The Big Picture: Cooking Show - A Look at Too Many Cooks

[ewhac]

I aborted the video about four minutes in, thinking, "Okay, I get it, endless takes on the 1980's sitcom opening credits trope. Would have been funnier if they could have snuck Bob Saget in." And no, the semi-topless woman was not enough to keep me watching. Seems I might have aborted it too early.

And yes, you should definitely test-drive everything that comes out of Williams Street. Even Tim and Eric, who have a terrible track record with me, always deserve at least one look.

I think I accidentally watched the season ender to 12 Oz. Mouse, whereupon the other fragments I had seen started to make some perverse sense.

Xavier just seems to me to be the story of an acid trip, told from the first-person perspective.

Metalocalypse actually helped me form an appreciation for metal.

Moral Orel was absolutely brilliant in its brutal throat-punching of the bankruptcy of "received morality," and should be required viewing for every religious zealot on the planet.

I just recently got into Venture Bros. I'm on the last episode of Season 1, and I've been enjoying it a lot so far.

Oh, you are in for a treat! The cold-open of episode 202, when #21 and #24 don their henchman uniforms once again, is an absolute masterwork. And yes, Bob, you should do a column/video on it.

 

[Jetsetneo]

Dammit Bob, now you NEED to do a Venture Bros. Episode.

Also, please attempt Xavier. Because I need to get SOMETHING out of that show.

 

[McMarbles]

Dammit Bob, now you NEED to do a Venture Bros. Episode.

Also, please attempt Xavier. Because I need to get SOMETHING out of that show.

I got plenty out of that show. What I got was "Sometimes things aren't products of misunderstood genius that you're obviously too stupid to understand. Sometimes they're just bad."

 

[Piorn]

Too many Cooks was hilarious, just watched it.
And I've literally never seen or heard about any of those other things.

 

[Norix596]

Well now I get last week's Super Best Friends podcast.

 

[Darxide]

The gag ran too long and the "weird" at the end wasn't weird enough to save it. Dunno. I didn't find it funny at all past 3 minutes in and then I watched just to see where it went. Was disappointed.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Bob sounds like one of those guys who knows everything about a particular niche, and loves nothing more than to let that be known. "Oh, you like that new experimental quasi-jazzcore metal band? Yeah they're pretty cool but Baznerfaustkerflumpenstein has been doing that for yeaaaars".

 

[MerlinCross]

Watching this just to see what the hell this is.

Not Bob's video I mean this subject matter.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Huh...never actually thought about metalocalypse in that way, but since you pointed it out, yeah I see it. I just love it for the music as well as the humour.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Interesting analysis of many of adult swim originals, even though I avoid the live-action stuff like the plague (especially Tim and Eric, they're still not funny) and 12-oz. Mouse looked like ass from beginning to end. The one-joke-in-the-beginning style can wear thin and make me not want to look again. I'm trying to get back into Matalocalypse after 2 seasons, but the mass slaughter they do is too graphic and realistic to be enjoyable.

Venture Brothers, however, is the tits. Do some episodes on it! Devote a whole MONTH if you have too!

Dammit Bob, now you NEED to do a Venture Bros. Episode.

Also, please attempt Xavier. Because I need to get SOMETHING out of that show.

I got plenty out of that show. What I got was "Sometimes things aren't products of misunderstood genius that you're obviously too stupid to understand. Sometimes they're just bad."

I think "misunderstood genius among stupid people" is an ass-covering excuse by people who don't want to admit that something is clearly awful.

 

[Jennacide]

I'd tend to say Aqua Teen Hunger Force personifies Adult Swim's bizarre sensibilities better than Venture Bros. The comedy in ATHF is absurd and yet usually understandable (but not always). And yet there is a series of meta gags running around the show, like it's newer insistance that it is NOT ATHF anymore, but Aqua Unit Patrol Squad One, or Aqua TV Show Show, or my favorite "Aqua Something You Know, Whatever..." ATHF also speaks volumes about comedy when the show is about a 'family' of talking food products living next to a stereotypically white trash neighbor, and that is the least crazy part of any single episode. With story arcs like Shake being turned into a chocolate milkshake by being bitten by a radioactive black man; or a walking sentient dick that makes everything out of dicks and has appeared multiple times as different characters, such as BALLOON HITLER (Der Inflatable Fuhrer).

 

[grey_space]

Another vote for Venture Bros Bob.

I would be genuinely interested in your take on it.

(And might rekindle an interest in the show for me. It's excellent but damn if there doesn't seem to be a long wait in between seasons)

 

[crimsonshrouds]

The gag ran way too long and i got so bored that when it started the murders I stopped watching. I just don't find it amusing because it feels like its trying to hard to get a reaction out of me.

Edit: I also want an episode about venture bros

 

[CrazyGirl17]

I... I don't... what this this I don't even?!

As much as I like the idea of taking the typical 80's/90's sitcom and screwing with the viewer's expectations... I don't think this one's for me.

Then again, I usually avoid the live action-stuff on Adult Swim... and most of their animated stuff that's currently on for that matter (I'm still pissed that Toonami has been relegated to Midnight on Saturdays). I don't know, in my opinion, it's barely worth wading through the crappy stuff to get to the good stuff...

That being said, I highly agree with the idea of an episode (of episodes) on The Venture Brothers, arguably one of the best shows on Adult Swim. If I had it my way, it and a few others would be the only shows on that block...

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I had never even heard of this before, when he first linked the video at the start i was tempted to just ignore and go on with the video to get straight to the explanation rather than bother to gain the necessary context. Glad i didn't spoil it for myself, that was amazing.
Seems strangely polarizing, some people seem to hate it, i personally loved it.

 

[Shjade]

At this point I'd say Venture Bros. main downfall is that it's become SO layered within itself that it's basically impossible to watch if you haven't been following it from the beginning.

I watched the first season and really liked it. Then I got into other things and only kinda watched episodes of the second season here and there, more or less let it fall off my radar. Came back to it more recently and 90% of what I saw made NO sense at all, and the other 10% only mostly made sense after I made some leaps to connect dots that were kinda far apart, and even then it left me going "but how did we get here?"

It's kinda rough to introduce someone to a new show with the caveat, "You have to watch it all, from the beginning."

This is compared to something like, say, Archer, which has its own internal developments but for the most part you can disregard that to just enjoy the Now of whatever episode you're weatching. VBros has some of that, but...it really needs the plot anchor to stand up.

 

[Moeez]

I love Tim and Eric so much but wasn't expecting so many people to get why Too Man Cooks was funny, cause it's basically what Tim and Eric's anti-humour is all about.

Moral Orel is amazing, more people should watch it.

 

[hentropy]

I can say that I saw it before it was a "thing", because I did routinely watch the Infomercials and Off the Air in late nights. Really it didn't feel like anything special when I watched it, it was funny as hell and I did like it, but I felt the same way about previous Infomercials. They all seem to follow a similar formula, start off imitating an infomercial/late-night trope (and they often do it pitch-perfectly), add in some laugh-worthy subversion/transformation (like when Too Many Cooks started to switch genres suddenly and perfectly), and then end it in absolute chaos. My favorite is probably For-Profit Online University, but there's also Fartcopter, Sharp Things, Broomshakalaka... all of them coming with the "Don't Ask Questions, Just Watch It, All the Way Through" label. That's not to say there aren't any duds, but even they are pretty good. When put up next to those, Cooks is still one of the best attempts, but not anything particularly groundbreaking, to me at least.

Out of the all the original [as] programming, Venture Bros. is probably my all-time least favorite. I get the joke, but it doesn't seem to fit into any real genre of comedy, or at worst it tries to do them all but none of them particularly well. I can't say I've seen every episode, but none of the stuff I have seen actually seems that funny. It just seems to be... the characters (all mockingly homoerotic in some form, and it doesn't seem complimentary) being in situations which might be considered humorous. I guess there's just some things you're not going to "get", and the Venture Bros are that for me.

 

[The Squid King]

(Warning, incoming TVTropes link)

Adult Swim: Our mission statement is Cerebus Syndrome [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CerebusSyndrome].

Well that is the rest of my day gone

OT: Hadn't seen Too Many Cooks until I saw this episode, I have now watched it 3 times. I love this type of surrealist humour and I wish there were more TV shows that use it. It would be great if more Adult Swim was shown here as I only have so much money to buy box sets with.

 

[revjor]

i'd love to see a big picture on Venture Brothers.

I'd rather see a Big Picture on Season 3 of Moral Orel. By Season 3 that show becomes genuinely evil and heartbreaking.