Heh Heh Heh

I've been watching the new Beavis And Butt-head show on MTV.  It's nice to have them back, though it feels weird.  I mean these two were around almost 20 years ago, and were a phenomenon.  It's hard to capture that spirit again, but since they're saying and doing new things, it's not just an exercise in nostalgia.

Instead of commenting on videos, which are much rarer on MTV these days, they spend most of their time discussing reality shows.  But the best part of the show is still their straight adventures, not their TV watching.

What's most impressive about the comedy is how well the show sticks to the central concept: these guys are stupid. They're not allowed to say things smarter than they are.  This may seem obvious, but in fact, usually when you get dumb characters, the joke is how they constantly say things they couldn't come up with (for example, Wayne's World or even Family Guy).

But B&B are dumb and will stay dumb.  Creator Mike Judge gets it.  It limits the comedy tremendously, but makes them masters of their niche.  And part of the fun is the tightrope act, where the producers have to come up with comedy, but have to figure out how to filter it through stupidity.