![]() It gets a fraction of the energy of something like The Venture Bros. Stripperella also has people like Mark Hamill, Jon Cryer, and Tom Kenny rounding out the cast, so it’s not without its talent. This level of disconnect between the series and the network for what was permissible is another example of the problems that plagued production. Curiously, the show featured explicit nudity due to the show’s strip club setting, but it all had to be blurred when it aired on Spike TV. Striperella is not interested in highbrow comedy. Episodes detail things like “booby-trapped” breast implants that have explosives inside of them or a shrink ray that reiterates how size doesn’t matter. Stripperella is a show where characters have names like Queen Clitoris, Pushy Galore, and Chief Stroganoff. At its best moments it feels reminiscent of the campy energy that surrounds the ’60s Batman series, but the majority of the time the series just plays with excessive double entendre and a hypersexuality towards everything. This feels incredibly on brand for what Spike TV was going for and the series has a clever self-aware nature to itself. It’s a cartoon created by Stan Lee where Pamela Anderson plays Erotica Jones, a superhero secret agent who moonlights as a stripper. Stripperella, which aired alongside Gary the Rat, is also a very strange entity. There are still a definite lack of animated legal series, so Gary the Rat gets points there, but it needed more of the insanity of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law and not so much of the extreme nature of Family Guy’s wilder moments. The rampant murder feels gratuitous at times, but many of the jokes are easy and don’t feel worthy of Grammer’s efforts. The court cases that Gary takes on provide the opportunity to do parodies of bigger courtroom dramas like Philadelphia, but tonally the series just never comes together. Gary the Rat also had other notable talents like David Hyde Pierce, Ted Danson, Michael Keaton, and Betty White in recurring roles, as well as a score that came from Mark Mothersbaugh.ĭespite all of this, Gary the Rat is just stupendously average. The most notable thing about the series is that it stars Kelsey Grammer in the titular role, who actually does put a lot of effort into his performance and seems to genuinely be invested in the series. It’s an absurdist mortality tale that chronicles a self-interested lawyer being turned into a giant rat, who must go on to continue to practice law with this newly offensive appearance. “The First Network For Horny Teenage Boys” would have likely been a more accurate description of Spike TV’s animation slate.Īdapted from a web series of the same name, Gary the Rat is perhaps the lesser of evils when it comes to Spike TV’s animated series. They were all satisfied in wallowing in depravity where shock content seemed to be valued just as much, if not even more than a competent story. None of these programs really attempted to be higher art or become something of substance. In this sense, Spike TV may have achieved their “First Network For Men,” goal, but practically as a crude stereotype of what the gender is interested in. Spike TV aimed to fix this problem, but in reality they seemed to be more of a breeding ground for misogyny, punching down, and cheaply produced animation. Finally, men would now have a safe haven where they could watch edgy cartoons that cater specifically to them. ![]() The major push behind Spike TV is that Viacom thought that the 18-34 male demographic was being severely underserviced on television, especially when it came to animation. Back in 2003 the adult animation landscape was much less exciting and Viacom aimed to fix this by turning The New TNN into Spike TV. ![]() There are dozens of cutting edge adult animated television shows at this point and it can almost be easy to take for granted just how mature cartoons have come. In reality, all that it did was marginalize women and alienate an entire demographic in the laziest way possible. However, back in 2003 this is exactly the strategy that was used to not only launch a new television network, but also a block of late-night animated programming that was supposed to redefine what could be approached in a cartoon. The phrase “The First Network for Men” is now a boast that would likely invoke eye rolls and immediate dismissals from viewers, rather than act an attractive selling point. ![]()
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