act123
I never heard of Wonder Showzen until the other night, when I randomly found it on the shelf at the local rental place. A quick glance at its description on the back of the cover sold me instantly. What I didn't expect was how funny it was. Sickly funny. I've never seen a show so blatantly and brilliantly awful. It's anarchy at its finest, packaged neatly in a vintage Sesame Street vibe that only kids born between 1969-1979 can really understand. Watching this brought back memories of watching The Electric Company and Sesame Street through the mind of someone mentally ill tripping on acid. LOVE IT. I don't think anyone could top the genius of Wonder Showzen. In a way I'm glad there were only 2 seasons of it, because it would have been a shame to see it go downhill and lose its sense of vitriol and vim. Highlights include "Beat Kids!" and educational films with kid commentary (saying gems like "DADDY!" when a slaughtered pig appears on screen) and Muppet-ish puppets in pornographic situations - it's everything a cynical adult secretly thinks about kids' TV, but manifested with unabashed glee. GET IT.
liquidcelluloid-1
Network: MTV2; Genre: Parody, Satire, Comedy; Content Rating: TV-MA (for strong language, adult content, animated blood and violence, scatological humor and - what the hell - crazy puppet sex); Available: Uncensored DVD, MTV; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);Seasons Reviewed: 2 seasons Tucked a way on satellite-only MTV2 and trading in a Tom Green-style post-modern anti-comedy, "Wonder Showzen" is truly the hip show watched only by those in the know. So, I know exactly what I'm supposed to say about it. I know I'm supposed to point to all the reality shows, mindless sitcoms and procedural crime dramas on TV and call "Wonder Showzen" a brilliant work of originality. A piece of absurdist art. That there is nothing else on TV like it.Usually, with TV we are just happy if we see a show with some guts or that just doesn't embarrass us with stupidity. But "Wonder Showzen" is bad in a different way, a way that we aren't used to on TV. "Showzen" passes all these rudimentary tests and then fails spectacularly on the next level - I think it just doesn't achieve the lofty goal it sets for itself.The creators of this surrealistic nightmare of a puppet show, Vernon Chatman and John Lee (of the Brooklyn band PFFR), like its fans, would probably tell you that it is a satirical parody of the kid shows of yesteryear. Immersed deeply in a perfect recreation of every kid show we suffered through as children, the show's only saving grace is that everything it does is with an unblinking straight face. But what about kid shows is it satirizing? "Showzen" seems furious that children's shows exist and are pumping young minds with lies sanitizing the horrible state of the world. "Showzen" is going to correct the record.The kids show that is "Showzen" is hosted by Chauncey (Chatworth), a puppet rag of an indecipherable species (Chauncey as a stoned hippie gets my biggest laugh). A cast of other puppets (including Mother Nature having a sex change and piles of crap with eyeballs) and real kids (the subject of some heavily edited voice-overs to make them say the darndest things) join Chauncey. Lee performs street-interviewer Clarence with a voice so adorable it lets him get away with saying just about anything.Why do I feel like I've seen all this before? Comedy Central has based countless series over the years on taking the template of a children's show and juxtaposing it with something adult, bloody or blasphemous and letting the hilarity ensue. "Showzen" is another drained exercise in the concept that this juxtaposition is just inherently funny. It most recalls Robert Smigel's short-lived children's show parody "TV Funhouse" (as well as Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog) only less focused, not nearly as clever as it thinks it is and not a fraction as funny. This is your chance to see what "Funhouse" would look like running around on a violent cocaine high. Funny. Not Funny.What it lacks in skill, it makes up for with balls. "Funhouse" found laughs in racial and scatological jokes. "Showzen" finds them in race, vulgarity and angry left-wing middle-school-age anti-war, anti-capitalist politics. What is the show really saying about slaves, American imperialism, God, the meat industry? Nothing really. It is just a subversive re-affirmation of what an angry viewer already believes. Which takes me to its biggest crime: how derivative it becomes, repeating the same jabs on the same targets over and over.The show desperately wants to be controversial, but Nazism, plantation slavery, mushroom clouds, the meat industry and "He Haw"? The show's targets aren't just stationary, they are decomposing. As a result, its desire to be a dead-on retro parody and a contemporary social satire crash into each other. It cycles between making sharp jabs, taking back those jabs and straight-up lecturing us. After the DVD comes out, the show lectures us about pirating DVDs. Season 2 goes off, almost entirely, on a rant voicing the liberal fear that Middle America (literally, a puppet shaped like a red state - get it) and "He Haw" watching hillbillies are trying to take over the world.It might sound like I'm contradicting myself. How can the show be unoriginal, gutsy, irrelevant and iconoclastic all at the same time? To understand that is to understand that there is a fundamental disconnect going on between TV and the public - the traditional TV viewers it wants to offend and every other TV show out there pushing the same buttons also trying to offend them. Yes, its true, the "He Haw" crowd that still exists would surely get up in arms over a blasphemously amusing bit called "God's Biggest Boners" or God killing himself with a pistol over loosing a game of rock, paper, scissors. However, when you look at it in the context with the rest of TV – as I am - none of this is that revolutionary. Some time in the last decade all this became TV normality. The difference between them and "Wonder Showzen" is passion. To say that "Showzen" is angry would be the understatement of the year.So, forgive me if I roll my eyes at this show's pre-teen level rebellion against authority. This is normally the type of twisted enterprise that I like, but "Wonder Showzen" is more a dull, crass, mean-spirited, nearly unwatchable and socially irrelevant exercise that delights in torturing its audience for 22 minutes to make unoriginal points. It is like being hurled around in a cyclone of dementia, anarchy, pedophilia and puppet sex."Wonder Showzen" has gotten being awful down to a science, but there will always be an audience for this and if you are going to watch an angry, cheap, mean-spirited, pure ideological spit-wad show, this is the one to watch.* ½ / 4
stakahas
Anyone who thinks this program is bad for its shallow portrayal of kids shows is totally missing the point. Wonder Showzen's political undertones are genius and provide a refreshing perspective to an increasingly conservative TV network system. Believe it or not, this show is extremely intelligent and effective on so many levels.This show is excellent at poking fun at the American people and their ignorance toward important societal issues. It manages to subtly sneak in inferences pertaining to our government and its powerful hold over the collective citizen mind. In the end, Wonder Showzen becomes the Sesame Street for adults, providing an educational wake-up call to the apathetic public.I'm guessing this show will not return for a second season, but I am extremely thankful that every episode was released. I praise MTV for letting this show air, and hopefully in time, people will come to appreciate it.
