Moving up another five years, I brought back the animation/comedy darlings of then, ol’ Beavis & Butt-head. What do they have to do with back-to-school stuff? They were high school students or upper-end junior high students, depends upon the type of district people attend. I can also rationalize it by saying 1993 was the “average year” between my taking classes in 1992 and 1994.
I know they’ve returned to MTV (pronounced like the word “empty”) since poor Mike Judge is just out of ideas. His last cartoon on ABC sucked and Extract didn’t get a second life through DVD like Office Space or Idiocracy. Back in 2012 I found out he left Austin too. Damned shame.
Anyway, I haven’t seen any of the dipstick duo’s new adventures yet. I figure MTV would have to change the formula because they don’t show music videos so I’m guessing they make comments about the inanity of the cheap-ass reality shows?
I want to honor the original memory of what this cartoon brought in 1993. Due to The Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy being huge successes, every network scrambled to throw any animated show on hoping it would yield the same result. Really? Just who thought Fish Police was comparable? Beavis & Butt-head was an uncharacteristic stroke of genius at MTV. It combined the popularity of MST3K‘s participation with MTV’s largely ignored music-video catalog while keeping the moronic teens’ antics short. As much as I loved Beavis and Butt-head Do America, I doubt the writing staff could fill out many eight or 11-minute cartoons with the premises shown.
The other element I enjoyed regarding this program was how it demonstrated what my generation/geographical area called Burnouts (I’ve also heard Rockers and in Canada, Heshers) were often like. Admittedly, they’re an exaggeration but after the glorification of Jeff Spicoli and Wayne Campbell for a decade, it was nice to see the ridicule. I endured similar people throughout high school. In North Dakota, they were sadly at the top of the food chain. I got over their crap quickly, none followed me to college.
Beavis and Butt-head‘s greatest legacy was King of the Hill and Judge’s first two, under-appreciated films.
Now to figure out something for 1998, going to be tough.