Continuing on from Dogma, I'm working my way through Kevin Smith's filmography in prep for a retrospective panel I'll be on in July at CONvergence.
While I knew of this tv series while it was in production, I didn't catch it during the original brief airing of two episodes, though eagerly picked up the DVD release of the entire series, which I've dug out to watch again today. Like much of Smith's work, the last time I would have seen it was at some point in the early 2000s, and I remember quite enjoying it at the time, with some gags that I still vividly remember (the courtroom episode where they "ran out of" script and just let the Korean animators finish things their own way, the bottle episode where they get trapped in a freezer, the way Alec Baldwin's villain would always growl out the word "clerks!"). This also got me into the work of producer/co-writer David Mandel, who was coming off of Seinfeld at the time and would continue on with Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep (and I'm also quite fond of his boner jam comedy Eurotrip). As well as character designer Stephen Silver, who followed this with prominent work on Fairly Oddparents, Kim Possible, and Danny Phantom.
Episode 1 "Leonardo Leonardo Returns and Dante Has an Important Decision to Make"
Right from the start, I love how this show is embracing rapid-fire meta absurdism with the recurring gags of Kevin Michael Richardson's disclaimer cards (carrying on the gag from Dogma), the "Previously On" color pattern of nothingness, and being assured that this was recorded in front of a live studio audience. While it's not doing much to capture the malaise and existential disconnect, it's certainly having fun with the "messing with annoying customers" angle as it opens with the "is it safe" reference gag that feels like it extends to a cruel degree till it keep bringing back that poor man to the point of the cruelty becoming absurd in its own way, then giving us a montage of stupid questions, then showing poor kids lulled into believing they could set off dangerous fireworks by those explosive dealers on the corner, Jay & Silent Bob (if they aren't allowed to sell drugs, this is a deeply amusing alternative).
Everyone's settling into a fine Bing & Bob archetype of their original selves, with Dante as the morose straight man, Randal as the acerbic punchliner, and the comedy has taken on the zany zeal of Mel Brooks asides and visual gags like multiple establishing pull out shots of Dante's bedroom.
The setup of our plot (and if memory serves me correct, of the series as a whole), is that billionaire industrialist and explorer Leonardo Leonardo (Alec Baldwin parodying the original casting hope of Alan Rickman) has returned to his eponymous hometown of Leonardo, New Jersey to establish not only his corporate Leonardo Tower, but the elaborate mall pointedly named QuickER Stop, giving us a foundational battle between the underdog small stores and mega monoliths of commercialist exploitation. The whole backstory of ancestor Bernardo Leonardo's colonialist exploits of Canada, where the natives were burly men wearing maple leaf loincloths who gladly trade their land for swigs of polio virus, is shocking in its bold satire. What's not shocking though is that this is an episode completely skipped by the original network broadcast, as there are a few too many times where it feels like it's pushing buttons just for the sake of pushing buttons, like aspects of that gag, as well as lines about kids in helmets and "you're such a 'mo" which is a surprising one to come after Smith's explorations of homophobia in Chasing Amy.
Still, there's really fun gags, like Jay thinking everything looks like a giant bong, or the tumbleweed store going out of business, or how every shop in the mall has a small coffee bar, or LL's giant Oddjob style henchman who actually turns out to be a chipper and efficient personal assistant. It's really soaring with a good energy.
Moving into the second half, I especially like the scene where Leonardo Leonardo tries to buy our clerks off, with Dante sincerely willing to bail on the Quick Stop at the promise of college, only for Randal to, as always, sabotage that because he can't stand being left behind from his fixed insecurities. That's the old Randal we know and despise, and a good reminder that these two aren't friends.
This half is primarily a string of gags, including scaling the tower Batman '66 style, Jay & Silent Bob quitting jobs they don't have, a maze of death complete with a minotaur. Some of it has aged poorly, like their continued gag about native Canadians which really is quite bad, and them making a joke about shows that use "qu--r" and "ret---d", seemingly as a free pass to use it themselves. There's actually quite a few homophobic jokes, which continues to surprise me post Chasing Amy.
The episode is such a random string of gags that it really is hard to evaluate it on a narrative level, and by the time they've tricked LL into handcuffs and accidentally blow up his mall (which is skipped over in amusing shorthand), all that's left is our heroes right back to their status quo.
It's a fun pilot, but is definitely settling more into sight gags and reference humor than any actual plot, and leans meaner than I'm personally fond of. But it's fun. The designs are cute, a lot of the gags are catchy and quotable, the music is snazzy, and the characters still feel true to themselves, definitely benefiting from most of the original cast coming back. And as for Alec, LL growling out "clerrrrks" was every bit as fun as I remembered.
Review by noelctBlockedParentSpoilers2023-06-19T02:32:53Z
Continuing on from Dogma, I'm working my way through Kevin Smith's filmography in prep for a retrospective panel I'll be on in July at CONvergence.
While I knew of this tv series while it was in production, I didn't catch it during the original brief airing of two episodes, though eagerly picked up the DVD release of the entire series, which I've dug out to watch again today. Like much of Smith's work, the last time I would have seen it was at some point in the early 2000s, and I remember quite enjoying it at the time, with some gags that I still vividly remember (the courtroom episode where they "ran out of" script and just let the Korean animators finish things their own way, the bottle episode where they get trapped in a freezer, the way Alec Baldwin's villain would always growl out the word "clerks!"). This also got me into the work of producer/co-writer David Mandel, who was coming off of Seinfeld at the time and would continue on with Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep (and I'm also quite fond of his boner jam comedy Eurotrip). As well as character designer Stephen Silver, who followed this with prominent work on Fairly Oddparents, Kim Possible, and Danny Phantom.
Episode 1 "Leonardo Leonardo Returns and Dante Has an Important Decision to Make"
Right from the start, I love how this show is embracing rapid-fire meta absurdism with the recurring gags of Kevin Michael Richardson's disclaimer cards (carrying on the gag from Dogma), the "Previously On" color pattern of nothingness, and being assured that this was recorded in front of a live studio audience. While it's not doing much to capture the malaise and existential disconnect, it's certainly having fun with the "messing with annoying customers" angle as it opens with the "is it safe" reference gag that feels like it extends to a cruel degree till it keep bringing back that poor man to the point of the cruelty becoming absurd in its own way, then giving us a montage of stupid questions, then showing poor kids lulled into believing they could set off dangerous fireworks by those explosive dealers on the corner, Jay & Silent Bob (if they aren't allowed to sell drugs, this is a deeply amusing alternative).
Everyone's settling into a fine Bing & Bob archetype of their original selves, with Dante as the morose straight man, Randal as the acerbic punchliner, and the comedy has taken on the zany zeal of Mel Brooks asides and visual gags like multiple establishing pull out shots of Dante's bedroom.
The setup of our plot (and if memory serves me correct, of the series as a whole), is that billionaire industrialist and explorer Leonardo Leonardo (Alec Baldwin parodying the original casting hope of Alan Rickman) has returned to his eponymous hometown of Leonardo, New Jersey to establish not only his corporate Leonardo Tower, but the elaborate mall pointedly named QuickER Stop, giving us a foundational battle between the underdog small stores and mega monoliths of commercialist exploitation. The whole backstory of ancestor Bernardo Leonardo's colonialist exploits of Canada, where the natives were burly men wearing maple leaf loincloths who gladly trade their land for swigs of polio virus, is shocking in its bold satire. What's not shocking though is that this is an episode completely skipped by the original network broadcast, as there are a few too many times where it feels like it's pushing buttons just for the sake of pushing buttons, like aspects of that gag, as well as lines about kids in helmets and "you're such a 'mo" which is a surprising one to come after Smith's explorations of homophobia in Chasing Amy.
Still, there's really fun gags, like Jay thinking everything looks like a giant bong, or the tumbleweed store going out of business, or how every shop in the mall has a small coffee bar, or LL's giant Oddjob style henchman who actually turns out to be a chipper and efficient personal assistant. It's really soaring with a good energy.
Moving into the second half, I especially like the scene where Leonardo Leonardo tries to buy our clerks off, with Dante sincerely willing to bail on the Quick Stop at the promise of college, only for Randal to, as always, sabotage that because he can't stand being left behind from his fixed insecurities. That's the old Randal we know and despise, and a good reminder that these two aren't friends.
This half is primarily a string of gags, including scaling the tower Batman '66 style, Jay & Silent Bob quitting jobs they don't have, a maze of death complete with a minotaur. Some of it has aged poorly, like their continued gag about native Canadians which really is quite bad, and them making a joke about shows that use "qu--r" and "ret---d", seemingly as a free pass to use it themselves. There's actually quite a few homophobic jokes, which continues to surprise me post Chasing Amy.
The episode is such a random string of gags that it really is hard to evaluate it on a narrative level, and by the time they've tricked LL into handcuffs and accidentally blow up his mall (which is skipped over in amusing shorthand), all that's left is our heroes right back to their status quo.
It's a fun pilot, but is definitely settling more into sight gags and reference humor than any actual plot, and leans meaner than I'm personally fond of. But it's fun. The designs are cute, a lot of the gags are catchy and quotable, the music is snazzy, and the characters still feel true to themselves, definitely benefiting from most of the original cast coming back. And as for Alec, LL growling out "clerrrrks" was every bit as fun as I remembered.