment.) Aside from working on this and Happily N'Ever After, they are perhaps best known for producing the age all classic, Da Boom Crew.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume it's incredibly cheap to produce anything in Germany. It was the same country that brought us Uwe Boll for the love of Edward Canby. For a better idea on why I feel this way, check out the average Warner Bros. International Television show produced with assistance from UFA International Film & Television GmbH. They aired in syndication, consider that a fair warning, okay they also produced a cheap ass TV movie for Fox in the late-90s too.

Voices for the show were recorded in Germany, as well as in Toronto. Among eight actors credited to this, two are singled out. The first singled out is Jeff Burrell, he came from New York and moved to Berlin some time after (hey, what I wouldn't give to get out of this state for good, or at least out of the boroughs permanently.) He plays Devlan13, who I'm going to refer to as Dumbass13 later on.

The other top billed actor is Jonathan Mallen, who appeared in a number of things, which include Mean Girls and Angela Anaconda. In this he plays the cocky stereotype guy. Then there's Jonathan Failla, and this is going into the participant section. I don't know who he played, but he looks like he played a deep-voice guy who happens to be the villain. He never appeared in anything I've seen before.

We then get into more familiar territory, we have the voice of Wyatt from 6Teen, he's uncredited but my instincts tell me he's voicing a token black guy. Then there's Tajja Issen, aka Atomic Betty, aka one of many shows I have a bone to pick with. There's Marty Sander who's listed as a female for some reason. Look, I'm not getting much on them, they've been off the map since 2008 with some other German exclusive show which oddly looks more interesting in terms of style.

The remaining two actors only had this show to their name, so you know at least one of the two have to suck ass.

An Episode

As mentioned before, I cut out a few minutes into the episode. But just know that when I tried to be fair and see it all the way through, it didn't feel rewarding. Waiting for messages on deviantArt and Discord was a more fulfilling experience than this show.

First thing's first is the intro, while I could find diddly on the composer, the vocals were performed by Natascha Grin and Vernon D. Hill. I imagine they're big in Germany, but I couldn't find anything painfully interesting about them to warrant further discussion. As for the song, when you take into account where this show came from, it'd make perfect sense. It's  a Europop techno song, Euro's in the name so you can't help but point out that association. As for the song itself, even for the year it came out, it sounds dated, what with its incorporation of rap and tone deaf vocals. The song itself may be catchy to some, but at large it comes off as generic, thanks to its inane lyrics. Sorry to say, but it's one of those you gotta hear for yourself deals.

The episode begins with my favorite kind of characters, archetypes. We have the cocky annoying arrogant archetype, the blonde girl type, the alternative looking girl that people latch onto and make a shit ton of fanart out of (but that never happened since I'm one of two people who heard of this show) type, and the most wonderful of them all... black. But wait, he's not just black, he's a black nerd. You really reinvented the genre. While I'm not the kind of person who loses it over representation, I will say that the inclusion of an African American character this way seems hollow.

Anyways, this show abides to the ever-typical stop the bad douche framework. These four gamers, or how a fifty+ year old man imagines gamers to be like, are up against a villain who for the life of me I can't remember the name of, so I'll just call him The Emo Tick (if you heard of The Tick, whether it be the cartoon or the Fox show or whatever came after, you got taste)

I'm just gonna say right off the bad, the dialog is garbage. While it isn't littered with slang, it sounds incredibly forced. I have the feeling the people behind this have never encountered another human being before, or perhaps this show was produced entirely by a machine. Most of the dialog consists of stating the obvious, lines falling in line with character archetypes, and at one point someone uses the word "overrated" as a diss against a villain early on in the episode.

Right after a round of the game they're playing (and for the record it's actually called MP4ORCE: Beyond Real, stated in full to add to the ass dialog), we meet Damien Darkstone, aka Damien Dumbshit, aka Devlan13, aka Dumbass13, aka...

Kevin 11

I was kidding around when I compared the villain douche to The Tick, but that is low-key Kevin 11 from Ben 10. I imagine this show was completed some time after Kevin got introduced. For everyone throwing inane rip-off accusations at other shows, check out MP4ORCE and then talk to me about rip-offs, provided your head doesn't explode from what you witness.

So why am I calling this kid a dumbass? Well he plays a rival character who's against the main four, holy redundancy Batman, and he always loses. He wouldn't last ten seconds with that World of Warcraft player from South Park. But anyway, before I get off-track, getting his ass handed to him one time two many had left him desperate. So what happens? He sees a cheat code, a very specific cheat code that allows him to win every time. Guess what ha- he types it in, and as a result gets the show's entire conflict going.

You know, people gave Mabel shit for getting Weirdmageddon going. But personally, I understand why she did it, she felt scared of what her future would hold. She had a drive for accepting Bill Cipher's deception. Think what you want about what Mabel did, but by default, she had a better reason to do what she did than Damien. Damien didn't question an oddly specific cheat code that came out of nowhere, and I mean he didn't look it up it just popped up on his screen. I guess it was sent by the Emo Tick because Damien aided him in the game, but how could he not question it. Damien comes off as the kind of person who'd download just about anything. Bet his computer is littered with junk and spyware.

After each landing a spot in the high score chart, they are contacted by Claxon, or as blonde, bland and bad at acting say, "the guardian from MP4ORCE." Please note this girl has some of the worst acting in any show I've ever seen. All I can say about this guardian guy is...

Dude, you look like sperm.

So the basic idea behind this is that four kids are recruited to take on a major threat, with their skill being tested through how well they do on a video game, with them getting the high score.

Never heard that one before.

Following some more totally natural dialog that doesn't suggest these kids had never spent much time out of the arcade, they get sent to a station where they'd be put into the game to take the Emo Tick head on. Throughout this, I think they want us to hate the cocky kid, call it a blind hunch but I think they want us to hate this kid, he doesn't shut up.

Meanwhile, Damien Dumbshit has evolved into Dumbass13, and in case you weren't paying attention, the A grade dialog has your back, they feel the need to explain key plot points as if you have the attention span of a reality show junkie. Because, as his nickname implies, he's an idiot, he freed Emo Tick from the game, and now he's set on digitizing the world so he could rule it from his own domain (he has ghost attributes in the real world, shown through scenes that try to be funny, but come off as tacky, with an exposition-based coating.)

Now, did someone say let's pad out the episode by including a gearing up montage and then showing the characters point out the game characters they've become? Well you got this far, what do you think happens? This does nothing but alert Emo Tick to them being in the game.

After padding that'd make Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase blush, we get into the game, and we start off in an ice level, the finest of all levels. If this show went on I imagine they'd incorporate a sewer level somehow. In this, we get the typical video game representation in TV show schlock, desperate attempts to establish camaraderie through the ever common and totally not repetitive concept of teamwork, running low on energy where the stakes are little to none. Hey, if this show is so reliant on exposition, just say that if they die in the game, they die for real. Gamebox 1.0 never mentioned this directly, but even that film handled things better, regardless of how cheesy it is.

Also now we get a whole new collection of archetypes related to their video game characters, we have the cocky hero type, the voice of reason who often scolds the cocky hero type and tends to act like an ass when the cocky hero type falls flat, Tommy Wiseau if he were a girl and sucked harder at acting... black guy?

The only thing interesting that happens is some banter between Emo Tick and Dumbass13, the latter is more standoffish than I imagined. Congratulations, you had one series of moments that didn't make me feel like my brain was dripping out of my nose. From here it's just combat, with nothing new or exciting to warrant a word beyond acknowledgement. They obviously win the game, I know, I didn't expect that either, Dumbass13 devolves to Damien Dumbshit and goes to deal with his mother. Probably gave away her credit card info for something advertised online.

If you're expecting some drama to have happened during the fight, you'd be shit out of luck. The voice of reason one gets frozen, and this doesn't hold any emotional weight, just some incredibly stupid dialog to follow the discovery. The show isn't a comedy, it's hardly a gritty action show, it's the closet we have to sheer nothing. But there is a lesson in all this. Don't cheat. Yeah, I'm gonna say it, Sabrina's Secret Life did morals better than this, at least the plots of the episode would fit in with the moral.

Nothing else interesting happens, and that could go for the entire episode, stay tuned for the closing statements, because I will put down harder than the Great Grape Ape.

Animation

The animation is deceptive. On the surface, it looks good, but if you pay close attention there're nuances you can't ignore. We've got a whole kettle of fish in the first episode alone. Some characters are completely still while only one moves in most scenes. In the very beginning, it looks like these gamer dorks are acting like they're a movie character pretending to play video games (the screens don't move but they sure do), heck, during the montage, it looks as though they pasted JPGs of the game characters onto the screen and moved them with a mouse. It looks to be a mix between 2D and 3D animation, but they couldn't quite pull it off.

And I can't stand the art style.

Anime grin FTW. Why would anyone smile while shutting their eyes in these kinds of shows?

A big hangup I have with anime styled shows is their over-consistency. You see one anime styled show, you've seen like 80% of the rest. You can identify many nuances (and how many times am I going to use that word in my lifetime?) in shows like these. Frankly, I'm just sick of seeing it. Somehow, the art style looks incredibly bland here, nothing ever truly pops out unless it's something you can't possibly ignore.

All of that just amplifies how bland this show truly is.

Overall

I'd just like to point this out for the last time, the first time I saw this episode, I quit after a few minutes. Trying to sit through the episode to the end felt like hell to me. It was a big mistake. If this did air in the states, either nobody watched it or they did and tried their hardest to forget it even existed. It's rare to see a show try its hardest to be as bland as possible, bland characters taking it up the ass through archetypical characterizations, a bland premise that begs for comparisons to existing properties, a bland art style, and other things that I'm too wiped to point out directly. Also plagarism.

I would normally say don't watch this show at this point, but given how I'm one of two people who've heard of it... more people need to see this show. More people need to talk about this show. People love to ravage more comedic shows because they're easy targets, well now I discovered a skid mark so vile it's bound to open a grander can of worms in the action genre of cartoons. Bring this show up to whoever you want, RebelTaxi, Saberspark, Mr. Enter, anybody who can put this on the map. We can't leave this stone unturned, no matter how heavy and out of the way it is.

All I wanna do now is check out an episode of The Loud House themed around a video game, you know, cleanse the mind with something more palatable, get some pizza and sleep. But first, I just got a pop-up, ooh, Channeleven Lives Forever cheat code. Well if Damien Darkstone taught me anything, it's to not approach weird messages with caution. Just insert my credit card info and-

Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch review

As a reminder, I won't cover the live-action Sabrina shows. I won't cover Sabrina the Teenaged Witch because I really don't have that much to say about it, other than that I grew up with it, but until I can find an episode, I don't know how to view it from a modern scope. As for the others, I haven't seen them, nor do I have the interest, plus if they are serialized, I'm not the kind of person who'd binge watch stuff, my current line of work forbids me from doing that kind of thing.

Also, I won't cover the Filmation series. As far as I know, it isn't as interesting as what came after, but if there's more to it, I may give it a look. For now, I just want to cover what I consider to be the more interesting adaptations.

With that said, have a nice read.

Before I get into the main course, I'd like to give you a recap on the shows I covered so far.

First off, I covered Sabrina: The Animated Series. Going into it I thought it was considered a classic show by many, but going into it now, I realize that a lot of people didn't really like it that much. Even before Mr. Enter claimed it, a lot of people chided this show for its lack of connection to Sabrina the Teenaged Witch.

It could've been a misconception, but apparently, promotions established a connection, and two, Sabrina had always been a teenager in the comics. They just de-aged her for the sake of making a kids show seem more relatable than it actually was. Hey, not every kid show needs a kid protagonist, much like how not every adult show needs an adult protagonist. If you could make it work then you'd have something more interesting on your hands.

STAS was essentially a cash-in, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch aired on ABC while STAS aired on a block ABC had a stake in, which coincidentally extended beyond their own network (STAS also aired on UPN, and a key reason why anyone would bother with that network is that they didn't have the same strict standards as other networks and they tend to book bigger season deals. For example, UPN promised Clerks: The Animated Series 22 episodes on the air while ABC promised them six, and only aired two. This was meant to exploit a big coincidence.)

Sabrina's Secret Life just barely made it before Sabrina could be considered obsolete in the public's conscious. It was more of the same as STAS, but this time they had to follow E/I regulations, meaning that morality tales which were a thing in STAS became more point blank. But beyond that, it was almost close to what STAS was. I will say that Sabrina's voice in this is better than the one she had in STAS.

The Sabrinaverse died out around 2004 when Secret Life ended, we ended on an otherwise acceptable note, DiC Entertainment got acquired by DHX Media (then Cookie Jar) four years later, I doubt reruns of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch were as common at that point, so it was over... right?

Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch

I don't know how this came about, I don't know what encouraged anyone to make a Sabrina series. You might think the comics were still going on which would warrant another show, but the comics ended in 2009, roughly four years before this show first aired. As a reminder, Secret Life might've not been that good, but at least it came out while the comics were still released, as well as within the same year Sabrina the Teenaged Witch ended.

If the bad timing didn't get to you, the production trivia will.

The show was primarily produced by Splash Entertainment. The name may sound familiar, because it is. Splash is the current incarnation of the animation production division of the now defunct MoonScoop Group. MoonScoop, back when they produced shows under the Mike Young Productions banner, were behind a number of cheap CGI shows. They produced Pet Alien, as well as Butt Ugly Martians.

Around the same time this came out, MoonScoop went through a restructure and became Splash Entertainment, with this show being their first production under that name. Oh yeah, and they happened to produce Norm of the North, which I consider to be the worst mainstream animated film of all time, and you can't tell me otherwise.

As this is a Splash/MoonScoop/Mike Young show, their funding would come from international units. Among those who helped fund this are Telegael, who had been in business with Splash since 2005 and you'd see their logo on almost all of their productions, as well as through DSK Entertainment, the production arm of a conglomerate based in India. The animation was done by Laughing Lion Ltd, I'm not certain where they're from.

The show aired on The Hub, remember that network? Well I don't remember seeing this show, then again I wasn't able to get this network until later on. The show lasted for 26 episodes, all within a single season. Going into the ratings this show got, they jumped a whole lot, the highest they got was a 0.274 on the fifth episode. Toward the last four episodes the ratings aren't shown. I blame embarrassment.

Premise

On the surface, this seems like STAs had they kept Sabrina a teenager. However, at least by the summary alone, this time she goes between worlds, living a normal life in high school and training to do magic in another. Plus she's a princess of sorts, yeah, because those are still in style.

Also apparently Salem is evil in this, and I don't mean the past context of him being an evil wizard turned into a cat, I mean he is a spy sent by Enchantra, the big bad to spy on Sabrina and screw her over. Okay, I'm starting to miss Salem being the voice of reason in Secret Life, at least he still had more than an iota of his character in the other adaptations. I'm stressing over this, but that's only because their depiction of Salem seems hollow and incredibly one-note. You can incorporate new aspects, just don't take the easy routes.

Then again, that's just an impression, I could be wrong here.

Like past Sabrina animated shows, their scope of talent comes from Vancouver, aside from the star. Sabrina is voiced by Ashley Tisdale, Sharpay from High School Musical and Candace Flynn from Phineas and Ferb. I have nothing to say on this aside from, hey, she turned out better than Hillary Duff (Haunting of Sharon Tate vibes inensifying.) For the others, we have Ian James Corlett as Salem and a teacher at Sabrina's school in the magic world, I'm gonna save performance quality for when I go into the episode, I have a gut feeling I won't like Corlett's performance.

There's also Kathleen Barr and Tabitha St. Germain, incredibly common actors in Vancouver productions, as well as Maryke Hendrikse, aka Sonata Dusk from Equestria Girls. The rest require some extra drudging, I just wanted to keep it brief.

As far as finding an episode to cover, I wanted to focus on the first, a werewolf episode, both because of my interest in the prospect as well as how other shows portrayed it. I got curious, but it turns out the show's blocked in my country, and I'm too cheap, and lazy, and outright apathetic to invest in a VPN. So, I went for the earliest episode available. Here goes nothing.

The episode

I'm going to focus on the third episode, Shock Rock, where Sabrina acquires a band for a benefit concert and Enchantra's son tries to steal her thunder with his own band.

Before I get into what I find, I'd like to give you an idea on the visual aspects.

Courage...

I get a little taste of Sabrina's attitude in the first few moments. I.e., every teenaged main character ever. Have you ever seen a typical teen cartoon character not knock classical music while promoting the mainstream radio crap? In this, the teacher likes it, so I guess that's new for me. For the record she starts out in the magic world, and apparently they have the same mentality as England through the eyes of Butch Hartman, as in... hardly on the up and up.

Before I go on, here's a question nobody asked. Do I hate Sabrina's voice in this? Well, I'm mixed. On one side it's a stereotypical teen accent that doesn't make her stand out too well. On the other, it still sounds a hell of a lot better than Emily Hart.

While I went on that tangent, did any of you piece together the start of the conflict? If you said jealous asshole disagrees with the music and claims he can do better... uh... if you see me on the streets I'll give you fifty bucks. The jealous asshole is Shinji, the son of Enchantra. Admittedly, they could've easily pulled the forbidden love aspect, where the two like each other, but they didn't. Then again, this is yet another easy route to take. I guess they would've lost no matter what they did, so I won't hold it against them.

Another thing I won't hold against them is the dialog. They try to incorporate the wit STAS and Secret Life had into the show, and well, it has something. The dialog here is automatically better than MP4ORCE, and I will keep bringing that show up until more people cover it.

The dialog's listenable, but it's essentially like anchovy pizza. It's eatable, but there're issues you can't avoid. Shinji took the band thing too far and treated it as if it were a challenge, but Sabrina tried to tell him it wasn't a challenge. It would've been fine stated twice, but they stretch it a little longer than necessary. Did it accomplish anything? Does me thinking Shinji is an idiot count as an accomplishment?

But to be fair, right after that stretched exchange, we get into a real big plus for this series. The opening sequence. Apparently, the show won an Emmy for Main Title and Graphic Design, and I can see why. The intro made use of paper cut-out type animation, it's incredibly fluid and pleasant to look at, it firmly establishes the vibe the show goes for and the song it plays to isn't bad either. It's a pop song indicative of the time, but it's still very easy on the ears, I'd consider it better than Secret Life's intro.

Also apparently Ashley Tisdale won an Emmy for her performance as Sabrina. All I have to say to that is the first Emmy was deserved, it was a damn good intro, and since Tisdale's better than Hart at voicing Sabrina, I'd give her an award just for giving a shit.

Anyway, back to Sinjerkass, obviously he's egomaniacal, and he goes for the ever-typical put name of self in name of band, and have it like blank and the blank-ets. He takes a rebuff against that better than I expected him to. A problem they face is a lack of instruments, so they need to get them from the human world. Given that Shinji heard music from the normal world, I guess it was by instinct that he would get instruments from there to compete with the band Sabrina showed off.

I wanted to wait until the next seen to discuss Salem, just to know for sure how he's portrayed, and now I have an idea. I wanted to see a scene with Salem with Sabrina only, and one where she's in the company of others. Salem doesn't speak, well, not in Sabrina's company anyway. He takes the role of a seemingly innocent cat who relays information to Enchantra. Points for trying something different but this is yet another safe route.

We then get to Enchantra's first scene, where in this she takes on the role of a shipper, well, she tries to make a love potion to get Sabrina and Shinji to fall in love with one another, and maybe lower Sabrina's morale in doing this, I dunno. We go the downtrodden path of someone has a valuable item and they get disrupted by something, causing the item to get destroyed. The destruction comes in the form of a loud and over-compensatory spell cast by Shinji, but to be fair, the item Enchantra has in question gets saved from going to waste. This either plays a part in the plot, or they just wanted to try their hand at subversion.

At this point I learn Sabrina has a female friend, wouldn't you know it, another one, who's on the up and up for Sabrina's witchery. At this point Shinji conjures up the instruments left by the band in the gymnasium and I'm just gonna guess Shinji can't sing. I would say this would be funny, but I kinda saw the shrill voice schtick from a mile away. I can get by most repetitive jokes, but again, they're repetitive and you gotta single out those kinds of aspects.

After that, I finally hear Salem talk, and I've gotta say... it's the worst Salem voice I ever heard. I normally don't want to compare it to better actors, but Nick Bakay practically made the character. Why else would Maurice LaMarche incorporate Bakay's portrayal into Salem for Secret Life? Because it's good? People knock changes like these because more often than not, they're badly executed. Salem's essentially an idiot in this.

Oh hey, that valuable item gag? Turns out I was wrong on both fronts, it's played out the same, just as Shinji's about to do something incredibly noisy. Shinji then attempts to lampoon egomanical singers, touching hallmarks such as a solo career before settling on a genre far off from what he started in. I'm already getting sick of pointing out when they go for the obvious, so I'm gonna try and muster up some compliments to break the monotony. I guess the tone of voice Shinji has makes the joke hit harder than I expected it to, something about sounding so serious makes the joke fly over well, especially when he leaves for real, only for us to go back to the Enchantra important item gag.

But I guess there is a payoff to that. She gets rid of the source of the noise, I.E., Shinji's band to concentrate on her work. At least there was a point to all that. As for what happens to the rest of the band, they get trapped in a bubble, but they decide to make the most of it by practicing due to the bubble having a killer echo.

Anyhow, aside from set-up for a subplot in Sabrina's token friend trying to keep the situation under wraps and a pre-occuring subplot where Salem tries to elude a school guard who heard him talk, Sabrina returns to witch world and finds Shinji, and I expected him to be rude to her. Was he? Actually, no, he turned out to be surprisingly helpful. I mean he basically killed the need for establishing a search for the instruments, but I found it surprising that he was willing to help, albeit indirectly. There's some layers to Shinji it seems.

Anyhow, as the members of Shinji's makeshift band got trapped, they resorted to practicing, and I'm willing to bet, know, I know it's gonna happen, they're going to save the plot. After some more sub-nonsense, Sabrina finds them and the band she hired bailed. As for that Enchantra gag, the failure to secure the important item didn't serve as her downfall, just the usage of the wrong ingredient. Also of that Salem subplot, take every magical creature against someone proving their existence and pinpoint the ending to that kind of plot.

As for the band, well since the bubble they were put in couldn't be destroyed by any means in the witch world, apparently that means a technicality would get them out. That being that it is vulnerable in the real world. This is within the last minute or so for the record. So the performance goes well, although the vocals aren't very good.

Before I close this off, I'd like to point out that Trevor Wall directed this episode. The director of Norm of the North.

Animation

Splash's animation has been mostly stagnant since the beginning, with the only improvements going toward better technology. It's at an all time high with this show, but it's not saying much. The movement can be a little rough at times, characters look plasticky and some of the backgrounds clash with the animation at times. If I had to be nice, at least this was for a TV show, where it's a bit more acceptable. As the episode went on I got better used to it.

While I was able to find stills that amplified how ugly the models looked in Game Over, not even the one I got in the screencap above had the same effect.

Overall

I went into this thinking I'd absolutely hate this. I think part of me just wanted to hate this because Splash was involved, but I actually kinda liked it. Now don't get me wrong, there are some inexcusable flaws, they play it safe more times than they need to. The acting could also use a little spit-shine, but the latter could be said about the other Sabrina cartoons as well. Then there's what they did different. I'm no fan of what they did to Salem, even the few times where he was altered in other cartoons, he was consistent. This was too radical of a change here. For the record, I'm just going by what I saw, I'm taking the premise with a grain of salt, it could've been from an earlier pitch which got abandoned before production began.

While this rates lower than the previous show, the only negative review on the show was someone who got pissy over a lack of morals. A more positive review came out a year after the former review, so I guess it depends on what you're into.

At least for this episode, for something as damaging as the morals STAS try to teach (at the very least in Anywhere but Here), and as preachy as Secret Life, I'm glad this one abandoned the moral schtick and just tried to tell a more straightforward story. Although the Salem subplot could've been left out and it wouldn't damage the plot shown here.

As for me bringing up how it coming out so late was a bad thing, I'm aware that the aspect could be overlooked if the end product was good. I mean how long ago did the third generation of My Little Pony end? And what came after needs no introduction. Maybe the people behind this genuinely wanted to bring Sabrina back and go for what Friendship is Magic did, bring it to a new audience.

I do respect the fact that they decided to keep Sabrina as a teenager in this. It felt less like they were pandering to kids when they made Sabrina a 12 year old in STAS, which actually wound up fucking over the comics. We haven't had a Sabrina cartoon where she was a teenager since the Filmation series, and to be fair, this wouldn't be the last Sabrina series ever, aside from hopes of appearing in Riverdale, there's an ongoing as of late live action series on Netflix, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Also again, Ashley Tisdale is better than Emily Hart, Hart's older now so I'm not necessarily attacking a kid at this point.

So to sum up, I guess I'd consider this something of a guilty pleasure. I'm aware this isn't necessarily up to par with The Hub's other shows, but there's a hell of a lot worse. This may very well be Splash's best production by default, from this era, I will consider this the best Mike Young/MoonScoop/Splash CG cartoon. Bear in mind this is up against the various Bratz specials, Pet Alien, Butt Ugly Martians, so yeah, this is the best of their CG efforts.

All that's left to say... why was it so hard to make a Sabrina cartoon where she's still a teenager, if this could do it, so could the previous ones.