I should preface this with the fact that every week i look forward to hearing car talk on the radio every week, its smart, informative, spontaneous and- in what makes for perhaps the only passable jokes on the TV show- its everything public broadcasting really isn't: funny.
As the Wrench Turns may very well be the weakest attempt to create a prime-time animation show i have every seen. To begin lets consider the standards, the shows that set the bar for prime-time animation: The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama. As the Wrench Turns compared to these shows is like comparing 'Herbie: Fully Loaded' to 'The Departed.' A good character driven animated sitcom needs a few things: quality animation, total joke saturation, great voice acting and good story (The Simpsons and Futurama even manage to jerk a tear out of you once in a while.) As the Wrench Turns doesn't come anywhere near the standard for any of these.
The animation, while it is digital ink and paint, is some of the weaker animation i have ever seen, a show like Sponegebob Squarepants's animation isn't just better, it blows this show out of the water, and when comparing it to what i consider the gold standard of cartoon animation- futurama- its dead in the water.
As for the joke saturation, its pretty weak. One of the executive producers of the simpsons once said of his show "it wasn't about how many jokes you could fit into one page, it was how many jokes you could fit into one line." No one at car talk was listening to him when he said that, and the simple fact is the show just ain't that funny. They need to hire on professional comedy writers to do this, and not have Dougie Berman as head writer, keep him and Tom and Ray on as consultants, and maybe contributing writers, but if anyone from the show reads this- please get a real writing staff to help.
The voice acting- except for Tom and Ray who are only doing themselves, which is hilarious alone- is terrible, the actress who plays beth Totenbag needs to sit and have a talk with Dan Castellaneta (voice of Homer) or Billy West (voice of Fry) or Seth Macfarlane (voice of Peter, Stewie, Brian and Quagmire on family guy.) Her inability to convey her emotions through voice makes the animation seem even worse, as when her character throws her arms in an exasperated scream, the sound is weak from her mouth at best. The other characters aren't terrible, but nothing special to speak of, and in animation, every character should sound funny.
The stories are decent, some of the ideas are very funny in prospect, but due to all the other flaws, they come out as terrible jumbled messes of episodes, with plot points coming out of nowhere like asteroids from space.
Overall, this show fails to meet the acceptable standards for prime-time character driven animation- its not absolutely dreadful, but it needs lots and lots of work. Stories are weak and seem tossed together, the jokes are scarce, and with the exception of a few jokes at PBS's expense, nothing is particularly funny- especially not for the audience of prime-time animation watchers, and moreover, the audience of intelligent car talk listeners. The animation is bad, plain and simple, and its pulled even further down by the weak voice acting from everyone but tom and ray. Guys, i love car talk, its one of the best radio shows out there, but please get some professional writers on this job, because As The Wrench Turns could be funny, and for the producers, try getting a better animation studio to do this job.
