How Spike TV Tried, And Failed, To Corner Adult Animation

 

The phrase “The First Network for Men” is now a boast that would likely invoke eye rolls and immediate dismissals from viewers, rather than act an attractive selling point. However, back in 2003 this is exactly the strategy that was used to not only launch a new television network, but also a block of late-night animated programming that was supposed to redefine what could be approached in a cartoon. In reality, all that it did was marginalize women and alienate an entire demographic in the laziest way possible.

There are dozens of cutting edge adult animated television shows at this point and it can almost be easy to take for granted just how mature cartoons have come. Back in 2003 the adult animation landscape was much less exciting and Viacom aimed to fix this by turning The New TNN into Spike TV. The major push behind Spike TV is that Viacom thought that the 18-34 male demographic was being severely underserviced on television, especially when it came to animation. Finally, men would now have a safe haven where they could watch edgy cartoons that cater specifically to them.

Spike TV aimed to fix this problem, but in reality they seemed to be more of a breeding ground for misogyny, punching down, and cheaply produced animation. In this sense, Spike TV may have achieved their “First Network For Men,” goal, but practically as a crude stereotype of what the gender is interested in. None of these programs really attempted to be higher art or become something of substance. They were all satisfied in wallowing in depravity where shock content seemed to be valued just as much, if not even more than a competent story. “The First Network For Horny Teenage Boys” would have likely been a more accurate description of Spike TV’s animation slate.

Adapted from a web series of the same name, Gary the Rat is perhaps the lesser of evils when it comes to Spike TV’s animated series. It’s an absurdist mortality tale that chronicles a self-interested lawyer being turned into a giant rat, who must go on to continue to practice law with this newly offensive appearance. The most notable thing about the series is that it stars Kelsey Grammer in the titular role, who actually does put a lot of effort into his performance and seems to genuinely be invested in the series. Gary the Rat also had other notable talents like David Hyde Pierce, Ted Danson, Michael Keaton, and Betty White in recurring roles, as well as a score that came from Mark Mothersbaugh.

Despite all of this, Gary the Rat is just stupendously average. The court cases that Gary takes on provide the opportunity to do parodies of bigger courtroom dramas like Philadelphia, but tonally the series just never comes together. The rampant murder feels gratuitous at times, but many of the jokes are easy and don’t feel worthy of Grammer’s efforts. There are still a definite lack of animated legal series, so Gary the Rat gets points there, but it needed more of the insanity of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law and not so much of the extreme nature of Family Guy’s wilder moments.

Stripperella, which aired alongside Gary the Rat, is also a very strange entity. It’s a cartoon created by Stan Lee where Pamela Anderson plays Erotica Jones, a superhero secret agent who moonlights as a stripper. This feels incredibly on brand for what Spike TV was going for and the series has a clever self-aware nature to itself. At its best moments it feels reminiscent of the campy energy that surrounds the ’60s Batman series, but the majority of the time the series just plays with excessive double entendre and a hypersexuality towards everything.

Stripperella is a show where characters have names like Queen Clitoris, Pushy Galore, and Chief Stroganoff. Episodes detail things like “booby-trapped” breast implants that have explosives inside of them or a shrink ray that reiterates how size doesn’t matter. Striperella is not interested in highbrow comedy. Curiously, the show featured explicit nudity due to the show’s strip club setting, but it all had to be blurred when it aired on Spike TV. This level of disconnect between the series and the network for what was permissible is another example of the problems that plagued production.

Stripperella also has people like Mark Hamill, Jon Cryer, and Tom Kenny rounding out the cast, so it’s not without its talent. It gets a fraction of the energy of something like The Venture Bros. and although the series was way ahead of the curve when it comes to superheroes, everything that this series was doing is currently getting serviced in a better capacity. Despite the pedigree behind the series, Stripperella unfortunately never really had a chance. Stan Lee and Viacom were sued by an ex-stripper who claimed that Stripperella was actually her idea and that she told it to Stan Lee during a “private dance session” with him. This negative attention towards the series, which was already viewed in a condescending way, led to the show’s cancellation and another property that Spike TV couldn’t do anything with.

Ren & Stimpy “Adult Party Cartoon” was simultaneously the most anticipated and reviled program to make it to Spike TV. The return of the highly popular Nickelodeon cartoon Ren & Stimpy was exciting for many fans, but the program pushed Spike TV’s adult mandate to the limit and the result was a soulless creation that retained the Ren and Stimpy characters, but none of the charm that was present in the original series. The program was a highly offensive exercise that made Ren and Stimpy a bisexual couple and put them in needlessly adult scenarios that just played as uncomfortable. Billy West, the original voice actor for Ren and Stimpy, didn’t return, citing that the decision to do so would be damaging to his career based on the show’s content.

In an exercise that’s almost emblematic of the failure of Spike TV’s animation block as a whole, Adult Party Cartoon only aired three of its six episodes, leading to scheduling problems on the network, and the unaired installments eventually seeing release on DVD. These episodes push things even further, with “Naked Beach Frenzy” being the most disgusting and egregious example, where Ren and Stimpy spend an episode at a nude beach. It’s worth noting that Kricfalusi wanted to produce a new episode for the DVD set entitled “Life Sucks,” that sees Stimpy asking a crucified Cat Jesus why there’s pain and suffering in the world, only for the martyr to reply that he had to create something to amuse himself. So that’s the level of edgelord content that Adult Party Cartoon was striving for at the time.

This series and its content are even more problematic when considering the details that have come out regarding John Kricfalusi, some explicitly occurring during the production of Adult Party Cartoon. The extremely sexualized subject matter becomes even more regrettable and leaves a bad taste on the entire series. The colossal misfire of Adult Party Cartoon is really what tainted Spike TV’s entire animation slate and doomed the other series before they had a chance. What was meant to be the prestige anchor of the block became an objectionable controversy that couldn’t even finish airing.

Gary the Rat, Striperella, and Adult Party Cartoon were Spike TV’s trio of flagship shows, but they also experimented with a few others, which either didn’t go on to air at all, or did so in an extremely limited capacity. One of these programs, This Just In!, was an animated series that focused on a conservative news anchor named Brian Newport. This Just In! strived to be different by having a conservative pundit who was actually intelligent and competent, rather than some buffoon. The political satire also intended to take a page from out of South Park’s book by capitalizing on their episodes featuring storylines and news that were ripped from the headlines and as timely as possible.

The series’ cheap Flash animation approach allowed the show’s creators, Steve Marmel and Kevin Kay, to expedite the production of episodes with the show’s timeliness being more important than its appearance (it honestly looks like what a Leisure Suit Larry cartoon might look like). This Just In! only aired four episodes during 2004, some of which have slowly made their way onto YouTube over time. Despite its failure, This Just In! probably had the best chance at actually succeeding. Its premise is still something that animated series are trying to make work, whether it’s in Our Cartoon President or Tooning Out the News. The conservative angle for the show might have been what did it in, but it was trying something new at the time.

Another series, Zilch & Zero, was announced along with the birth of Spike TV, but it never actually made it to air. Zilch & Zero was created by John Leguizamo and seemed to capture the energy of other slacker comedies like Clerks. The cartoon would be set in a video rental store (remember those?) and focus on two best friends who immerse themselves in film minutiae as they detach from the real world. The premise behind Zilch & Zero isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it also doesn’t sound broken, either. This program could have brought a nerdier sensibility to Spike TV, which was a niche that definitely wasn’t being serviced with any of their other shows. Unfortunately, the underperformance of Spike’s other programs meant that Zilch & Zero would never get a real shot.

Finally, one of the more puzzling developments at Spike TV was the animated series, Immigrants. Coming from the acclaimed animation studio, Klasky-Csupo, Immigrants centered on two roommates, one from Hungary and the other from Russia, who have recently moved to Los Angeles in search of that coveted “American Dream.” While the concept may sound slightly problematic, Immigrants is actually respectful of its cultures and tries to find a refreshing point of view. Klasky-Csupo had previously proven that they could do impressive animation for adults with their work on Duckman and Immigrants looked like it could carry some of that same energy.

Despite the talent involved and having Hank Azaria and Eric McCormack in the cast, Immigrants never aired. Spike TV ordered six episodes and even announced a two-hour marathon to premiere the series in August of 2004 (along with the return of Adult Party Cartoon), but the damage at Spike TV was already done at this point. Klasky-Csupo was able to repackage the episodes of Immigrants into a film called Immigrants: L.A. Dolce Vita in 2008. On some level it’s nice that this project could still see a release, while also not having to associate itself with the failure of Spike TV’s animation block.

It stands to reason that the animation industry and television as a whole have drastically evolved in the 15 years since Spike TV’s inception. It’s understandable that these programs would be a little cruder and less inclusive than the current animation landscape. However, 2003 was hardly the dark ages for smart, animated content. At this point Adult Swim was already around and programs like Samurai Jack, The Venture Bros., and Home Movies had aired, which intelligently engaged with an adult audience without diminishing anyone in the process. In theory, if Spike TV debuted with more thoughtful animated programming than it might have actually been able to make a splash or create a show that lasted beyond a single season. Adult Swim had plenty of crude content circa 2003, but it feels like shows such as Gary the Rat or Stripperella would have even been too juvenile and cheap for the fledgling network at the time.

Since Spike TV only had a few animated series, the rest of the network’s schedule was filled up with things like James Bond films, Star Trek series, and wrestling. It likely would have been smarter to look to those programming decisions as the framework for their animated content. If Spike TV had developed a series like Archer or Final Space, they would have had better fits for the network that still skew towards men, but don’t do so in an embarrassingly desperate way. It’s possible that a Star Trek or James Bond fan may want to watch Stripperella or Ren & Stimpy, but it seems like those shows wouldn’t be their first picks to watch.

After the failure of these programs, Spike TV quickly pivoted towards more action-centric programming. The shift may have helped Spike TV survive for roughly another decade, but it marked the end of their aspirations towards creating a new edgy animation block. A year later, and with not even a handful of series to show for it, Spike TV’s animation experiment was dead. In the end, it seems that Spike TV accrued more lawsuits than it did notable original programs.

In fact, it’s unlikely that another adult animation block akin to what Spike TV featured would even be possible or desirable now. Networks like Adult Swim, Fox, TBS, and now HBOMax have become excellent homes for challenging adult animated content. They may be shows that skew towards the male 18-34 demographic that Spike TV was after, but they’re hardly programs that only appeal to that specific crowd. The idea of intentionally capitalizing on gendered content seems like a major way to fail. Animated series can be complex and speak to universal audiences, despite their perspective, and there’s no need to put such a specific audience on a pedestal.

Something as ludicrous as Stripperella may have seemed like a show that would be perfect for young males, but now something like Harley Quinn can capture that same energy, yet in an infinitely more thoughtful way, and from a female point of view, at that. Males require a whole lot more than base-level titillation and toilet humor, yet Spike TV’s slate was content to capitalize on that rather than push for growth. With hindsight, shows like Gary the Rat or Stripperella don’t seem misunderstood, but rather their shortcomings are even more obvious. These aren’t gems that were ahead of their time or airing on the wrong network; they’re the kind of shows that would be parodied on Saturday Night Live’s “TV Funhouse” segments (and with comparable animation, at that).

The fact that not only have all of these shows been forgotten, but that Spike TV doesn’t even exist anymore, speaks to the nature of how this awkward period has effectively been scrubbed away. It’s strangely fitting that the final piece of programming that aired on Spike TV before the channel was re-branded to the Paramount Network was the film Pitch Perfect, a movie that couldn’t have been more antithetical to the network’s original mission statement.

It’s not uncommon for networks to re-brand themselves, but the shift from Spike TV to the Paramount Network in 2018 felt especially laced with vitriol. The transition from Spike TV to Paramount featured an extensive viral marketing campaign where the aim was to insult the former network as much as possible. Their angle was that “Spike” was an employee who’s been fired, with the advertising campaign attacking Spike for his terrible programming decisions. This all culminated in a live Facebook stream on January 17, 2018, where viewers were able to vote on how the old Spike TV logo would be demolished and defaced in front of a cheering crowd. Spike TV wasn’t just erased, but its destruction was transformed into live entertainment.

This level of sanctioned animosity is seldom seen on television, but it speaks to just how misguided Spike TV’s campaign really was. For many audiences it wasn’t just enough that these shows were cancelled, but they felt like they were owed some kind of apology. Spike TV’s destruction is meant to be the cathartic release of the network’s embarrassing impulses. The Paramount Network has already found its niche and created a handful of notable programs, but it will likely be some time before the network is interested in returning to animation. Even then, an animated spin-off to Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone seems more likely than a program that centers around a crime fighting stripper or an oversexed cat and dog.