Animation Domination High-Def is a block of animation which airs Saturday nights at 11PM/10c on FOX. And all over the internet right now. So far it features the shows Axe Cop and High School USA. More shows will be added as time goes on. More info about the individual shows below. Two more shows have been added to the line-up. They are Lucas Bros. Moving Co. and Golan The Insatiable.
Golan The Insatiable
GOLAN THE INSATIABLE is the story of a mighty godlord from an alternate universe who arrives in the small town of Oak Grove, where his only friend is a 10-year-old goth girl named DYLAN. Together they fight the boredom of suburban life. GOLAN is Dylan’s ideal playmate and constantly urges him to destroy and wreak havoc on the town that makes her so miserable. GOLAN THE INSATIABLE is created by television newcomer Joshua Miller, and developed for television by Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser. Miller, Silverstein and Jeser serve as executive producers.
Nick Weidenfeld and Hend Baghdady serve as executive producers on all ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF series.
Lucas Bros. Moving Co.
The stand-up comedy of New York-based identical twins – and television newcomers – Kenny and Keith Lucas (The Lucas Brothers) gets animated. After their uncle dies and leaves them his old van, the twins start a moving company called Va¢ation Boy$. Their customers are often apprehensive to hire such a scrawny duo, but the brothers like to remind them that that’s why God made two of them. A day that begins simply by moving a bed down the street may lead to the threat of city-wide catastrophe, resolved only with the help of a once-famous ’90s wrestler. No matter what happens around them, KENNY and KEITH always remain totally, bizarrely unfazed. LUCAS BROS. MOVING CO. is created, written and executive-produced by Kenny and Keith Lucas.
Axe Cop
“Axe Cop,” based on the imaginings of a 5-year-old boy, combines sophomoric body-function humor with a dream-logic approach to storytelling. Into 10 minutes, the pilot packs Axe Cop’s back story, surreal digressions explaining the histories of other characters, and a full-fledged rescue mission involving flying, brain-eating dinosaurs. The animation is serviceable, and the show gets a vital boost from the voice performance of Nick Offerman, whose mock solemnity works as well for a mildly fascistic superhero as it did for a middle-American bureaucrat in “Parks and Recreation.”
Fox will introduce more series as time goes on, some of which may move away from the relatively straightforward narrative styles of “Axe Cop” and “High School USA!” They probably won’t stray into the sometimes Dada-like regions explored on cable by Adult Swim’s short-form animated series, however, even though Fox has brought in an Adult Swim alumnus, Nick Weidenfeld, to run this new block. (High-Def does produce looser, more experimental work, which can be seen at Fox’s Web site.)
Mr. Weidenfeld was involved in some good shows at Adult Swim, including “Children’s Hospital,” “Black Dynamite” and “The Boondocks,” which might bode well for the Fox project, depending on how much freedom (and money) a broadcast network is really willing to give him. Maybe he can even manage to change the unwieldy and ugly label Animation Domination High-Def, or A.D.H.D., the only title I can think of that combines an existing corporate trademark with a punning reference to a childhood behavioral disorder.
Produced by Friends Night and Animation Domination High-Def Studios. Written by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein; developed for television by Judah Miller and Nick Weidenfeld, based on the graphic novel created and written by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle; Mr. Weidenfeld, Hend Baghdady, Mr. Jeser and Mr. Silverstein, executive producers.
WITH: Nick Offerman (Axe Cop), Ken Marino (Flute Cop), Rob Heubel (Grey Diamond), Giancarlo Esposito (Army Chihuahua), Tyler, the Creator (Liborg) and Vincent Kartheiser (Bat Warthog Man).
High School USA!
“High School USA!,” a broad and dull spoof of the Archie gang, slides down the wall quickly. Mr. Stamatopoulos’s humor in the premiere episode, a satire of the anti-bullying movement, feels unfocused and past its expiration date — there’s funny business involving emoticons, girls’ kissing and the meaning of “ironic,” none of it very funny.
Of course when the Betty and Veronica characters, now named Cassandra and Amber, make out at the diner, it’s a reminder that the whole point of late-night animation is to get young men to watch television; likewise the moment involving the Reggie character, a steroidal jock named Brad, beating up a nerd who voluntarily sticks his head through a hole in a men’s room stall. Not much glory for Fox there.
The tone-deafness of Mr. Stamatopoulos’s attempt to lampoon both bubbleheaded modern thinking and afterschool-special preachiness comes through in this exchange after one of Brad’s Neanderthal pronouncements: “That sounds a little rapey, Brad.”
“No, it’s worse than ****, Amber. Brad’s a bully.”
Happily, “High School USA!” is balanced by the premiere of “Axe Cop,” based on the Nicolle brothers’ characters but written by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein. It’s a nonsensical but inventive and purely entertaining takeoff on superhero tales, with the ax-wielding protagonist and his buddies — Flute Cop, Bat Warthog Man, Army Chihuahua — battling buglike aliens and a building-size villain to rescue Bat Warthog Man’s friends, who turn out to be the cast of a fondly remembered TV show.
Produced by Friends Night and Animation Domination High-Def Studios. Created and written by Dino Stamatopoulos; Nick Weidenfeld, Hend Baghdady and Mr. Stamatopoulos, executive producers.
WITH: Nathan Barnatt (Blackstein), T. J. Miller (Brad), Vincent Kartheiser (Marsh Merriwether), Mandy Moore (Cassandra) and Dino Stamatopoulos (Marsh’s Dad).
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