Robot Chicken

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Robot Chicken
"It's Alive!"
Genre: Sketch comedy Black comedy Satire Running Time: 11 minutes 22 minutes (specials) Country: United States Release Date: February 20, 2005 – present Network(s): Adult Swim Created by: Seth Green Matthew Senreich Distributed by: Williams Street Starring: Seth Green Les Claypool Zachary Levi Katee Sackhoff George Lowe Michael Ian Black Chrisian Slater Breckin Meyer Donald Faison Adam Talbott Mark Hamil Pateick Pinney Patrick Stewart Jamie Kaler Michelle Trachtenberg Seasons: 11 Episodes: 220 (and 11 specials)

Robot Chicken is a long-running American adult stop-motion sketch comedy television series, created and executive produced for Adult Swim by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. It premiered on February 20, 2005, and is currently the longest-running Adult Swim Animated Series as it has aired for a total of 16 years.

Summary

Seth Green and Matthew Senreich created the off-the-wall comedy hit, which is a series of pop-culture parodies using stop-motion animation of toys, action figures, and dolls. The title character was an ordinary chicken until he was run down by a car and subsequently brought back to life in cyborg form by a mad scientist who tortures Robot Chicken by forcing him to watch a random selection of TV shows, the sketches that make up the body of each episode. The show often features special episodes built around a single theme, including Star Wars and DC Comics.

Why It's ALIVE!

1. The stop-motion animation is amazing as it uses action figures and dolls instead of clay-mated puppets.
2. It satirizes pop culture referencing toys, movies, TV shows, video games, celebrities, politicians, etc. much in the same vein as comedy sketch shows like Saturday Night Live.
3. Funny and likable characters, including the Nerd, the Bloopers Host, Bitch Pudding, and even the titular Chicken.
4. Plenty of hilarious and unforgettable sketches such as:
   • Delicious Gummy Bears
   • J.R.R Tolkien, Jr., Jr.
   • The Black Stallion
   • Eagle Eye Smith
   • Unicorn Fantasy
   • Lil' Hitler
   • Donkey Kong Halo
   • Bob the Union Scab
   • Five Stages of Grief
   • Who could forget one of the most important sketches of all time, The Blow Some Steam Sketch.
5. Some of the toilet humor is funny.
6. Great voice acting, especially from Seth Green and Seth MacFarlane.
7. Creative writing, with many skits being funny.
8. Bizarre theme song that fits the show well.
9. The success of this show spawned Titan Maximum and Buddy Thunderstruck, both of which are great.
10. It stands out to be the longest-running stop-motion animated series. You'd be quite lucky to know this show has always stayed in stop-motion, even from Day 1.
11. It even spawned a short-lived, family-friendly spin-off for Cartoon Network called MAD with a similar premise as this show except with the content toned down for its younger target audience and uses a wider variety of animation styles as opposed to just stop-motion and aired from 2010 to 2013.
12. Profanity is censored on television, though most home video releases of the show are uncensored.

Dead Qualities

1. Like Treehouse of Horror, some sketches are extremely disturbing, unfunny, boring, insulting, or just mean-spirited such as:
   • Pluto Nash Day
   • Cole Slaw
   • The Sodomy Cycle
   • Potter, You Fool
   • Toy Story 4 (not to be confused with the actual movie with the same name)
   • The Homestar Runner Sketch (since the joke here is confusing)
   • Home Alone Clip (though it is nice for Macaulay Culkin to reprise his role)
   • Happy Birthday, Calvin
   • Turbo Teen
   • The Worst Halloween
   • The Worst School Day
   • The Last Pizza (arguably one of the worst sketches of all time)
2. Most of the toilet humor is unfunny as expected.
3. Some sketches are inaccurate to the source material they are parodying, such as the Team Fortress 2 sketch.
4. The Pepe And Michigan J Frog sketch is just a dumb crossover where none of the frogs won, instead it's just a political mess.
5. "Malcolm X Fully Loaded" is often considered the worst episode in the series by many fans and is currently the only worst episode of the show we have.

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