The newest addition to the Comedy Central network, Freak Show, is the reason sarcastic quote marks were invented.
It's a comedy
it's edgy and it's not-so-thinly veiled political commentary on George W. Bush, the Iraq war, Wal-Mart and the Guantanamo Bay prison camps. To top it off, it's all bundled up in an absurdist setup that is milked for every offensive ounce possible.It's also horrible, and that needs no quote marks.
The show is a hybrid of Comedy Central's Drawn Together and South Park, taking the former's concept of assembling cartoon stereotypes and using the latter's penchant for sociopolitical commentary. The show has a Charlie's Angels-esque mission-should-you-choose-to-accept-it format but with one caveat: All the heroes are freak show performers from a fair in Ohio. There's The World's Tallest Nebraskan; Primi, the premature baby; Log Cabin Republican; the Bearded Clam; and Tuck and Benny, Siamese twins who can separate.
While such an absurd and offensive concept is no worse than many shows that have aired on the network, what lowers Freak Show to third-rate shock comedy is the obviousness of its agenda.
In the first episode, the characters are charged to travel to a foreign country and retrieve a rare type of nut the president loves. The dictator-led country, Jarbala, has human blood as its No. 1 export, with the beloved nuts coming in second, a point of little concern to the Freak Squad.
Now wait: A president sending people overseas to fight for his interests, ignoring the larger issues at hand? The prison at Jarbala labeled the world's second most inhumane prison? It's liberal, but it sure isn't funny.
Freak Show has a few small touches that are inspired compared to the rest of the show. Primi inexplicably has an Italian accent, and the better half of the mom and pop who run the fair can't stop rambling off the titles of her tasty desserts, like her tinkleberry jam cream-dappled old-fashioned pumpkin thyme licorice dilly bars.
The show's best recurring bit is that the Bosley of the show is a parking attendant for the Pentagon, stopping occasionally mid-command to take money and give change.
These moments, of course, are few and far between rampant and pointless tastelessness. South Park has an uncanny gift for pushing buttons, but it has a purpose and is always with a context. It's hard to see the point in the Freak Squad forming a giant Princess Diana monster.It's hard to see the point in watching Freak Show, either.
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Comedy Central's lineup gets another addition tonight with [I]Freak Show[/I], an animated "superhero" adventure comedy starring a motley crew of sideshow performers. The show dishes out its own brand of left-wing political commentary.
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