3 gibbles out of 5

Even though it’s a one-joke pony that uses up the majority of its momentum in its first couple episodes, “Children’s Hospital” maintains enough laughs / episode ratio to make it acceptable pass-the-time fare.

So adults being dumb and mean around kids is funny, right?  The creator of Children’s Hospital – Rob Corddry – thinks so.  Unfortunately, this style of transgressive humor is no longer transgressive.  This is our generation’s humor now, it’s in prime time shows, it’s on SNL, and it’s on every blog.  It’s difficult to be funny.  I can’t do it.  Rare are the shows that can actually achieve “new” laughs; it’s better to stay with a safe formula that occasionally reaches for something really out there.  The show began as a web short, and the limited timeframe is when its at its best.  The first “season” in the Adult Swim DVD release maintains the short  webisode formant, and these and are a flurry of energy.  The general intent of the show is to parody a medical drama and with this as a template, everyone just gets to go insane for a few minutes.  The kid/adult juxtaposition isn’t so much the focus as is the over-the-top melodrama and soap-opera antics tweaked into ridiculous levels.  I thought I was going to love the series at this point.

But…  the second season expands to full length episodes and a full length season.   Characters are more “developed” and there are plots that are longer than radar blips.  It’s admirable to expand the scope as such, but it requires a different approach, and here the show loses its appeal, relying more on a safe formula with a few minutes of wackiness that remind you this won’t be airing on a regular station.  But even those jokes hedge toward not as funny because they’re occasionally too self-aware… cognizant of the need for something Adult Swimmy.  When guest stars galore start getting into the mix, it all feels a bit too formulaic.  Which happened with Superjail’s second season as well – a notable attempt to gain a wider appeal.  Oddly, David Wain of The State is involved with both projects, and the same pattern has creeped into his recent films, having joined the Judd Apatow ring of friendly dirty-humor films.

The 15 bucks I spent on this was worth the hilarity of the first season, and the second season is pleasant enough to return to, especially now that I’m expecting the style change.  It’s out of place on Adult Swim not only for it being live action, but the humor is also more traditional (which I would say is limited by the live action as well, but then you have Tim and Eric…).  If you find the one joke funny, you’ll keep chuckling through the collection, but if you’re hoping to champion a new series, this doesn’t quite make the cut.

Update, 07.07: I’ve completely caught up on the rest of the show.  I’m… not sure what I was talking about with the second season being full length, except that I think the first season was a web series and thus shorter than the 11-minute Adult Swim standard.  So apparently 11-minutes was too much for me to handle.  My comment is still mostly accurate, though, in that the web series was such compressed madness (and more directly parodying insane soap opera plots) that it made the comparatively slower paced following seasons seem less inventive.  But once you get into the swing of the new pacing, you appreciate how the expanded tonal palette (ditching the strict soap opera concept) really gives the writers free reign to do… anything.  Literally.  This is hit and miss, but it’s hit and miss per episode, meaning there’s always something within that 11-minutes to make you laugh.  And now, years later, AS has more non-animated fare, so it doesn’t seem like a show just trying to be different, but rather gets to settle into being its own thing.