The live comedy sketch-series Mad TV was the off-color cousin of Saturday Night Live, with skits that were always a bit more immature and out there while still lampooning aspects of pop culture. It wasn’t always top-notch comedy, but it was capable of establishing returning characters and drafting skits that could keep their humor for longer than ten seconds. That’s more than we can say for its new animated counterpart Mad. With a style that’s somewhere between Robot Chicken and the 90s Nickelodeon series Kablam!, Mad has none of the wit of either and instead of riffing on classic cartoons, it makes dated jokes that ring empty each and every time. Mad’s only success comes when it keeps it vignettes under 10 seconds in length and relies less on an obvious parody and more on an absurd angle, like a fire extinguisher suffocating in his glass case. More often than not, the show resorts to slapstick and fart jokes. It’s that kind of comedy.
Mad really doesn’t give its audience much credit, and instead of giving them comedy where the punchline isn’t explained at the end, it spells out almost each and every joke. The only time Mad works as a comedy show is when it takes the madcap absurdity that made the classic Mad magazine and just lets it come out naturally. When the show tries to force the comedy, like by recreating Jurassic Park with Pokemon (severely dated, yes?) or by combining How to Train Your Dragon with So You Think You Can Dance, the jokes fall flat on their face. The meager laughs come in the form of the quick off the cuff gags separating the longer skits and the Spy vs. Spy bits.
DVD Bonus Features
None.
"Mad: Season 1, Pt. 2" is on sale January 17, 2012 and is not rated. Animation, Comedy. Directed by Aaron Horvath. Written by Aaron Blitzstein, Marly Halpern-Graser, Kevin Shinick. Starring Chris Cox, Grey Delisle, Tara Strong, Kevin Shinick.
