Random TV Observations

Down in the Boondocks
Given that I don’t usually find the comic strip especially funny, it was surprising to discover just how hard each episode of “The Boondocks” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim makes me laugh.
This show is hilarious, and I highly recommend it…but not to everyone.
The focus of the show, like the comic strip, is on race relations, politics, and other hot-button topics, all of which it deals with quite frankly and with no apologies. While the end result is a show that can make you laugh your ass off, it’s not a show for the easily (and even the not-so-easily) offended.
If you’re someone who’s of the opinion that the use of racist terms and racial stereotypes is never okay in any context you’ll want to stay away from the show, which throws the “N Word” around as casually and frequently as a teenage girl uses the word “like.”
It’s exactly that sort of shock tactic that gives the humor so much power, though, and which robs the racial epithets of whatever power they might otherwise have.
So with those caveats, check the show out Sundays at 11:30 pm on Cartoon Network.

The War at Home (not that crappy sit-com on after “The Simpsons”)
On a different TV-related front, maybe it’s just me, but every time that Army recruitment commercial in which the dad tells the son he’s a “changed man” because he looked his dad in the eyes when he shook his hand, I can’t help but think that we’re not getting the whole story.
Sure, it’s a heartwarming moment in which we see a father recognizing that his boy is all grown up, and it lets you know that the Army can make a man out of you, but what they don’t show you is what happens six or seven beers later when the cops have been called, mom has ushered all of the younger kids up to their rooms and is hiding in the kitchen, praying, and the father, broken bottle in his hand and stripped down to his wife-beater shirt, is screaming, “So you’re a big man now, aren’t you Army boy? Think you’re big enoug to take on your old ma? Come on, Army Boy! Who’s the big man, huh? Who’s the big fucking man?”
Honestly, you would think that something like that would help drive up recruitment. After all, I’m sure that Baghdad is a lot less chaotic than some people’s home lives:
“Join the Army and see the world...and get far away as possible from your fucked up family.”