Television shows have been gaining popularity more and more
through the decades. Several shows have especially become popular like Full
House, The Office, The Walking Dead and many others. Adult Swim is a television
station that is known for showing animated shows that have more adult material.
It also shows late night television spots and infomercials. One such television
spot, Too Many Cooks, has recently caught the attention of many people when it
was aired in the early morning. It is a short film that at first appears to be
a new show, but slowly evolves more and more until the audience realizes that
it is not a show and in fact a parody of classic television shows, mainly from
the 80’s and 90’s. Too Many Cooks is a parody focused on explaining how culture
and society has become more and more obsessed with television shows.
This argument will be explored via two aspects. The first
based on the in video content, and the second being the context. There are many
elements within the content of the video where the television media is being
parodied. At first everything seems normal, the introduction is very similar to
family sitcoms from the 80’s and 90’s. When you feel like the introduction
sequence should have ended, it keeps going, as if to say that amount of new
shows being made every year keeps rising. The video continues to go through
many different film genres such as comedy, detective, cartoon, soap opera, cooking
shows, sci-fi, doctor shows, and even the old Brady Bunch style for a little
bit. Showing each genre as it did emphasizes that those television genres are
all under the same curse as each other. This curse being that television shows are
being obsessed too much over by society.
Another element in the video is a specific character that is
emphasized as a motif. This character shows up near the beginning as a creepy
killer man. His appearances aggressively become worse and worse. These
appearance represent the consumers of television because of their desire to
become more and more apart of the show itself. People in today’s culture feel
the desire to learn everything they can about a show and keep up to date on
them religiously. The man’s grotesque visual in the video can be related to
that of the consumers who demand television constantly and as a result it takes
over their life and they metaphorically “feed” on it like the creepy guy did in
the video.
Toward the end of the video, there is a segment that is
dedicated to what a television show should do, which is to actually play the
show. The short length of what is played represents how little there is in many
shows today content wise. Most of the emphasis in today’s shows are on the
people who made the show, which is also implied by the entirety of the cast
present in the short seconds of the ending to Too Many Cooks.
Speaking contextually, there are a few items that should be
highlighted that make this short film different than popular television. The
first being the time that it was aired. It was played early in the mornings
during the week, which happens to be a time when hardly anybody is awake. This
is truly a humble act of the creator and the studio for airing it at such an
odd time, where hardly anybody would stumble upon it, avoiding any kind of
hypocrisy that could arise if it was aired during a popular time on a more
popular station. Of course the counterargument here being that that time was
the only time the creator could afford, especially since it was so low budget
that Casper Kelley, the creator, had to put in his own personal hours in order
to finish it.
Of course the director did not intentionally have this theme
in mind when he created the film. He said that he wanted it to be more like an
80’s sitcom. And since it was filmed on a comedy station, its intentions could
have been more to entertain by poking fun at television shows, rather than
informing people of the effect that it is having on the culture. There are many
other parodied short films that are aired on the same station and at the same
time slots as Too Many Cooks. It is possible that this short video is just
another film made to catch the attention of the few who remain awake.
That being said, Too Many Cooks still provides strong ideas
about today’s culture having too much of an obsession with television. This is
exemplified by the content and context which creates a parody that makes fun of
the many popular shows that are out today.
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