Network: The Cartoon Network (Adult Swim); Genre: Animated Comedy, Parody; Genre: TV-MA (for pervasive nudity, strong language, sexual content, drug use and graphic animated violence and gore); Available: on iTunes; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);
Seasons Reviewed: 2 seasons
The streets of Exeter, New Hampshire are a dangerous beat. It's as if they just dumped out the sewers and let the filth wash over the streets of their fair city. Walking backwards onto the scene to set things right is Assy McGee, a rogue cop who plays by his own rules. Standing about 3 feet tall, Assy is only a bare buttocks with legs. He talks in an 80s raspy jerk cop mumble, cheeks undulating with every drunken slur. Wielding a gun from a holster with what can best be described as unseen hands, Assy (voiced by Larry Murphy), unstopped and at times adored by his straight-laced family man partner Don Sanchez (also Murphy), dispenses his own brand of justice against the filth of the city as well as any innocent bystanders that happen to be in the way.
"Assy McGee" is such a deliriously outrageous creation that it just may leave you slack-jawed at the sheer nerve of it. Which is why it is so much fun and has become one of the most reviled thing on The Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, a network that has made a schedule out of the outrageous. I've never been a fan of Adult Swim's pension for look-at-me weird for the sake of weird, where the randomness of "Robot Chicken" or the obvious parody of "Venture Brothers" passes for hip. But "Assy" stands out from the pack, with a focused story-driven parody of a very specific set of pop culture clichés. For the most part (I'll get to that later), the show doesn't do very much winking and nodding to the camera as many others can't help but do. Assy simply barrels forward through ridiculous stories - surrounding such originality as priests selling drug-laced cologne, the government stealing bikes off the street and trading them with terrorists, polonium-laced sandwiches and underground squirrel fights - and expects the audience to just get the meta-joke. Many may find it mean-spirited and disgusting, but my lord can it be funny. And I'm not a fan of the fart joke.
In fact, the pilot, "Murder by the Docks", had me laughing so hard I was gasping for air, which hasn't happened since the Rick James "Chappelle's Show". Over 200 years ago, President John Adams' favorite whore dies of a soot allergy. Cut to present day where the body is found and from the moment our hero walks in and shoots up the crime scene he's on the case to find that whore-killer John Adams. Assy's attempts to narrow down the suspects by simply randomly calling up names in the directory and expecting someone to confess over the phone is just about the funniest single bit I've seen in a while. "Assy" is one of those shows that actually gets funnier the more you think about it. Just keep applying real world logic to any bit of it and you'll peal back layer after layer of different laughs. This about as smartly crafted as a stupid comedy gets.
The rest of the series doesn't quite have the impossible level of lunacy the pilot does, but Assy as a character is rarely not a riot. Yes, we've seen a talking ass as a character before - on "Family Guy" and "TV Funhouse" - but "Assy" leaps beyond the one-joke set-up of that series with original stories and the sheer detail put into Assy's character. He hits on flight attendants, can turn a baby into a weapon and blows away a blimp with a rocket launcher that appears out of nowhere. All the while with some odd character quirks (he's illiterate, casually racist, got a bizarre sense of humor and is unbelievably stupid), an out-of-where Cuban ancestry, some strange phobias and an endless supply of puns and lame conventional cop one-liners. Just about everything said in Larry Murphy's barely intelligible Assy voice tickles me.
What I also love is the way the show plays with the mechanics of Assy's physical appearance. He has to stand in the car but sits backwards in a chair without arms. His "eyes" opening in a POV shot. He "chatters" his "teeth". And the show makes numerous references to Assy having unseen male genitalia via his frequent patronage of the oriental massage parlor. Even better, because nobody in Exeter appears to think anything odd of taking orders from a talking ass, Assy is able to slip "undercover" with the greatest of ease by simply donning shirts, hats, ties, glasses and, in one case, just a bow tie (Assy complains to be "suffocating in this penguin suit").
After season 1, Assy became something of a cult comic legend with me and my friends. Could this be the next great animated comedy? But as the show enters season 2 it falls back to Earth. It gets what I have come to call "Family Guy" syndrome - a show, played best as a nonsensical parody, that starts taking itself too seriously and seeks to make us care about the story and characters when it works better as unholy anarchy. In season 2, the chief is more tolerant of Assy's behavior and much of the episode's perfectly precious 10-minute running time are swallowed up in an odd, ultimately pointless storyline involving the stress and dissolving of Sanchez's marriage. Huh? "Assy's" gleefully excessive use of blood, guts, torture and crude sexuality as well as the generally disgusting and cruel demeanor in which Assy (and everyone else in Exeter apparently) conducts himself will turn off many viewers. The show's animation is cheap and crude. To say that "Assy McGee" is not for all tastes would be the understatement of the year.
* * * ½ / 4
