"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: The Boondocks, "Breaking Granddad"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

You can tell it's been a mediocre week for animated TV shows when the strongest piece of animated TV is an episode of The Boondocks' fourth and final season, the only season that was completed without Aaron McGruder's involvement. For those who forgot that The Boondocks is still on the air, McGruder exited his own creation under circumstances that still remain mysterious, even after he posted on his Facebook account in March an unusually benign message of thanks to Sony Pictures Television and Adult Swim for the show's first three seasons. A writer from The Root compared hearing the news of McGruder's departure to "buying tickets to a Public Enemy show only to find out that Chuck D is no longer with the group." Sony claims McGruder exited because he and the studio couldn't come to an agreement over the fourth season's production schedule.

Getting the full story behind the tight-lipped McGruder's departure is about as likely as Dr. Dre dropping Detox. I bet we won't know the full story, perhaps due to legal reasons, until a few years from now (which would be much longer than the amount of time it took for Dave Chappelle to address his fans after he quit Chappelle's Show because he was dissatisfied with sketches that he felt were making white people laugh for the wrong reasons, the same issue that's currently fueling the debate over whether or not Leslie Jones' controversial SNL monologue about slavery is "coonery").

For now, what McGruder's departure has left us with are episodes that mysteriously don't contain any writing credits (the "Created by Aaron McGruder" credit has also been erased from the opening titles, just like when Matt Groening took his name off a Simpsons/Critic crossover episode he despised) and have so far been mostly limp rehashes of earlier Boondocks episodes, with very little of the effective social commentary that distinguished past McGruder-scripted gems like the Peabody-winning "Return of the King." The Boondocks is the latest show that's stumbled creatively after the creator who was so essential to crafting most of the show's greatest hits went ahead and bounced (exhibit A: the departures of Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry from the original Star Trek; exhibit B: Dan Harmon's Sony-related absence during what's come to be known as the "gas leak year" of Community).

Though "Breaking Granddad" is another example of how much the gas leak year of The Boondocks pales in comparison to the seasons when McGruder was involved and was proud to leave his name on the product (the episode is another one this season that doesn't contain a writing credit), it's easily the funniest of the three fourth-season episodes that have aired so far. That's not due to the Breaking Bad gags, which mostly fall flat and are riffs on just the events in the Breaking Bad pilot episode and no other episode in Breaking Bad's history (spoofs of network or cable dramas have never been The Boondocks' strong suit; the third-season finale, which aired 120 years ago, was an underwhelming 24 spoof that showed signs that maybe it wasn't a good idea for McGruder to agree to a fourth season). What redeems "Breaking Granddad" is all the genuinely funny satirical material about hair-care products for black people, a subject that's never really been satirized on an animated show before (the plot has the Freemans inventing and selling a gel that both relaxes and lengthens hair). Even though "Breaking Granddad" is watered-down Boondocks, it's still more daring than late-period Simpsons, even when the latter experiments with CG animation for one episode (which it did this week with the okay-but-still-not-up-to-classic-Simpsons-level "Brick Like Me," a story set mostly in a Lego world fantasized by Homer).

This whole fourth-season arc, in which Robert Freeman (John Witherspoon) winds up so broke that, like pre-cancer-diagnosis Walter White, he's taken a job at a car wash owned by Uncle Ruckus (Gary Anthony Williams), is straight-up character assassination. Sure, Robert's always been a loser, but he's never been as dumb as Riley (Regina King). It's hard to buy that Robert would be so clueless that he'd lose ownership of his house and be forced to sell both himself and his grandsons into slavery. I'm getting the feeling that McGruder left because the storyline wasn't his idea and even he thinks it's inane.

Or maybe it was McGruder's idea and he felt burnt out from both the show and dealing with Sony (he's since moved on to creating a live-action Adult Swim show called Black Jesus), and leaving The Boondocks was the only thing that would make him happy. McGruder has a history of sometimes appearing to be bored with his own creation, especially back when it was a comic strip. Too many of the strip's post-9/11 weekday installments were lazily drawn rehashes of the same scenario--Huey sits and watches some idiotic soundbite on TV--and towards the end of the strip's run, McGruder stopped drawing it and left the illustrating duties to an uncredited artist.

Fortunately, "Breaking Granddad" doesn't rehash material like how the strip would recycle that same damn pose of Huey parked in front of the TV or how the season premiere (with special guest star Michael B. Jordan as a Chris Brown-esque celebrity) laughlessly recycled the much more hilarious "Tom, Sarah and Usher." This week's episode is the first (and judging from King's comments to the press about behind-the-scenes infighting over the direction of her show's writing, most likely to be the only) time I've ever felt like The Boondocks' fourth season wasn't a complete mistake.

Memorable quotes:
* "Well, you see, I'm a little short on cash. [Sound FX of the woman on the other end of the phone line hanging up.]"

* "Oh, thank you, Jesus! Always knew if I pretended to believe in you, it would pay off someday!"

* Boss Willona (special guest star Jenifer Lewis): "Don't you get it? These bitches would put napalm on their hair if it would make it straight. Put a warning label on it!"

* "The ironically named hair gel is the hottest-selling on the market, but experts claim a single jar contains enough high explosives to destroy a small plane or a Prius."

Terence Blanchard's Red Tails score swoops into "AFOS Prime" on A Fistful of Soundtracks

George Lucas and Terence Blanchard (Photo source: Jessica Drossin)

Even though TV spots for feature films flash the cast and crew member credits so quickly you have to pause the DVR to read them, I was able to make out the name of Aaron McGruder in the split-second credits at the end of a TV spot for frequent CSI: NY and Treme director Anthony Hemingway's Tuskegee Airmen flick Red Tails, which came out just in time for Black History Month and was a longtime pet project for George Lucas, who produced it.

"Hold up," I thought. "The Aaron McGruder? The same Aaron McGruder who made Red Tails star Cuba Gooding Jr. and George Lucas such frequent punching bags in his Boondocks comic strip?"

If someone told me 10 years ago that Lucas and McGruder, the most vocal lapsed Star Wars fan outside of Simon Pegg, would work together someday, I would have said, "Sure, they will. When pigs fly."

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Edo G feat. Masta Ace, "Wishing"

Song: "Wishing" by Edo G feat. Masta Ace
Released: 2004
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's featured in The Boondocks' 2006 MLK holiday episode "Return of the King," which had Dr. King (Kevin Michael Richardson) interacting with the characters in the Boondocksverse. Ignorant-ass Riley (Regina King, no relation) sizes up Dr. King and asks him, "Is you Morgan Freeman?" Self-hating, brain-damaged Uncle Ruckus (Gary Anthony Williams) protests against the civil rights leader and in one of the episode's funniest lines, declares "I was happier at the back of the bus!"
Which moment in "Return of the King" does it appear?: "Wishing" accompanies the brief montage where Huey (also Regina King) and MLK go door-to-door to spread the word about their political rally (the above photo is from this sequence). The 2004 track samples King's "I Have a Dream" speech and is Masta Ace and Edo G's list of wishes for changes in everything from the then-Bush-run White House to more-heated-in-2010-than-they-were-in-2004 issues like Islamophobia and health care ("I wish God could take away the pain/I know you wanna call me insane/I'm a dreamer"). "Wishing" isn't featured long enough in "Return of the King" for viewers to dig most of the verses, but the track's presence nicely foreshadows the final moments of Huey's episode-long fantasy ("It's fun to dream").

"Return of the King" is my favorite episode of any animated series in the '00s. The initial fear that Aaron McGruder dumbed down his thought-provoking and politically charged comic strip for TV was laid to rest with a brilliant, hilarious and scathing peek into an alternate reality where King didn't die from James Earl Ray's bullet.

King awakens from a 32-year coma and is disheartened by what's become of the world he non-violently fought for. His image and ideology are exploited in everything from advertising to so-called political discourse (a certain August 2010 rally at the Lincoln Memorial is eerily foretold during the scene where a bow-tied mash-up of smarmy Tucker Carlson and equally smarmy Bill O'Reilly tries to force King to espouse his "Country First"-like agenda, and the blowhard ends up getting an ass-whupping from Huey that always makes me applaud). Streets that were named after MLK have become hotbeds of violence. His pulpit has been taken over by preachers who are talkin' loud and sayin' nothing. MGM released Soul Plane.

"Black Entertainment Television is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life!," complains King in a climactic rant where he frequently says, uh, "Nintendo." King's wake-up call to his community pissed off the totally-missing-the-satirical-point-of-the-episode Rev. Al Sharpton (much of King's speech was lifted from a song by Asheru, the same MC who performed The Boondocks' dope opening title theme). Sharpton publicly lashed out against the McGruder-scripted "Return of the King" and demanded an apology from Cartoon Network for allowing MLK to be "desecrated." The Peabodys responded to Sharpton's criticisms by giving the episode an award.

"What I like about Al is that he's not in this for the publicity," snarks McGruder in the episode's equally hilarious and scathing DVD commentrak.

"Cartoons," adds Boondocks co-executive producer Rodney Barnes in the commentrak. "That's what Dr. King be doin' today: fighting against cartoons."

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Madvillain, "Raid"

Song: "Raid" by Madvillain feat. M.E.D. a.k.a. Medaphoar
Released: 2004
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's one of three Madvillain tracks featured in the 2006 Boondocks episode "Let's Nab Oprah."
Which moment in "Let's Nab Oprah" does it appear?: The sequence at the end of Act 1 where dumbass wiggers Ed Wuncler III (Charlie Murphy--hold up, isn't he black?) and Gin Rummy (Samuel L. Jackson--hold up, isn't he black too?) attack a Woodcrest bookstore to carry out the episode's titular scheme, and Ed and Rummy's increasingly exasperated eight-year-old accomplice Riley Freeman (Regina King--hold up, isn't she a woman?) points out to the duo that they went to the wrong bookstore and kidnapped Maya Angelou by mistake.

The "Where's Oprah, punk?" clip from this sequence, which I tacked on to "Raid" as an intro for airplay during the "Rock Box" block, never fails to amuse me whenever I hear it. It's a hilarious sequence that also gives some nice exposure on TV to DOOM and Madlib and one of my favorite tracks off Madvillainy (because of couplets like "The metal fellow been rippin' flows/Since New York plates were ghetto yellow with broke blue writing"). The opening jazz-piano sample in "Raid" meshes well with the show's Vince Guaraldi-style original score.

Hear the Villain spit enough lightning to rock-shock the Boogie Down to Brighton.

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #6

"There's a rumor going around that Al Sharpton was holding two pieces of chicken right before King said 'n----r,' and I can't say what happened, but paramedics were called."

--Boondocks co-executive producer Rodney Barnes, joking about Rev. Sharpton, who protested the show's "Return of the King" MLK holiday episode in 2006, from the crew commentary for "Return of the King," which later won a Peabody Award

The Palace: Death to Skinny Jeans begins Monday and concludes December 28

As with all other arcs of the Palace webcomic, which I've written and illustrated from time to time since 2008, I'll be posting one strip per day for an entire week. I wanted to post the latest arc last week, but I had to make a last-minute change to a script for one particular strip. I scrapped that strip's original sight gag because the subject of that gag--Skids, half of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's pair of Amos n' Andybots--was just too difficult for me to recreate in pencil and ink. Thanks a lot, Transformers sequel character designers, for making your bots so damn difficult to draw.

(I miss the Boondocks comic strip so much. I wonder how Aaron McGruder would have immediately reacted to Skids and Mudflap. And I wonder if he'll reference them in the Boondocks animated series' forthcoming third season.)

So because of that last-minute change, The Palace's new arc will unfold this Christmas Week, even though the arc isn't exactly Christmassy. But it references some of the most infamous moments involving America's favorite pastime of insulting Asian Americans, race, pop music and fashion in the past year, so I guess it is a good time to post the arc because many of the sites I click to are currently posting their year-end (or in the cases of The A.V. Club and The Playlist, decade-end) wrap-ups.

During this arc, I realized I draw best when I'm hearing music in the background. My computer is broken, and my iPod Nano appears to be on its last legs, so I've had to flip XM's alt-rock, hip-hop and R&B stations on while drawing the latest arc. "Empire State of Mind" does wonders for my illustrator's block. Now that's what I call a banger.

The Boondocks: "The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show"

The second of two Boondocks episodes that were banned from American TV (rumored to be due to threatened litigation from BET), "Ruckus Reality Show" is another funny BET-bashing episode from writers Aaron McGruder and Rodney Barnes. The song that plays during Uncle Ruckus' montage (I like the brief jab at Tyler Perry movies) is Syl Johnson's "Is It Because I'm Black?" The 1969 track has been sampled by Cypress Hill ("Interlude") and the Wu-Tang Clan ("Hollow Bones").