The Retort

Two Long-retired Icons Return

November 4th, 2011 by Andrew Donnelly Of The Retort Staff

Two long-retired American icons from the 90’s are back to make us laugh -uhhhh...uh huh huh huh. Beavis and Butt-head are back on MTV. The new season premiered October 27. Now Beavis and Butt-head will be aired weekly for a glorious time. In the legendary words of Butt-head, “This is going to be cool.”

If you aren’t familiar with the comedic duo, first of all I offer you my condolences. Beavis and Butt-head are animated teenage idiots who live vapid lives, watching music videos and making trouble for their school and town all day. They always get themselves into hilarious, albeit often dangerous adventures. The disclaimer that ran before every episode gives a strong hint as to their behavior:

“Beavis and Butt-head are not role models. They’re not even human, they’re cartoons. Some of the things they do could cause a person to get hurt, expelled, arrested, and possibly deported. To put it another way: Don’t try this at home.”

Beavis and Butt-head enjoyed a popular run on MTV from 1993 to 1997, as well as a feature film co-starring Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. To this day, the duo maintain a cult following. Since the show was cancelled, fans have had to make do with sporadic DVD box set releases. Now, creator Mike Judge has brought these morons back to cable. Why am I so excited about this, and why should you be?

Beavis and Butt-head as arbiters are cool. They invented words, critiqued the music of the 90s, and inspired juvenile laughter in their fans with their stupid antics. They can do this all over again in this decade.

They tormented their old, low-vision neighbor who hired them to do odd jobs which they comically botched. They held jobs at a fast food place, but could never get it quite right - deep-fried worms are no substitute for curly fries. Their hippie teacher tried and failed to reach them with his patience and sensitivity to their unique challenges. Their classmates looked down on them as the village idiots, and girls never liked them, because they would constantly hit on them, and poorly.

Their only friend, the hopelessly dorky Stewart, wore a Winger t-shirt and was naive enough to follow Beavis and Butt-head into countless ill-advised schemes. A straight-A mama’s boy, he played a great foil to the pair of delinquents, and actually looked up to them. Then there was the criminal twenty-something Todd who bullied them endlessly, whom they wanted to be like one day and join his gang. Daria, a smart hipster girl often insulted the boys to their face in a way they never understood.

Do these scenarios sound stupid? Does this cast of characters sound moronic? You’d be right, hence the brand of humor Beavis and Butt-head helped to pioneer. The creators of South Park have even cited the show as a major influence.

Now that Beavis and Butt-head has returned, segments of the show will feature not just the lampooning of music videos, but also modern entertainment such as YouTube clips and Jersey Shore, as well as movie reviews.

If you hate Beavis and Butt-head then the series revival that began this October isn’t for you. If you’re fan or have never experienced the show, then it is a great time. Beavis and Butt-head are a cultural revolution in their own right, and after fifteen years of absence from television, they are back with a vengeance to break new ground in comedy all over again.

The premier episode of the new season found the boys wanting to become vampires or werewolves. They astutely observe that women today seem infatuated with vampires and werewolves, as evidenced by the soaring popularity of such garbage as the Twilight saga. They find a man who they are sure must be a werewolf. He is actually just a dirty, shaggy bum. When they ask the bum to bite them so that they too can become werewolves, the bum happily obliges and bites the hell out of them.

Rather than becoming werewolves, irresistible to women, they contract Hepatitis C and a host of other diseases. Of course, as they are cartoon characters, they end up bouncing back from this no worse for the wear, sort of like how Wile E. Coyote was smashed flat probably a million times by an anvil.

Later in the episode, Butt-head catches Beavis crying and won’t let him hear the end of it, ridiculing him constantly. This gets funnier and funnier until it builds up to a surprise climax that I didn’t see coming. The plot, dialogue and writing in general are brilliant and just as good as anything from the old seasons.

Of course, as is their hallmark, the duo spends most of their time watching television and lampooning what they watch. They always have something stupid, yet paradoxically clever to say about what’s on. Supposedly these segments are impromptu by creator and voice actor Mike Judge, and they are hilarious. In the new premier episode, Beavis and Butt-head put their barbs (smart-ass comments) into the Jersey Shore cast and of course make fun of some of the latest music videos.

Beavis and Butt-head have always combined the best of low-brow comedy with a sharp wit pointed at the absurdities of pop culture. After watching just one episode of the new season, I will call it the best thing currently on television. While Beavis and Butt-head is a show people either love or hate, you should definitely catch at least one new episode to see if it tickles your funny bone as much as it did mine. In closing, I will say that I watched the first episode with two friends, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.