Our Cartoon President
Warning: Do not write "It's a Democratic propaganda show" in the Why It Sucks section, or add in the category "Propaganda shows" on this page.
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 If you're going to do a satire on the commander-in-chief, at least don't depict their entire party negatively by portraying it in a petty and tasteless way.
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Our Cartoon President is an American adult animated satirical television series that premiered on February 11, 2018 on Showtime. The series was created by Stephen Colbert, Chris Licht, Matt Lapin, Tim Luecke and R.J. Fried, and is based on a recurring segment from Colbert's late-night talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The show was canceled in November 2020 after Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to former Delaware Senator and Vice President Joe Biden.
Plot
The show is a satirical take on the Trump administration. It is based on a recurring segment of Stephen Colbert's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The second season introduces the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, as the focus of the show shifts to the 2020 election.
Why It's A Candidate To Be Impeached
- The idea of a comedy cartoon centered entirely around Donald Trump's politics is a very questionable idea in the first place due to his extremely polarizing nature, along with the fact that Trump himself has been ridiculed way too much on the media and various shows (mostly talk shows, South Park (albeit, in a good way) and Saturday Night Live). Stephen Colbert, who co-created this show, already made fun of Trump a lot of times on his talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
- The series airs on the premium network Showtime (a network for higher-quality series and/or series far too explicit for basic cable/broadcast networks), yet feels more like a show that belongs on Comedy Central (the series was created and aired before Showtime's parent CBS re-merged with Comedy Central's parent Viacom to form ViacomCBS). It didn't help that Comedy Central made the similar Trump satire The President Show months prior, making this series redundant.
- The series is overall an anti-Republican propaganda which portrays Republicans as idiotic, racist jerks while (in the first season) Democrats are seen as the "smartest" people on the planet; both of those are stereotypes because not all Republicans are racist idiots, and not all Democrats are smart either.
- Trump himself is portrayed as an unfunny and obnoxious bigot with an annoying voice who somehow mistakes a pen for a bomb.
- The animation, despite being the first show done with Adobe Character Animator (a program where 2D vector puppets are animated in real-time through motion-capture), ranges from barely passable to absolutely cheap and lazy.
- Incredibly terrible writing that somehow has a poor grasp on politics.
- All the vocal impersonations of the politicians range from bearable to absolutely awful.
- Some of the character designs (on many right-wing politicians) are ugly, inaccurate, stereotypical, and cringe-inducing:
- Trump's skin is drawn orange and tiny hands like nearly every single Trump caricature ever made.
- Steven Mnuchin (the Secretary of the Treasury at the time) has a big nose and mouth in the series when they aren't that big in real life.
- Jeff Sessions' design barely looks like his appearance in real life, with huge ears.
- George Stephanopoulos' design in the series has grey hair when he has brown hair in real life.
- It's dull, bland, and boring, with dumb and unfunny jokes that have been overdone well before the series even premiered.
- Some of the plots are ridiculous:
- In "State Dinner", Justin Trudeau, the current incumbent of the office of Prime Minister of Canada, comes to the White House for a state dinner, with Trump trying to outdo him.
- In "Civil War", Trump refuses to trust Mike Pence, assuming he's after his job, while at the same struggling to pass voter suppression legislation.
- The show ends up aging horribly in the long run (even being dated already in some instances when an episode first airs), despite being made as cheaply as possible. At least it's fresh with South Park when it airs because episodes take a mere 6 days to create.
- False advertising: The trailer claims it to be "The highest rated show of all time", which is an outright lie.
Redeeming Qualities
- At least the voice acting is passable.
- Some of the backgrounds are pretty decent.
- Some of the character designs, such as Mike Pence, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin and Alex Jones, are actually decent and accurate.
- Despite his flaws, Joe Biden is a likable character.
- Despite showing favoritism towards the Democratic Party in season 1, they did improve on it as it began taking jabs at all the Democratic Party primary candidates, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Democrat Congress Folk starting in season 2.
- At least it aired a year into Trump's presidency (while Lil' Bush aired too late into George W. Bush's presidency to be remotely relevant).
Reception
The series was met with mixed-to-negative reception for its Democratic bias, poor quality animation, unfunny attempts at mocking Donald J. Trump or politics in general, character designs, and its poor humor. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds a 32% approval rating with an average rating of 5.17 out of 10 based on 25 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Sugar-coated satire, Our Cartoon President wavers between scathing social criticism and softball slings in a way that's as unsatisfying as it is uncomfortable.". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 42 out of 100 based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".