The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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March 20, 2008
Lil' Bush, Resident of the United States - Season 1 on DVD Comedy Central picked up Lil' Bush in 2007 as a half hour tv show after it had been originally created as short webisodes for Amp'd Mobile phones. This is the first web generated video to become a legitimate full fledged tv series.
And quite a funny series it is. Most of that is because of old fashioned writing - stories, dialogue and character. The series was created by Donick Cary, with about as impressive a comedy writing resume as you could have. He was head writer at Saturday Night Live, and wrote for The Simpsons among others. He specifically wrote the classic episode "The Last Temptation of Krusty," for one.
Now of course Mr Cary dislikes President Bush and all things conservative, as do all smart and caring people. But in an interview segment with Tucker Carlson included with this disc, Donick says he's kinda found himself liking Bush. Just the process of thinking through to write stories for Lil' Bush has humanized the administration for him.
You can see how that comes out in the show, in that it has relatively somewhat substantive character development and relationships on which to hang the more topical political satire. It is miles ahead of the manatees in the ideas tank that write Family Guy, for one.
Lil' Bush is framed as broadly a family sitcom during the presidency of Bush the elder, when Dubya and the cronies Lil' Condi, Rummy and Cheney are grade school students butting heads with the rival gang of Lil' Democrats. Imagine how insufferable the gradeschool Lil' Al Gore might be - then double that, cause Cary's good. Also, of course, Bush and the cronies have a band, and they get to play a song each week dressed as different bands. I particularly liked Lil' Condi cast as Slash.
Perhaps the most interesting character in the show is Lil' Cheney. He's the heart of all evil. Darth Vader is his father. He gets his nourishment by ripping the heads off birds and small animals, and sucking out the juices. He goes to hell, and ends up showing the devil better tricks for torture "it's all in the wrist."
Lil' Cheney is a little man of few words, just "rah, rah, rah" and a couple of keywords. Cary explains it something like that his Cheney character is so contemptuous of most people that he can barely be bothered to articulate words to communicate - a heart of darkness from which few intelligible words can escape.
But for being so totally the evil-hearted bad guy, Lil' Cheney naturally becomes a groovy anti-hero. He ain't quite up there with Eric Cartman, but he's pretty good.
But of course, the Lil' Dems get their share of being slapped around creatively. After an amorous Lil' Cheney got stuck in an undisclosed location up inside Barbara Bush, the fam ends up at the abortion clinic. Lil' Hillary comes out of the abortion clinic in her nurse outfit, explaining that she volunteered there after school "just for fun." That's about as harsh a smackdown as anyone has gotten in the series. Then she's laying a big kiss on Lil' Condi.
This first season consists of 6 half hour episodes each consisting of two shorter episodes. The DVD has a bonus episode "Walter Reed." This episode was amusing, and one reason for someone who has seen the Comedy Central broadcasts to own the DVD. But the funniest part of that is the explanation of why they produced it. They have an episode in which Lil' Cheney dies and goes to hell. They produced this extra episode as a substitute in case the vice president were to have actually dropped dead last summer as these were being shown. That might just be wishful thinking on their part.
Finally, note the evilest adventure of the Lil' Bush gang. Cool guy and Bush rival Lil' John McCain gets arrested by Hall Monitor Lil' Bush on charges of being a hippie, and tortured in the basement by Rummy somehow with an ice cream scoop. Then Lil' Bush lines the tortured to crazy McCain up as his replacement when his term as hall monitor ends, as he's under control and obviously not going to be monitoring the Bush gang's hall activities. Sort of a grade school Manchurian candidate.
