A friend of mine introduced me to Childrens Hospital late last year and it was love at first sight. Irreverent humor poking fun at every race and religion, hilarious non-sequiturs, the lack of any kind of medical knowledge and of course, a character that’s equal parts John Wayne Gacy and Patch Adams? It’s like it was made for me. The medical drama spoof was created by Rob Corddry of The Daily Show and Hot Tub Time Machine fame and stars an incredible cast of comics including Rob Huebel, Lake Bell, Henry Winkler, and Ken Marino.
Childrens Hospital (that’s not a typo, it’s named after a Dr. Childrens) started off as a five minute web series on TheWB.com and was later picked up by Adult Swim and expanded into a 15 minute epic. Each episode stands alone and is equal parts absurd and hysterical. You can catch full episodes on Adult Swim’s site right here.
I’ve seen the first two episodes of the upcoming third season and they are delightful.
The season premiere, “Run Dr Lola Spratt, Run”, shows what happens to a child that ventures into a quicksand farm and gets stuck. They manage to extract him via the method above but he’s still sinking to his death. The poor kid chose to go get himself killed on the weekend, and as everyone knows, doctors don’t work on the weekends. The only solution- call together the super-team of doctors from their weekend activities. Expect lots of great moments as you see what each character was up to when they receive the call of a child in need. Jon Hamm cameos.
The second episode “Ward 8 ” guest stars Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation) as a man who ventures into a dark and previously unknown section of the hospital and Sarah Silverman as another clown doctor who dates Rob Corddry in a flashback.
Any more than that would ruin either- these are just 15 minute shows, after all. But both feature the humor we’ve come to know and love from Childrens Hospital, and if anything it feels like the show is getting even funnier as the characters get more defined and insane.
14 full episodes are on the way. Season 3 premieres on Adult Swim on Thursday, June 2 at midnight (ET/PT).