So before I get into the review, here's an update on the Hi Honey, I'm Home pilot. I skimmed over a majority of it just to get to A.J. McLean's parts, and just knowing how awful one of the characters are, I didn't wanna go back to it.
With that out of the way, let's scrape out the last few braincells in my head.
Remember Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa? That incredibly obscure Christmas film that aired on The WB('s local affiliates in syndication), and became a big deal due to it being lost media, then it landed in the crosshairs of various cartoon reviewers and was a big deal for a while before falling into obscurity again? Well it turns out they went on to do other things. I'm not referring to Dinosaur Island, no, I'm referring to something more obscure, but surprisingly easier to find.
P.S., I wasn't brought there by RebelTaxi.
Background
While it's mentioned that Wolf Tracer had involvement in this, the only true connection is another employee that was involved in their other works.
The show, or channel, whatever applies best, was created by Dave Edison and J.R. Horsting. Edison is an editor, and I'll let his resume speak for itself: http://www.daveedison.com/resume.html
To heck with Edison, Horsting is far more interesting. After some small roles in Indian in the Cupboard and a Star Trek flick, he had the most involvement with Wolf Tracer Studios, working on both of their projects before co-helming this. If it's the same guy, he's currently whining about Republicans on Twitter. If you're a washed up actor, you either appear on Law and Order or you whine about Trump on Twitter.
Whether or not this was intended to be a pilot for a full series can be taken with a grain of salt. It seems Horsting ran the channel and Edison assisted on editing. He seemed so proud of this project it's buried in video after video of clips of comedians, and probably some other original content. Apparently they moved to another channel, only to drop off in 2011. I'll link both channels down below when I'm through.
The Short
Before I go into this, I'd like to make something clear. They didn't take this short seriously, it's an absurdist short that was made up as it went along. I get that, I have no issue with absurdism, either it manages to weave an interesting premise or there is a point to it, if not allowing people to come to their own conclusions.
My issue here is that there's no meaning to their madness. These are dumb skits through and through, even Mr. Pickles had meaning to its madness. This wouldn't even fly on Adult Swim. Even the sight gags can be predictable (you see two men with pies for heads, throwing a pie at another, guess what's in the pie?
If you want some real absurdity that has some surprising meaning, check out Arise! Church of the Subgenius.
Plus they have their own crap advertising (get it, because it's Crappco). Points for not making a shit joje out of Nestea, but Nas-Tea is Wacky Package-tier. As for a yogurt commercial poking fun at redundancy, if this is something yogurt commercials did, fair game, but come on, not even Family Guy did that, they made fun of eye-floaters, but how much mileage can you get out of redundancy in yogurt commercials?
But to be fair, I didn't expect something like baby bras. That's... desperate all things considered. What? They trying to ease us into something shocking by throwing two mediocre jokes at us?
Self-awareness can go both ways, on one hand it's out of left field and shows the creators are in on the feelings viewers have of their work. On the other hand, it's code for they don't give a fuck and they just want whatever excuse they could to act like any of this is worthwhile.
Onto the show proper, we get either an Elvira: Mistress of the Night parody, or a half-hearted MST3K parody. Not much to say here beyond a fake-out with the "come closer" schtick and hijinks with a spider and a fly, the former looking like a puffball that looks strangely familiar. All we get is some occasional sight gags and dialog, maybe the humor is in the fake movie they show?
Now I place importance on the movie they show because an abstract concept would be present in an already abstract concept, sky's the limit, and we got.... Gary Cole as a giant with his trademark quotes. Did I expect this? No. Does it make things any better? They frame the idea of someone mutating from years of exposure to television, there were many directions this could've gone, Gary Coleman just isn't exciting or absurd enough to inspire interest.
Also for the record Coleman was alive at this time, so this wasn't disrespecting him. I think this is making fun of the fact that Gary Coleman is now the size of the average human and people are overreacting. The joke would work better if it was just overreaction and Gary goes on like normal, or the other way around, but this is played relatively straight.
If that didn't tickle your fancy, how about a hollow stab at smell-o-vision involving farting monkeys? How would that work on television?
But that's the end of one glorified non-sequitur, onto another. A duck gets an enema and screeches real loud. There was no other way to describe it, so there you go.
People who hate Carrot Top to the same extent a stick-figure Stan Smith hates a self-insert in a dog's body will get a kick out of this next segment. An albino Michael Buckley hosts over Carrot Top getting torn to pieces in a blender. Talking about that was a lot more interesting than the dialog heard before it, but surprisingly he lives at the end of it. They allude to another guest but it ends there. I'd say this was just a seven minute promo, but that was the show, at least, the core of it.
Ever wanted to see the misadventures of a fetus dressed like he's out of a detective drama? Then let's be grateful no other episodes were made of this. Just a bunch of ads for other skits featured on the show, not even worth mentioning aside from a painfully edgy Teletubbies parody, then it ends with actual ads (well, actual by them.), I'd say none of them are interesting, but something tells me Mike Myers saw the last ad and decided to reference it in the all time classic The Love Guru.
Overall
I can forgive this if it was some one-off project by a bunch of young immature teenagers just having fun, but the fact that this was a conscious effort by people with experience in the animation business, hell experience with the basic principles of film and television production puts this in a whole other pond. Compared to, let's say those edgy flash shorts that were common in the late-2000s, I can accept those as they are adult parodies of things aimed at younger audiences, at the very least there's a point to them.
Where was I? Oh yeah, there's no method to the madness of this video, absurdism works best when there is a point to be made, the only time it's okay not to have a point is if you're David Lynch. Things happen here for the sake of happening, any jokes are either too obvious or lack the right kind of delivery, it's a slog.
Now you may be thinking "Chann, this was like, what, 2007? This is a new low even for you." Once more, this was made by someone with experience in professional editing. This was also made by someone who was a producer, animator and art director on something that made it on television, it may be bad, but it got on television. I'm just saying, the first Newgrounds animation posted in the year 2000 has more effort, and it involves animal violence. Hell, David Lynch's Dumbland is an absurd series of shorts that's more interesting than this.
Seems like Horsting is trying to distance himself from the fact he has been associated with sheer crap with blue bricks. Unless some cook just so happens to share the same name as him. Remind him of your fond memories of him.
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