LTA: This Just In...

 Now before I begin I wanna point out that I talked about this particular series a while back, it being a part of a grander retrospective on cartoons made for Spike TV, something interesting in itself. From a pornographic superhero show helmed by Stan Lee, to a show who's only lingering offense was the mere presence of Kelsey Grammer, though you could argue this was before he had truly lost his mind, and yes I know he had been a Republican long before then, because he had a big role in An American Carol, which showed that of the Zucker Brothers David was the least talented, and that Kevin Farley is a case for what would've happened had Chris not, well you know.

There is a point to me going political here, especially on Republicans, just wanted to point that out.

But even those are objectively better than Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon, a show that proved that John Kricafalusi wasn't the unadjusted genius people thought he was, and showed exactly what would happen if he was allowed to do whatever the hell he wanted without having to work around network standards and practices. This was the bottom of the barrel, especially amongst its contemporaries.

By 2004 the well began to run dry. We were cheated out of an adult cartoon by Klasky-Csupo, well, another one, but that got to see the light of day in a different way at least. But there was one Spike TV cartoon that made it to air that year, one that isn't as talked about because let's face it, few even knew about its existence whether Adult Party Cartoon eclipsed it or because nobody even watched it.

Ladies and gentlemen, This Just In.

Background

This Just In was the last Spike TV cartoon produced for the network, well last cartoon that made it to air at least. This Just In lasted for four episodes, more than the amount of APC episodes that made it onto the network at least, airing between March and April of 2003. It was between this, Stripperella and old Ren and Stimpy reruns accounting for the last of Spike's animated output at that point, but for the time it came out, it was an interesting period for Viacom-owned ventures. It seemed Viacom wanted to put the hammer down and broaden the scope of their more niche networks. Along with continuing their experiment with animated series on Spike TV, we got shows like O'Grady on The N, Fatherhood on Nick at Nite, and Alf's Hit Talk Show on TV Land. What puppets don't count? Also bringing this up for the sake of a coincidence and to shed light on some more obscure shows.

But that's just when it came out, who was behind this show? The show was co-created by Kevin Kay, who served as the president of Spike TV at the time, and Steve Marmel, who otherwise handled the rest, co-writing and playing the main character. If the name Steve Marmel sounds familiar, it's exactly who you think it is. You may recognize Marmel for his work with Butch Hartman, Fairly Odd Parents, Danny Phantom, and of all things a pre Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius episode, one that I do not have the fondest memories of.

But Hartman aside Marmel has actually done quite a lot, having written for old Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken, also doing some stuff for Disney Channel like Sonny with a Chance, So Random and Mech-X4, before gradually fading into the background. I bring up his other stuff because, given how people attempt to highlight his contributions to Hartman's stuff, especially since he tends to take more credit than he deserves, people really have little idea how much Marmel had done, let alone what he does, because here is where things get interesting.

At least as far back as the George W. Bush administration, Marmel was a conservative, though in his own words he was a 'raging moderate'. This is important because politics play a major part in this show, hence that little tangent near the beginning. It's also important to note that this is the first and only cartoon Marmel helmed without Hartman, for better or worse.

The genesis of this show came from Marmel wanting to make a show that would undercut a recurring theme of cartoons and other shows portraying conservatives as idiots if not outright evil, and given that The Simpsons had gone as far as giving Springfield's Republican party headquarters an evil castle I guess his claim held some merit. And I guess conservative politics would fit right at home on Spike TV. Whether or not the show was truly awful cannot be confirmed. Whereas with APC the show ended while Spike's animation block was still active, this show ended when Spike shut the lights off on it, so it was doomed to go under no matter what.

And just to answer that burning question you might have, is Marmel still a conservative? No, he isn't. While this show came out during the second bush administration, it was around 2005 that Marmel would change sides. During the Trump administration he locked in on Trump bashing, going to show how much of a 180 he pulled. This isn't gonna be some dirty laundry deal, in fact it's just going to show Marmel's evolution.

The Tone

Now when it comes to conservative-oriented comedies, or comedies made by conservatives there is a recurring pattern with each of them. The protagonist is portrayed as morally right at all times, every dissenter is a caricature or in the wrong no matter what, for people who hate politics it's a defining element of their show, murica, so-so animation.

Not saying shows like King of the Hill are guilty of this, for something like that while Hank Hill has conservative views he is also more open-minded compared to others in his stead, for one thing he isn't a blind advocate for everyone in the Republican National Convention, don't ask him about George W. Bush, and I doubt he'd be so gung ho to root for a New Yorker, take a guess.

But anyway, it's obvious what I'm actually referring to, but if you don't know I'm talking about shows like Mr. Birchum, shows that act more like power fantasies for their niche audiences, seeking to validate pre-conceptions they have and throw in some comedy so bad it should be illegal. Of course some of you might think.

"But Channeleven, Mr. Birchum was made for the Daily Wire, a conservative news site, it's not a power fantasy it's just playing to their audience!"

Okay you got me there. So for the sake of establishing the kind of tone many bad conservative comedies go, why don't I use a more general example, like The Critic? ...hear me out.

Much like how certain conservative comedies act as power fantasies for conservatives, The Critic acted a power fantasy for movie enthusiasts. While Jay Sherman was intended to be a hapless loser, nine times out of ten he managed to succeed by the end of an episode, is often always portrayed as being in the right and his field being portrayed as morally essential, and a lot of the jokes are either obvious or punching down, but for the sake of not getting off topic I won't explain how even though I really really want to.

Just saying, replace movies with conservative concepts and you'd have a near one for one between The Critic and Mr. Birchum. But that aside, I wanted to establish a standard I'd hold This Just In to, if the protagonist has the same kind of odds as Jay Sherman then this will be a miserable experience.

The Characters

So onto the protagonist Brian Newport. Brian is a conservative news columnist for The Register, very likely The Orange County Register, that is in spite of the show taking place in San Diego. While Brian's columns are big enough to get noticed by small time news networks, half the time they don't view his writings the way he wants them to be viewed. He is single and the only woman who ever dated him did so because she thought he was a liberal, he lives in a crappy apartment, or condo, or low rent housing community, and people otherwise don't take him seriously.

He is a die-hard republican, but he does not have the blind adoration most other shows would've given him, and given the other examples I've brought up that says a lot. Adding onto the stand-outs, Brian has a black friend, er let me rephrase that. He doesn't have a black friend, he has a friend who just so happens to be black. A common straw many conservatives grasp at is that they have an African American friend who exists solely to validate their behaviors. In those shows the black friend is generally a near perfect clone of the conservative whack-job. In This Just In, the friend who happens to be black, Jimmy, is often quick to debate Brian on his ideas, that or not blindly agree with him every which way. He's more like Lionel Jefferson from All In the Family, he's a person, not a representative of the black race nor a shield for problematic individuals and their equally problematic beliefs.

Speaking of defying stereotypes present in conservative comedies, Brian has a liberal foil in a bar waitress, Sami. If this show were to be made today, well you can guess how she'd look. Unappealing for a general term. But here she is just as headstrong as Brian and quick with a rebuttal. She also looks like an actual human being and not a stereotype or strawman. They have a believable kinship, and I could imagine these two seeing each other as the only ones who can carry out a legit debate.

Of course it's not just them. Also making up the cast is Craig Tindle, who is more or less just a walking punchline. He is in a relationship with a Korean-American woman Hsu and needless to say it ain't fun for him, in fact according to Spike TV's website he had lost a decent job and the fun personality he once had over the engagement. You don't have to be married to have a good life, anyone who says otherwise is either old fashioned or just plain stupid. But onto how this is carried out as a joke, it's not amped up to the point it becomes more tragic than funny, but it's otherwise repetitive. He's essentially pussy whipped, and if you didn't hear it from me you'd hear as much through his ringtone. As for Hsu she is otherwise one of two of the more stereotypical characters on the show, but somehow not to the same extent as other characters in general. Also she is a neoconservative apparently, this was only brought up in passing  The other is the bartender Henry, a Cuban-American immigrant who, expectedly or not, bemoans his life before coming to America. If I had a nickel for every Cuban-American who had fled their country, because let's face it they had justification to do so, I'd have three nickels, one for Henry, one for Emilio from The PJs and one for Vic Palmero from George Lopez.

If there's one thing I'd have to say about the characters at least they sprung for unique actors, rather than casting the same familiars over and over again. Whereas many shows nowadays are looking to ensure characters of certain ethnicities share actors of similar backgrounds, Marmel was ahead of the curve depending on your point of view. The actors otherwise suited the ethnicities they had for the most part. Rudy Moreno played Henry, he is of Latin American descent, and Cuba is technically a part of Latin America... certainly counts more than a Malaysian actor voicing a Laotian character. Sami was played by Alex Menses, who has Mexican roots. I'm not clear on her connections with Henry so I'm gonna assume Sami is inherently Hispanic, that is in spite of the thick accent which would spell it out. But on the other hand, Gwendoline Yeo played a Korean woman on this show... whereas the actress is from Signapore.

Guess it's still better than springing for Lauren Tom again... because she'd be even less of an accurate fit... yet she still kept her role as Minh, a Laotian... the King of the Hill revival isn't an isolated incident, this has been a thing for years and this show is a case for that.

Beyond them, the remainder are parodies of existing individuals, you know, celebrities, politicians the usual crop. I'll give the show this, most of the time they don't go for the obvious, either that or what they aim for is so out there that I can at least say I never saw it before. Bringing The Critic up again let's compare how they handled Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Critic had a lot of softball jokes, leaning heavily into his Terminator role, even having a scene where his giant body was a fake... talk about punching low.

In This Just In, the show leans into Arnold being from Austria, an adjacent to Germany, and otherwise voyuristic. Hey, I said it was different not good, but still widely more entertaining. It's important to note that Arnold was once California's governor, as a Republican, so the fact that he is otherwise poised as a borderline Nazi using his influence to silence dissenters, especially given where we're at now, it seems Marmel was either ahead of the curve or he managed to remain consistent with his philosophies.

One more thing I wanna bring up is that Arnold in This Just In was played by Darren Norris, because you can clearly hear Jorgen Von Strangle in his voice, which along with providing a lot more than just the Terminator again, leans heavily into Marmel's past connection to Hartman. Another real life person who gets parodied that I want to bring up is Michael Moore, which given the territory is something conservatives try to seize. You'd expect him to be portrayed as someone who is never seen without a piece of food in his hand or gob or just randomly ranting... Jay Sherman, his parody was actually fairly soft. Let me put it like this, Michael Moore in This Just In looks slimmer than say, his appearance in Family Guy, and Seth MacFarlane is very liberal.

Now, despite the stigma satire has, where so many people tend to punch down more than up, I will say certain people tend to act in certain ways where the jokes write themselves. Let's face it, John Kerry didn't do the best he could to sway voters in 2004. I could say Marmel managed to hit it just right where the key aspects of celebrities are covered and mocked and the show doesn't pivot to the extremes of its side...

Then there's episode four.

The fourth and final episode is where the show devolves into conservative comedy stereotypes all too common in shows like it nowadays, along with other general cliches. For instance, he just had to work in a dig at Star Wars fans just for liking the prequels (what else is there to take from questioning someone for letting George Lucas let people down)? But okay, this was a year before Revenge of the Sith, this was common across many shows… nah fuck it, if you see the original trilogy as anything more than a glorified technological showcase you’re either old, morbidly obese or a sociopath, sorry to be blunt, but if you aren’t any of these things you have no reason to respond, how can I touch a nerve if it wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near your’s?

I’m just saying, if someone was compelled to make a show where conservatives weren’t the idiots, we’re way past due for a series where original trilogy Star Wars fans aren’t in the right or are just the butt of the joke, it has literally never been done before anywhere (on television), and I’ve seen more of the same so many times that I’m going on this tangent. What is it about Star Wars(‘s first three movies) that turns people into idiots? Lest said about modern grifter culture and Star Wars’ part in it the better, the fact it just barely fits the context of a conservative catered comedy makes it all the more depressing, warnings were there from the very start.

Fuck where was I? Oh yeah conservative comedy cliches. You know how conservatives make fun of men who aren’t super-masculine. You know Moby? Well in this episode he’s your alphabet soup of liberal stereotypes conservatives like to portray them as, in this case, lacking in testosterone. Would’ve been cool if the beef noodle soup Brian gave to Moby just made him a more powerful liberal, would’ve been less funny but believeable if the testosterone reduced the size of Moby’s manhood. It was at that point things were seriously going wrong, that this show was becoming exactly what I feared it would be. To add onto the oncoming grit Bill O’Riley is in this and not to be mocked, and a bulk of the episode was dedicated to raising funds to provide weapons to the US Army, during the Iraq War, W’s biggest L in terms of how the whole thing began. I’m not gonna go all “Randy Marsh caused COVID” here, but something like this reinforces how far one leans politically. Going beyond just an exchange of views and jokes at everyone’s expense you make it clear who you’re trying to appeal to. Now that’s what I call a dishonorable discharge.

What was the point of any of that, is there an explanation? Well, I think I have one On Moby I guess the whole testosterone thing was just to drive home the mission objective of Spike TV, the first network for men, showing what kind of men they look to cater to. Given the network's branding was built on motorycles, tits, asses, action and butts, also the fact that once again one of the co-creators was the president of the network it could've just been reassurance. Guess ultra-testies have feelings too, go figure.

As for Bill O'Riley, because of how obscure the show is there isn't a complete cast list. What I'm saying is that it is likely they sprung for the actual Bill O'Riley to make a cameo. It would explain the otherwise softball appearance. But to make things more ambiguous this episode along with the third do not include the closing credits. On one hand there's context behind these things happening and none of the writers had mal intent. On the other hand it never stopped the worser types from co-opting these ideas, thus it would be harder to view these with any ounce of good faith.

Beyond the more questionable stuff, the rest of the episode centers on the guys trying to watch Hellboy, er, the first live action movie from 2004, while Craig is forced to watch Mean Girls. At this rate you can guess the greater meaning behind this conflict. Funnily enough both movies are actually great, both contemporarily and retroactively, each scoring somewhere in the 80% range on Rotten Tomatoes, though Mean Girls’ 7.1 on IMDb beat out Hellboy’s 6.9. Either way this episode was not gonna hold up.

Animation

Now for a show of its nature it would cover current events. When it comes to portraying ongoing trends in a cartoon it's always a risk. It takes time to produce an animated whatever have you, to the point that by the time the episode is ready to air the trend had already passed. For politics and whatever's covered in the latest news cycle you had better strike while the iron is hot, and for better or worse, This Just In found a way. This Just In used flash animation, which was slowly becoming widely used in cartoons as a cheaper and quicker means of production. While not a bad thing inherently it's usually a sign someone wants something out without much effort.

I just find it funny that this show wasn't the only one to do something like this. Refer to Stephen Colbert's Our Cartoon President and Tooning Out the News, shows made with Adobe Character Animator for the sake of covering the Trump administration while details were relevant, as well as to work around quarantine restrictions. Didn’t mention Fairview because that show’s circumstances are different.

I couldn't find the name of the studio that produced this, this show has no production company credited other than the network it aired on so I'm gonna assume this was done entirely in house.

But here’s where things get odd. The show is said to be computer animated, I mean flash is a computer program, but the more I think about it the more complicated it gets. The show doesn’t have the same conventions of other flash shows like, say, John Callahan’s Quads, Hey Joel, post season one Home Movies, O’Grady or Good Vibes, where the movement is more bouncy for a lack of a better term, I will say it is similar to Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi’s animation without the anime conventions.

Having seen every episode, oddly enough I can draw comparisons to shows like Gary the Rat, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Adult Swim’s early originals like Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Metalocalpyse, another obscurity Unsupervised, once again, Stephen Colbert’s cartoons like Our Cartoon President, Tooning Out the News and Fairview and, can’t believe I’m saying this, Ctrl, Alt + Del, where movements are more limited. To make it simpler, it’s less like flash animation and more like 2D computer animation, where character animations look more strung along and limited. There is a firm distinction to be made, and it's clear that was what This Just In went with.

To reaffirm, the reason the show took this route was to get episodes out quickly while certain news cycles were still fresh, it’s more deliberate than anything so I can forgive it. It wasn't the first show to use that kind of animation, but given it's not the only show that used it for timely episodes I can at least say it was ahead of its time in that way.

Availability

As I said before, This Just In lasted for four episodes. For a long time the show was considered partially lost media. I wouldn't say nobody watched Spike TV, but I doubt that many tuned in when This Just In came on. For a long time only three episodes of the show surfaced, those getting uploaded to YouTube, but they're incomplete, two lacking the end credits and one missing a cold open. This has since changed with the first episode getting put on the Internet Archive, and in the event the channel that had the other episodes went belly up I put the other three on there too.

But here's where things get more interesting. On IMDb, for the cast listing it's implied that the show had six episodes, but they do not have official titles. There is virtually little info about them, but it is possible they had in fact aired. According to a comment on the Lost Media Wiki, the fifth episode would've seen George W. Bush appear, whether or not he'd be mocked or played straight is anyone's guess, and the crux of the episode centered on taxes. The person who brought it up said they had the episode on tape but struggled to convert it digitally, but sadly that was said in 2023 and no updates had occurred since, and it's unlikely anyone else has a copy. The sixth episode is a complete mystery, whether it was completed but never aired or did air but nobody cared enough to tape it.

Were these episodes stronger than the fourth? Would they have leaned more into conservative stereotypes? Could they've developed the characters even further? What would George W. Bush have been like, especially since parodies of him have been common especially back then, and his antics are comedic goldmine, and would they have clowned on Dick Cheney? Will we ever get to see these episodes?

Final Thoughts

This Just In is an interesting case. For worse it was ahead of its time as a conservative comedy, but for better, compared to its future contemporaries it is the best of the bunch. Maybe it was due to Marmel being a moderate that he avoided cliches associated with shows like it, for the most part, before they became widely used in shit like Mr. Birchum. It wasn’t the worst cartoon Spike TV aired, then again it isn’t hard to rise above APC, there was a lot of potential here, but the only thing holding it back was devolving to commonplace conservative cliches, whether the network was pushing for it or Marmel was that far down the Republican rabbit hole.

I can at least say Brian is more likable than Mr. Birchum, he isn’t treated like a god or some all knowing paragon of virtue, at most he’s just a conservative spin on Brian Griffin. It’s up to you to determine which one is less of a douche. But just to drive that point home, as a fan of adult cartoons Mr. Birchum pisses me off, it exists solely to validate the sods who subscribe to the Daily Wire, and I didn’t need to do so, unlike Saberspark.

With This Just In it’s a slower irritation, and in that time I can at least say I liked the characters and that the show wasn’t just a political soap box, and maybe more context can help justify certain parts of it (not for political happenings but everything else.)

Think it also helps that Marmel had changed his views since this series, if you were to compare this to the posts Marmel makes on BlueSky you’d never think both are connected. Therefore, it’s easier to come into a show like this knowing the creator never bottomed out or got worse… for now.

To sum it up, This Just In is pioneer in animated conservative comedies for better or worse, but this is at least far from the worst of them, or never lasted long enough to get any worse.

If you wanna see the show for yourself, as well as any remaining details, here're some links, enjoy.

• Spike TV website page: https://web.archive.org/web/20040412001326/http://www.spiketv.com/shows/series/index.jhtml?seriesID=12283&refID=thisjustin
• Episode 1, Chappaquidicide: https://archive.org/details/this-just-in-1.x
• Episode 2, Vagicentrics: https://archive.org/details/this-just-in-102-vagicentrics
• Episode 3, Labidocrites: https://archive.org/details/this-just-in-103-labidocrites
• Episode 4, Iraqathon: https://archive.org/details/this-just-in-104-iraqathon