Okay so take the basic notion of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". A group of kids trying to save the world from evil. Now replace Buffy with a teen age, stoner, metal head. That's the show right there. Well not entirely.
Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, is a horror comedy series soaked in blood and teen age hormones. With it's main hero Todd, his one armed best friend Curtis, the bitchy popular girl Jenny, and the smart nerdy girl Hannah they form a team of kids who are in search of the book mentioned in the title. Every week it appears and offers some poor teen age kid a solution to their particular problem, and in true Monkeys Paw fashion that solution winds up causing massive amounts of mayhem carnage and destruction.
Seriously this show is chock full of blood, gore and bone. If you're squeemish ya might find it a bit hard to take at first, but as most of this is done in slap stick comic effect it does tend to make it a punchline rather than a shock moment. So much so that the schools janitor (Played by Jason Mewes) asks one of the shows characters for his blood mop as he'll likely need it in about an hour.
The casting of the show is brilliant, but special attention has to be paid to Chris Leavins who plays Atticus Murphy the schools guidance counselor. It's rare to have an actor steal every scene they're in but he does it. Mind you the writers gave him a part where there is no such thing as overacting and he uses it to huge advantage.
Jason Mewes seems fairly restrained in this show, but he does bring a sort of been there done that attitude to his character Jimmy that resonates well. Jimmy is the schools janitor and possibly the only sane person in the whole show. Well sane as compared to everyone else in it.
The series itself is one long series of gags poking fun at teen genres, and has a great time using it's main characters to do so. Fortunately the writing does develop them in the series they start off as elevated character stereotypes but within a few episodes you've grown to like them warts and all.
So long story short, it's crazy, bloody as hell filled full of sophomoric humor, with fun writing and great acting. So of course it only lasted two seasons. Apparently shows that really do rock can only be supported for so long, or find their audience after they've been taken off the air. Thankfully the producers raised enough money through kickstarter for an animated last episode that should be out later this year. So look for it.
Meanwhile both seasons are out on DVD and are available through Netflix. Although if I may beg watch the seasons then buy the discs, the extras are worth it and I have a hope that if it moves enough discs we might get more Todd in our life.
What drives the show; http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless
No comments:
Post a Comment