While I am home for Thanksgiving, I have been watching more tv than I did in Kentucky. I’ve seen “My Name is Earl” and “How I Met Your Mother”, both new sitcoms that I’d been looking foward to. (My household in Kentucky didn’t have television, so all I got was juicy bits from Entertainment Weekly.)
I also saw one episode of “The Boondocks,” the new cartoon show on Adult Swim that’s based on Aaron MacGruder’s comic.
I’ve always loved the comic. It’s smart, it tackles controversial subjects, it’s radical, funny, and the cultural references are targetted at my generation.
But the show really sucks. As the EW reviewer wrote several weeks ago, the show just stretches the comic out, and there really isn’t enough quality material to fill the time. The comic format forces one-liners and concise commentary; the longer show is just a different kind of media, and it begs for a different kind of humor.
Also, the anime/manga-style animiation style really bugged me. Yeah, the comic’s always been a little geeky, sprinkled with references to Star Wars and open source software, but that doesn’t mean the art has to suck. Most of the non-anime shows on Adult Swim have cheap-looking art, too, but that’s what they’re going for when Sealab and Space Ghost use old 70s Hanna-Barbara cartoons. In the Boondocks, it just looks bad.
Another gripe I have is that both Huey and Riley are voiced by an adult woman. This is a normal phenomenon, as Nancy Cartwright has made a career out of voicing Bart Simpson. But in the Boondocks, it just sounds really fake and cheap.
I guess the main reason I’m so disappointed is that I have faith in Aaron MacGruder. He’s hilarious, his art is good, and he seems very genuine and cool in interviews. He’s the kind of guy that I would love to sit down and have a beer with. But it just seems that Cartoon Network or whoever is producing this show didn’t put the money into it that The Boondocks deserves. It’s just very disappointing.
(cross-posted at buzzwords)
The following is a post I discovered saved as a draft – after our triumphant move to WordPress, no less. Which reminds me, thanks be to Todd, to whom we are forever indebted for this lovely and neglected new template. On with the trip down memory lane:
<blockquote>This came up in my Semantics class when talking about prepositions. Anyone remember that poem that begins, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go”? It turns out to be written by Lydia Maria Child, an abolitionist, early feminist, and Medford local. Grandmother’s house turns out to be the current residence of the Provost here at Tufts.</blockquote>
How is it possible that I’m always the last to hear about neat toys?
This should probably have been posted here, rather than Back to the Lab. My bad.
Here’s a good reason to stop buying cds, if you hadn’t already.
In fact, while I’m at it, don’t use crappy media players that ship free with content, or Windows.