Re: Superjail!

I have a terrible tendency to intentionally seek out the most esoteric things possible. I am the proud owner of every single episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, the "birth" of the Adult Swim programme lineup and likely the single most self-amusing television series in the history of the medium. It toys with the late night talk show format, stretching the inane conversations to absolute logical extremes by having previously taped conversations between a series staffer and a celebrity played alongside unrelated animated footage with largely improvised dialogue to create the illusion of a live discussion. Very rarely is there an ounce of cohesion present, with the guest tending to either ramble on about something irrelevant (the black and white episode with Peter Fonda is a great example of this, and on top of being aggressively strange said episode also features an endless low-frequency hum designed to disorient the already confused viewer) or freeze up and nervously chuckle (David Byrne, of all people, seems incredibly uncomfortable).

The Adult Swim block has remained consistently bizarre, although with mixed results. There have been a few winners (particular commendation is in order for Frisky Dingo's sharp political satire and the strange but oh so wonderful combination of comic book soap opera and 60s pop culture homage that is The Venture Bros.) but for the most part their programming has failed on some level or another. The block plays host mostly to low budget, oft completely hideous stuff (as brilliant as Aqua Teen Hunger Force's early years were, there's no denying it stretches poor visuals as an aesthetic point to the absolute limit on more than one occasion) written with the same level of self-indulgence as the absurd psuedo-talk show that birthed it (although frankly, the likes of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! function more as an exercise in ego masturbation via LOOK AT ALL THE FAMOUS GUYS I KNOW and OH LOOK AT HOW CLEVERLY WE SUBVERT INSIPID OUTDATED CULTURE comedy than they do as genuine experiments in audience manipulation).

A show I was always warned to avoid was Superjail!, which I knew little of till very recently. When the pilot aired I found the idea to be pretty clever, but I heard nothing but bad things from everyone I've talked to about it. From critics to online geeks to close personal friends, the bashing of this show was nigh universal. I avoided it, and forgot about it for years. It just came out on DVD today, and the pre-release hype revived my vague hope in the series. Then reviews started piling in with yet more abject disgust at the programme's very existence. For a second I was discouraged, but then I thought "Fuck that, I'll watch it because of the negative reputation, not in spite of it," expecting some kind of awful trainwreck that will at least be funny in how unwatchable it was. The opposite proved correct.

Though there are many shows in the Adult Swim lineup I would say are funnier, Superjail! is without a doubt the most surreal and the smartest. It's a Kafkaesque nightmare world where anything that can be will be and in the most morally repugnant way possible. Each episode begins with an ambitious (and screamingly insane) thug known as  Jacknife committing an illogical, disturbing and altogether pointless crime, only to be caught by a flying robot who drags him across the entire planet (sometimes even into space) to the volcano-inside-a-volcano location of our titular prison (set to the strains of the phenomenal "Comin' Home" by a rock outfit known only as Cheeseburger). The sequence is depicted with different visuals each time (aside from the pair of episodes where Jacknife is either killed or already imprisoned), and the interior of the penitentiary is completely different every time it is shown. 

In actuality, Superjail isn't really a prison as much as it's a metaphysical playground for the deranged Warden (voiced by the gleefully batty David Wain of Stella and The State fame). The very personification of an idiot manchild, The Warden's petty desires manifest themselves in the prison, changing themes from underwater base to spaceship to Greco-Roman arena to suit whatever foolish whim  is on his mind at the moment. Want to impress the lone female in the prison? Why not build a massive bar and grill despite the huge waste of funding and the sensitivity of your recovering alcoholic assistant? Morale running low among staff and inmates? Start an underground gladiator competition with the promise of freedom to the victor. The Warden approaches his problems, major or superficial, with the least sensible answer possible and shows no remorse for all the deaths his foolish plans inevitably cause. Sometimes he doesn't even have an ounce of interest in the end result of whatever foolish conquest he is pursuing, he's shown to take sadistic joy out of stringing people along (particularly his humiliation of the female warden of rival correctional facility Ultraprison).

The other major characters are a bit less unhinged, female guard Alice (an obvious post-op transsexual and the object of The Warden's childlike infatuation) is a stereotypical violent prison cop with a taste for savagely beating, sexually humiliating and even outright murdering inmates. Her behaviour is more or less as abhorrent as The Warden's, but she does not share his delusions of righteousness and she is also a capable corrections officer despite her malicious attitude (more than a few times saving even The Warden from one of his ill-conceived schemes). The Warden's assistant, nebbish midget Jared, is the polar opposite of his boss. Jared is an accountant by trade, horrified by the amount of money The Warden spends willy-nilly and trying his absolute best to discourage him from making more unnecessary expenditures. Jared's job is, imaginably, incredibly stressful and he once kept himself going by hitting the bottle. His attempts at staying on the wagon prove unsuccessful, as The Warden insists Jared become the bartender for his new venture, Party Bar. Party Bar is, like all of The Warden's plans, a disastrous failure with a cadre of inmates not partaking in the drunken bashes held there planning a daring escape while the staff are too inebriated to stop them. During this botched escape, the prison's sea gate cracks open and floods the entire facility, killing hundreds of inmates and when the chaos finally ends, The Warden's sole regret is that he didn't get to drunkenly seduce Alice.

The Warden's most repulsive moment comes near the end of the series, in the episode "Mr. Grumpy-Pants". During his usual apprehension of Jacknife (who, in a low moment even by his standards, is stealing medication from the pediatrics ward on Christmas eve), JailBot accidentally brings a four-year-old girl dying of cancer onto the grounds of Superjail. Christmas day is The Warden's birthday, and this year he is feeling particularly neurotic. Obsessed with the inevitability of his demise and his physical appearance, he demands the child be burned alive as punishment for reminding him of his lost youth. A terribly disfigured inmate who operates the prison incinerator takes a shine to the child, refusing to allow her to perish and instead taking her into his care. Lovingly dubbed "Sanser" by the illiterate inmates trying to pronounce the diagnosis on her hospital bracelet, she is warmly received by all the prisoners in Superjail and playing with her has taken attention away from Jared's planned birthday party for The Warden. This causes The Warden to literally give birth to a demonic manifestation of his inner child, which then sets about killing the child. After a chaotic fight breaks out during the party, Sanser succumbs to her terminal illness quietly and dies sitting in The Warden's chair, distracting the inmates from all the bloodshed and moving them to tears while the unfeeling Warden continues to fret about his wrinkles and hair loss.

Superjail! plays out much like a Roald Dahl book for adults would, if Dahl kicked his sense of morals to the curb and dosed up on copious amounts of hallucinogens while writing. The profound sense of strangeness in the structure and plotting caries over into the visuals, with the show boasting an eye-wrenching palette of colours and some of the smoothest animation I've seen come from a small American studio. New York's Augenblick Studios animate The Warden's every twitch and the ludicrous amounts of bloodshed with a wonderfully unique flourish. The prison's radical changes from episode to episode never clash with the general aesthetic of the programme and while the intentionally hideous designs of the prison population may initially put off most casual observers, there are plenty of visual treats to make up for the art department's shortcomings. The chaotic action sequences are frantic beyond belief, layered with massive amounts of background detail you'll often miss the first time around. These setpieces play out like a visual orchestra, with rhythmic splashes of violence building to a crescendo of explosions and blood. The ending of "Terrorarium" (in which The Warden's sickly fetishistic miniature society science project quite literally outgrows and envelopes the entire prison) is the sort of thing you can watch twenty times over and still notice new details with each viewing.

Now despite all the praise I've showered this series with, I can totally understand why so few people like it. It's an aggressive, unpleasant and very dark series, with little in the way of "jokes" and a shitload of occasionally meandering weirdness. I'm really not sure what kind of audience the show is aimed at, but it's clearly not the main Adult Swim viewerbase. There aren't nostalgic jabs at pop culture, goofy puns or "random" stoner humour to be found here. What laughs are there mostly come from the sheer absurdity of the situations, and the few conventional jokes told all have a black-hearted tinge to them. If you like your comedy darker than coal, are an animation ethusiast or are a megalomaniac who dresses like Willy Wonka, you're probably gonna dig this, but anyone else is really in for an uphill battle. You might end up liking it, but if you join the "fuck Superjail!" masses I'll be disappointed, but certainly not surprised.