Friday, July 21, 2006
JEFFERTON ALIIIIIIIIIIIIclick: or "Why I have grave issues with Tom Goes To The Mayor".
My mom has always had adversarial relationship with the Andy Griffith Show. Her problem was with Sheriff Andy himself, who was way too accomodating with the flipped-out loons that surrounded him, especially the cockily overconfident Barney Fife. I never quite understood why she couldn't deal until I ran across the Adult Swim show Tom Goes To The Mayor. You'd think a show loaded with performances from the best and brighest comics of the past ten years (and whoever Tim and Eric are) would be a consistent delight. And yet, I got nothin' here.
The premise is as simple as a Roadrunner/Coyote episode: Tom Peters gets an idea that he thinks would benefit the community of Jefferton, and the wigged-out mayor either extrapolates Tom's idea into something utterly insane or merges Tom's idea with one of his mayorial project...which is invariably utterly insane.
My main issue, and where my Sherriff Taylor/Tom analogy would've broken down if I had chased it, is that Andy almost always knew when something was going south and gently tried to steer things back on course. Tom doesn't have that "problem"; openly despised by his wife and stepkids, taken advantage of by anyone and everyone, he simply takes it, then bends over and asks for more. As a rule, I have nothing against deferential characters, but Tom Peters is too much. We get it already: Tom will never win, is past winning, and invariably is willfully sabotaged when he gets the prize in his grasp. I'm assuming this is the "point", and maybe with a stronger personality at the fore I'd be on board. In fact, the ones I enjoy the most are the most atypical ones. The marathon balloon race from season one is a perfect example; Tom's gradually rising alarm as the mayor loses his mind (more than usual) is the type of character-driven conflict sorely missing from a standard episode.
The program is toploaded with grotesques; the freakishly "on" Married News Team, the troll-like harpy that is Joy Peters (she's morbidly obese, she's barely coherent, and she screams everything, and I guess that's why we're supposed to think she's funny), and various annoying one-shot characters. We do get exceptions to the rule, but not often enough.
It's kind of beside my point, but TGTTM isn't even a proper cartoon, rendered in a washed-out Xerox of still frames of the live actors performing, mixed in with actual video of them whenever the hell they feel like it. "Well, that's just their style," I've been told, but these are the same jerks who bag on Squigglevision for the laziness of the approach, so I have no sympathy whatsoever.
My mom has always had adversarial relationship with the Andy Griffith Show. Her problem was with Sheriff Andy himself, who was way too accomodating with the flipped-out loons that surrounded him, especially the cockily overconfident Barney Fife. I never quite understood why she couldn't deal until I ran across the Adult Swim show Tom Goes To The Mayor. You'd think a show loaded with performances from the best and brighest comics of the past ten years (and whoever Tim and Eric are) would be a consistent delight. And yet, I got nothin' here.
The premise is as simple as a Roadrunner/Coyote episode: Tom Peters gets an idea that he thinks would benefit the community of Jefferton, and the wigged-out mayor either extrapolates Tom's idea into something utterly insane or merges Tom's idea with one of his mayorial project...which is invariably utterly insane.
My main issue, and where my Sherriff Taylor/Tom analogy would've broken down if I had chased it, is that Andy almost always knew when something was going south and gently tried to steer things back on course. Tom doesn't have that "problem"; openly despised by his wife and stepkids, taken advantage of by anyone and everyone, he simply takes it, then bends over and asks for more. As a rule, I have nothing against deferential characters, but Tom Peters is too much. We get it already: Tom will never win, is past winning, and invariably is willfully sabotaged when he gets the prize in his grasp. I'm assuming this is the "point", and maybe with a stronger personality at the fore I'd be on board. In fact, the ones I enjoy the most are the most atypical ones. The marathon balloon race from season one is a perfect example; Tom's gradually rising alarm as the mayor loses his mind (more than usual) is the type of character-driven conflict sorely missing from a standard episode.
The program is toploaded with grotesques; the freakishly "on" Married News Team, the troll-like harpy that is Joy Peters (she's morbidly obese, she's barely coherent, and she screams everything, and I guess that's why we're supposed to think she's funny), and various annoying one-shot characters. We do get exceptions to the rule, but not often enough.
It's kind of beside my point, but TGTTM isn't even a proper cartoon, rendered in a washed-out Xerox of still frames of the live actors performing, mixed in with actual video of them whenever the hell they feel like it. "Well, that's just their style," I've been told, but these are the same jerks who bag on Squigglevision for the laziness of the approach, so I have no sympathy whatsoever.
|| Eric 2:16 PM#
