Tuesday 27 December 2016

Robot Chicken, Season 2 (2006)



If ever there was a show which was pitched specifically at people born in the first half of the 1970s, Robot Chicken is it.  That's certainly not to say that everyone born in that period will like it, of course.  Nor that those born in other years won't ever be amused; they sometimes riff on more recent stuff, such as Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto.  But this is most definitely a show which profits if you're of an age to have grown up with Gobots on the TV and a Commodore 64 in your home.

As I mentioned in my review of the first season, this is a stop-motion comedy sketch show, with sequences lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes.  It has no continuity to worry about - very occasionally a gag might do a call back to an earlier sketch, but if so it is just a momentary 'easter egg', not the focus of the scene - and just focuses on hurling absurdist, often twisted, frequently very nerdy jokes at the screen.

How absurd, twisted or nedy?  Well, how about a skit based entirely around the Spy Hunter arcade game?  Or a Terminator pastiche featuring the cast of Inspector Gadget? or an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on The Beastmaster?


Yes, this Beastmaster

Then we've got ethnic cleansing in Care-A-Lot, unicorn sexual predators, and a whole lot of poop jokes.  The latter are my least favourite part of the show, but to give the writers some credit, they're generally short or have some kind of additional pay-off at the end.

Wildly anarchic and featuring a lot of very dark humour, Robot Chicken will certainly not be to all tastes, but I generally laugh out loud at least once an episode.  If you think you sound like you're the target audience, you should check it out.

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