Day Sixty-four - Code Monkies: Episode 1, The Woz, or "It's the little things that make it okay."

It's been a hellabusy day, today, so I really didn't have time to dive into anything of much length or depth. That said, I bit off a semi-palatable chunk of the pixel-art video game series Code Monkies.

Now, let me start off by saying that it's cheese. Unadulterated, non-pasteurized cheese of the stinkiest variety. The opening joke is the jackass of the show humping his computer monitor in order to get it to unfreeze... or pleasure himself, one of the two... or both.

Either way, you know you're in for lowbrow humor of the stupidest, most cliche variety.

Raising Hope, anybody?

So, nominally, the premise of the series is that it centers on a group of video game programmers in the 80's back when graphics were terrible and the first crash was looming.

In addition to being stereotypes and misfits, all of the ensemble cast live in a pixelated world that actually resembles the games they create.

Take the moment where one of the two leads, Jerry, has to jump over a spike pit to get to a company meeting and loses a life using the Megaman death animation.

To be honest, that's the main appeal of the series to me... granted, there's the nostalgia factor of all the old game references, but the magical realism of these characters navigating game levels as just a normal part of their every day lives is just enough surreality to tickle my funny bone... a smidge. I mean, I'm never laughing out loud for any of the show's moments, but they garner more smiles than Family Guy ever seems to.

Really, I think it has to do with the lack of depth. All of the characters are horribly two-dimensional... which I think is the puntastical point. It's cute, but never really goes anywhere... as I'm not a fan of shows where everything ends on the status quo. Sure, that's not the main drive of the series, which is just to sell nostalgic video game one-liners and scat/sex humor, but that's the way I want it.

Since it doesn't deliver on what I want (versus what it really is), it doesn't get more than a passing glance when I'm bored. It's silly and stupid and mildly amusing, but only for when there's nothing else in the queue that's better... which is, thankfully, quite a bit actually.

But, hey... they managed to get Steve Wozniak to guest on the pilot... so... pretty cool for them, eh?

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~