Adult Swim OPO

Plus it has the benefit of not plagiarizing its source material.

Whatever, that theme song was Vanilla-Ice-one-note-off-is-totally-different from 227's.

welp, i was looking for a new display name

"Too Many Cooks" is about 1000x times more intricate than the MadTV sketch.

xp I'm hoping you realize that was a riff on goofy movie critic phrasings

I don't think being intricate is any indication something's good. I guess you can't argue taste, though, no point in bothering.

hmmm not sure I would call that thing a total laugh package with a nice absurd ending

― iatee, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 10:58 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, he did say it was a laugh package, presumably someone already took the laughs out .

Mad TV was always pretty reliable at delivering a soggy and laugh-free version of any halfway good idea. Except Luann Lockhart, which is still one of my favorite comedic characters ever (I'm sure it helps immensely that Crista Flanagan was flying solo in most of those bits).

mad tv was planted by lorne michaels to make snl seem watchable

The VH-1 theory, I hear ya.

there were some great madtv sketches, working with a sort of cultural vocabulary that the snl writers just don't seem to be able to nail.
e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stluj3krlP8

i loved mad t.v. ilx always made fun of me for loving that show. fuck the haterz! way better than snl. too many sad randy newman fans on ilx. get all indignant when they made fun of randy...

even when I disagree with scott I agree with him

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/too-many-cooks/

that casper kelly dude must be giving about ten interviews a day at this point.

MadTV's celebrity sketches always made me laugh. One of the guys did a spot-on Dane Cook impersonation that I still think about from time to time, it's really great. That said I didn't like any of their recurring characters and they often went way too far in an unfunny direction. I think Key & Peele talked about this to some extent because they were on the show in its final seasons, that it was difficult to really do anything too adventurous as their audience was mostly teenagers. Probably still better than most concurrent SNLs!

they're running too many cooks twice a night every night at midnight and three

Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!) Too many plays! (Too many plays!)

xps thanks for the link amateurist

I only watched this twice, a week ago, and that damn song is still running through my head clear as a bell.

That said I didn't like any of their recurring characters and they often went way too far in an unfunny direction.

I couldn't watch it because it felt like 35 minutes of Swan and that manchild showing his underwear to the camera.

I'm sure they had funny sketches but fuck if I was ever going to sift through all their bad ones to find them.

The only part in "Too Many Cooks" that I didn't really care much for and which struck me more as "typical Adult Swim" stuff was the Wonder Woman gag.

http://popculturespectrum.com/?tag=shawn-coleman

xxpost Luann Lockhart. That's all you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20ygZIdyDJM

the Wonder Woman gag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6xZOUXNyQg

Yes! Was trying to remember the artist who did that.

The only part in "Too Many Cooks" that I didn't really care much for and which struck me more as "typical Adult Swim" stuff was the Wonder Woman gag.

― MarkoP, Wednesday, November 12, 2014 4:34 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah clearly they were letting it go on a little too long for the 'payoff' at the end but it was the only time when i was like ok are they just padding this thing out to fill the timeslot they were given? the hawk loop also went on for too long but at least musically it was catchy enough that i didn't mind.

i loved mad t.v. ilx always made fun of me for loving that show. fuck the haterz! way better than snl. too many sad randy newman fans on ilx. get all indignant when they made fun of randy...

― scott seward, Wednesday, 12 November 2014 17:39 (Yesterday) Permalink

I think about the randy Newman sketch every once in a while

https://twitter.com/adultswim/status/532929012491116545

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Kind of weird to me that "Too Many Cooks", which is probably the weakest example I've seen of a style of surreal horror comedy that Adult Swim normally does really well, is blowing up so big. I thought "The Newbridge Tourism Board" fake infomercial was much funnier, but I would 'cause I am a Scharpling fan.

xxp alright, that got me

I'm a huge Scharpling fan, and as a Scharpling fan, I have to concede that the Newbridge infomercial was mostly for Scharpling fans (i.e. I can't imagine that it's going to convert many people who were previously unfamiliar with Scharpling & Wurster).

The popularity of "Too Many Cooks" seems linked to the nostalgic touchstones (Roseanne, GI Joe, etc) it employs up until the serial killer stuff starts happening. Really the only explanation I can think of for it's mass appeal.

The Newbridge infomercial was fantastic, but very niche in a lot of it's humor. Felt like I was watching Tom Goes to the Mayor again (a good thing)

i'm not 18 and i don't really watch adult swim but man if you can't see why too many cooks would stand out in a sea of internet stuff i don't even know what to tell you. it's pretty epic weirdness. and i've seen lots of weirdness.

i like when people really go for it. you know? commitment! it's just so well made...

It occurred to me, too, that the insane logistics of the whole endeavour were on par with Michel Gondry's music video golden era, which I hold in the highest esteem.

yeah this thing is successful because they got so many small details right / wrote a really catchy song, not because the underlying joke is super funny (cf the terrible madtv sketch)

I swear I'm not bearing Mr. Cynical Old Man. I was rooting for Too Many Cooks when I hit play! I just really didn't see anything particularly mindblowing about it. I only got one laugh out of it -- it was a big laugh (the credit shining through the closet door), sure, but I didn't see anything particularly brilliant or outstanding about in the funny, fucked-up, or funny-in-a-fucked-up-way categories, and it's hard for me to forgive something that feels overlong at 11 minutes.

Oh, and here's the Newbridge thing if you didn't see it and are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2E-X0RVYM

There's definitely some Blair Witch Syndrome here, in that the earlier you stumble across it, the more likely it is to work on you.

(I thought the credit people with the screaming humans on them was pretty fucked up)

my wife didn't think it was long enough at 11 minutes...

yeah it's an agree to disagree thing. that newbridge thing isn't that funny to me. i like parks & rec though...as far as loser town stuff goes.

yeah this thing is successful because they got so many small details right

The shaky helicopter shot of the skyline in the first :01 is what sealed the rest of it for me.

xpost The Newbridge infomercial is building on thirteen years of jokes and character- and world-building from a radio show. I can't imagine that it'd be super accessible if you aren't already down. And even then, it doesn't work nearly as well as when it was an audio-only undertaking.

the element of surprise was a big part of the 'success' of it, that it was just a standalone thing that wasn't advertised ahead of time and featured no known stars. compare that to something like "The Greatest Event in Television History," another Adult Swim one-off lampooning '80s TV opening credits that featured famous people and had an ironically aggrandizing title and was advertised ahead of time but wasn't actually very entertaining at all.

the newbridge thing is also the victim of 25 years of simpsons springfield jokes.

this was one of my all-time favorite things when i was a little kid. the national lampoon did an entire sunday newspaper for a fake loser town like springfield and i couldn't believe all the details. all the t.v. listings for fake shows. the classified ads! an entire sunday comics section. i would look at it for hours. very similar in some ways to a lot of modern stuff now. and in tune with sctv and fernwood, etc of that day.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2869/8827923856_0312c9fd11_z.jpg

Def feel like Too Many Cooks just doesn't commit hard enough to what it's supposed to be -- should be longer, should be more even in tone, lose the serial killer and hero gags.

FWIW in the version I had in my mind the movement was less linear, like there wouldn't be an obvious relationship between one character and the next, location might jump around, etc. Of course this could be very expensive and complicated to shoot.

The Newbridge spot also suffers somewhat because Jon Wurster is one of the funniest human beings alive on the radio but his presence in the infomercial is like actors who made the awkward transition from silents to the talkies. Something is lost in translation because he doesn't work the medium with the same magic.

Sight unseen, I would highly, highly recommend the upcoming Best Show box set to anyone who thought there was a spark of anything in the Newbridge spot, but again, $100 is a pretty significant barrier of entry for anyone on the fence.