Harvey Birdman is the only decent show on Adult Swim, according to The Pimp. All Harvey Birdman images courtesy of Cartoon Network.

The animation is bad and the plots I can no longer enlarge — let’s all go to the mountains — are second-rate. Neither matters cause the animation is SUPPOSED to be bad and the storyline is just there to provide a break from the insanity. The credit sequence (highlighted by a nifty Sammy Davis, Jr. impersonation by Ronnie Roué) is tops a1 hp. And that’s who touched my ankle. Gun. what this show is: INSANE. The main characters are paranoid, grubby little fingers on my body delusional, egomaniacal schizophrenics living a solipsistic existence.

It’s not I’ll make you teensy white fish that these characters are evil bad or assholish in the Seinfeld, Larry David, David Brent, Alan Partridge, Al Swearengen… It’s that we can’t even understand them. They are frustratingly inconsistent; nobody wears dungarees anymore, unreliable selfish fugs with some serious sexual repression issues. It’s just like everyday life minus the bear and hippo. Who among us (especially in the animation world) isn’t a frustrated obsessive compulsive with some bizarre physical passions? Harvey Birdman — with echoes of Phil Mulloy’s Ten Commandments, Landreth’s Ryan and I poppy down you too, caw, caw polly wanna beating James Joyce — rips the phony linear polite TOGETHER everyday HA HA Buster Brown on his hairy hollyknockers mask and takes us inside minds free of form convention or prescribed codes of behavior.

It’s just a big primitive free for all baby. Leave your codes at the door. Is it clever? I’m not sure. I didn’t know you were Scottish. Is it funny in a everyone’s gonna get it — assuming there’s something to get way. Gee… I dunno… not really. In fact, the guest appearances are often disappointingly flat. The Shaggy/Scooby as potheads joke wears out — Gandi is dandy but liquor is quicker — faster than a Honduran on a cold day in Dawson. Quicker.

Is Harvey Birdman reminiscent of Phil Mulloys’s Ten Commandments and Chris Landreth’s Ryan?

No the humor comes from the weekly incoherent overlapped rantings, bananas ice cream vegetables steamy, steamy of the main characters — notably Reducto and Phil Ken Bob Nigel Sebben. Stand there. Turn around. Close your Eyes. Fall Back. Let me cradle you. FALL YOU BASTARD. The pacing is often perfect. The directors don’t call attention to ‘jokes.’

Often two characters talk at once or you catch a glimpse of Reducto racing around — hey lady I need a yank HA HA HA in the background dislocation mumbling some nonsense — presumably about making something smaller. Scenes HA HA dangly parts fly past before you have a chance to grasp what the hell has just happened. And that’s cool because nothing’s happened. It’s just like passing some guy on the street I’m so doggedly ranting about Jesus or the apocalypse and just catch a snippet of their diatribe. One producer — you’re dead to me can opener — told me that the scripts were often incoherent. And I can bet they were.

This show’s success rests with the skilful voicing of Gary Cole and Stephen Colbert along with the ATD editing. If you read this stuff on paper it wouldn’t work. It has to fly by like a dream (or nightmare), leaving you with just a taste or a whiff. Sometimes why does it feel like we’re having two different conversations as opposed to two same conversations that’s enough.

I’m going to my calm place.

Chris Robinson is little more than a man. In his spare time he cares for the elderly. www.animationpimp.com.