Drawn Together [Animated TV Series] (2004)

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The weekly animated series Drawn Together was a double-barrelled satire: a devastating lampoon of live-action reality shows and a broad takeoff of several familiar cartoon stereotypes. The premise dictated that a group of B-list cartoon celebrities was forced to live under the same roof, with their every move filmed for the entertainment of the viewing audience. Naturally, these diverse characters got on each other's nerves with frightening regularity -- and this being a cable show, the language and the activities were as raw and uninhibited as traffic would allow. The principal performers were Xandir P. Whifflebottom, the hero of a Legend of Zelda-type videotape, who despite his avowed crusade to rescue his girlfriend eventually revealed himself to be gay; Toot Braunstein, an overweight spoof of '30s cartoon star Betty Boop, who appeared only in black-and-white; Captain Hero, a stiff-necked, empty-headed parody of cartoon caped crusaders, who was under the mistaken impression that there was a huge cash award awaiting whoever "survived" to the end of the series; Ling-Ling, an androgynous knock-off of Pokémon's Pikachu; Spanky Ham, an obscene prankster reminiscent of the iconoclastic, Robert Crumb-style animal characters indigenous to Internet cartoon sites; Foxxy Love, a trash-talking black chick designed to evoke memories of the impossibly curvaceous and long-legged female characters on such Hanna-Barbera efforts as Josie & the Pussycats; Princess Clara, a Disneyesque simpery-sweet heroine (and closet racist!); and Wooldor Sockbat, an amorphous, easily led jerk who bore a marked resemblance to SpongeBob Squarepants. Not only were characters sublimely typical of the cartoon world, but each one was also a readily recognizable reality show archetype: Spanky was the hygienically-challenged party dude, Toot was the scheming bitch, Princess Clara the spoiled wealthy blonde, Foxxy the token "angry black character," Xandir the house homosexual, and so on. With all this in mind, it should be no surprise that every episode of the series was chock full of knowing pop-cultural references pertaining to both of the TV genres it so mercilessly skewered. Debuting October 1, 2004, Drawn Together remained on cable's Comedy Central for eight lively weeks. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi