Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
A bawdy romp through locker rooms and dorm parties, Spike’s Blue Mountain State regurgitates the boozing, bonging, pill popping and sexing escapades usually reserved for Judd Apatow’s R-rated movies. “We kind of come from the ’80s and we love that kind of comedy—Animal House, Porky’s, Meatballs,” said creator Eric Falconer in a wickedlocal.com interview. “It’s behind the scenes of a college football team, and every episode we wanted to do a little ’80s movie.”
While that may have been their goal, Falconer’s assessment of he and co-writer Chris Romano’s, uh, work is actually a bit lofty. If you start with the gross-out nonsense of some of those ’80s comedies, double the bodily function mess and strip out any semblance of actual wit, then you’re on your way down to the level of Blue Mountain State.
Listing central players and describing storylines in this case, then, is really fairly silly. Each hyper-caricatured, overflowing hormonal Petri dish of a character and every paper-thin snippet of plot is in place only so that the show can get on with titillating its randy guy audience and push cable TV boundaries. Foul language packs the dialogue. Scenes (either explicitly shown or strongly suggested) have already included team-wide orgies, oral sex-obsessed transvestites, bizarre masturbation experiments, a drug-induced vision quest, urinating in public (and during sex), a father who pimps his daughters and a communal sex toy that transmits syphilis to … pretty much everyone. That’s not even mentioning the nonstop flow of booze and the tacit approval given to (and sometimes participation in) this buffoonish debauchery by every authority figure in sight.
The New York Times calls BMS “dumb even by frat-boy standards.” The Boston Globe dubs it “lewd and crude.” And the reviewing site screenhead.com says the series is “often juvenile, and frequently little more than a race to the bottom.” I’ll add this: Blue Mountain State does more than merely race to the bottom. It’s digging out a new bottom in the rancid mud pits of cable TV’s decaying wasteland. Or maybe I should just say, Dude, where’s my remote?
“The Badger”
A big playoff game against hated Overland University is fast approaching and things are heating up. The previous year Overland players killed BMS’ mascot, so this year team captain Thad Castle grabs Overland’s badger—pledging to cut off its testicles and eat them as a team motivator. (The enraged badger escapes and runs off to attack everything in its path.)
Quarterback Radon Randall has his life threatened by a rabid fan, and the coach takes him into his home to protect him until the big game. Of course, Radon has a certain pregame ritual involving alcohol, drugs and scores of underwear-clad girls. So … the coach gets buzzed with Ecstasy-laced booze and ends up passing out in a pile of seminude coeds. While that’s happening, Blue Mountain’s goat mascot is accidentally tranquilized and a cheerleader tries to revive it by lubricating and then stuffing ice into its rectum (a technique she says she once used on her overdosed grandmother). Thad eventually does eat testicles.
About a half-dozen uncensored s-words are joined by “h‑‑‑” and “b‑‑ch.” God’s name is combined once with “d‑‑n.”
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
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