A decade of Adult Swim
Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:13 pmIt's a few months early - but still: Adult Swim premeired in 2001 and is still with us in a form not too different from how it premeired.
Sure, it's anchored by Family Guy and King of the Hill re-runs and the Sealab guys are now doing Archer for FX and anime (after a period of expansion following Adult Swim's birth) has now been scaled back to one night a week - but we still have new episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (mind you, I stopped watching around season 4) and The Venture Bros. (the pilot episode of which aired when AS was about a year and a half old). Old favorites like Home Movies, Cowboy Bebop, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex are constantly shown in the middle of the night where I'm sure they are still enjoyed by insomniacs and DVR'ers.
Adult Swim hit in September 2001. Yeah, just around the time of the terrorist attacks. I was still in middle school and enjoying the heck out of both Toonami and the weekend airings of Space Ghost Coast to Coast (AS' direct precursors). I stayed over at my cousins' house the night of the AS premeir, very excited by the prospect of a new Space Ghost episode and watched almost the whole block- the cousins turned off during Home Movies to play video games and did the same thing during Cowboy Bebop. I wouldn't have it the second time and found a little TV set in an obscure part of their house and had my mind blown by the first two episodes of Cowboy Bebop while lying in a pile of laundry (naturally, both of my cousins became great fans of the two series they skipped later on).
After that it was a ritual. I'd watch the entirety of Adult Swim broadcasts for the next few years and the programs would be a main source of conversation with the groups of misfits I'd hang out with at school. Little events still stand out to me as a kind of introduction to the internet-heavy message board relationship we have to... well, all TV shows and movies now: the last season of Home Movies - especially the finale and (this was the big one) the internet discussions while FLCL first aired.
Really, the theories people were coming up with during FLCL prepared me for all the chatter that would surround the TV series Lost that shrouded the last decade like smog over '70s Los Angeles.
Then what happened? Many of AS's flagship shows began to either run out of steam or wear out their welcome with repition (actually, a bit of both). Shows started ending and the ones that took their places added more variety but felt less of a cohesive whole then the original lineup. And let's be frank: after the initial lineup the Williams Street originals have been very hit and miss, with a lot of miss. The main shows became Family Guy (liked the first few years), Futurama (still like it - but it's now on a different network) and now King of the Hill (I respect it, just don't ask me to watch more than five minutes of it).
That's not to say I have something against those shows (besides the fact that American Dad is far better but much less appreciated), but they are obviously cut from a different cloth than the underground, garage band of animation that headlined originally - and that's what the network TV shows do now: headline the block.
And anime has dwindled, which has a lot to do with the burst of the early to mid-'00s anime boom and the creative slump in Japan now (which themselves are connected). It's funny, I, and many other geeks my age, have such warm, fuzzy feelings about Toonami, but checking the web about what shows aired when and I realize I was only really into Toonami for about two years: when the Tenchi Shows, Gundam Wing, Mobile Suit Gundam, Outlaw Star, and The Big O ended I immediately went to Cowboy Bebop on AS (which corresponded to a lot of us getting good and tired of Dragon Ball Z, how's that for graduating to the next level?). From then on it was a pretty good line of winners, from Cowboy Bebop to Trigun to The Big O (again) to FLCL to Evangelion to Ghost in the Shell to Eureka Seven to... well, I think it ends at Eureka Seven (don't kill me Bleach fans! I'm just not that in to shonen anime! Maybe I should give Fullmetal Alchemist more of a chance, come to think of it).
While Adult Swim no longer inspires the level of love and dedication it did to my younger self it still has shows that I try to catch from time to time, and The Venture Bros. has grown into more of an epic then anyone could have imagined. I still follow Futurama on Comedy Central for that matter - and I've just started getting into FX's Archer, which really blows even the earliest Sealab 2021 episodes out of the water in terms of quality. Childrens' Hospital and Robot Chicken are both pleasant enough (Ha! Bet you usually don't hear the word "pleasant" connected to the depraved antics on those programs).
More than anything, Adult Swim gave a crazy alternative to normal programming just when I needed corrupting the most, and I have just one thing to say to AS:
Red Dwarf. Come on. You guys aired Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh and The Office. I really think Red Dwarf could be a good fit. You know there are supposibly new episodes on the way? Come on! Why won't you answer my e-mails! Blah blah Blah
Sure, it's anchored by Family Guy and King of the Hill re-runs and the Sealab guys are now doing Archer for FX and anime (after a period of expansion following Adult Swim's birth) has now been scaled back to one night a week - but we still have new episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (mind you, I stopped watching around season 4) and The Venture Bros. (the pilot episode of which aired when AS was about a year and a half old). Old favorites like Home Movies, Cowboy Bebop, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex are constantly shown in the middle of the night where I'm sure they are still enjoyed by insomniacs and DVR'ers.
Adult Swim hit in September 2001. Yeah, just around the time of the terrorist attacks. I was still in middle school and enjoying the heck out of both Toonami and the weekend airings of Space Ghost Coast to Coast (AS' direct precursors). I stayed over at my cousins' house the night of the AS premeir, very excited by the prospect of a new Space Ghost episode and watched almost the whole block- the cousins turned off during Home Movies to play video games and did the same thing during Cowboy Bebop. I wouldn't have it the second time and found a little TV set in an obscure part of their house and had my mind blown by the first two episodes of Cowboy Bebop while lying in a pile of laundry (naturally, both of my cousins became great fans of the two series they skipped later on).
After that it was a ritual. I'd watch the entirety of Adult Swim broadcasts for the next few years and the programs would be a main source of conversation with the groups of misfits I'd hang out with at school. Little events still stand out to me as a kind of introduction to the internet-heavy message board relationship we have to... well, all TV shows and movies now: the last season of Home Movies - especially the finale and (this was the big one) the internet discussions while FLCL first aired.
Really, the theories people were coming up with during FLCL prepared me for all the chatter that would surround the TV series Lost that shrouded the last decade like smog over '70s Los Angeles.
Then what happened? Many of AS's flagship shows began to either run out of steam or wear out their welcome with repition (actually, a bit of both). Shows started ending and the ones that took their places added more variety but felt less of a cohesive whole then the original lineup. And let's be frank: after the initial lineup the Williams Street originals have been very hit and miss, with a lot of miss. The main shows became Family Guy (liked the first few years), Futurama (still like it - but it's now on a different network) and now King of the Hill (I respect it, just don't ask me to watch more than five minutes of it).
That's not to say I have something against those shows (besides the fact that American Dad is far better but much less appreciated), but they are obviously cut from a different cloth than the underground, garage band of animation that headlined originally - and that's what the network TV shows do now: headline the block.
And anime has dwindled, which has a lot to do with the burst of the early to mid-'00s anime boom and the creative slump in Japan now (which themselves are connected). It's funny, I, and many other geeks my age, have such warm, fuzzy feelings about Toonami, but checking the web about what shows aired when and I realize I was only really into Toonami for about two years: when the Tenchi Shows, Gundam Wing, Mobile Suit Gundam, Outlaw Star, and The Big O ended I immediately went to Cowboy Bebop on AS (which corresponded to a lot of us getting good and tired of Dragon Ball Z, how's that for graduating to the next level?). From then on it was a pretty good line of winners, from Cowboy Bebop to Trigun to The Big O (again) to FLCL to Evangelion to Ghost in the Shell to Eureka Seven to... well, I think it ends at Eureka Seven (don't kill me Bleach fans! I'm just not that in to shonen anime! Maybe I should give Fullmetal Alchemist more of a chance, come to think of it).
While Adult Swim no longer inspires the level of love and dedication it did to my younger self it still has shows that I try to catch from time to time, and The Venture Bros. has grown into more of an epic then anyone could have imagined. I still follow Futurama on Comedy Central for that matter - and I've just started getting into FX's Archer, which really blows even the earliest Sealab 2021 episodes out of the water in terms of quality. Childrens' Hospital and Robot Chicken are both pleasant enough (Ha! Bet you usually don't hear the word "pleasant" connected to the depraved antics on those programs).
More than anything, Adult Swim gave a crazy alternative to normal programming just when I needed corrupting the most, and I have just one thing to say to AS:
Red Dwarf. Come on. You guys aired Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh and The Office. I really think Red Dwarf could be a good fit. You know there are supposibly new episodes on the way? Come on! Why won't you answer my e-mails! Blah blah Blah
