David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Comedy Central votes for "Lil' Bush"
It was bound to happen - well, no, actually, it wasn't, but it has nonetheless: A little flash-animated series created for a cell-phone company has become a full-blown TV series.
"Lil' Bush" (isn't the apostrophe misplaced?), a cartoon about Resident of the United States George W. Bush as a precociously bratty child with his pals Lil' Condi, Lil' Rummy (who'll now have to be recast) and Lil' Cheney (who basically just growls like a rabid dog), has received a six-episode pickup from Comedy Central. Comedy Central, of course, tried something like this before with Trey Parker and Matt Stone's live-action sitcom "That's My Bush," whose levels of transgressiveness got lost in the intentionally awful punchlines and soon disappeared.
But the story here is that "content" - to use the desultorily bland industry term - intended for a cell phone customer (that is, content designed for a tiny niche audience that can't afford to be too selective) has made the great leap to basic-cable. If someone's not pitching "Ringtone Nation" to MTV2 as we speak then something has happened that has depleted our national supply of cynicism and investigations should be underway.
Actually, "Lil' Bush" is kind of cute - the design is better than most recent Adult Swim offerings, it boasts a swinging little theme song and, if not exactly funny, then at least it contains trace particles of wit. In one episode, Lil' George gets control of his pop's red-button in the Oval Office and goes about exacting revenge on his foes, such as Lil' Kim Jong-Il, Lil' Hillary Clinton, Lil' Mikey Moore and Lil' Blue States. And in every episode, just like with the Archies or Josie and the Pussycats, George and his pals take up their musical instruments and perform a ditty.
It probably deserved a higher initial place in the entertainment food chain than cell-phone time-killer to begin with. But if we can promote programming to higher-profile platforms, does that mean we can also demote lame shows? Because "According to Jim" would be a natural for a cell-phone mob-isode: It only takes him two minutes to say something stupid, do a pratfall and get hugged by his doting wife, anyway. Scratch those other 28 minutes and everyone's happy.
Comments
THIS is what Al Gore was dreaming of when he started the Internet.
Posted by: Suzy Q | December 5, 2006 3:02 PM