What happens when you put eight animated characters from different cartoons in the same house? Total chaos. Drawn Together is an animated TV “Reality,” parodying famous cringe-worth reality shows such as Big Brother or Jersey Shore. Living together in the house, the cast’s interactions with one another lead to some of the weirdest, most disgusting, messed-up, yet, hilarious content on television.
Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein created “Drawn Together”. They decided on a sitcom style cartoon, in a reality show setting, because they wanted to base the show’s jokes off of each character’s unique personality. The show aired on Comedy Central from 2004 until 2007 when the show was ultimately cancelled. However, in 2010 the Drawn Together movie: “The Movie!” was released on DVD.
Check out the trailer for season 1 below:
Characters living in the house consist of:
Ling-Ling – A tiny parody of ‘Pikachu’ from Pokémon. Ling-Ling speaks in a Japanese sounding nonsense language, so you have to read the English subtitles to understand what Ling-Ling is saying.
Captain Leslie Hero – A buff, superman style character. Captain Leslie Hero has many strange, oftentimes sexual, jokes and tendencies.
Princess Clara – The spoiled princess who is portrayed as a sheltered, religious, racist woman who likes to sing.
Wooldoor Jebediah Sockbat – A strange character that appears to be a mix between SpongeBob and Stimpy.
Foxxy Love – A ‘ghetto-speaking’, slick and promiscuous singer who also solves mysteries.
Toot Braunstein – An alcoholic, black and white cartoon version similar in appearance to Betty Boop. She has many personality disorders including depression and eating disorders.
Spanky Ham – An ultra crude humored, annoying, pig, who is addicted to sex and doesn’t speak unless it is in poor taste.
Xandir Wifflebottom – A homosexual, sensitive, feminine parody of resembling Link from The Legend of Zelda.
The humor in this series closely resembles the jokes in shows like South Park, topical, and extremely adult-friendly. To enjoy this show, I think it is important to first see the humor in the show’s concept. The jokes in Drawn Together keep coming, so while many come off as too weird, or maybe touch a subject that could be considered out-of-bounds, the show moves fast to keep you entertained. Drawn Together relies heavily on the shock value of many of their jokes. In some episodes it’s actually pretty incredible the show could be aired on TV, the jokes are that crude.
Included in the Drawn Together: The Complete Collection package are 7 discs. Two for each of the first three seasons, and the final disc featuring The Drawn Together Movie. Although complete seasons of Drawn Together have previously been released on DVD, this set offers all discs together in a nicely packaged boxed set with the movie included.
The set also includes bonus material such as:
-Audio commentaries by the cast and creators
-Behind-the-scenes interviews
-Karaoke sing-along
-Censored/Uncensored game
-Deleted Scenes
The show moves from place to place rapidly so it might be hard to get into at first, if this is your first experience watching the show. If you think shows like Family Guy are all over the place, you are truly in for a surprise with Drawn Together. Drawn Together has very little consistency in plot, and the concept allows the writers to really free flow ridiculous jokes in each episode. This is why I believe the show has built somewhat of a ‘cult-following’.
Personally, I am still up in the air with Drawn Together. Some scenes were absolutely historical, while other jokes came across as a little too bizarre for my taste. Also, after watching seasons 1-3, the movie was a minor disappointment. However, in both the movie and the show’s final episode, Drawn Together is able to poke fun at itself and makes several references to the show’s Comedy Central cancellation.
Drawn Together was successful in producing some of the funniest voice acting I have seen on a Comedy Central show. With a cast featuring names such as Adam Carolla, Abbey McBride, Jack Plotnick, Cree Summer, and James Arnold Taylor (among others) the characters come to life with wild personalities, adding a ton of entertainment value.
If you haven’t seen the show before, I recommend watching an episode or two before purchasing this set because this level of humor definitely isn’t for everybody, especially those with children present. But, if you have seen the show before, or you’re a fan of outrageous humor with zero boundaries, this could end up being your favorite animated show. For Drawn Together fans this complete collection truly has it all, and with the extra features included, you wont find a better value than this set.
