arcreviews

I have trouble understanding why people are defending this show. Sure it's not the worse thing in the world, but what ever happened to creativity? We're getting a Loud House spinoff and now a SpongeBob spinoff. Nick is relying a lot on nostalgia and off what worked in the past besides making the next big thing. There's even a new show based of a YouTuber that's coming out.

It's not even like how people thought Johnny Test was a rip off of Dexter. It wasn't this blatant. Even Johnny Test was more focused on the test subject aspect instead of the geniuses themselves. For this, the title of the show it's trying to take from is in the title of the actual show. Some executive somewhere thought they liked Unikitty and said hey..... how about instead of a unicorn kitty we have a butterfly unicorn kitty BAM... TV show.

Even if there are a few obvious differences it's pretty much the same kind of humor but worse. It lacks that energy that Unikitty had and with lower tier comedy worse animation and worse characters. Honestly, knowing that other show exists means I do not want to watch this one. They could have done something entirely new here but they decide to alter something that already exists.

This show mainly relies two selling factors. One is the concept of the show and the second is all the outrageous drama in the show.

So the concept of the show is interesting, you have these cartoon characters parodying different cartoon media forced to live together. It's okay. So how about the characters. Now the biggest problem I have with the show are each of these characters. They are parody characters and are essentially designed to tell one joke over and over again. So they are pretty much one dimensional characters. Clara is probably the worst example. She's racist she has no motivation for her actions other than she's racist and that's one joke she tells over and over again. Even more I don't understand the joke about these characters or what they are supposed to be. Woldor is some SpongeBob parody. Xander is an effeminate Link from the Legend of Zelda. I guess it supposed to be a reference to how a lot of people think Link looks like a girl and of course the main joke they tell is Xander is gay jokes.

Now what they are parodying is not a huge problem. The bigger problem is that these 1-dimensional characters designed to tell one joke can't run a show for 22 minutes straight. In reality television you have all these complex personalities butting heads with one another, but Drawn Together pits eight cardboard cutouts and see how far they can go with it. After a while the jokes get old and the characters don't have complex motivations for their actions.

So the second selling factor is how crazy and over the top the stories are. This is actually what the show is best at creating these wacky situations to put the characters in. It is absolutely insane and it works... at least partially. This over the top drama comes at expense to the characters. Which character do you want to come out on top? No one. I don't want to be invested into any of them they as are all as horrible as possible and are way too simple characters to care about. The over the top drama and shock humor get to the point where it's overplayed, everything is in your face and taken to the point where is does get old really fast. Sure they create interesting situations but after awhile nothing really shocks you.

This type of show can only be taken in small doses because it gets old really fast.

Perhaps the biggest compliant this show gets is the gross-out humor. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, but if you look at the 90s, there were lots of Nick shows in the 90s that used gross-out humor. I don't think it's that horrible just become of the toilet jokes that appear every now and again. Nickelodeon has always had shows with this kind of humor.

Okay so I'll talk about my gripes with the show. The first few episodes felt a little bit repetitive and some of the gross out was just feels cringey, but I don't think that's the whole story. If anything this show is actually better than the stuff Nick has put out in previous years like Planet Sheen, Fanboy and ChumChum or TUFF Puppy. In part because the main characters aren't mindless idiot heroes that run around causing trouble and then annoying everyone who gets in their way. Sure the main two make fart jokes a lot but Sanjay has a childish because he is a child but not everything here is toilet humor. Sanjay and Craig are best friends who like to laugh and enjoy life together. They don't let things get in between their friendship and that's why the show can be sometimes heartwarming.

If anything the show is at it's best delightfully silly and weird and a little heartwarming. I like the dialogue, I like the wacky facial expressions and I like the dedication put in the show to be really weird. If you don't like the first season, I'd suggest watching the second because the first mainly feels like a work in progress. The humor isn't limited to toilet humor there's a lot of humor just in the awkward facial expressions and dialogue in this show.

Also there's lot of creative ideas here like the one where they imagine themselves into a Star Trek parody or the one where they can't stop listening to a sad song. There's a lot of gross out humor and it's mainly hit and miss. Sometimes it's funny because of how over the top it is, sometimes it's repetitive. Even in the toilet humor there's a bit of creativity.

While the toilet humor is a bit cringey the show is something that demands that it be given a chance. It's not funny all of the time but it can still tell a good story and have some creative ideas.