Wonder Showzen (MTV, 2005-2006) IMDB Link“Todays Wonder Showzen is brought to you by; the letter N, Mexico, and Baby's First Sensual Oil, because you're never too young to set the night on fire.”Watching “Wonder Showzen” for the second time after it was released three years back made me even appreciate it even more. Made as a fake children’s show (think “Sesame Street”), “Wonder Showzen” proves to be the weirdest, most experimental TV show you have ever seen. It is hilarious and smart, but most of all, completely original in its style and format.
It is a bit hard to describe the show. Being a fake children’s show, it uses puppets and children discussing adult subjects, such as the letter N being a drug addict. Frankly, if someone told me this, I would be unimpressed, because that sounds like such boring and easy humor. But “Wonder Showzen” constantly leaves you unprepared for what they are doing. Some of the parts are hard to watch, such as a kid journalist or a blue puppet asking random people on the street awkward and annoying questions. In one of the episodes, the blue puppet (Clarence) asks people what makes them angry, and he keeps asking the questions, until, well, most get angry. In another, a kid dresses up as Hitler and asks people, “What is wrong with kids today?”.
But I think my absolute favorite thing about the show is that how far they are ready to go with their experiments. In the finale of Season One, an episode is called “Patience”. The episode itself tries to test the viewers’ patience by repetitive sentences and long uneventful segments, until the half-point of the episode, where they apologize for testing our patience, and decide to undo the damage. So what do they do? They play the first half in reverse. And then there is like a few minutes left, which they use to speed through as a new episode.
We have another episode where a redneck puppet takes over the show and makes a fake show (an offensive, extremely bad and lame redneck show called “Horse Apples”). They show creators call in real people to test screen this fake show, and surprisingly it gets good reviews. The show then takes it a step further and actually dedicates a whole episode to this fake, bad show.
An insane and one of a kind show. Not for everyone, but a must for anyone who wants to try something completely different.
Clarence: "This is the Chernobyl of TV shows."
Chauncey: "Only with less laughs."
5/5
