Turner had purchased Hannah Barbara outright in the early 90s, and properties they had no real interest in were the easiest (and cheapest!) to get corporate approval on as they branched into original content. 

Aside from the Family Guy-ness of it, I could never get past the fact that Bordertown had Hank Azaria recycling his Comic Book Guy voice for the main character.

ne’er-do-well father (also voiced by Spade)

It’s crazy how much of Adult Swims early programming was Hanna-Barbera spoofs. Obviously Space Ghost, but also Sea Lab, Harvey Birdman, The Brakk Show, and I guess also Venture Bros albeit in a different way than the others.

Watched a bit of Father of the Pride when it was first aired and it was fucking awful.

Everything about Allen Gregory was strange. The lead character is so unlikeable I don’t know why I watched multiple episodes. And the ad campaign leaned into his unlikeability, as if that would draw viewers in! (I suppose it worked, somewhat, because I watched a few eps to find out if the character was as annoying as…

There’s a line in the Oblongs that still gets play in my house, “Mom says bitch gotta go.” 

from Treehouse of Horror III (in the pet cemetery, for extra cleverness)

It blows my mind that two people I find to be so incredibly and consistently funny worked on a show that actively repulsed me.

But I can’t friggin’ stand Jonah Hill, so I was predisposed to hate the show from the jump.

HOLY SHIT I had vague memories of Capitol Critters (I was pretty young at the time) but I didn’t realize that they kill off the main characters entire family in the first couple of minutes. Look at this shit; it’s straight out of a horror movie:

Airing only two episodes of a show and managing to air those out of order is a truly impressive accomplishment in the field of network meddling.

I remember Baby Blues airing on Adult Swim and being very confused at why the comic in the newspapers that just made jokes about how messy children are was suddenly making vibrator and masturbation jokes.

I think the quirk-for-quirk’s-sake criticism is spot-on. Napoleon Dynamite was the kind of movie you would expect to be popular in an era when Wes Anderson was becoming a big deal with Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums. That said, I found the lead character’s dorkiness refreshing. He wasn’t a secret genius or a…

Allen Gregory was bad in part because it leaned into pointless, all-encompassing darkness. The only thing I remember actually being funny was Allen’s friend, a cheerful dimwit who perkily revealed harrowing details from his life, like how he had found his sister’s body in the woods behind his house.

It’s easy to see jokes about vegan dogs and organic produce going over like gangbusters with the “owning the libs” crowd. 

I wish Kevin Smith had a crystal ball and could have waited to release Clerks in the Netflix or Adult Swim Era. We’d be on Season 14 with only a handful of episodes each season, but that deserved to live. The best was the “clip show” from the second episode.

S’cheaper.

Hey, racist neo-Nazis have to eat, too.

Punk ain’t no religious cult
Punk means thinking for yourself
You ain’t hardcore ‘cause you spike your hair
When a jock still lives inside your head

Oh damn the explicit reference to white supremacists is wonderful and fitting.