What It's Like Being Alone

A wondrous and fiendishly humorous stop-motion animation series about freak orphans who are desperately trying to get adopted. They must have had a crack writing team. Incredible animation and each touching story is as pithy as it is erudite. Though it is appealing to a younger audience the plot lines aren't facile. For example I especially enjoy the brilliant autopsy of the idiosyncrasies of racial stereotypes. Dwayne Hill is a maestro of voice. If only there were more shows like this on television. Finally we have proof that a fantastic series with great production values can come from Canada. I just wish there was more marketing behind it.

From the comment titled "What It's Like Being Amazed"

***A wondrous and fiendishly humorous stop-motion animation series about freak orphans who are desperately trying to get adopted. They must have had a crack writing team. Incredible animation and each touching story is as pithy as it is erudite.... (yadda yadda yadda...)***

Clearly, this post was written by Peyton himself - no other human being would display such bravado as to write such complete drivel about a poorly constructed show that has nowhere to go and no way to get there.

While I have to admit that the animation and set design is top-notch, the actual story lines are weak and the characters direct rip-offs of other artist's creations: a cuter version of Princess Lucy can be seen on "The Oblongs" and the dead bunny is practically a direct steal from Vasquez's "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" - not to mention the Tim Burton-esquire "influence" that other posts have mentioned. This can come as no surprise to anyone who has ever had the pleasure of reading Dirge's "Lenore" comic book only to later be exposed to Peyton's "Evelyn" - the plagiarism is tangible enough to choke even the most stalwart goth-wannabe.

It is a shame that this show was made on the backs of the Canadian tax-payers while the art and animation department struggled to make the show funny and brilliant under the weight of poor scripts and even poorer management.

Do yourself a favour and watch the show with the sound turned off - at least that way you may enjoy the beauty of the animation and art direction unencumbered by the lousy writing.

Those poor, poor animators and production designers on this show. They knocked themselves out on this really terrible effort from third-rate Tim Burton rip-off Brad Peyton.

Lucy the irritating monster in the toilet paper roll with the annoying voice -- completely unlikeable and enough to turn the channel before one episode is finished (never to return). Really lame sight-joke characters. Adult humour in an infantile format which misses the mark completely as to how South Park and the rest pull these things off so well. Insults to gay people, racism, insults to thinking people everywhere. How in the world did the CBC let this one slide on by? Read on.

Those poor animators...

Poorer still are the Canadian Tax-payers who flipped the bill for this one. Not unlike the endless disasters from the English Canadian film Illuminati (Egoyan and those other failures Canadians hate so much), the Canadian public who is paying for this garbage is avoiding it with a passion. I read today that the ratings are down to 118k average for the season so far. Which means, at some point, the ratings dropped to about 90 thousand people, across the whole of Canada, who paid for this. It doesn't get much worse than that. An astonishing .25% of Canadians are watching this show (ONE QUARTER OF ONE PERCENT). It cost us HOW MUCH? As a point of fact, the ratings have been dropping through the floor since the premier episode, falling off an incredible 40%! Some people gave it a chance, then fled after seeing how worthless it was. If this were in the US, it would be yanked immediately and never heard from again. Brad Peyton's career would be thankfully over and he'd be sent packing to flip burgers back in Gander, Newfoundland -- his natural calling. But this is Canada.

Terrible writing, irritating characters, bad jokes, no actual audience that can be identified, and the whole rip-off fake pseudo-Burton/Suess/Sesame Street thing is infuriatingly bad. So how did it happen? It all got a blind-eye instant greenlight because Fred Fuchs signed up his name knowing he'd make a quick buck because Peyton had a deal with Tom Hank's PLAYTONE and the big name recognition that brings (Hanks needed a Tim Burton rip-off for some project). Now the mythic Hanks project has fallen off the map, not listed on the website even, and we Canadians are left holding the bag on this.

When the ads first started running on CBC las year (?) I thought the show looked great. A creepy, silly fun stop-motion animation show for adults! Can it get any better than this? Well, yes it can, because after viewing a number of episodes, the beauty of the animation can only carry weak writing so far. Each episode had a few laughs (few being the main word) but overall, this is an unfunny comedy and that's the worst thing a comedy can be.

Yes, I get that the humour is supposed to be ironic and that the tragic lives of the characters are supposed to be sickly darkly funny. Sometimes they are indeed, but most of the time their just kind of bland, or boring or tedious.

I really wanted to support this show, to see it succeed as a cool new thing, and Canadian to boot, but sadly, what it's like is, well, dull.

At first I was intrigued when I saw the posters advertising the show. Stop-motion animation on TV? what's not to like? But when I looked up the creators I found that one of the guys was responsible for Evelyn: the Cutest Evil Dead Girl, a short film whose style was obviously taken from Tim Burton, and concept was lifted wholesale from Roman Dirge's comic Lenore: the Adventures of a Cute Little Dead Girl. He couldn't even be bothered to change the title. So when I finally saw the show, I was watching with lowered expectations.

I've only seen the third episode, but for the most part it's about as unfunny and derivative as his previous effort. The style still looks like it was fished out of Burton's recycling bin, the main character is more grating than necessary and there are the usual comedy ensemble stereotypes. Only Aldous had a few funny lines and I liked the Seymour character mainly because he was mute. I might watch a couple more episodes to give the show a chance, but unless the writing improves I'll hold out for the next Aardman film, thanks.