Animation fans you know me I love to talk about shows that people either A) have forgotten about or B) didn't watch and well since I just reviewed the movie I figure why not take a look at the series that spawned the movie and I have to say it was a freaking chore getting through season three so here it is my review of Drawn Together.
The basic set up of the show is eight cartoon characters take part in a reality show. Honestly the best way I can describe this show is Big Brother but with cartoons and incase you couldn't work out by my summery the show has no plot line so you can watch the show from any episode and you'll know exactly who's who , what there meant to be spoofing and what kind of jokes you can expect from them.
Starring in the show was Jess Harnell as Captain Hero , James Arnold Taylor as Wooldoor , Tara Strong as Princess Clara and Toot Braunstein , Cree Summer as Foxxy Love , Jack Plotnick as Xandir , Adam Carolla as Spanky Ham , and Abbey DiGregorio as Ling-Ling. The actors in the show i'd say do the best with what there given it's just a shame that alot of the time what there given isn't that good. You can throw character development out of the window because there's very little to none of it in this show.
As you might have been able to work out from the character designs all of the characters are parodies of other cartoon characters. For example Toot is a 20's sex symbol who looks alot like Betty Boop , Clara is a spoof of every single Disney princess and ling-ling is a Pikachu spoof and in this regard the show works well because you can imagine famous cartoon characters in this series but I have to ask why didn't they just try and get permission to use the actual characters that would have made the set up and the jokes alot more funnier in my opinion.
The animation for the show was done by Rough Draft Studios who also did the animation for The Drawn Together Movie and I have to say that the animation in the movie is far better then what's seen in the show. Yes I know that the movie most likely had a higher budget then the show but still i'm not saying that the animation in the show is bad in fact for a cartoon show airing in the early 2000's it's actually pretty decent but it could and should have been so much better.
In total this show had thirty six episodes spread out over three seasons heck the first season is so short that it's taken me less then a day to get through it all. Each episode is around twenty two minuets and unlike the movie where you don't feel every single one of those minuets you feel it alot here I get that the makers of the show were trying to emulate reality TV shows but those shows are on for over an hour and thus they can afford to have several storylines going on. This show is on for twenty two minuets so at most you should have two storylines going on and they should move pretty freaking quickly.
Remember when I said the first season was short I wasn't kidding it's only seven episodes and it's the only season of the show i've seen all the way through which even then was by coincidence. The other two seasons have sixteen (season 2) and fourteen (season three) episodes respectfully and I think that was when Comedy Central starting acting a little greedy because this show works best with smaller season orders so to me they were going more for quantity over quality.
Like I just said I didn't watch all of the seasons two and three but even I could tell that the writing in season three wasn't as good as in the other seasons. I have no idea what caused the writing to take such a nose dive maybe the creators were running out of ideas or what the deal was there but they should have tried to make the writing as good as it was in that first season and it seems I wasn't the only one who thought that because even the fans of the show hated the third season.
The show ran for three seasons starting on October 27th 2004 and ending on November 14th 2007 something really odd happend in the third season tho. Since that particular season started on October 5th 2006 and it went on a nearly year long hiatus after episode seven I can't think of a single show animated or not that's taken that long of a break during the broadcast of a season and I can't really think of any reason why they went on that break so maybe there was some trouble behind the scenes that we don't know about.
One of the things i'd say the show was well known for is it's cameos because yeah there's a lot of cameos from other cartoon characters even tho the are coloured differently to avoid copyright. It was honestly shocking at how many cameos they had in the show and the cameos weren't from little known characters either they were really known cartoon characters so it's a wonder how they managed to get away with having these characters in the show.
Now many people would say that the show is more well known for it's adult humour and I can certainly see there point of view. Since there's a lot of it heck even in the first episode of the show a female character goes topless and two of the other female characters make out but here's the thing to me alot of those jokes just weren't funny since they were just there for no real reason but at least in that first season there was some jokes that made me laugh and that's something I cannot say for the third season.
I've just mentioned this but i'm going to say it again this is a an extremely adult show with a more adult jokes then you'd know what to do with. The only thing that makes this show adult is just that it's adult jokes there's nothing here that's mature on a deeper level and I think that for this show that does work and I know that's weird since I just criticised it for having adult jokes but here's the thing I wouldn't expect anything else from a show like this.
Overall I thought that this was a very enjoyable but deeply flawed series and it's one that I would recommend to people who can stomach alot of gross out humour and i'd also say don't watch this show with any parents or grandparents around either this show gets a modest but fair 5 out of 10 from me.
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