 |
| Notice the Full House font. |
Cartoon Network's Adult Swim came to televisions following a wave of animation that saw Futurama, Family Guy and South Park bring cartoons with an adult sensibility to television. The channel exposed an American audience to a wave of sci-fi anime (Big-O, Gundam) while creating new images of old cartoon, giving
Space Ghost and
Harvey Birdman new jobs in a heroics-free atmosphere. One of the most impressive things Cartoon Network's late night line-up did was fill its broadcast with shorts that lasted 5 to 15 minutes. With only one act, these shows are too short for commercial breaks, which turn late night Adult Swim into a collage of commercials, full episodes and old cartoon shorts. This format is part of what makes the new line of fake commercials appearing late night on Adult Swim so perfectly placed. One of the best and most talked about of this series is
Too Many Cooks.
With an overly upbeat melody with bland lyrics for a theme song, this video starts out as the introduction for an 80's TV family sitcom called "Too Many Cooks." The song plays while characters of the Cook family are shown in their setting before becoming aware of the camera, which they face and pause as their name appears in bright yellow letters. By the time the song reaches what sounds like an end, a new verse comes in to introduce new characters. This goes on, cycling through styles of family sitcom, workplace comedy, police procedural, action cartoon and soap opera to highlight the level of cliche present in the montage style used in opening credits. At times, it's clear they spoof actual shows when copying
Rosanne with a camera that rotates around a diner table to show more people than there are seats for. With each new genre, the theme song change emotional tone with lyrics that narrate the new environment.
 |
| The killer creeping in the background |
Unlike most opening credits, there's a man looking out of place appearing at odd moments of the montages, usually in the background. He moves to the foreground and soon appears with a machete and begins killing the characters in this show with an endless cast. At this point, a character becomes self aware, breaks the third wall of a pre-taped intro and begins to run from the killer. Leaving the set, she looks for safety in the studio hallways before meeting her deadly fate. The introductions and theme music continue. One imitates the music of
Law and Order as a policeman investigates a crime scene created by the killer. Soon after, the father from a previous introduction is seen lying on a hospital bed, being diagnosed with "intronitus," a contagious disease a doctor soon catches as his own names begins to scroll up.
 |
| Don't catch intronitus |
Before long, the universe of
Too Many Cooks collapses on itself, actors from different introductions start crossing shows and playing different characters. By the end of the video, the characters from all shows come together in an enormous Brady Bunch character board and fill the family living room for a closing photograph. The show finally begins with the father walking through the door and saying "honey, I'm home." But that is where it ends with "to be continued" appearing at the bottom of the screen.
With the use of violence turned comical when juxtaposed to the happy theme music,
Too Many Cooks mocks the cliches of television by using repetition to highlight exactly how repetitive and formula-driven many TV shows are. As an added joke, it does this without even getting to the show, suggesting how easy it is to identify what a show offers an audience simply by watching its introduction.
 |
| "The risks of claridryl should be weighed against the benefits of its use." |
Where Too Many Cooks is the show that never was,
Unedited Footage of A Bear is the product that never was. For the first 30 seconds, viewers see footage of a bear taped by a still camera. There are chirping birds and inaudible whispers in the background. This turns into a ten minute spoof of a commercial for prescription allergy medication that "acts immediately and last indefinitely." If you watch the video on youtube, you'll see a box in the right hand corner counting down to how long before you can skip the ad. This box is embeded and acts as an added layer to the joke. If you click it when it says "Skip ad," the video pauses and you're redirected to a
page on the Adult Swim website. This page is a fake ad for the drug that includes links that disappear when clicked, backwards text and a bottle of claridryl that keeps growing until the site goes grey.
If you keep watching, you see a mother with allergies on the playground with her children. Tropes of prescription drug commercials such as cloudy days turning sunny, fine print appearing at the bottom of the screen, families having fun at picnics and the soft spoken voice-over listing side effects fuel the first minute and thirty seconds. The mother drives her mini van out of the commercial and into the suburbs. The voice-over eventually stops and Donna drives by a taped-off scene where police circle a man in handcuffs and garbage bags containing unknown objects get carried out by people in masks and hazmat suits. Donna pulls over when she sees the same sweater she's wearing on the road leading to her suburban home.
This is where it starts to get weird. A propelling drum beat kicks in. Fine print keeps appearing on the bottom of the screen. The side effects of Claridryl start fueling the next seven minutes. After being chased down, beaten and run over with her own car, by a woman that looks exactly like her, Donna finds herself in a 21st century episode of The Twilight Zone. With a mix of horror and suspense,
Unedited Footage of A Bear turns itself into an allegory about the side effects of prescription medicine that mocks the template those commercials use when advertising on television. When Donna opens her eyes, it's dark, she's bleeding, and
an aggressive song begins playing while images of alternate Donna occupying her house and terrorizing her children fill the screen. Is this her, with some sort of split personality or memory lapse? Did the medication create an alternate Donna? Is this all a dream? Like a surreal art film, the video leaves the audience with more questions than answers when images of the bear return to end the video.
Too Many Cooks and
Unedited Footage of a Bear use humor, violence and surreal images to create videos that satire sitcoms and commercials. Other videos in this series go on to mock the tropes different types of infomercials tend to be built on. Workout videos are taken on with an infomercial for
Goth Fitness. Ads for books reinventing the bible are poked fun at with
Book of Christ. While many other videos lampoon subjects in basic and silly ways,
Too Many Cooks pushes tv shows to grow by rethinking how they work. Using nothing but formats of stock tv intros in an imaginative and thoughtful way, Cooks challenges tv to get imaginative. With
Unedited Footage of a Bear, the creators highlight how prescription medication is treated as much like a product as Nike shoes, emphasizing the side effects of a culture where patients ask doctors about medication they think they may want before doctors recommend patients take the drugs they need. One thing all these commercial do is catch the audience off guard by looking and acting so much like the commercials they mock. But it speaks more of television when you realize these videos imitate it so well, that the only way to know if you're watching a real commercial or tv show is by looking for the station identification watermark in the bottom corner.
For a full list of the fake commercials from adult swim,
follow the link.
No comments:
Post a Comment