Anyway, the first episode isn't very good because the segments all come from the first season. Besides cruder animation and voices that don't sound right, the show's humor was a bit too harsh. In one episode they huff paint thinner and in a couple others they torture animals and insects.
By the second episode though the show started to find its stride by toning down their behavior a little. They were still very, very, very stupid but not as much of hoodlums as in the first season. Which I think goes to show that even crude, subversive humor has its limits.
For instance it's OK for characters in shows or movies to drink alcohol or smoke pot, but doing hard drugs like heroin, meth, coke, or crack is not good. And definitely not crude drug-seeking activities like huffing. LSD is OK if they have a funny and/or weird trip. Ecstasy and amphetamines can be ok if it's for instance a button-downed character who takes them by accident or ignorance so they start going wild. Regular abuse of those is not really funny.
Torturing animals is definitely not funny behavior. It's just sad, serial killer behavior. But it is funny if an idiot is going to do something to an animal but the animal turns the tables by mauling and/or humping them.
In the case of Beavis and Butt-Head the show really wouldn't have been watchable--for me anyway--if it had kept with that first season attitude. By getting rid of some of the more self-destructive traits the show found its winning formula of two really incredibly stupid teenagers who through their own stupidity and ignorance often manage to subvert the values and mores of 90s society. Not just the "politically correct" but pretty much the adult world in general.
Though still the best segments are when Beavis gets hyped up on sugar or coffee or whatever to turn into "the Great Cornholio." I need TP for my bunghole! Are you threatening me? Now that's comedy.
Probably my next most favorite episode segment was the XMas one where an angel tries to convince Butt-Head how much better the world would be if he'd never been born. The reverse It's a Wonderful Life.
An interesting fact is Beavis and Butt-Head is the origin for MTV's Daria series, which was far smarter and less crude--probably why it didn't generate the same amount of success.
1 comment:
I probably only saw a couple of the first episodes because I remember thinking it was crude and too stupid, so I gave up on it. I agree with your comments on going too far with dark humor. Good for them they figured it out.
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