By James Keller
It’s being dubbed the next South Park, but it’s not as funny–it’s not even as offensive. It’s being compared to the Muppets, but the characters aren’t as colourful or interesting. It’s even being likened to the Bert is Evil website that raised a stir in recent years, but isn’t as clever or original. Puppets Who Kill promised all kinds of clever and witty humour when it debuts on Canadian television this month, but unfortunately, it will fail to deliver on every account. In all honesty, it accomplishes the exact opposite.
After two pilot runs on the Comedy Network over the past two years, the show finally got the green light to go into full-scale production. Hopefully, this won’t last long.
The show follows the lives of four puppets (actually, all but one are just stuffed animals), ranging from Buttons the Bear to Bill the Ventriloquist Dummy, newly out on parole and consigned to a halfway house with a social worker named Dan.
The humour is immature, dull, and just not funny. One attempt at comedy features a joke about Dan urinating while sitting down (there’s quite a lot of toilet humour–too much, in fact), another sees Cuddles the Comfort Doll sent back to jail for a brief stay for using the word “poo.” While he’s there, his cellmate, cleverly named Bubba, attempts to make him his bitch. When Bubba’s anal rape attempt fails, Cuddles gets his own bitches, scaring even the warden. This lame display of wit continues through the two shows distributed for review, and one can assume through the rest of the series as well.
Instead of creativity, Puppets Who Kill relies on the novelty involved when you hear stuffed animals say “shit” and “fuck.” Suffice it to say, once you get over the fact that they’re using the F-word–on network TV no less–and once you get passed Cuddles performing cunnilingus on a city councilor’s wife to get the house gifts, the show has little else to offer.
The show doesn’t even offer the intrigue of watching it purely to see how bad and offensive it really is, like The Osbournes. The puppets are on parole and out of jail on Oct. 11. Hopefully, they reoffend and get sent back sometime soon, along with the creators behind this poor excuse for a television show. Maybe then jokes about Bubba and anal rape will have a slightly different punch line, and everything will make a little more sense.