If you haven’t yet caught Adult Swim’s viral video “Too Many Cooks” . . . Run! Seriously, shut down the computer, toss your phone in the trashcan, and get the hell off the grid. Because once this Williams Street send-up of corny opening credits from ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s TV shows crawls into your ear, there’s no tearing it out. Think Lamb Chop’s “Song that Doesn’t End,” only more demented…well…at least more overtly demented.
Eleven-plus minutes of repetition goes from amusing to old to absurd to gouge-your-eyes-out maddening. The short has received the Hollywood feature review treatment from sites all over the Web, grabbing headlines that describe it as everything from a “towering achievement in surreal, satiric comedy” to “the sitcom parody of your nightmares.”
Trying to call out the innumerable nods to sitcoms (Perfect Strangers, Alf), prime-time soaps (Falcon Crest, Dallas), cop dramas (Hill Street Blues), sci-fi and fantasy serials (Wonder Woman, Battlestar Galactica), and even a Saturday-morning cartoon or two (GI Joe), could make for a great drinking game. Or nightmares of Smarf and/or the Bearded Man, might just drive you to drink alone.
You’ve been warned.
