First, let me say that I loved the first season and probably have seen every episode of it in reruns. Next, a bit of disclosure: I absolutely hate Clarence and wish they would chuck him into the fire in favor of more cartoons, commentaries on 40-year-old educational films, news parodies and skits with the regular puppet quartet, although I guess that obnoxious *&#% is good for filling up the minutes. Now the gist of this episode: I thought it was going to be somewhat in the style of previous episodes, but was surprised to find that they had managed to spin the only segment I think I loathe more than Clarence into an entire episode of one-note hillbilly/trailer trash jokes. It's the same @)$!ing rubbish for over 15 straight minutes. I missed a bunch of the new season in the weeks before this episode, but this one made me tune out entirely, not to mention making me feel like I needed to bathe my brain.
2 Reviews
Well, Breaking Bad had Fly...
rottentowers-630276 March 2023
Warning: Spoilers
So, I finally found myself too angry and frustrated with this episode to look it up and learned that it was a parody of some show called Hee Haw that celebrates the disease called ruralism. The problem here is that the structure of the episode just ruins the entire joke. We get a message at the beginning telling us that the show has been changed in order to comply with demographics information, we see a title card for Horse Apples, and then we are bombarded with one-liners from actors pretending to be hillbillies.
Which begs a question. Who, exactly, was this meant for? At the time the episode was released, nobody in the target audience would have known or cared what Hee Haw was, and I suspect they would hate it if they learned after the fact that it inspired whatever this is. As previously described, all we get is a bunch of one-liners of actors telling us they beat their wives, think various racist things, and so on. But the connective tissue of Chauncey et al just is not there. We are not given any context. There is no story, just a bunch of "take my wife, please" style jokes that land like dung on a face.
Compare that with the rest of the series, in which we get savage takedowns of how we handle things like health, disease control, bullying, or body issues. My favourite (and next to Horse Droppings, least favourite) episode uses psychology to teach us how annoying it is to insist to people that they be patient. I was getting a little old for it at the time, but watching the patience episode whilst chemically enhanced looks like fun. To this day, I wonder if the Wonder Showzen crew deliberately made up that man's teeth to look so dirty.
The vast majority of good shows have one or two episodes that are below the standard set by the others. Breaking Bad has Fly, Westworld has the entirety of season four, and on it goes. Actually, the Westworld season four comparison is pretty apt. For the entirety of the show, you wonder how this episode is even tangentially connected to the others, you wonder why the showrunners elected to make this episode, and you wonder about the factors that led up to that choice. Perhaps legalities prevented the further use of the child actors that made the other episodes so amazing. Maybe someone put the puppets through the laundry. Maybe the creative team were burned out and decided to get through this episode, as well as the Clarence Special Report, as quickly as they could.
Wonder Showzen is the red-headed stepchild of great TV, a feat in making a show that legitimately feels like the blood and gore from a twelve car pile-up. Horse Apples is like an episode of F(r)iends. Whether you just forget it or your mind blanks it out like a violent crime, you will definitely not see it as a highlight of what is one of the most underappreciated achievements in television. Love Wonder Showzen, hate Horse Apples.
Which begs a question. Who, exactly, was this meant for? At the time the episode was released, nobody in the target audience would have known or cared what Hee Haw was, and I suspect they would hate it if they learned after the fact that it inspired whatever this is. As previously described, all we get is a bunch of one-liners of actors telling us they beat their wives, think various racist things, and so on. But the connective tissue of Chauncey et al just is not there. We are not given any context. There is no story, just a bunch of "take my wife, please" style jokes that land like dung on a face.
Compare that with the rest of the series, in which we get savage takedowns of how we handle things like health, disease control, bullying, or body issues. My favourite (and next to Horse Droppings, least favourite) episode uses psychology to teach us how annoying it is to insist to people that they be patient. I was getting a little old for it at the time, but watching the patience episode whilst chemically enhanced looks like fun. To this day, I wonder if the Wonder Showzen crew deliberately made up that man's teeth to look so dirty.
The vast majority of good shows have one or two episodes that are below the standard set by the others. Breaking Bad has Fly, Westworld has the entirety of season four, and on it goes. Actually, the Westworld season four comparison is pretty apt. For the entirety of the show, you wonder how this episode is even tangentially connected to the others, you wonder why the showrunners elected to make this episode, and you wonder about the factors that led up to that choice. Perhaps legalities prevented the further use of the child actors that made the other episodes so amazing. Maybe someone put the puppets through the laundry. Maybe the creative team were burned out and decided to get through this episode, as well as the Clarence Special Report, as quickly as they could.
Wonder Showzen is the red-headed stepchild of great TV, a feat in making a show that legitimately feels like the blood and gore from a twelve car pile-up. Horse Apples is like an episode of F(r)iends. Whether you just forget it or your mind blanks it out like a violent crime, you will definitely not see it as a highlight of what is one of the most underappreciated achievements in television. Love Wonder Showzen, hate Horse Apples.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
