Cartoon Network has been on a major creative tear in the past few years, turning out some of their best animated series since their first heyday turning out the likes of The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Johnny Bravo. The initial wave of success with Adventure Time and Regular Show led to more creative experimentation, and eventually the new series Steven Universe, Clarence, and Uncle Grandpa. The last show has just received its first DVD release with Uncle Grandpa: Tiger Trails, containing 12 episodes of the show. Unfortunately, it’s show that I admire more than I really like. Its gleefully surreal sense of humor appeals to me in principle, but it never really manages to hit home with me in the same way as the likes of Adventure Time or Regular Show.
The title character of Uncle Grandpa is the magical uncle and grandfather of everyone in the world (voiced by series creator Pete Browngardt), who wanders from place to place in his trusty RV with his traveling companions: the sentient and seemingly bottomless Belly Bag (Eric Bauza), the smart-aleck Pizza Steve (Adam DeVine), his dinosaur bodyguard Mr. Gus (Kevin Michael Richardson), and his trusty steed Giant Realistic Flying Tiger. Judging by the selection of episodes offered on this disc, the only consistent thing about Uncle Grandpa is that there isn’t much consistency between episodes of Uncle Grandpa. Any given episode starts with someone having a relatively mundane problem (failing to get a T-shirt on, being afraid of the dark, flunking a driver’s license test) which leads to 11-minutes of energetic nonsense as Uncle Grandpa comes up with a bizarre magical intervention to turn the world upside-down and sideways to solve the problem.
Uncle Grandpa does a whole lot of things right. It has a distinctive brand of anything-goes, surreal humor that’s always delivered with great gusto and a freewheeling sense of madness. It’s also mated to an art style that’s highly reminiscent of classic MAD magazine, and when someone like MAD luminary Sergio Aragones thinks Uncle Grandpa is a weird show, you must be doing something right. At it’s very best (which, to my mind, are the episodes “Space Emperor,” “Uncle Grandpa for a Day,” and “Uncle Grandpa Sitter” on this disc), Uncle Grandpa can feel like classic Looney Tunes, with Uncle Grandpa drifting through a surreal situation both causing and deflecting chaos with Bugs Bunny’s unflappability. It’s extraordinarily clear that the cast and crew are having a total blast making Uncle Grandpa, and the show is a testament to the power of animation to bring the quirky and bizarre to vivid life perhaps better than any other on-screen medium.
However, I also find Uncle Grandpa to be more exhausting than genuinely funny. It’s akin to my reaction to shows like Chowder or The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack or even SpongeBob SquarePants: all these shows can make me laugh, but not as hard as I think they really ought to. Of course, this begs the question of what it is about other recent shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Breadwinners, or Gravity Falls, all of which can be every bit as strange as Uncle Grandpa but which I also find much funnier. It’s a bit frustrating that I can’t quite pinpoint what I find missing from Uncle Grandpa (and the other shows cited) — I have a vague thought about character serving the insanity vs. insanity that comes with characters attached, but it’s full of holes and so half-baked it collapses almost immediately.
Uncle Grandpa: Tiger Trails is as good as one might hope for in a standard-definition home video release. The show’s colorful palette is reproduced vividly by the anamorphic widescreen DVD, showcasing the show’s high production values quite nicely. The running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes also means it’s an excellent value for the money, especially for a “soccer mom” release like this one. The only complaint one might have about the DVD is that it has no extras of any kind.
As I mentioned, I find I admire Uncle Grandpa more than I really love it. Its madcap sensibilities always ensure a fun and unpredictable experience, but I still find myself wishing that it connected more solidly with me. Of course, humor is highly subjective, and the fact that I’m not laughing as much as I think I should be might just be on me. If you are a fan of early-era SpongeBob, I expect Uncle Grandpa will have more to offer you.
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