Who here remembers when Adult Swim had programs with stories on it? I certainly do. If you do, raise your hand, take a picture, and send it to me. I’ll put in the raffle to get your name in the title of my review next week. Now on the adult block, we just get random and weird crap with no plot. I don’t even hate all of it. “Children’s Hospital” is funny, but with the talent on staff, it could be so much better if it wasn’t catering to the “zany” audience. Sure, back in my day (23 years old over here) Adult Swim had some of that. “Sealab 2021” and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” were wacky and weird, but their seemed to be a point to it. The show that this week’s review…review is about had all the makings of a great show. The only trouble was that “Mission Hill” was on the WB, and it stood no chance. Instead of the long run a show with real characters and plot, we get 13 pretty good episodes. They were hitting a nice stride when they got unplugged. There are 5 unmade episodes too that had scripts, and you should go to Wikipedia and read about them. I’m so upset I don’t get to see them; I wish the WB would come back and become defunct again. Anyway, on to “Mission Hill.”
"Harsh man"
Think “South Park” when trying to figure out why this show is called what it is. The show’s premise was very simple. A slacking cartoonist lives with his hippy chick roommate and Brian Posehn. They have a dog that eats couch cushions and they have to take on the cartoonist’s uptight brother. Their neighbors consist of a very alternative couple that have a baby with no name, and two gay men, one of which is SpongeBob Squarepants. It’s almost too hackneyed to really look at, but to their credit, they pulled it off.
I mention Adult Swim because it picked up this gem after it was cast off. Sadly, it did not pull a “Family Guy” or “Futurama” and take off. It did however draw a small following and managed a DVD out of it, so not bad.
I personally wanted more of this
The stars of this show are the brothers Andy and Kevin French. The former is the freewheeling cartoonist/ water bed salesman and Kevin is his little brother that is a sheltered genius. When he is thrust onto his brother in this rough urban setting, Kevin has trouble adjusting. You know, the same way many of us had to move when our parents ditched us to move to Wyoming, and then burn down a corner store while watching it for our friend because we tried to burn pornography in the toilet. Like I said, it’s all so trite. I’m not sure why I like it. We’ve seen this all before.
"Can't I just have the Anus Bar?"
I mean, I would talk about plot, but the last paragraphs are really showing me how boring this show is. Take episode 5 for example. The two brothers argue over getting with young Kevin’s friend George’s sister while the two old gay men argue about whether or not the knife should be removed from the bear’s head. I hate to reiterate, but come on; played out.
The series finale is actually kind of touching when the boys get in a big fight because Andy doesn’t celebrate Kevin’s birthday. They go back to their hometown and throw a party at their empty old house. Thusly the GRUEBER MEISTER was born.
I think me pretending everything here is normal can stop now. Those still playing along, I must thank you. “Mission Hill” isn’t going to set anyone’s world on fire. It’s just a good show. It was a nice gateway show for me to get into the harder world of “The Venture Bros.” This show could have easily been done as a normal sitcom, but they decided to go with the cartoon. If they had gone live action and added Megan Mullaly to the cast, WB probably would still be running it. Ignore that before I already said that channel no longer happens. I’m glad they chose the cartoon though, because as the great Loren Bouchard once said, “Live action is just lazy animation.”
And that was a lazy ending
Credit goes to: Wikipedia.org, Youtube.com, msnhill.com, fanpop.com, sharetv.com, and adultswim.com