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I recently came to a shocking realization:

I am the only person writing for this blog who has never done a review or recap of a movie or TV show!

I know, right?


So seeing as how I've finished my second article for TR, and since Comcast OnDemand just got in the entire first season (which I've so far watched twice) I thought I'd lose my reviewer's innocence with an examination of Comedy Central's newest animated series: Ugly Americans.


Comedy Central has been very unreliable when it comes to animated programming. In 1997 the first season of South Park aired, and over the next 13 years it grew to become a global phenomenon and critical success second only to The Simpsons.

The network has since attempted to recapture South Park's magic with a litany of failed, mostly unfunny toons: TV Funhouse, Lil' Bush, and Drawn Together, to name a few.

With Devin Clark's Ugly Americans, it seems they may have a chance. And coupled with their restoration of my beloved Futurama, and Adult Swim's baffling trend towards Live-Action programming, Comedy Central might end up surpassing Cartoon Network as the premier provider of adult-oriented animation.


The show is pretty standard fare: It follows the various trials and tribulations of an overworked, underappreciated New York City social worker with a deadbeat roommate, a drunken co-worker. a moody, unstable girlfriend, and a boss from Hell.

The kicker is: The deadbeat roommate is a brain-eating zombie(yay! zombies!), the drunken co-worker is a 500 year old wizard, the moody girlfriend is a succubus, and the boss from Hell is precisely that.

The New York of UA is populated by a multitude of non-human beings: zombies, werewolves, vampires, wizards, demons(an escalator to Hell allows visitors to come and go), robots, blobs, and God knows what else. Most of them are just average Joes and Janes, trying their best to make it in the world--which is where our protagonist comes in, let's meet him and the people and things who comprise his social circle:

This is Mark Lilly, voiced by Matt Oberg. He works at the Department of Integration. At the beginning of the first episode, his department is gutted so the bulk of the budget can be diverted to Law Enforcement, leaving only Mark, and his inebriated co-worker Leonard, to handle the onerous task of helping various not-quite-human creatures(and a few normal, human immigrants) successfully assimilate themselves into American society.

Basically, he's one of those poor, deluded souls who work Civil Service jobs and actually care--give him two years and he'll either become a broken, nihilistic cynic, or go on a rampage with a hunting rifle.







Meet Callie Maggotbone (the "t" is silent). She's Mark's girlfriend and supervisor. She's the sterotypical "wrong kind of woman" taken to the most absurd extreme. What else would you call a woman who consumes souls and actively seeks to bring about the End of Days? Her mixed parentage(Mom was essentially Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby)makes her incredibly moody and often confused about what she wants out of life. Will she marry a nice guy like Mark and settle down in the Suburbs? Or will she cave in to Daddy's wishes, take a high-ranking Demon for her suitor, and become a broodmare for Satan's Dark Army?

I find this character profoundly, disturbingly attractive. Even though she dumps Mark at least once an episode, has been known to bite whole chunks out of his flesh, and has something called a "Threehole" which is better left unexplained.

Oh, Callie is also voiced by stand-up comic and local girl(Rockford, about an hour southwest of me), Natasha Leggero. Ms. Leggero is a regular on Chelsea Lately, and a regular guest on several late-night talk shows--she's cute, too:







Introducing UA's resident Zombie and Mark's roomie: Randall Skeffington--voiced by Kurt Metzger. Randall "went zombie" a few years back in an ill-advised attempt to impress a girl who claimed to only date the walking dead. Naturally, by the time Randall made the change, the girl in question had lost interest in zombies and now exclusively dated Warlocks. Well, we've all been there, huh?

Randall works a few odd jobs, but for the most part lives off of Mark--though not in the more literal way he'd like to: Randall copes daily with his cannibalistic urges--Mark is fully aware that his roommate would like nothing more than to crack open his skull and devour his brain, yet he accepts Randall nonetheless(This kinda defines the line between Noble and Stupid).

Though technically dead, Randall's sex-drive is second only to his urge to consume human flesh. He's become remarkably non-selective in his choice of sex partners/acts, to the point that his penis actually became disgruntled and ran away in one episode.

Randall's Dad fought in the Zombie-Human Civil War, and until Mark accidentally let it slip on a visit, He'd successfully hidden his condition from his family.




Leonard Powers has mastered the art of work avoidance through magic. He's the only employee left in the department besides Mark, and despite being a wizard, he's a useless shell of a human being who's slowly drinking himself to death(and given that he's 500 years old, this is a process that apparently takes wizards a very long time).

Worthless and apathetic though he is, he does like Mark and attempts, when it's not too much trouble, to help him out.

Leonard is voiced by Randy Pearlstein.

(Nerdtastic moment: At his desk, Leonard watches "America's Next Top Wizard" online, where a young, Harry Potter-esque wizard is verbally reamed by Dr. Strange as a Simon Cowell-type judge)







Twayne The Boneraper(of the Connecticut Bonerapers)is head of the department. Though imposing and intimidating on the surface, Twayne is little more than a mid-level cog in a monolithic bureaucracy--the classic "big fish in a small pond".

None of his superiors, co-workers, or fellow Demons have an ounce of respect for him. Particularly Callie, who in every practical sense runs the office for Twayne, who wouldn't have a clue how to manage it alone. There is also the creeping inevitability that Callie and Twayne will end up together, if only because he's the kind of man her father wants for her.

One might find the idea of a Demon running an office set up to help people counterintuitive, but apparently the Department of Integration is part of a larger Satanic design to introduce as many non-humans as possible into human society. Exactly what the purpose of this plan is will hopefully be explored in the next season.

Twayne is voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley, an actor and singer who recently did the voice of Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors" on Broadway.





Frank Grimes has become, in a sense, Mark's nemesis within the department. While Mark is devoted to helping the people and creatures under his supervision, Grimes is convinced that all non-humans and non-Americans are inherently evil and criminal. He and his goon squad comb the streets of the city looking for those among Mark's clients who slip up--even in the slightest.

Grimes has a laundry list of injuries received from tussles with various creatures, plus his wife left him for a vampire(his daughter would later marry one too, but he learned to live with that, as you'll see in the episode).

Frank Grimes is voiced by Larry Murphy, and may or may not be a Simpsons reference.





It's important to remember that an animated show's appeal is 90% in its look. Ugly Americans has taken a page from South Park's book and gone for a bare-bones, "less is more" style. But instead of using South Park's paper cutout medium, they've instead gone for a wonderfully retro, old-school horror comic look--which not only fits the subject mattter perfectly, it's also refreshingly uncomputerized(don't know if that's a word--oh, well).

Bottom line--I enjoy the hell out of this show. It's neat-looking, clever, smart, bold, and a lot of fun.

I can easily imagine it not being for everyone. The dialogue is a bit off-color at times, as are the visual gags, and there's a lot of sexual humor. If these things offend or simply do not entertain you--then this isn't your show.



Well, it's 4:30 in the goddamn morning--man, these things take a long time! I gotta go to bed.

Quick revision of the previous article concerning the Blog's stats: Apparently, I need to get better glasses, for I failed to notice that the numbers I gave for our hit count were not cumulative, they were the numbers from each individual month. In other words--the real total was all of those numbers added together: As of now SOHB's all-time hit total is actually 7,236! Sorry about that.

I leave you with a video some kindred spirit made about Randall's tumultuous relationship with his penis, scored with a tune that was oft played in my utterly wasted teen years.






Scooty Doo