By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

For the most part, I can’t stand MTV. I consider it to be one of the main contributors to the stupidity of the average American. In small doses it’s harmless enough, but if you spend hours and hours watching that drivel your brain will turn to pudding. Seriously folks, MTV will make you stupid.

Still, when I was in junior high an MTV show captured my imagination, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Ironically, some would consider it the most mind-numbing show the network has ever produced: Beavis and Butt-Head. I must have been the most annoying middle-schooler ever. I was always doing the voices, I had a “Tommy Pullmyfinger” t-shirt, I even had a couple of plush Beavis and Butt-Head dolls. There’s just something familiar, and thus funny, about their reckless idiocy. Thus, I was thrilled when it was announced that the show was being revived on MTV. The show has been back for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been watching with great interest.

The first episode of the revived series saw the boys attempt to become vampires/werewolves a la the Twilight movies so they can pick up girls. But things go south when the “werewolf” they’re bitten by turns out to simply be a diseased homeless man. Later in the episode, Butt-Head catches Beavis crying after sniffing an onion and gives him hell for it. In the second episode, our heroes see an old-time movie where a character asks for a woman’s “hand” in marriage, and they take it completely the wrong way. In the second half, they work as computer tech support workers via the telephone and unintentionally wreak havoc.

I absolutely loved the first episode. It made me laugh out loud four or five times. The second episode was solid, but not as successful in the laughter category. I think much of that has to do with the novelty of seeing a new Beavis and Butt-Head episode for the first time in over a decade. There’s nothing about having the boys get bitten by a diseased homeless man that’s somehow creatively superior to having them do tech support. But the fact that we missed them made us a friendlier audience for the first go-around. Realistically the episodes were about the same quality. The show is about as good as it was in the ’90s, which is fine. That’s certainly better than if it had aged dramatically.

As a kid, the cartoons featuring Beavis and Butt-Head were always my favorite parts of the episode. But as an adult, I find myself more attracted to their music video commentary, which has now expanded to include commentary on TV shows like Jersey Shore and 16 and Pregnant. Mike Judge’s stream-of-consciousness riffing is really awesome to listen to. He doesn’t always hit his mark, but when he does it’s awesome. In addition to the different MTV shows, the boys have watched videos from artists like LMFAO and Katy Perry.

One thing Mike Judge deserves a lot of credit for is that he can take simple statements and make them funny simple because his characters are saying them. For instance, there’s a line in the first episode where Butt-Head says: “It’s okay to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you.” I just about lost it. Judge manages to hit all the right inflections to turn even the most random phrases into comedic gold.

It’s been said that Beavis and Butt-Head is like the blues, in that it’s the same thing every time but you really never get tired of seeing it. Even though I’m certainly not the same junior high kid I was when I met these two dumbasses, I’m still not tired of them. Does that speak to the quality of brain I’ve got in my head? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I’m glad they’re back.

Front page image from mtv.com. Image 1 from header.com, image 2 from geekyrant.com, image 3 from tvworthwatching.com.