Badly drawn boys: Review of ‘Haha, You Clowns’ |
Over several decades, as Hollywood comedy has become mostly paint-by-numbers, Adult Swim, the nighttime programming block on Cartoon Network that has played host to weird ephemera alongside hits like Rick and Morty and The Boondocks, has long served as cringe comedy’s deep space region. It has aired shows that plumbed every possible emotional depth except for humor, and for which even discomfort was a barely adequate response from viewers. At their best (or worst), they could trigger a kind of fight or flight instinct. Whether The Eric Andre Show, The Heart, She Holler, any Tim & Eric incarnation, the infomercials, and maybe even for some Joe Pera Talks With You, they often felt like tests of one’s sensory, aesthetic, and philosophical tolerance, and sometimes the bonds of friendship. In the end, you took them, or you left them. A middle ground, a humorous liminal space, was impossible.
On the surface, there is nothing to suggest that Adult Swim’s latest series, Haha, You Clowns, is any different. Its three central characters, hulking brothers Preston, Tristan, and Duncan Campbell, have a distinctively yet typically off-putting presence: flat-faced, almost cubed heads, beady-eyed like subterranean mammals, chronically open-mouthed like obscene phone callers, topped off with identical Jonathan Taylor Thomas haircuts and indecipherable speech impediments, all voiced by series creator Joe Cappa. They suggest nothing........