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STUDIO: Comedy Central
MSRP: $24.99
RATED: Not rated
RUNNING TIME: 308 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
* Uncensored and extended versions of every episode
* Commentary by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein (along with cast and crew) on “Freaks & Greeks”, “Lost in Parking Space, Part One”, “Drawn Together Babies”, and “Breakfast Food Killer”
* Original network promos from all three seasons
* Karaoke/sing along versions of the show’s songs
The Pitch
Some old toons end up on Cartoon Network or Boomerang. Others…uh, not so much….
Consider this my most subtle NSFW alert.
The Toons
Princess Clara, Wooldoor Sockbat, Foxxy Love, Toot Braunstein, Ling-Ling, Xandir P. Wifflebottom, Spanky Ham, Captain Hero.
The Nutshell
Eight cartoon characters from different eras and different walks of life (that are patterned after real-life mainstream characters) are gathered together in a house Big Brother-style with cameras watching their every move. Together, the eight of them cause a thousand times the mischief, havoc and carnage than any of them could possibly achieve by themselves.
The Lowdown
Let me bottom line Drawn Together for you right out of the gate: it’s the raunchiest, most irreverent, foul-mouthed and offensive cartoon I’ve ever seen on TV…which is why I immediately liked it. This third season disc is uncensored, and I don’t how much of the racier material aired on Comedy Central, but if it’s even half, I’m shocked this cartoon ever got FCC approval. There’s full-frontal nudity, masturbation, necrophilia, cross-species sex, mass killing and enough bad language to fill a Mamet film. I’d heard of the show but never seen it, and I thought it was just going to be a spoof with a little bit of raciness tossed in. Thirty seconds into the first episode, that preconception was shat upon, vomited upon and sliced in half before being buried in a shallow grave, then dug back up and violated repeatedly.
The concept is that eight cartoon characters, most of whom you’ll immediately connect as being inspired by more famous real-life cartoons, are living in a house in the vein of Big Brother. They occasionally do competitions related to the reality show they’re partaking in, but mostly they get wrapped up in debacles of their own creation. Any and all of the characters are malcontents with their own particular psychological issues, ranging from eating disorders to dubious sexual preferences to indifference for causing the violent deaths of untold characters around them – including each other – and a general disregard for any semblance of common decency or morality.
Probably the worst of the lot is Captain Hero, a vain and functionally retarded superhero, drawn like the Timm / Dini Superman and with the mental capacity just barely north of The Tick. He has powers similar to Superman and won’t hesitate to use them to either amuse himself or torment people around him. He has a sexual preference for pretty much anything that moves: man, woman, child, animal, robot, and especially, corpse… Toot Braunstein is easily the most neurotic character and most readily identifiable as being a take-off of Betty Boop. Like Betty, she’s black and white, but she’s also a gluttonous pig frequently depicted as having a pretty face atop a hideously fat and disgusting body with enough hair, surgical scars, bodily fluids and smelly orifices to turn the stomach of any sane person.
Foxxy Love and Princess Clara are the two resident hotties, patterned after Virginia from Josie and the Pussycats and a number of the animated Disney princesses, respectively. Their respective neuroses are that Foxxy is a complete slut, willing and able to bang anything (including Scooby Doo); and Clara is a high-maintenance, bible-thumping racist with a penchant for getting off to fatal car crashes. Ling-Ling is an Asian-gibberish-speaking take-off of Pikachu, Xandir is a supergay, over-emotional send up of Link from The Legend of Zelda and Spanky Ham is an overly obnoxious parody of internet Flash cartoons Finally, Wooldoor is essentially the bastard lovechild of Spongebob and Stimpy.
A few highlights of some of their misadventures in Season 3 include “Freaks and Greeks”, where Hero mistakes a Greek immigrant family as a fraternity that brings back an old regret from college that he never successfully pledged. When he freaks out the family and they ask him to leave their house, he decides that if he can’t be in their fraternity, he’ll start one of his own and make his neighbors’ lives a living hell with traditional fraternity pranks. Meanwhile, Ling-Ling’s father falls in love with and marries Toot, who got wed for the money, which sparks a war with Ling-Ling.
“Lost In Parking Space” is a two-parter that finds the gang trapped in the van in the parking lot of the mall, with dwindling supplies and dwindling hope of escape (unless they would simply crawl out of the sunroof). Meanwhile, Clara, who had been abandoned by her housemates, thinks they’ve been taken by the rapture and that the UPS delivery man is Satan coming to get her to sign away her soul.
She finally casts off her Christian morality and decides to go on a spree of evil. On another front, Foxxy, who had left the van to go for help, ends up in a toon torture dungeon similar to Hostel that’s run by the clerk at one of the mall clothing stores. In “Unrestrainable Trainable”, Hero discovers that the giant retarded kid rampaging through the city is the result of his superhero sister using a deposit he made at a sperm bank back when he was attending Howard University.
In “Mexican’t Buy Me Love”, Toot and Ling-Ling get caught up in Mexican cockfighting in order to bribe their way out of jail. “Wooldoor Sockbat’s Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!” finds Wooldoor the target of a one-lining, ultra-hetero Terminator who must kill him in order to prevent a public access TV show that he’s destined to create from causing a future where everyone is gay. Of course this means that Xandir is there to make sure it in fact happens.
Drawn Together drew me in from the get-go. I spent a Sunday watching the entire season, frequently laughing my ass off. That’s rare for me because I usually don’t find that many properties that can make me do that as I’ve become jaded and bitter in my old age. But with this show, I can just turn my brain off for a while (although sometimes I have to reboot it to get some of the side references that are made in the show) and enjoy the stupidity.
I like the raunchiness of Family Guy quite a bit and this makes that show look like the Care Bears by comparison. If you’re of African descent (i.e. a sistah or a homey), a person of Jewish descent, or a conservative Christian, you may not like this show very much because all those demographics are skewered repeatedly and mercilessly. It’s incredibly un-PC in an incredibly PC world and I liked it a lot.
The Package
The episodes themselves look good and frequently employ a number of familiar toon and movie themes that are instantly recognizable. As stated, these are uncensored and extended versions of every episode. This ain’t stuff you can watch with your kids, that’s for sure. Captain Hero is frequently naked with his super dick flapping in the breeze, virtually everyone is having sex with each other or something else, and when the ladies are by themselves, they like to bring out the pocket rockets, umbrellas, jackhammers, or whatever’s handy. And the language is flying off an assembly line like donuts.
There’s also commentary by creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein (along with cast and crew) on “Freaks & Greeks”, “Lost in Parking Space, Part One”, “Drawn Together Babies”, and “Breakfast Food Killer”. Original network promos from all three seasons and karaoke / sing along versions of the show’s songs round out the offerings.
