Thursday, November 12, 2020

Tooning out the News non-view

The biggest source of stress is politics, coming usually from the news, so what better way to relieve ourselves of it than to watch something in relation to the news and keeping the aspects that cause stress?

We have a show meant to poke fun at the news, this sounds like something that'd be on YouTube, but somehow it's affiliated with a major network, CBS to be exact.

This is one of the first animated CBS shows of any form in a long time. The last major animated series they aired was Family Dog back in the early-90s, where it sucked so hard it and Fish Police rendered CBS unwilling to air any more animated shows on their network. And to be fair, that's still true.

This, and Star Drek: Lower Decks (and the typo's intentional), both air on CBS All Access. I don't know if it's too late to joke about its low popularity, but for those who're new, it's nothing special. The only programs I know of on it are the third revival of the Twilight Zone, which was created by Jordan Peele, enough said (okay if you want more its political views are near impossible to ignore), and the aforementioned shows. I believe they also aired Star Trek: Discovery.

Any wonders on how a show that begs to be on YouTube would be all but forgotten once you realize who created it. Stephen Colbert. Ignoring his talk show career because it's common knowledge, Colbert is perhaps best known for creating Our Cartoon President, born from a sketch on one of his shows.

Since there're enough idiots to tune in and rack up the ratings, a spin-off, an ongoing as far as I know spin-off, was created to air as a show within a show. Actually that would make too much sense. Instead, Our Cartoon President became its own show on a different network. Showtime created an anti-gay icon with Queer Duck and Our Cartoon President isn't the only show to hammer in politics.

Our Cartoon President wore its partisanship on the sleeve, but what makes it stand out is that none of the people involved had any experience in animation (aside from voice acting.) For those of you that would shit on flash cartoons, Toon Boom shows and Magic Girl Friendship Squad, that show uses a lazier animation tool, Adobe Character Animator.

I bring up Our Cartoon President because along with Colbert and the animation style, it practically utilizes the exact same staff. I'm not kidding, the only logo that doesn't appear at the end is Showtime (but CBS All Access is practically interchangeable with it.) To single out the more significant creators aside from Colbert, Chris Licht (who assists Colbert on his talk show) produces this as well, and this time around we get a new vanity card from R.J. Fried (Fried was one of many creators on Our Cartoon President for the record.)

To be fair, Adobe Character Animator would've worked fine in a short series format, enabling creators to make the weekly grind. It also works best what with the COVID crisis which drove them to use this (previously they did some form of rotoscoping, but who knows if they did it right.)

There isn't anything to the plot. It's just a collection of satirization on today's news topics, and since Colbert's involved, the guy is as afraid to make fun of his side as he it to make fun of himself. They also do commercials, but I imagine they'd be as weak as the news segments.

I put non-view in the title for a reason, because frankly I don't want to waste my time with it. It's by Colbert, so you know this show would have a heavy left-leaning perspective. It's a news-related satire where it's too afraid to poke fun at itself beyond the stories discussed. I know there'd be enough Trump/Republican jokes to span both hands and a small spattering of jokes related to the other side in order to make people who hate the show look like idiots.

And that's really the core of the show. It doesn't fill me with confidence.

CBS doesn't crank out the same level of shit as MSNBC and CNN on the news, but they get to that extent with their shows.

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