Coming to this show many years after it finished is perhaps not ideal, because it does remove the context of when it was first screened – and in some ways puts it in the shadow of the many other chaotic Adult Swim shows that it enabled in some ways. The second season continues in the vein of the first season, with chaotic nonsensical plots based around the use of mostly original animation from an old 1970's cartoon series set underwater. Unsurprisingly the plots mostly do not make any wider contextualized sense, mostly just fulfilling the internal logic (barely) of the single episode – with characters being killed or usually the entire base being destroyed. As before there is a show that breaks out into the production of the show itself, and all of these are mostly as funny and enjoyable in their own way as the first season was.
There is an interesting feel to the second season though, because a lot of the season does feel like it sets out to deliberately push the viewer to accept more and more oddity. The most obvious example of this is the episode which is pretty much a straight rerun of one of the original episodes, with no comedy, and nothing that those that enjoy the show would actually be there for. I am sure many loved the show for this, and the irony of watching the original be redone in this way, but personally I thought it was a bit too knowing. Some other episodes run jokes too long (like the 'uh oh' sequence), but some of these 'difficult' episodes are actually very well done – with the power- cut episode being a good example of this.
The voice work remains good, and the invention in the animation provides plenty to like; however even as someone who buys into the sense of humor, this season perhaps had a few too many touches which seemed determined to make me not get it, or just swallow something totally different and say it is just as good. Appreciate the challenge, and liked that most of it worked, but can't pretend that all of it did.
There is an interesting feel to the second season though, because a lot of the season does feel like it sets out to deliberately push the viewer to accept more and more oddity. The most obvious example of this is the episode which is pretty much a straight rerun of one of the original episodes, with no comedy, and nothing that those that enjoy the show would actually be there for. I am sure many loved the show for this, and the irony of watching the original be redone in this way, but personally I thought it was a bit too knowing. Some other episodes run jokes too long (like the 'uh oh' sequence), but some of these 'difficult' episodes are actually very well done – with the power- cut episode being a good example of this.
The voice work remains good, and the invention in the animation provides plenty to like; however even as someone who buys into the sense of humor, this season perhaps had a few too many touches which seemed determined to make me not get it, or just swallow something totally different and say it is just as good. Appreciate the challenge, and liked that most of it worked, but can't pretend that all of it did.
