Cynical Cinema

Drawn Together is a show I’ve never cared to watch. Oh, I see the ads for it during the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and that Lewis Black Root of All Evil show. (Which are the only three shows I ever pay any attention on the Comedy Network.) But when I received Season 3 of Drawn Together on DVD from Paramount on May 13th, I felt that if they went to the trouble of sending it to me, I ought at the very least to give it a shot, and check it out. So it was with a little reluctance that I sat down to watch. This is a show about 8 cartoon characters who live together in a Big-Brother style show. The commercials show clips of the characters saying filthy things to each other and doing gay and lesbian stuff. But those commercials drastically undersell this show. They make it seem like there’s nothing to the show except penis and fart and gay sex jokes. And frankly, I have no interest in watching something like that. But this show is much, much better than just being politically incorrect. Saying swear words and showing creepy sex is not funny in and of itself.

But this show IS funny. Very funny. The addition of the gay jokes and lesbian jokes in this show, unlike those in The Big Gay Sketch Show, are added only to enhance comedic effect, and are thrown off merely as added political incorrectness. The sex jokes and swear words add terrific comedic effect to what is actually a very good show. The eight characters are each very funny in their own way, especially Ling Ling, the little Pokemon-looking guy who is always animated in the Japanese animation style, and wants to battle everyone and speaks Japanese.

It’s the references to pop culture, however, which make this show so funny. There are a lot of nerdy, predictable references, like Star Wars, The Terminator, and Transformers. And there are also a lot of nerdy, unpredictable references. Like the Cronenberg movie Crash, Rocky III, Charlie’s Angels, and of course, Big Brother itself. Big Brother, the incredibly painful and horrible bottom-of-the-cultural-barrel TV reality show, provides a surprising amount of material and great moments for Drawn Together. Moments where the characters address the camera directly are some of the best. And the scene where the disembodied Big Brother House Voice comes over the loudspeaker and tells the characters that today’s challenge is to compete against the Peanuts gang in a spelling bee for the chance to win…an Applebee’s gift certificate! Very funny stuff.

Season Three of Drawn Together is hilarious. I can’t, unfortunately, compare it to Seasons One and Two. I have not seen those. Because I have been put off by the irritating commercials. It’s too bad a show that is actually good puts all the childish and lousy and stupid bits into their commercials. And then, the worst movies in the world put the best moments and three good jokes they have into their trailers. Don’t be deceived by trailers. Most of the summer “blockbusters” this year will likely suck. And don’t pay too much attention to the ones on TV either. And check out Drawn Together. Season Three comes out on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday May 13th, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.