The Simpsons (Seasons One To Five)

For those that know me in real life, you’ll have noticed a significant and glaring omission from these posts over the last 188 entries.  There’s a certain animated sitcom that influences my speech every day, that I have spent whole ski trips reciting (“Stupid, sexy Flanders”), whose songs I have butchered to the irritation of other passengers on trains in Germany (“Oh please won’t you see my vest?”) and that probably represents to me the first time I saw the status of masterpiece achieved in TV: The Simpsons.  It’s now been running almost as long as I have, but we’re going to go back to the very start and giving its early years the respect they deserve.  Therefore, its voluminous canon will be split into chunks and we shall begin with the first five seasons.  The classics, if you will.  It’s a well-documented and popular opinion held these days that America’s favourite yellow family is far past its peak.  Now that I have plumped for access to Disney+ (see crucial explanatory post on my life admin decisions here: The Mandalorian), I’ve decided to go back and see for myself.  But let’s be generous – at no point will I be denying the ongoing cultural impact of one family from 742 Evergreen Terrace.  In fact, they may even be victims of their own success.

For a long time I had no real idea what this Simpsonite phenomenon was.  In the UK, the show originally only went out on Sky One (which my parents wouldn’t pay for), and, in the days before the internet, my single route to any further information was an on-pack promotion with Shreddies.  This cereal occasionally appeared in the line-up for breakfast in my early 90s childhood.  My dad, who worked nights, would be asleep upstairs while my mum would quietly prepare my sister and me for school.  A selection of cereal boxes would be laid out on the table in the breakfast room (yes, I know) the night before, so we could serve ourselves on waking up, munching along in time to Mr Motivator on GMTV.  These days, Shreddies would cause me severe digestive discomfort, but in my youth I seemed happy to risk a code brown in order to keep hunger locked up till lunch.  In place of toys, the promotional packs contained Simpsons trivia cards.  I devoured these, desperate to know more about this collection of people who were, to me, at the time, little more than a spiky haired boy, a bald man, a lady with a blue head bush, and an indeterminate number of star-headed woman, all with bulging eyes and yellow skin.  One question then posed still lives with me: who is Bart Simpson’s hero?  I remember you had to slide out a little piece of paper to confirm the multiple-choice answer: Krusty the Clown.  I was torn.  Thrilled to have learned something about these intriguing characters, Krusty sounded like a weird name for a clown.  I also hated, and still hate, clowns.  I was left broadly concerned and very much unsatiated when it came to the world of these yellow cartoon strangers.  What was all the fuss about?

In a rare use of the license fee not to promote Tory politics, the BBC finally acquired the license to broadcast old Simpsons series in the later nineties.  It was the dawning of a new age for my sister and me.  This was years before culture was simulcast on both sides of the Atlantic.  Primitive dwellers of Blighty had to wait months and sometimes years to access Hollywood films.  Thus, only seven years after its American debut, The Simpsons came to British terrestrial telly in 1996.  Life would never be the same again.  In an act of severe trolling, its initial slot was something like 5.25pm on a Saturday afternoon (though it may have been Sunday).  This was before catch-up services and during an epoch throughout which my dad didn’t know how to set the timer on the VCR (which actually extends into present day as he has never learned), so the appointment to view was without compromise.  The show was paired with the TV spin-off of Clueless, so, for the best part of an hour, we would bathe in the contrasting genres of glamorous, sunshine-drenched, high school-based light entertainment that we didn’t understand, and a riot of colourful animation that we simply had to have in our lives.

Viewed in the present day, the episodes of that first season are charmingly rough around the edges.  The drawings threaten to melt at any moment.  Characters take on almost liquid form, and there is a very loose approach to ethnicity, with some racial identities taking a while to settle (and even adjusting in the same episode).  But this is part of the fun, and, either way, the tight tight storytelling distracts from any sketchy sketching to a significant degree.  Each instalment is a masterclass in screenwriting, combining biting satire with comforting heart, acidic wit with sweetness, genuine emotion with slapstick silliness.  The balance of contrasts is remarkable and something that, as modern detractors would argue, hasn’t stayed with the show through subsequent series.  At one point, Homer attempts suicide.  Lisa has depression.  But these aren’t played for laughs – they are taken on to reflect modern life.  Homer, in particular, is a different man.  Sure, he likes is food and is often outsmarted, but he is much more short-tempered, snapping often at Bart, and even at one point the driving force for his family to improve.

As I re-watched, I became fixated on the evolution of our paterfamilias.  Season one Homer has depth, but by season three he is almost fully dumb, and as season five settles in he is stupid beyond all reason.  Reflecting now, this strikes me as the main feature whose loss affects the quality of The Simpsons.  We go from masterpiece to (only!) still better than most things.  A tough judgment for something so lasting and popular but it’s my blog and there’s nobody to stop me venting my bugbears.  Homer shouldn’t matter so much as I’ve always preferred the rest of the family.  Storylines focusing on the children hold more fascination, with Bart channelling my impulse to do anything for the laughs, and Lisa a kindred spirit to my intellectual snobbery.  Often, the best line is simply Maggie’s dummy-sucking.  Marge, in fact, feels more relevant than ever as a manifestation of the invisible mental burden carried by female members of most modern hetero households.  As we progress, a whole town population of Springfielders is generated around the family and a perk of sitting through some episodes for what must be the twentieth time is tracking their first appearances and subsequent developments.

By season two, The Simpsons has perfected (from a high base) the art of the 22-minute story, carrying this right through to most of season five, which is what made me separate this quintuplet off for its own post.  A blessing and a curse comes in the form of the fact that each episode must end with the world unchanged.  The characters don’t age (imagine being eight since 1989).  All plot must be wrapped up and resolved.  When played for laughs, such as with the ongoing joke that Mr Burns can never remember who Homer is (“one of the carbon blobs from Sector 7G”) despite significant intertwining of their lives, this feels appropriately self-conscious.  But as time goes on, the increasing extremity of what happens in each episode gradually chips away at the family’s everyman status.  By the time Homer has gone to space, I start to feel a certain amount of turning off.  While an incredibly witty episode that puts Lisa’s morals front and centre, Whacking Day’s plot hinges on snake activity that is so unrealistic that the suspension of disbelief barely clings on (even though everyone is yellow and only has three fingers).

But who am I to nit-pick?  The show remains enormously comforting.  Even after its UK repetition ad-nauseum in the 6pm weekday slot on BBC2 and then Channel 4, I somehow stumbled across real gems in season four that I had potentially only seen once.  Season five in places represents a pinnacle in perfect sitcomery.  From my more advanced years, I can appreciate the wealth of references, both high- and lowbrow, that pepper proceedings: Edgar Allan Poe, The Grinch, Hitchcock and more.  From season two, there exists a wildcard Treehouse Of Horrors episode that serves to let the writers really shake things out.  As a cartoon, ultraviolence has fewer repercussions, and I always laugh whenever there’s an unnecessary explosion.

The Simpsons’ first seasons set an impossibly high standard.  They spawned a whole new world of animation for adults, begetting an array of entertainment that could often go further with offensive humour and push the boundaries of taste (South Park, American Dad!).  As such, The Simpsons in later years began to look safe and pedestrian.  Like Facebook, it risked acquiring a role as something embarrassing only your parents go on.  But, going back to its classics has been the perfect background comfort while pottering around my flat in lockdown 523, gaining a new and meaningful appreciation of its importance.  To imagine a world where it never existed is to imagine a duller, sadder way of thinking and being.  The inequalities it parodies are still with us so we can conclude that vintage Simpsons is as evergreen as the terrace where the eponymous family still live, all these decades later.

American Dad!

Due to a human error in my home office, this week we are back raiding the archives.  Yes, I’ve failed to time the completion of any new boxset to coincide with my weekly post.  You’d think that during another lockdown, when there’s literally nothing else to do besides consume hours of TV entertainment throughout the day and into the night, I would be doing better than this.  Truth is, I’ve only gone and started a part-time MA in Creative Writing (don’t laugh, especially if you see no improvement in the quality of this blog) and so I am occasionally drawn away from the big telly screen in one corner of the room to the smaller laptop screen in a different corner of the same room.  You’ve gotta switch it up.  I shan’t apologise for this oversight, as I can do whatever I want (provided I stick to government guidelines about staying two metres away from all other humans, unless I am testing my eyesight), but it’s also allowing me to reminisce about a show that’s linked to significant memories in my life: American Dad!  The exclamation mark is in the show’s title; I am not overexcited.

Now seems like a good time to turn our attention to a cartoon that set out to lampoon American foreign policy and domestic culture wars.  The year was 2005.  I was an undergraduate.  The White House was covered in Bush.  We were told our biggest fear was terrorism, to distract us from climate change and a lack of equality.  Sixteen years later, the US is recovering from an individual who makes Bush look like a harmless uncle, I’m jaded by thirteen years of office work (but am back studying), we’ve made little progress on climate change, some on equality but not enough, and the culture wars are worse than ever.  But there’s hope in America (if not yet in the UK).

American Dad! follows the Smith family, headed up by CIA career man Stan, often serving as the boomer/conservative voice, his wife Francine (she comes and goes policy-wise), and their two entitled millennial kids: Steve and Hayley.  The humour comes from the characters and the farcical things they do, often originating in Stan’s unerring patriotism and crashing into the kids’ sensitivities and/or self-obsessions.  This, plus the Washington DC setting, probably all sounds a bit vanilla.  Firstly, let’s point out that one of its co-creators is Seth MacFarlane, the comic behind Family Guy (which needs a post here too).  Any earnestness is therefore dowsed in irreverence, invoking the truism of South Park: everyone on every side of every argument is stupid.

Adding, then, to our human silliness, I’d now like to tell you all about Roger, the alien.  Hiding out at the Smiths’ after being captured during secret CIA work, Roger comes armed with a third option of opinion that often lays waste to those of the Smith generations.  An incorrigible sass-mouth, whose penchant for showing off clashes with his need to remain hidden, Roger has all the best lines and has to be carefully rationed in each episode so we are left wanting more.  He’s a world champion of dressing up though, which develops in later seasons (there are seventeen and counting) to allow more and more walks of life to be laid bare and exposed as nonsense.  Contrasting with his sharp wit, there’s also a German goldfish who’s pervy for Francine but unfunny in every other way.  He also murders the German language with incorrect grammar, and this is unacceptable on all levels.

I’ll admit to being way behind on keeping up with American Dad!  It was 2007 when we first got our hands on DVDs (yes, ancient times) of the show.  Such was our excitement that we gathered round someone’s laptop to watch them the minute they arrived.  It happened to be the day I had finished my last final exam (I had to sit eight three-hour papers dressed in an academic outfit called subfusc: dark suit, white bow tie, commoner’s gown, a carnation of the right colour, carrying a mortarboard).  The university tradition was for friends to meet you from your final paper to throw streamers and silly string over you, give you drinks and congratulate you for surviving.  I was therefore still in my formal get-up, covered in crap, and full of cheap booze.  You’re supposed to have a wild night out to enjoy your new freedom.  But I was powerless to resist the promise of subversive new animated comedy from America.  Indeed this is proof that I have always been cool, especially as I fell asleep after only a couple of episodes, but not before I’d heard Roger utter his immortal lines: “By the way, Hayley, oh my god. These Chocodiles. These Chocodiles, Hayley. Oh my god. These Chocodiles. Oh my god.”

 

Final Space

While nobody will really recall 2020 as being a golden age for anything (unless this really does turn out to be the year everyone stops being racist), I would like to suggest that TV is, overall, doing a very good job at the minute.  We are spoiled for choice.  Luckily, this big old pandemic has come along and given us more time at home to keep up with boxsets.  If anything, let’s spread the rumour that telly started the corona-thon.  Thanks to my evenings in, I’ve torn through (and loved) Normal People and I May Destroy You from the BBC (great to see the institution taking time out from delivering news coverage biased to chinless Tories), I’ve been making the most of my Sky subscription for once (look out for upcoming posts), but I seem to have totally bricked it with my Netflix decisions.  There’s a third series of Dark and a fifth of Last Chance U, both absolute gems, that I am yet to start.  Instead, I’ve been trying to follow up on my impressive achievement of devouring the fourth series of Rick & Morty.  Suddenly, I’ve craved cartoons about space.

Enter Final Space, a Netflix animated series that my tired mind hoped might just be in a similar vein.  There’d be laughs, clever humour, but also philosophical provocation and richly imagined worlds.  I really do love a richly imagined world.  But let me get this out of the way upfront: the world in Final Space is so richly imagined that I couldn’t keep up and, before long, I had no idea what was going on.

This is totally my fault.  And, in my defence, it only happened in the second series.  Season one of Final Space introduces us to our hero, Gary Goodspeed.  An astronomical everyman, Gary is nearing the end of a space prison sentence, living in isolation in a 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired ship with an Alexa-esque companion called HUE.  His concerns are obtaining cookies and staving off boredom.  Enter Mooncake, a squishy green floating being who makes Pokémon sounds and turns out to be a hugely significant, er, thing.  This is where my understanding runs out.  He’s a creature, but also, I think, an energy source, or a key, or you know, whatever you like really.  Either way, I was pretty gripped by the first series, slowly realising that each episode, rather than being a self-contained animated sitcom, is a sequential instalment in a hugely ambitious story about the very nature of space and time.  Throughout, irreverent humour is peppered.  We come across a lot of silly characters and ludicrous situations proliferate.

It’s well-crafted storytelling, but somehow, something didn’t connect with me.  That is my loss.  By the second series, as the universe, literally, of characters and backstories and mysteries expanded, my tiny mind lost its footing and Final Space, in all of its potential to entertain, ended up being a background show I had on while inexplicably baking gluten-free sponge cakes simply because it’s something to do in lockdown.  Ultimately, the show’s humour seems to detract from its serious storylines, while its serious storylines undo its humour.  Maybe it’s basic of me not to care about the end of the world when someone is whingeing about a cookie.

But there is a lot to love, and the animation is breath-taking.  If you like action happening in space, then feast your eyes on these cosmic bodies.  Futuristic vessels slip past, all slinky, while battles and asteroid clusters come to life in three dimensions.  It reminds me of a book I had as a child: some sort of graphic novel from the Ulysses 31 series.  I don’t know where it came from and I never actually read the words, just looking at the pictures in the early nineties and thinking: yeah, this is space and that.  If that specific reference doesn’t work for you, and why would it, then think anime.  And if you don’t know what that is, you’re probably better off watching Love Island Australia.

While I typically advocate for almost all Netflix animations (Bojack Horseman, F Is For Family, Big Mouth, Disenchantment) I will swerve any subsequent series of this.  If I have failed to do it justice, then so be it.  Let the talented voice cast, the incredible animators and imaginative writers all come after me.  Justice is already served in that I am persisting with a poorly read blog while their creative output is getting greenlit by the planet’s biggest streaming giant.  At least there can be no spoilers in this post, as I couldn’t even tell you what Final Space really is.  But yes, give it a go if your sci fi skills are better than mine, but otherwise there’s a host of animation out there that’s easier to connect with.

Disenchantment

It’s happened again: I’ve succumbed to a cartoon on Netflix.  Though this wasn’t that recent.  A few months back, I found myself clicking play on episode after episode of Disenchantment.  But I can hear my dear reader(s) asking: why am I talking about it now?  Well, it’s vaguely linked to fantasy-based medieval kingdoms with dragons and that.  For a blog about TV shows, the fact that I’ve not really mentioned the highlight of our televisual lives so far can’t have gone unnoticed (unless you’re just dipping in for the shows you actually watch and not indulging my ramblings about things you haven’t seen – the requirement is that you read everything).  I had mighty plans for Game Of Thrones, let me tell you.  Breaking with precedent (93 posts and counting) I was going to cover each series individually, giving me the perfect excuse to re-watch all seven existing seasons (which would be my third time doing this – cool).  Alas, I am no longer in a Sky household however, so each Monday while series eight premiers is characterised by me rushing around London trying to get invited round to friends’ houses to avail myself of their Now TV or (ideally HD) Sky packages.  Today I took four different buses to Fulham and back.

I was supposed to be in my own flat by this point.  I had dreams of returning to Westeros on a massive sofa in front of a 55” telly, but I’ve not moved into My First Newbuild yet, as lawyers are not only doing nothing, they are doing it at their contractually glacial pace.  So, while I’m still in my final rental, with nothing but somebody else’s Netflix account for company while I save my final pennies for furniture, cutlery and a washing machine, I might as well cash in on Thrones fever by talking this week about something that is a bit to do with it.

Disenchantment is to fantasy what The Simpsons were to real life and what Futurama was to science fiction: animated irreverence.  Uniting all three is my hero and the owner of a surname I’m still not really sure how to pronounce: Matt Groening.  Whether he’d have wanted to or not, this man had a hand in my upbringing, such was the influence of his humour on me at an impressionable age (0 to 34).  Luckily, he didn’t have an effect on my appearance, as so many of his characters have horrendous overbites.  That said, I did require orthodontics to fix my own overbite, but this was never horrendous.  It was initially grotesque and now it is nearly moderate.

Instead of Westeros, then, we have Dreamland, a ye olde fantastical kingdom, ruled by a king in a castle.  Through the eyes of our heroine, we join a complex network of political structures.  But while treaties with neighbouring kingdoms or giants might be inconsistent and rocky at best, Princess Bean’s sure-fire ability to make a hash of most things is a very reliable way to create the perfect plot device, ensuring hilarity ensues in each episode.  Voiced by my beloved Abbi Jacobson of Broad City, Bean prefers drinking to all other princess-ly duties.  Goading her in this misdemeanour is a black cat-like demon whose possession of her spirit signifies a sort of adolescent willingness to do the wrong thing.  Funnier than him, though, is Elfo, a little green elf who is picked up into the trinity of pals along the way, and voiced by Nat Faxon of Friends From College.  As the elfin punching bag for all punchlines and physical comedy alike, Elfo’s interminable cheeriness proves a worthy foil to the constant fantasy peril in which our three leads find themselves.

Each instalment is a standalone adventure, though there does seem to be progression towards various landmarks in Bean’s life and Dreamland’s existence.  The realisation of a fantasy world varies, seeming at points incredibly rich such as when they voyage to the damp realms of Dankmire, and at other junctures shallow and only serving a purpose of pay-off for some joke or other.  Similarly, there are moments of animation touched by true artfulness, such as every establishing shot of King Zøg’s castle, and others which look like the creative direction was running out of time.

The misadventure, however, plods along from mildly amusing to oh-so-clever.  Untapped reserves for future mining spring up everywhere, from the various elves of Elfo’s home village, such as Kissy (who kisses), and the fact that Bonnie Prince Derek, Bean’s half-brother, is completely emo.  This is because the territory is fecund and therefore ripe for parody, mostly through shooting fish in a barrel rather than needing to do anything truly original.  Either way, it adds up to a pretty smart watch, leading me to the conclusion that you probably can’t go wrong with a cartoon on Netflix.  There are so many more stages in animation when compared to filming live action; I imagine that this means there are more opportunities for someone to decide the whole thing is bollocks and stop or improve the production.  A second, longer series is greenlit and the security of that acceptance should provoke bolder humour and bring the seminal achievements of Groening’s other canon within closer grasp.  It won’t fill any Game Of Thrones holes in your life, but you may well enjoy a couple of funnies while your beloved characters are brutally killed off.

F Is For Family

I think we’ve all seen this little box.  There it sits in your Netflix menu, coming up time and time again.  You’re looking for that latest boxset that’s become mandatory viewing within your social circle, or double-checking just in case Netflix have started putting popular films on again (they haven’t).  But no, drawing your eyes from Wild Wild Country or Kingdom is this show: F Is For Family.  Yet, you’ve no idea why.  Its beigey-whiteish hues, its crudely illustrated characters (each with a scowl), its name that doesn’t really make any sense: none of these things are particularly appealing.  But don’t worry, I won’t let you be worn down by attrition.  Frequency is not the same as quality.  I, the boxset ranger, have done you all a favour.  Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve only gone and watched all of F Is For Family.  And now, by vindicating me with a reading of this blog, I shall impart unto you whether you should succumb to its persistence (like a Riverdale) or if you should ignore the programme’s existence entirely, thereby maintaining your quality of life (much as I didn’t when I sat through all of Altered Carbon).

It's an animated show about a dysfunctional family.  So far, so Simpsons.  Also, so Family Guy, so Bob’s Burgers, so so many other programmes.  You’ll note I haven’t dared yet cover the first two in this list on Just One More Episode.  However, keep reading my posts forever, as both are in my strategic content plan (Bob’s Burgers, though, I have totally done, so click on that link then and you can get yourself caught up on that post in case you’ve ever missed anything I have to say), but such influential cultural phenomena require a bit of a run up.  I’m still laughing that I used the word strategic in relation to my content plan.  There’s no strategy; there’s no plan; and there’s not that much content beside me talking about myself (so, to that end, keep telling me what I should cover).  The trick to approaching any new animated family is to find what’s different about them compared to all those that have sat on cartoon sofas before them.  Otherwise, you risk King Of The Hill happening all over again: everyone expects Simpsonian high jinks and ends up with a more subtle and specific form of humour.

Our big difference in F Is For Family is that everything is set in the seventies.  From our morally advanced glasshouse of 2019 and beyond (Brexit, Trump etc), we can throw stones at this bygone decade’s attitudes towards all matter of things about which we want to believe we have achieved greater enlightenment: gender equality, racial equality, health and safety.  These are all played for laughs, leaving you to marvel that things were ever that way, before an ensuing crisis of confidence in your own open mind: is this joke at the expense of former attitudes to women in the workplace, or is it at the expense of women?  Well, here’s a moral conundrum nobody wants when watching a cartoon.  Either way, I’m not sure why I’ve brought it up, as I’ve always loved subversive comedy: the main thing is that you’re thinking about what you think.  Why not have some uncomfortable laughs along the way?

That’s the big difference covered then.  Otherwise, the family in the For Family bit of F Is For Family is run of a certain kind of mill.  Frank Murphy is our paterfamilias (a word I’ve never used before, and I’m 34), all white shirt and angry voice.  His tirades are laced with enough effing and jeffing that you can’t help thinking about calling social services to ensure the safety of his children.  But don’t worry, as wife Sue is a strong foil to his clenched fists and spewed vitriol.  Indeed, eldest son Kevin is such a loser (enjoying wizard-based rock and failing at school) that you can see why Frank is not a fan.  Youngest offspring, Bill and Maureen, add an extra element of sinister undertones, most notably whenever Bill is forced to witness some sort of harrowing violent or sexual act: his haunted eyes will stay with you long after you’ve chuckled at his plight.

Beyond the Murphys, it’s the supporting cast that are more interesting.  Ginny Throater is a creation whose neighbourly annoyingness is compounded by her incredible accent: she extends her every vowel to cover the full range and this just bloody tickles me, alright.  Bob Pogo, Frank’s morbidly obese, chain-smoking boss at the airport, serves to lampoon our past’s bad attitudes to personal health.  You can literally hear the fatty flesh of his neck compressing his windpipe when he speaks or wheezes while trying to reach mayonnaise from his mobility scooter.  A completely unacceptable figure in many ways, yet why does his ilk still block my path on many a busy street?  The blackest humour is saved for Ben and Kenny, two neglected neighbourhood kids inhabiting woodland when shooed out of houses.  Neither has jackets, but Kenny does have a full nappy, despite being way beyond the age of potty training.  Their throwaway lines are dark, especially when they mention they are looked after at home by a grandmother who is sleeping at the end of the stairs.

Let’s conclude now.  Those were my observations.  You have read them.  Should you watch this show, though?  Well, I’m going to go off my response to hearing that a fourth series was on the way: I felt positive about the prospect of watching more.  Therefore, this is a good show.  It’s neatly episodic, yet the Murphys’ fortunes progress (or decline) across the sequence of a season.  I want to know what happens next.  There’ll be loads more silliness to chuckle at when we reach the eighties.  So next time that little beigey-whiteish box is staring at you from the TV screen, and you’ve got half an hour spare, click it and watch it.  Just don’t ask me what the F is for.  Probably f***.

Big Mouth

I’ve watched another animation on Netflix.  It’s not big, but… it is clever.  In fact, it’s actually called Big Mouth, so parts of it are, in fact, big as well.  So, to conclude, it is both big and clever.  And I watched it.  And here you are, reading about it.  Right, that’s the awkward opening passages out of the way, so let’s plough on with making sarcastic remarks about it, all while feeling a little guilty that there’s a remote chance its creators might one day read this and think me a prick for commenting on it.  I’ve frankly no right.  I’ve just counted up how many shows of my own I have created, and the answer is: none.  Also, there’s no chance of them ever reading this self-indulgent nonsense, so let’s agree that I’ve got nothing to lose.

The good news is that Big Mouth is a good time.  You might have seen it in your various Netflix menus: crudely drawn children and hairy, horned monsters.  What a combination.  But it’s not quite the pervy mess it sounds like (or is it?).  Big Mouth is all about puberty and adolescence.  Set in an American middle school, our focus is a bunch of young teens at various stages along the hormonal journey, some on the lookout for that first hallowed pubes, others coping with bumfluff taches and uncontrollable, confusing sexual urges.  Chaperoning them on this voyage of development is an array of adults who should know better, but don’t.

Cast your mind back to your schooldays.  Male classmates were divided into the early adopters, sporting their adult bodies at the age of 12 and buying everyone alcohol as a result, and the Peter Pans, trapped in an eternal babylike state of knee-highness and squeaking to communicate.  I remember after PE in year 7 when the whole class, rather than getting changed back into our uniform, got distracted by comparing who had the most impressive armpit hair development – we might as well have ranked ourselves in order of undergrowth.  The advanced puberteers derided the non-starters, while the hormonally under-resourced eyed their hirsute brethren with suspicion.  It’s in this pickling predicament that our two Big Mouth heroes find themselves, with Andrew Glouberman’s precocious development exceeded only by Nick Birch’s desperate desire to harvest his own crop of precious pubes.

I’ll stop myself here as I’m painfully aware that this is a fairly graphic way to talk about underage bodies.  Rest assured, this pales in comparison to how this process is handled in the show: what images my words can’t bring to life are rendered in colourful animation across your screens.  If you’re prudish or easily offended, don’t watch (don’t read this, either).  And if you think my intentions are sinister (which they’re not) just wait till you come across the main conceit of Big Mouth: the hormone monsters.  To represent the bad influences these biological changes have on behaviour, a hairy, horned accomplice appears in the lives of these children to guide them through their new urges.  And by guide, I mean persuade them to give in so that we as the viewer can enjoy the most extreme and entertaining circumstances.  It’s like an imaginary friend, only they’re not telling you to burn things, just to hump them.

If you think it’s just the boys getting the pubescent scrutiny, I can assure you that girls come in for the same treatment.  Whether that’s Missy pleasuring herself with her plush toy during a school camp out, or Jessi’s first period coming on a day she chose to wear white shorts, everyone can enjoy getting offended here.  There’s a certain shared experience with the characters’ disastrous attempts to make sense of their changing bodies, especially when you factor in the cluenessness of the parents to deal with any of it.  Nick’s dad’s wholly inappropriate responses are beyond slimey (pretending to be a pussy), while Jay’s mum (or mom, rather) couldn’t be less interested in any of her boys, let alone the youngest – especially when there is wine to focus on – leaving him to forge relationships with household cushioning.  The teachers are even worse, with a special mention going to Coach Steve.  At first, this individual annoys with his constant appearances, but he becomes a well-placed foil to so many of the storylines that he inevitably endears himself.

Let’s therefore laugh at our obsession with sex by revisiting our first encounters with its mysteries through the eyes of middle schoolers and their hormone monsters.  Big Mouth is as comfortable being intelligent with thought provocation as it is making vagina jokes (with the voice of Kristen Wiig as a really friendly vagina).  There’s a song in every episode and the voice talent is stellar, with Maya Rudolph unrecognisable as Connie the hormone monster, but Andrew Rannells (often the best thing in Girls, apart from the girls) entirely recognisable as the quick-witted Matthew.  With its imaginative and subversive approach (and strokes of genius, such as illustrating minds blown by having characters’ heads literally explode), Big Mouth throws open our societal inconsistencies in the treatment of so many issues, as well as recognising hilariously that we are all just about managing to keep on top of our hormones, even as adults.  How big and clever is that?

Archer

“Have you seen Archer?” a friend asked.  I hadn’t.  I had no idea what they were talking about.  It was my worst fear come true: someone trying to engage in conversation about a piece of content pivotal to modern culture and there’s me, oblivious and unable to take part.  “You’d love Archer,” they went on.  Things had escalated.  Now this thing I had never heard of was actually being recommended to me!  I gave the only response possible at the time: nodding silently while my mouth slowly opened and closed.  But I don’t think I got away with it, as the same friend then insisted on showing me the programme while I was visiting him in Beijing.  (This was the same dear friend who first recommended the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to me, so he has a strong track record).

Let’s relive my first thoughts during that initial viewing, as this will help to bring the show to life for readers.

“So, it’s some sort of spy agency?”

Yes, it is.

“Wow, this is a work of art.”

Firstly, it’s adult animation.  This doesn’t mean it’s a cartoon of explicit jiggery and pokery for lonely men to watch with boxes of tissues.  It means it’s something for grown-ups that just happens to be produced from moving illustrations, like BoJack Horseman or Rick & Morty.  But everything in Archer is drawn to look like artwork by Roy Lichtenstein.  The characters are pneumatic in their attractiveness (though this still isn’t aimed at the hand-over-fist crowd).  The backgrounds too add to the overall high quality, while sixties lines and styling give everything a slight Mad Men feel.  I feasted my eyes.

“Isn’t that Bob from Bob’s Burgers?”

Following the overload in the eyeballs, my ears attuned to the aural assault.  Lead character, Stirling Archer, is voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, who plays Bob in Bob’s Burgers.  While Archer isn’t exactly supposed to be a successful spy, it’s hard to forget the images of a bumbling family man who flips burgers when Archer is seducing beautiful ladies or rolling about on covert missions.

“Why is everyone shouting?”

The characters pursue all dialogue at a certain heightened pitch.  It’s the tone you use in a conversation where each exchange elevates the previous sentence’s sarcasm, irony or sardonic tone.  It has nowhere to go but shouting, which means that everything can feel a bit ranty, jokes (though funny) don’t stand out and we end up with one level to the whole thing.

“But yes, this is quite funny.”

Once you overcome the scream at which lines are delivered, you can appreciate the humour that laces everything.  Jokes reoccur and harken back to former statements, layering on themselves over and over till you can’t help but chuckle or groan.

“Oh, so it really is only these characters then.”

We more or less stick to the world of ISIS, the spy agency where Archer works.  Fun fact: it’s run by his mother, Malory (voiced, well, shouted by Jessica Walter from Arrested Development), so his relationship with her is the source of about 60% of the humour because it’s funny and silly to work for your mum as a spy.  Around eight characters feature in practically every episode, no matter what, which starts to feel close and closed off across the nine seasons.  Yes, nine.  Occasional relief comes from guest roles, for which some sort of Hollywood comedy actor is always found, like a bit of an inside joke, so you can have a great time trying to place the voice before giving in, checking IMDB and seeing that it was Janice off Friends.

In short, this is a good man-show.  I don’t want to be gendering things as we move into 2019, but the humour can be schoolboy, Archer lives consequence-free and I’m fairly certain the female characters only serve as garnish in order to bait or foil (all while shouting of course).  Nevertheless, nine series is good going, so let’s go through how things have been padded out and what my bodily responses were for each one:

Series one

Still getting to grips with the style, characters and tone, we have an episodic approach with each instalment more or less resolving itself.  There’s an airship, among other retro elements, with most conflict coming from a rival agency (and between Archer and Malory).

Series two

More office management japes creep in, but the episodes climax in Archer searching for the true identity of his father.  We get into our stride here a bit more.

Series three

Things get joyfully further and further fetched, with more action in the animation (versus perennial standing around posturing) and more diverse settings.  Robots appear, as does a mission to space.  Enjoyment peaks.

Series four

Just more classic Archer, with a hilarious Bob’s Burgers crossover.

Series five

This is Archer: Vice.  We depart from the old office and the whole staff end up in South America trying to offload cocaine.  Comedy comes from Pam doing most of the cocaine most of the time.

Series six

Back to nearly normal with more global travel.  Some of the characters’ backgrounds are fleshed out.

Series seven

Archers goes all Hollywood.  I didn’t really get what was going on.

Series eight

This whole series is a dream.  No, really, it’s called Archer: Dreamland and takes place in Archer’s mind during a coma.  It’s a shame he can’t dream up some new main characters.

Series nine

Completely clapped out, the whole thing moves to 1938.  I lost the plot.  I didn’t have a mental health episode, I simply was unable to find any narrative to follow.

After the quick intro in Beijing, I’ve limped my way through this show, possibly repeating series three, or, in fact, missing out whole chunks of episodes altogether.  Because of its constant tone, I find myself easily distracted, even though each instalment is short.  As such, in an effort to make it finally to the last episode (which wasn’t helped by series nine dropping when I was knee deep in series six) it has become a background show I put on whenever I am doing something else.  Many a work email has been bashed out on the old laptop while Archer and Lana scream at Figgis, or while Pam runs around naked eating snacks and taking drugs.  Maybe a close-knit colleague collective of inept spies can only go so far, yet Archer still feels unique in both the worlds of comedy and animation.  Within its overwhelming volume, there are hilarious gems.  So, if you live life terrified of being caught out by someone asking if you’ve seen Archer (and it’s only happened to me twice more and both times I could respond confidently with a big fat yes) try a couple of episodes.  If you hate it, then stop it and do something else.  And if you like it, then enjoy; you’re welcome.

Rick & Morty

If you ever start watching this adult animation (and I’ll tell you why you should in a minute), you’ll instantly be struck by three very irritating things about it:

1.      The animation is so crude you’ll be forgiven for thinking the show’s creators couldn’t be bothered to spend any time on it

2.      Rick and Morty, despite being grandfather and grandson, refer to each other by their first names.  Not just on the odd occasion either, but constantly, till almost every sentence is punctuated with unending reciprocal name-dropping

3.      Rick, the grandfather, is a cranky old bastard, and while this is hard to adapt to at first, it’s the fact that he burps while he speaks that will have you reaching for the remote to try watching something else due to sheer disgust.  He doesn’t pause in a sentence to belch and then carry on.  His throat reverberates while it emits digestive gasses in the middle of words, so that he uses this emission to power his speech, rather than air from his lungs like the rest of us.  Let’s not generalise, but old men are mostly kind of gross.  Rick out-grosses them all.  In addition, when he’s a bit sloshed, he has this patch of drool on his chin that just makes you want to get out a hanky and start wiping your TV screen, even though he’s an animated character

Acknowledge these things.  Take a note of how they make you feel.  But believe me that they soon go away for the following reasons:

1.      As you work your way deeper into each of the three series, you’ll realise that the animation is actually breath-taking.  Sure, Morty still looks like a kid scribbled him into life, but as he and his grandfather travel to more and more planets and alternate realities, this whole universe of rich imagination comes to life before your very eyes.  There are aliens from the depths of the darkest trenches of human minds (sci-fi orientated, geeky writer minds), with limbs on limbs on sex organs.  There are landscapes that no live action or CGI could realise.  The brutal action demands total attention.  You’ll want to rewind and watch bits again just to bask in the spectacle

2.      The excessive name-using never really relents, but you simply stop noticing it, so don’t worry about that

3.      And, as for the burp-speaking, you will come to terms with it.  In fact, you might even go as far as starting to feel affectionate about it.  Don’t tell me you’ve never been surprised by a digestive interruption in the middle of a conversation and simply tried to pass it off as a change of tone, or blurted out “Oh, excuse me” while clasping a hand over your mouth and its offence.  The fact is, Rick doesn’t have time for this.  So let’s look at why

The basic premise of this programme is fairly generic.  American family in the suburbs.  Farcical things happen in a way that they only can in a cartoon.  The twist is that live-in grandpa, Rick, is a supremely intelligent scientist with his own portal gun and extensive experience in travelling between universes and dimensions.  Rather than bonding with his grandson by pretending to find football interesting, he drags him on adventures across the full spectrum of space, time and reality.  It’s pretty high-concept stuff, but it’s all brought down to earth (literally – lol) by the fact the family members just see these trips as adventures.

And what a great word.  Adventure.  Adult life simply does not contain enough adventures.  Though, as a child, an adventure meant going to the park when it was raining and pretending to be in Jurassic Park.  As an adult, it means getting your smartphone out on a busy street and seeing if a moped-mounted thief is going to come and grab it off you.

So, off go Rick and Morty, gallivanting around in their clapped-out spacecraft and leaving a trail of world-altering destruction.  Sometimes, cynical older sister Summer, is allowed to come along, brilliantly juxtaposing the drama of high-school crushes against the demise of a whole alien race.  Further banality comes in the form of Morty’s parents’ relationship, with Jerry and Beth teetering on the edge of divorce while the universe teeters on the edge of catastrophe.

Some episodes do seem to pair up family members into a formulaic plot and subplot structure, but their adventures still strike consistently entertaining chords, with the show’s overall subject matter elevating it above standard crude humour-based animation for adults.  Rick & Morty never shies away from intelligence.  Rick, as the owner of an unmeasurable IQ, must balance out his genius with the view of the world it forces upon him: he recognises the absurd farce that constitutes life.  This makes him seem cold and unhuman, something which the programme embraces in its plots.

In turn, this is why the show is so far up the IMDB list of the top 250 TV shows of all time, based on average ratings, with a score of 9.2 landing it in eighth place.  Not bad for what looks like a puerile cartoon.  A 22-minute of Rick & Morty packs a whole universe of challenging philosophy, eye-popping artistry and laser-sharp social commentary into your brain via your eyeballs and earholes, so jump on this bandwagon and get ready to impress fellow office drones with the news that, yeah, you’ve seen all of the eighth best TV show of all time.