Drawn Together Season Three DVD
Comedy Central’s Popular Mature Cartoon Returns for Final Season
Conceived as a spoof/satire of current reality TV shows, Drawn Together uses a “Surreal Life” type setting, by following the antics of eight cartoon characters, as they live as a group in a lavish suburban villa, under the watchful eye of a million TV cameras.
Drawn Together Cast
In order to avoid obvious copyright infringements, each character is a variation of known icons. Amongst them:
- Dim-witted Captain Hero (think of a perverted and clueless Superman, complete with cosmic back story to match);
- Ex-girl band hottie Foxy Love (a tribute to the token colored girl in most 70’s Josie and the Pussycats-type cartoon series);
- Wooldoor Sockbat, a weird and hyperactive yellow whatchamacallit (think of a variation on Spongebob Squarepants);
- Zandir Wifflebottom, a gay, elf-like video game character;
- Spanky Ham, a former internet parody pig actor with no redeeming qualities;
- Toot Braunstein, a depressed, voracious black and white former 1930’s pin-up girl (an obvious reference to Betty Boop);
- Ling Ling, a diminutive former manga battle monster (think Pikachu from the Pokemon games);
- Princess Clara, a character created in homage to all Disney-type princesses, were it not for the fact that she is also an extremely bigoted racist.
Drawn Together Creators
The product of former TV writers (and childhood friends) Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein, Season Three continues in its quest to shock viewers, by weaving semi-transparent commentary on known cultural and racial stereotypes into each episode’s storyline, while dousing each half hour with enough pop culture references to make light of other known intellectual properties in the cartoon world.
One must hope the creators are personally acquainted with other show creators, as a plotline in Season Two took the cast through other known settings, such as Bedrock (The Flintstones), The Future (The Jetsons), Springfield (The Simpsons), and South Park. How they could run through so many different titles within a single episode without incurring numerous lawsuits is impressive at best. The show runners even made fun of this during the first episode of this third season, by breaking through the fourth wall, and having the mailman deliver the usual bunch of copyright infringement notices (which the housemates promptly run through the nearest shredder, oblivious to the consequences.)
Season Three Highs and Lows
The best episode of the season has to be “Wooldoor Sockbat’s Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable”. A clever tribute to the Terminator film series, Wooldoor’s attempt at a children’s show is revealed as a possible cause for causing worldwide viewers in the future to become gay as a result. Hetero survivors from the future send back a hulking cyborg with a familiar Austrian accent, back in time to attempt to destroy Wooldoor and his TV pilot. Though completely absurd and tasteless, the writers maximize the laugh factor, by spoofing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s usual one-liners.
The only negative of this season, is each episode’s inability to stretch the storyline thin enough to fill a full episode. As a result, many jokes run a little long, as if the producers are afraid they’ll be short on content. In some situations, these lengthy segments work well for comedic effect. Were it not for the fact that this device is used every single episode, the season as a whole would have come off as stronger and funnier.
DVD Bonus Features and Overall Analysis
As a box set of 14 full episodes, the Season Three Uncensored Edition comes off as a bare bones format, very light on bonus features. Other than a pleasantly silly Karaoke sing-along (featured in the first two season sets as well), the only other draw for fans will be the audio commentary on select episodes. Some of the commentaries shed some valuable light on the method behind the crass madness, others seem like pointless filler.
It must be said that this series is definitely not for children. Most of the content runs along the fine line of humor, with jokes ranging from potty jokes, to crass and offensive attacks on known stereotypes and sexual mores. This being said, Comedy Central has also had a pretty good run with its other questionable property, South Park. They too relied on such vulgarity in early seasons. As such, it’s safe to say Drawn Together has found its niche, for years of late night reruns to come.
