A few months ago, I was hit with an overwhelming
sickness that culminated in drinking almost an entire bottle
of NyQuil, which resulted in two things: I wrote a fairly
nonsensical review for this website (which I am still ashamed
of), and I turned my television’s cable box on – something
that very rarely happens. In my  near-hallucinotory
drug haze I happened upon MTV2, which was in the middle of
showing an episode of Wonder Showzen. My mind was absolutely
shattered and I had no idea what the hell I had just witnessed.
Needless to say, as soon as I heard a new batch of MTV discs
were being presented for review, I asked specifically for Wonder Showzen Season 1. This would prove rendundant
because not only had the request been already made, it was
requested specifically for me to review. Thank god
for  having the insight to know that I would like to see a handpuppet
having intercourse with a box labeled “LADY PARTS.”
For those who don’t chug bottles of medication (an exception
being homeless people, but they don’t have internet access), Wonder Showzen was originally produced for the USA
network, which was understandably rejected by the network.
Seen as something that could never be shown on television,
MTV2 in its wisdom managed to smuggle it on their own network,
where it became a fairly minor hit.
A
satirical knock on such children’s programming as The Electric
Company and Sesame Street, Wonder Showzen collects a series of sketches ranging from crudely made cartoons,
puppet shenanigans, storytime featuring special guests and
most importantly using real live children that show up throughout
the series.
While at times the cartoon segments can float dead in the
water, nearly every segment involving children coasts by on
the solid cliché that having children saying awful things
is funny. A cartoon about a duck with a time portal in his
ass comes off as a tepid attempt at shock humor, but there’s
something mind-bending about a real child dressed up as Adolf
Hitler goose-stepping towards unknowing adults to ask if there’s
anything wrong with the youth of today.
 Yes,
it’s all shock value. Yes, the show picks easy targets such
as religion, sexuality and race which we’ve seen it a million
times before, but that doesn’t mean the material can’t be
done well. When it’s successful, Wonder Showzen is
dark, disturbing, subversive and so funny, it actually made
me shoot cola out of my nose. Don’t be surprised when it’s
cancelled next week.
Wonder Showzen Season 1 comprises of 9 episodes, which
I’ll run down in a fairly scattershot way, considering the
nature of the show.
Birth: The Wonder
Showzen gang is ready to welcome back the newly sober Letter
N, but Letter N is soon off the wagon and ends up pregnant
after a night of debauchery. The kids-on-the-beat segment
(titled BEAT KIDS, complete with animated fists assaulting
the screen) features Trevor visitng his local butcher shop
to partake in the pleasures of drinking blood.
 Space:
Today, Chauncey and his puppet pals are celebrating space
and white people. After a small mix-up resulting in the beating
of a black child, Chauncey and the very lucky and very white
Kaitlin blast off moments before the Earth explodes. Puppet
on the street Clarence goes out to talk to adults about freedom
of speech, which ends with the burning of the U.S. Constitution.
During a Q&A segment with children, a child responds to the
question “what is heaven” with “That’s where my legs are.”
Ocean: The group
discover a treasure map that takes them straight to a chalice
of pure liquid imagination, and Chauncey cannot resist sucking
down the entire bottle, depleting the world’s imagination.
But thankfully it’s revealed that the chalice only held plain
water – the imagination was in Chauncey all along! America’s
most perfect child Tyler makes a perfect apperance, and there’s
a musical tribute to slaves.
Diversity: Wonder
Showzen celebrates diversity, which creates a war between
letters and numbers. In the middle of the ruckus, love blooms
between the letter J and the number 8. Chauncey  turns
hippie in hopes that it will stop the violence. Beat Kids sends Tamara out to Wall Street to fight the power, which
results in high-fives all around. Clarence takes to the street
to tell people using cell phones in public is rude.
Nature: When
the flowers start vomiting blood, Chauncey rushes to find
Mother Nature, who is in the process of a homemade sex change
operation, which results in Father Nature dead on the slab.
Chauncey can’t help himself and takes advantage of Father
Nature’s discarded lady parts. Rufus Truthfist travels from
school to school, educating children about white oppression.
 History:
The Number 1 cancels his guest spot on the show, and the overcompensating
Number 2 manages to annoy the hell out of everyone with its
need for attention, which culminates in a televised suicide.
Thanks to the wonders of stock footage, we learn the process
of making TV Dinners – the secret ingrediants are rat feces,
botulism and cockroaches. Chauney’s history lesson teaches
us a valueable lesson: Greeks is freaks.
Health: Wonder
Showzen puppet Wordsworth comes down with a terrible case
of Cooties, which is turned into a gold mine when Cooties
scabs turn out to double as a delicious treat, but it turns
out to be a lesson in cop-out dream endings. In a charming
cartoon segment titled D.O.G. O.B.G.Y.N., a pregnant
woman attempts to break the world record in pregnant skydiving,
but in mid-air she goes into labor. But never fear! D.O.G.
O.B.G.Y.N. is here to save the day!
Patience: The
first episode I ever saw, Patience turns into sheer
comedy terrorism with painfully insipid moments, or as a news
anchor describes it, “The universe has been raped in the mindgina.”
Fifteen minutes into the episode, Wonder Showzen decides
to literally take it all back by running the episode backwards.
Even fans might find this intolerable.
Presentation
A mixture of newly recorded material, archival footage and
new material degraded to look like archival footage,
both the audio and visual are an intentionally mixed bag –
and fully appropriate for the concept of the series. The new
footage is clean and full of bright colors required for a
children’s show, the archival footage is dirty and spotty.
The audio experience is presented really well, the mind-fuck
nature of the series includes a lot of buried screaming and
horror, and it comes through loud and clear.
Also of note is the DVD slipcase. I’m just going to say it’s
creepy. Go ahead and touch it - nay- grope it.
Extras
If you’re looking for information on the actual making of
the show, don’t even bother; the four audio commentaries included in the series seem to be competing with Sealab
2021: Season Two for the “worst commentaries ever” award.
You get Screamin’ Steven J. Hawkins on Space (sadly
an impersonation), A musical performance by PFFR on Diversity (which is actually quite good if you enjoy sloppy garage rock
with irritating synthesizers), Mr. Sun shows up to talk about
his life on Nature, and Gordon Lish contributes an
interview for Patience, which succumbs to the effect
of the show itself and gets run backwards.
On disc 2, there is a fairly large chunk of excised footage,
starting with Auditions and Outtakes which shows how
the child interviews go, while Beat Kids Outtakes and Clarence Outtakes are just that. Under promos there are commercials MTV2 aired to promote the show (which
actually include a little bit of extra footage as well). The PFFR Music Video is 2 minutes of random footage set
to fairly irritating music, while Story Time With Flava
Flav seems to be a scene that was deleted almost entirely
from the first season – only about a second of footage was
actually used in the first episode.
Possibly the most interesting extra is the sneak preview for
season two. It’s a cartoon called S.O.S., Special
Owesome Squad for short. It runs a little over 2 minutes,
and features a gang of handicapped superheroes.
The disc finishes up with a set of previews for volume
1 of Beavis
and Butthead: The Mike Judge Collection, Jackass:
The Box Set, Wildboyz and Viva
La Bam.
Overall
It’s hard to gauge just how truly subversive Wonder Showzen is when you consider it’s run at 9:30 at night and plays to
stoned college kids already in on the joke, but who cares?
Despite a heavy hand when attacking the government or religion
that would make liberal extremists wince, when the show is
funny, it’s painfully funny. Fans better snatch this up as
soon as possible. If you’re unfamilliar with the show, but
enjoy your comedy on the dark side, give it a rental.
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