Fox's Sit Down, Shut Up was supposed to be the new wave of Sunday anime. We say that sentence sarcastically but we're not joking. We were pressed early on about this show.
It's going to be funny and an animation breakthrough, we were told, and it has everything we always insist on. Why there's a person of color! And there's a gay character even! And, unlike most shows, an equal number of male and female characters!
We were going to love it, Fox friends insisted.
And we so didn't. First off, there was not an equal number of male and female characters. There were nine characters, three were women, six were men. Only in the world of Fox does that equal "equal." But all the claims were bogus.
This wasn't an animation breakthrough. It was a cheaply made show and part of the cheapness was in using photos for backgrounds to save money on the time required to draw, for example, a wall or a book shelf. It was a cheaply made show with such cheap sex jokes that it honestly reminded us of not Three's Company but of the many rip-offs of that show such as We've Got It Made.
Many an animated show gets off a sex joke, in fact Fox shows appear to require them; however, Sit Down, Shut Up offered very little else. So for example, assistant principal Stuart (Will Arnett) takes some pills he finds in a student's locker and ends up with breasts. And then sets himself up as a cheerleader. For the bouncing. As smutty as that was, it was the closet thing to a visual the show ever offered.
Using photos for backgrounds did not 'free' the animators to come up with wonderful drawn characters or situations. In fact, the show appeared to internalize the first half off of its title (Sit Down) while ignoring the second (Shut Up) leading to non-stop scenes of people sitting around tables while yammering on and on.
The whole point of an animated show is that animated characters can do things that real people cannot. So we were always puzzled why the program reminded us of more of a series of faded comics dropping by The Joe Franklin Show?
The show was supposed to be funny and, in its smutty way, it sometimes could rise enough to prompt a smirk from the average viewer but it was never going to promote laughter.
Early on, we asked Fox friends, "Why are you airing an animated show about high school faculty? Do you really think young adults and children will be interested in those characters?" It just flew over their heads with one responding, "Well kids go to school." Yes. Yes, they do. And children also have bedtimes so maybe Fox can next try to capture the 'youth market' with an animated program about all the adventures adults have after children go to bed?
Children's reaction was the first clue that there was a problem with the show. Specifically Betty's three children who found nothing funny about principal Sue Sezno. Sezno was one of the two characters of color (Fox friends had counted wrong there as well), the other being Muhannad Sabeeh Fa-ach Nuabar who was usually called "Happy." Sezno and "Happy" shared something else in common besides being characters of color, they were both voiced by men
Betty's children had a violent and vocal disgust to Sue Sezno as voiced by Kenan Thompson. And they should have because the character was nothing but some White stereotype of African-American women. Sue couldn't get a date, Sue was bossy and controlling (just like African-American women on most 'reality' TV shows!). Sue was overweight.
And then there was the voice.
With so few characters of color in animated programs, shows need to take great care when setting them up. They can be as outrageous and wild as every other character on the show provided they've been set up correctly. Having Thompson 'voice' Sue was not setting the character up correctly.
Thompson used his own voice. The character was already a series of disgusting stereotypes and apparently the White people in charge of the show never stopped to think that having a man voice Sue was implying that the character was manly. 'Those 'overly strong' Black women'," intentionally or not was the kinder message sent by the characterization.
The show wanted credit for Sue and they wanted credit for having a "gay character," drama teacher Andrew (Nick Kroll). But despite the fact that they referred to him as gay, the show called him bi-sexual and had him forever in the midst of quandary about who he wanted more, men or women? In the episode that aired last Sunday, he figured out who he wanted most: Himself. Wearing a dress and make up (because bi-sexuals are trannies?), he spied himself in the mirror and fell in love. So they managed to dust off the old stereotype of gays as 'stunted' and 'narcissistic' adults as well.
American Dad has Roger and Terry, a same-sex couple who are Stan and Francine's next door neighbors, so bi-sexual Andrew could never have been the break through Fox friends kept pitching him as. But he could have been something other than a non-stop insult.
That he wasn't went to the fact that the characters never did anything except sit around talking. They talked in the school cafeteria, they talked in the teacher's lounge, they talked at the students' football games. In the episode last Sunday, they talked through a party. The big 'visual' in that was a slow falling clump of melted cheese. Yes, that could have been done live action and, no doubt, would have been done funnier.
At one point the show was supposed to be a live action one. That might be the only thing worse than what aired.
What aired was a middle-aged White guy creating a show about other middle-aged White men and thinking he could land a young audience with it. You had Larry (Jason Bateman) as the coach and series lead. And he did nothing. Over and over. He was in love with Miracle (science teacher, so badly voiced we're not even noting the actress) and he wanted to ask her out. A lot. And never did. It's annoying when it happens on Better Off Ted and it's only more annoying when it happens with animated characters.
And nothing happened with the characters. Ever. Series 'stud' Ennis (Will Arnett) did not even sleep with Miracle after the plot dictated it and the whole episode revolved around setting it up. Nothing happened.
This wasn't "They didn't do it because Ennis had a Peter like cut-away where he remembered something crazy he did . . ." This was nothing happened.
We mentioned American Dad above and when we were sharing our thoughts on the first two episodes shortly before they aired, Fox friends reminded us how much we hated American Dad and pointed out that it's become "a ratings contender." Yes, it has and that's largely due to Roger the alien. Roger is the show's Stewie and the added emphasis on Roger in the second season and beyond has made the show worth watching. (If they ever noticed that Roger works best with Haley and acted on that, American Dad would really take off.) Sit Down and Shut Up might have, given time, had a break out character in the mix. (Will Forte's Stuart came off the best of all the characters. He was given lines that were as bad as the ones everyone else was stuck with but he made them work with a light delivery.) But so what? If that character emerged, the show would either have to drastically change or else the character would be sitting around sipping coffee like every one else on the show.
In the end, the network whose animated shows live to mock CBS' demographics provided an animated program which made CBS' bran and depends set appear like lively clubbers by comparison.
