Mr. Birchum

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Mr. Birchum

We should take every problem with this show and push it somewhere else!

Genre:	Animated sitcom Satire
Running Time:	24-27 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	May 12, 2024 – present
Network(s):	DailyWire+
Created by:	Adam Carolla
Distributed by:	The Daily Wire
Starring:	Adam Carolla Megyn Kelly Alonzo Bodden Tyler Fischer Brett Cooper Kyle Dunnigan Marisol Ramirez James Arnold Taylor Melissa Greenspan Brandon Tyler Harris Roseanne Barr Jay Mohr Patrick Warburton Rob Riggle Sage Steele Danny Trejo
Seasons:	1
Episodes:	6

Mr. Birchum is an American adult animated sitcom produced by the conservative media company The Daily Wire. The show premiered on May 12, 2024.

Plot

Wood shop teacher Richard Birchum goes about his daily life dealing with "wokeness."

Why It Belongs in the Donkey Corral

It's yet another generic adult animated series, with nothing new to add to the table.
The concept itself is in poor taste, as it relies on the controversial topic of confronting "wokeness."
- It's also very hypocritical that for a conservative outlet like The Daily Wire which opposes LGBTQ+ rights, they hired an animation crew from Spain that consists of mostly LGBTQ+ animators.
- Even the promotional material wanted queer audiences to be triggered, only to get this boring schlock.
- The hypocrisy doesn't stop behind the scenes. There's even potential queer baiting between Elliot and Rick in the fourth episode.
- There is also a non-binary character in the form of Don Gage.
Rick Birchum is a very, very unlikable character and is by far the worst character in this show.
- In "Welcome Back, Birchum!":
  - Instead of taking away one of his students' cell phone privileges for using her phone in class and/or placing her in detention for it, he puts the phone in a sawdust bin.
  - He goes on a harsh tirade about how dogs are supposed to eat meat instead of plant-alternative dog food.
  - He punishes a student for speaking Spanish, which some Spanish-speaking viewers would find offensive.
  - He fails his entire class despite not properly teaching them how to do woodwork.
  - He uses his students to build his porch without their parents' permission and just uses them for free labor disguised as extra credit.
  - He uses his political views and stance as a conservative as an excuse to get out of trouble when Elliott tries to hold Rick accountable for his actions. Rick would go on to use similar tactics like this in later episodes to escape karma.
The other characters are just as unlikable.
- Rick's son, Eddie, is a basement dweller who just likes to play video games.
- Her stepdaughter, Jeanie, shares her father's racist and conservative views.
  - In the fifth episode, she locks Elliot in a bathroom stall because he wanted to talk about pronouns.
As with any generic adult animated series, the humor relies on Family Guy-style cutaway gags, gross-out humor, pop culture references, and egregious amounts of liberal bashing.
- In the first episode, when Eddie streams himself playing video games, Rick shows his butt in front of Eddie's camera.
- Even in the first episode, two minutes in, there are Star Wars references like JEDI: Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion on Elliot as well as him wearing a "The Force is Female" helmet and wearing a Jedi robe. He equates the patriarchy with going over to the Dark Side.
- Gross-out humor: Don barfs into a kangaroo's pouch on a trip in Australia, which also causes its joey to barf out as well. And to add more barf to that, Don plans on going to Antarctica and barfing on a penguin.
- There's even a reference to the infamous "Will Smith Slap" done by Don while drunk to an inflatable doll.
In a similar vein to the infamous film “Loqueesha”, the show attempts to parody, satirize, and take jabs at “woke culture” but the way this is executed just comes across as shameful and offensive due to most of the humor being based on strawman arguments and the terrible behavior of the show’s characters.
Cheap animation and character designs. It doesn't help that it looks like a rip-off of Brickleberry.
- It gets even worse when in the background, several characters move like cardboard cutouts. It makes the animation in Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate look amazing by comparison.
- The fourth episode has a musical sequence in which the animation looks like it was done through keyframing and tweening.
- Like Chip Chilla's animation team, the animators were stuck on a very tight deadline and had to animate the show in a very rushed matter, contributing to these errors.
Regarding the show’s format, the show being animated is shown to be completely unnecessary as it does not have anything to justify being a cartoon other than to save money as filming things in live action is more expensive than animating things. This goes to show that the show has low production values.
Poor voice acting due to the fact that most of the voice actors are just conservative journalists and figures.
Poor soundtrack that is just generic country rock music to show how "patriotic" this show is.
The episodes are boring and hard to sit through.
- The first episode, "Welcome Back, Birchum!" is a partial rip-off of the King of the Hill episode "Little Horrors of Shop."
The show is so bad that even conservative viewers hate it. When your target audience hates this show for simply being bad, you know you managed to screw up.

Redeeming Qualities

There are at least a handful of funny moments:
- A pack of wolves eats another wolf.
- Rick gets hit in the face by a volleyball and in a later episode, gets his hand stuck in a lathe. These moments are unintentionally satisfying given how unlikable he is.
- A student in the Individualized Grade Recalibration system is listed as "Just dumb".
- A volunteer accidentally drops a bag of cement on his foot while cringing in pain.
Despite the terrible voice acting, the voice acting by Patrick Warburton (Joe Swanson from Family Guy and Steve Barkins from Kim Possible), James Arnold Tylor and Adam Carolla (both of which starred in Drawn Together, are great.
While most of the voice acting is bad in the show, the international voice acting is better.
Like many other modern bad adult cartoons, the theme song is admittedly catchy and can be the best thing in the show.
Some of the characters may be likable.
The 2011 pilot is better than the actual show.

Reception

Mr. Birchum received negative reviews from critics and audiences. Currently, it has a rating of 3.7 on IMDb. The show has been criticized for its poor humor and attempts at conservative messaging, while also criticized as a clone of Family Guy and King of the Hill. It's so hated that some viewers argue Velma was better.

Trivia

Mr. Birchum's name and voice are reused from Dick Birchum, Adam Corolla's puppet character from Crank Yankers.
Adam Carolla and James Arnold Taylor both starred in Drawn Together.

Videos

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