The return of "Beavis and Butt-head" will be a backdoor means for MTV to return to showing music videos -- something the network was founded upon but abandoned in the last decade to make room for popular reality shows....Great! I love "Beavis and Butt-head." Back in 1993, when the show premiered, people really were watching a lot of music videos, and it was great to have a show that helped us view them critically. The big joke on us was that it took 2 idiots — Beavis and Butt-head — to make us more perfectly hypercritical of the stupid junk we'd been watching.
The basic plotline revolved around two shorts-wearing, spectacularly immature teenage pals whose banter was delivered against the backbeat of their constant idiotic laughter.Key word: shorts-wearing.
ADDED: Heh. I got distracted by the shorts theme and forgot to make the point I was aiming at. When the show first came out, we'd been really into watching music videos. But, as noted in the article, MTV abandoned its video mission long ago. The new plan is to use the show to bring back to music videos. So The original design of B&B was to make us laugh at something we were caught up in — and, essentially, to laugh at the funniest thing: ourselves. Since we're not currently into music videos, indeed the point of bringing back B&B is to get music videos back onto MTV, we won't have that element of seeing the absurdity in something we take at all seriously. But presumably Mike Judge — the genius behind "Beavis and Butt-head" — will find new ways to make it good.
AND: "This sucks. Change it... It better start rocking or I'll really give them something to cry about."
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Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
I remember the movie fondly and give creator Mike full credit for what he did with both the cartoon and the album. Sure, it was low-brow, but enjoyable in moderation.
What you have to give BandB credit for was allowing MJ the cache to make Office Space, a true pop culture classic 90's flick. Without BandB, he never would have gotten to do that movie.
It would be nice if most "themed" channels got back to their roots.
Right now it's all shitty reality, all the time, everywhere, that has fuckall to do with the channel it's on.
BandB will fail, badly...it may have paved the way for South Park, but I'd argue South Park does and will tower above it.
Couldn't they bring back Daria instead? Imagine what she would say about twilight.
Didn't MTV switch to reality because videos don't make any money? I couldn't understand how they couldn't make money on something many people wanted.
We love Beavis and Butthead in our house. Long live Cornholio.
mmm, they have tried this before, with mtv2, but apparenlty there just isn't enough market anymore for just watching videos. then they stopped showing videos, too. the siren song of cheap ratings, i suppose. which sucks for me, because, well, D.C. radio stations completely suck ass and mtv was the only possible lifeline into music.
I used to love music so much and follow it so closely. now i can't get a line into it anymore. mtv used to be a line into it, when the local radio sucked. now its all gone and i end just listening mainly to "classic rock" because the local stations are so bad.
Beavis and Butthead? Oh, gawd... (*facepalm*).
Remember when MTV was cool and innovated? And now, they're reduced to recycling from the refuse of their own past.
It was bad enough when VH1 became cooler than MTV. Now, MTV's found a way to sink lower than filling their time with reality programming. God, what a fall from where they used to be.
Althouse as much as admits that she learned to be critical of the MTV "ethos" from a couple of geeks. Commendable, but my guess is that most viewers, who couldn't get past B & B's ultimate geekdom, laughed at them rather than with them.
MST3K did it first, and did it funnier.
MST3K was indeed funny at one point...but it was boring more than it was funny, especially after Joel left.
"MST3K was indeed funny at one point...but it was boring more than it was funny, especially after Joel left."
Oh, totally agree. Joel was essential to the show.
VH1 has been better than MTV for quite a while. Lately, they've been doing the music video thing quite heavily, including some concerts, and I've actually tuned in a few times.
One odd thing about MTV is that, at least for a while, they didn't show repeats of music-type things, like great episodes of Unplugged. Maybe they have recently, but I don't pay attention.
Those of you who lament the passing of MST3K should check out Cinematic Titanic, available from EZTakes and doing live shows across the nation. I miss the "let's put on a show" aspect of MST3K but otherwise, it's good riffing.
If you're more in to Mike and Tom Servo, you can check out Rifftracks.
Where MST3K exclusively features low budget, usually relatively obscure flicks, Rifftracks does a lot of box office smashes, like the later Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. And features celebrity guest stars like Neal Patrick Harris, James Lileks (!), Weird Al and Fred Willard.
I saw MJ's early B&B and Inbred Jed cartoons back in the early '90s, at Spike & Mike's Twisted Animation festival (saw the original South Park shorts, too).
"Frog Baseball" was funny in a horrible way. And I really enjoyed the movie.
I celebrate the guy's entire catalogue, to quote Bob, but I've never been able to get into the B&B show. Maybe because I wasn't watching music videos.
I am the mighty Cornholio! I need TP for my Bunghole!
"MST3K did it first, and did it funnier."
"It" is a genre I love. I welcome more practitioners. I remember thinking about this back in the 1990s and having a few other examples. Can't remember them now for some reason.
It is kind of like blogging.
The big joke on us was that it took 2 idiots — Beavis and Butt-head — to make us more perfectly hypercritical of the stupid junk we'd been watching.
Uhhh.... this blog sucks!
I think the videos were far from the focus of that show.
Well, I'll have you know that one day, in Mrs Dickey's class, I pitched a tent.
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