2 out of 5

Creator: J.G. Quintel

Covers season 1 through 3

Jesus, this show comes ridiculously close to making me sick.  You know how there’s the one dude who’s just sort of effortlessly funny, and maybe you’re a little jealous of how natural it is but you’re laughing too hard to really be bothered… and then in walks Dude With Hat, who’s decided to cop dude’s style but is trying uncomfortably hard, pausing for laughs?  That’s Regular Show.  I get it.  It’s ‘grown up.’  But a big part of what sells me on kid-friendly oddities like Adventure Time, up through middle-age burnout humor like Aqua Teen and Always Sunny is that it’s embraced a sense of innocence… and regarding those latter two shows, it’s when they lose track of that and start to point fingers at themselves for being funny or weird that the shows start to falter.  Unfortunately, Regular Show pretty much does that every episode.  It’s funny conceptually, and it has good ideas a’plenty bouncing around, with fitting character design and – though I find the voice actors’ chosen deliveries off-putting – committed voice work, but the description of the show on Netflix starts with “Nothing is as you’d expect,” and that’s just completely off.  Everything is expected – the cool references, the purposefully dumb bro talk…  Rigby and Mordecai are in their 20s and work at the park, which supplies their lodging, and spend each episode generally avoiding their duties, which in turn will generally cause that ep’s calamity.  This specificity – purposefully making our characters an older demographic – obviously works for a certain type of viewer (I imagine probably the ones who love references to Evil Dead and think ‘that’s so me’ about various Rigby / Mordecai-isms), but totally takes me out of the element.  And I accept that that’s a matter of taste.  Humor is subjective, obviously.  But whereas something like The Naked Gun has a timeless feel to it, Regular slots in with this eras SNL as a hodge podge of people smirking at one another and making jokes that won’t see as funny ten years down the line.  I credit the show with doing something new in that we haven’t had an ongoing cartoon that strikes this note of MTVness without being strictly labeled as ‘not made for kids.’  But I think if you’re following the line of Adventure Time to here, you don’t need to give the show a chance to figure out if you like it or not – one episode gives you all the beats you’ll need; no surprises in store.

UPDATE:

I wrote the previous when just starting season 3.  After taking in that season, I think the show gets a little better in some aspects, a little worse in some aspects.  Like Superjail!, there seemed to have been a push toward a bit more plotting and character stability, so Mordecai’s girlfriend woes become a semi-serious ongoing plot and some episodes – ugh – have mini morals.  But on the flip-side, this tones down the mean-spiritedness of some episodes.  The rating still stands overall, though, as the show still revels in cool-guy wink-wink references and wallows in that realm of completely normal sitcom plots covered with a somewhat forced weirdness.