With few exceptions, TV seeks to be broad, accessible, and inoffensive. Boundary-pushing shows do exist, but there are unspoken lines that most don't even bother approaching. Enter Wonder Showzen, a half-hour MTV2 program that feels like Sesame Street reared by smart, cynical, degenerate wolves. (A disclaimer before each episode states, "The stark, ugly, and profound truths Wonder Showzen exposes may be soul-crushing to the weak of spirit. If you allow a child to watch this show, you are a bad parent or guardian.") Sure, but what about the kids that are actually on the show? The first season—out now on DVD—features mostly young children interacting with evil (or stupid, or both) puppets and the occasional guest star (Amy Sedaris, Flavor Flav, Christopher Meloni). A smiling kid saying "I want to punch God in the face" may be one of the weirdest things on TV this year, but it isn't even close to the show's funniest or most offensive moments. Regular features include Clarence, a puppet that harasses people on the street; cartoons on everything from a heroin-shooting Bible to a canine gynecologist; and the amazing "Beat Kids," in which precocious preteens (most notably a red-headed scamp named Trevor) ambush unsuspecting people with bizarre, biting questions. (To a stockbroker: "Who did you exploit today?") Just prior to the second season's debut, The A.V. Club spoke with joke-prone Wonder Showzen creators John Lee and Vernon Chatman.
The A.V. Club: How did Wonder Showzen get started?
John Lee: It was an experiment. Vernon and I locked ourselves in a box with no light and sound to learn God's language, and it worked pretty good, because that's the show. The show is broadcast live in God's language.
Vernon Chatman: And then here we are talking to you.
JL: The first thing we came up with was a song, "Kids' show, kids' show, oh good Lord, a kids' show," that never ends. The concept was that the opening song was gonna last like 20 minutes, and then it was gonna be just a minute of television. And I totally remember thinking, "If we wuss out on this idea, then we just suck. I hope I never get to that point, where I sell out, where I actually do the show and not just the song."
VC: But the older you get, the more your spirit dies, and the more you like money.
JL: We've lived on the street for too long not to be doing this show. But I think slowly we're turning the show into something just that annoying.
AVC: Maybe the last episode can be just the theme song.
JL: We've tried to end the show many times, but it doesn't seem to work. We tell MTV, "Buy us out," but they're not doing it. This season, there were three episodes that we were like, "This episode should totally end the show."
VC: I don't know if you've seen all the episodes, but last season we had the "Patience" episode. [The show's second segment was simply the first segment played backward. —ed.]
JL: Our assistant editor—our show-boy, we call him, but he doesn't like to be called show-boy, so make sure you print that…
VC: He thought we weren't getting more than three minutes on the air.
JL: That's just a sign of network desperation. They said, "We need another episode," and we jokingly said to the executive, "Hey, we'll just run the thing backward," and he came back the next day and said, "Let's do it." And then we're like, "Shit, we have to turn this into something."
VC: It was originally gonna be just 21 minutes of a guy and a puppet saying, "Patience."
JL: We've learned we don't need to make an interesting show.
VC: We can just make MTV put anything on the air.
JL: Because that kind of worked, technically.
VC: It actually made it to air, and nobody got fired. They actually promoted some people because of it.
JL: Our goal all along has been to get people fired, and it hasn't worked. We can't even get ourselves fired.
VC: We got a couple of people to quit.
AVC: How much work does the show take on an episode-to-episode basis?
VC: Way too much. We overwrite, overshoot, over-everything.
JL: Vernon and I do all the writing, all the directing, all that stuff, so it takes about nine months to make six shows, which is a ridiculous waste of time. I calculated what we get paid per hour, and I think I'd be doing better if I worked at Cinnabon, because you get free Cinnabons. We don't get free Cinnabons in the situation we have now. There are deals being made as we speak. Cinna-deals.
AVC: Once you have an episode done and you take it to MTV, do you have to compromise with them about what gets on the air?
JL: We've got 'em pretty much on a leash. We try not to have stuff that's blatantly awful, and we try to have some point to the comedy. We hide behind the flag, the Bible, and the Constitution a lot, and that lets us get away with whatever we want.
VC: We shit all over the back of those things.
.jpg "Wonder Showzen")
AVC: How often do they say no?
JL: How often do they want us to clean that up? We did this thing called "Little Hitler: What's Wrong With The Youth Of Today." We dressed a 9-year-old kid up like Hitler and put him out on the street. We wrote that as a joke, thinking, "Okay, that'll be something that they'll throw out, and then we'll get this other thing." And they liked it.
VC: They were like, "Great!"
JL: And now they won't air that episode any more, because they aired it on Holocaust Awareness Day or something. So you'll only see that episode on DVD, or you can download it from iTunes. They don't have standards when it comes to buying it.
VC: It's not standards, it's protection. Everyone's protecting themselves. Standards are such a weird thing at a network like MTV. What's your moral standard when you're celebrating 16-year-old kids spending $2 million on a party? That's always our argument—"You show this stuff that's actually offensive!"
JL: There's not even any satire to it, just people yelling at workers.
AVC: Is there anything they've said no to flat-out?
VC: We had a real shotgun really shooting a crucifix, and we shot it, but they wouldn't let us air it.
JL: We did it the day before Cheney, our vice president, shot a man in the face, and they thought it was too insensitive. And we're like, "It's the cross' fault. He should have warned us." Usually, if it's something we really want, we just childishly never give up fighting. They have this weird thing on MTV. You can do almost anything, but you can't do a suggestion of oral sex. You can do fucking, you can do eating ass, but you can't suggest oral sex. It was this hard-and-fast rule, and we were like, "Okay, how do we get around this rule? Who do we talk to?" They were like, "This goes all the way to the top." Apparently somebody who owns the network, and I don't want to say who, is allergic. I'm assuming he got caught blowing a priest. That's the only answer.
VC: The only answer we'll accept.
JL: That was the one time we said, "We're not cutting this. If you guys want to go in the show and change something, you can," and they did. They went and dropped out a double entendre or something. We actually had to bring in puppets and show them how puppets don't have genitals. I think they thought our puppets had actual genitals. They were like, "You can't have that puppet put his penis in that other puppet's mouth."
- Comments