TV Funhouse

            Robert Smigel, the man behind the Ex-Presidents and Ambiguously Gay Duo cartoons seen on Saturday Night Live has gotten a show on Comedy Central called TV Funhouse. Hosted by the eternally upbeat "Doug" - the show's only live human presence aside from when they occasionally go out on the streets - each show is a mix of puppetry, cartoons in the style of those SNL ones, and faux health/ethics/civics instructional films in the style of 1950's pieces. The puppetry features the Ani-pals, often crude animal puppets who are as casual about their biological urges as real animals are. Occasionally they're funny, especially since real animals are often worked into the scenes, looking bored or perplexed by the puppets, but by and large they're water in this half-hour soup. They're generally obsessed with sex, drugs and get rich quick schemes. It's the other material that often makes this show worth the time:

             -A black and white film telling us how we should appreciate the fullness of God's Plan for us and so resist the urge to indulge in the sinful pleasures of bowel movements until we have come of proper age.

             -A musical claymation piece introducing us to Tingle, The Christmas Tension elf.

             -A cartoon featuring Robert Downey Jr. Margot Kidder and Anne Heche as drugged-out, mentally-unbalanced Freelance Trespassers who wander through neighborhoods, breaking and entering on behalf of clients who don't have enough evidence to get the police to go for search warrants.

             -Cartoons featuring Wonder Man, essentially a xerox of the Max Fleischer Superman cartoon style (at least as far as the stills go, not in terms of fluidity) about an amoral superhero whose sole aim is to get his everyday alter ego laid.

          The live action "instructional" and claymation pieces are often rendered convincingly in black and white with just enough visual noise to give them the look of old film stock.

          This one's been slotted at 10:30 EST on Wednesday nights, presumably to benefit from the lead-in from the increasingly tired South Park. For me it has worked the other way around, with me catching some of South Park again because I want to see TV Funhouse.

          The caveat is that it truly isn't for kids. The raunchy, sexual nature of many of the items should make even a marginally conscientious parent highly uncomfortable at letting their kids see some segments.

                                                                                                                                                MJN