Back in the day, I was a socially awkward Junior High School student. And the best part of my day was getting home and watching a huge block of “Beavis and Butt-Head” on MTV. Who really knows what it was that drew me into the show, but just the sheer stupidity of the main characters mixed with the naivety of the secondary ones was just the humorous escape I needed at the time. And even with creator Mike Judge’s hilarious storylines, Beavis and Butt-Head simply sitting on the couch commenting on MTV Videos was good enough for it’s own 30 minute show.
Eventually the show got so big, it got it’s own movie which was not only good… but became a bit of a cult classic and still to this day stands up as one of the better comedy films of the 90’s. A film that completely deserved a bunch of sequels.
Now, almost 20 years later (wow!) “Beavis and Butt-Head” are coming back to MTV. It was rumored later last year that the duo would return to the big screen in live-action form, don’t know if that’s still being worked on but it sounds like an intriguing idea. In the mean time, the show is definitely back in it’s original form on it’s original home, with all the hype and promotion you could ask for.
This isn’t the first time an animated series has come back after a long hiatus. “Family Guy” (not a big fan) triumphantly returned and is EVERY frikkin place you look nowadays. And more recently “Futurama” came back after a slew of successful straight to DVD films. Just speaking on “Futurama”, it is nice to have it back but it’s clear that the show lost a lot of it’s luster. While the show originally was really clever and original, now it’s a bit lazy with recycled plot points (sometimes directly ripping stuff from Sci-Fi films). Even with the less than stellar writing, “Futurama” still manages to be fun just without the thoughtfulness that went into it originally.
“Beavis and Butt-Head” doesn’t really share the same problem. Simply because it was always just a simple stupid show about two stupid boys. There was no need to be clever, just them being complete morons was comedy enough. However the great thing about the series returning is that Mike Judge is coming off of a very long and successful run of “King of the Hill” (which… that still comes on with new episodes right!?). Having graduated to a broader storyline, coming back to “Beavis and Butt-Head” might allow for some better situations for our boys.
But again, it doesn’t have to be any better than it was before and it’ll still be hilarious. And the twist now is that they’ll be commenting on MTV series as well (which unfortunately means I’ll have to be subjected to “Jersey Shore” and “The Real World” which I try my hardest to avoid) as music videos.
So in closing, “Beavis and Butt-Head” make their return to MTV TONIGHT (10pm eastern) and I’m so excited!