Television Critics Review: Adult Swim and a New Era of Comedy

It’s incredibly rare when a television network can hone in on the sensibilities of an entire generation and immediately click with its audience. For my parent’s generation, that was MTV, but for my generation, it was and continues to be: Adult Swim. Adult Swim may have evolved into the Animation Empire we know it as now, but it didn’t start out that way.

Now let me take you back to 1992, Ted Turner had just launched The Cartoon Network, a channel with absolutely no original programming that was built on the back of the MGM cartoon libraries Turner had acquired, so it was essentially the Hanna-Barbera rerun channel.

But Turner had wanted to make the foray into original programing, and that first original program was Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast. It was the brain child of Mike Lazzo, Cartoon Network’s original head programmer that would later go on to head Adult Swim. Lazzo was a huge fan of the shortlived Space Ghost cartoon from 1966, and since he had access to those cartoons through the Hanna-Barbera libraries, he had the idea to re-contextualize those original animation cells, and splice them in with interviews with actors and musicians, giving the washed-up superhero his own talk show.

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So, why the need for repurposing animation from the 60’s? Well, for the first four years of the show, there was basically no money allocated to the production budget. Space Ghost was an all volunteer gig since the network was hemorrhaging money at that point. There was no safety net, it was a trial by fire effort.

But the lack of funding, and the indie garage feel gave Space Ghost a unique aesthetic that was different from anything else on late-night at the time. It was experimental and bizarre, a sort of anti-comedy that that helped popularize “cringe humor”, a genre we see today in things like Nathan For You and Adult Swim’s own, The Eric Andre Show, Andre even stating that Space Ghost was his main influence when coming up with the concept. In December of 2000, after the success of Space Ghost, several new shows had stealth-releases under the guise of a “Special Programming” tag, to test the waters of the viewing public. Those shows were Sealab 2021, Harvey Birman, Attorney at Law, The Brak Show, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force all of which were direct spinoffs of Space Ghost. All these shows utilized that same lo-fi animation-repurposing technique that Lazzo and his team pioneered. And less than a year later on September 2nd, 2001, those five shows along with Home Movies, formed the initial lineup for Cartoon Network’s official late-night animation block, Adult Swim. Branded as alternative programming for when Cartoon Network’s primary demographic would normally be asleep.

But we weren’t asleep. We were up every night watching intently as this oddball block of experimental animation deconstructed and redefined the format. It changed the perceptions of what television could be, because adult swim wasn’t just a channel, over the years at it evolved it became it’s own personality, it’s own voice speaking directly to the audience. Watching Adult Swim wasn’t about viewing each individual program, it was about experiencing the entire night’s content; the shows, the bumps, sketches, music, promos, and of course the signature fourth-wall breaking inter-titlecards. Adult Swim was for fans, and it was the first network that felt truly interactive. They’d respond to emails, open a dialogue with the audience, you could submit art or music and have it seen by the programmers, maybe even get featured. People grew whole careers out of being featured on Adult Swim. “I was living at my mom’s house and the only TV I would watch is Adult Swim… they’d had a little blip on saying that, ‘yeah you think you got some beats, huh? Send ‘em over’… the first thing they played, they made a promo for The Boondocks around one of my tracks. And it just, yeah it blew me away man. The only TV that you watch, you know, you hear your music on it.” (Steven Ellison AKA Flying Lotus, experimental rapper). Adult Swim had a hand in launching the careers of dozens of artists, even boosting the popularity of the group, Odd Future with their show, Loiter Squad. MF Doom, Danger Mouse, Killer Mike, all these artists used Adult Swim as a conduit to form and grow their audience. It broke ground in offering creators different formats for their art. Even taking shows like Children’s Hospital, which had started as a webseries, and importing it into their nightly line-up. They were the first network to really embrace the digital world. “We’re Always, especially Adult Swim, are trying to stay ahead of the curve and bring people something they can’t see anywhere else, and that includes online, so we’ve hired writers off of Twitter accounts. We’re taking pictures, we’re looking online… we’re looking on Instagram, looking on Facebook, looking on Vine… it’s just inhaling as much content as possible and trying to figure out what works for us.”(Walter Newman, television producer, development exec)

Adult Swim also became the go-to network for cancelled or soon to be cancelled programming. It had a direct roll in the revival of one of FOX’s most popular cartoons: Family Guy. After Family Guy’s Cancellation in 2003, it premiered in re-runs on Adult Swim and exploded in the ratings, boosting viewership to over two hundred percent and less than a year later, it was renewed by FOX for another season. And in 2007, an almost identical renewal deal happened with Futurama, after an increase in viewership when the show started airing on Adult Swim. But probably Adult Swim’s biggest contribution to television, was its introduction of mature anime to an American audience, starting with Cowboy Bebob in 2001. Adult-oriented anime became the backbone of the network, sort of an extension of Toonami, which ironically, later became incorporated into Adult Swim after its own revival campaign. “Thank you to Cartoon Network, Thank you to Williams Street, and everybody at Adult Swim for actually paying attention to the voice of the people. You have spoken loudly, and you have spoken clearly. #BringbackToonami.” (Steve Blum, voice of Toonami’s TOM)

But Adult Swim wasn’t just about giving content a second chance. It was about giving it that first chance. It’s a hub where creators can create. Where the art is experimental and transgressive; it’s surreal, it’s sloppy, it’s a place that welcomes risk-taking, that wouldn’t immediately dismiss a show where the main character is literally a pair of asscheeks. Adult Swim cancelled your favorite show? Good. The important part is, it gave you a favorite show. Most of which weren’t even designed for longevity, they’re supposed to be fleeting, that’s what makes them so special. It’s about spontaneity, it’s about the community, it’s about the experience, and that’s one thing you can’t get from Netflix.