It's the Chernobyl of kids' TV shows!
"WARNING: WONDER SHOWZEN CONTAINS OFFENSIVE, DESPICABLE CONTENT THAT IS TOO CONTROVERSIAL AND TOO AWESOME FOR ACTUAL CHILDREN. THE STARK, UGLY, PROFOUND TRUTHS WONDER SHOWZEN EXPOSES MAY BE SOUL-CRUSHING TO THE WEAK OF SPIRIT. IF YOU ALLOW A CHILD TO WATCH THIS SHOW, YOU ARE A BAD PARENT OR GUARDIAN."
~ The warning that opens every episode
Wonder Showzen was a grotesque parody of
Sesame Street that managed, against all odds and
Executive Meddling, to last two complete seasons on
MTV. It features delights such as:
- Muppets who...
- Put a robotic slave, a monkey, and the human spirit on trial.
- Suffer from AIDS.
- Literally have sex with Middle America.
- Beat Kids, a segment where an intrepid young reporter asks increasingly annoying and disturbing questions to New York City residents.
- Horse Apples, a parody of Hee Haw and Blue Collar TV.
The spiritual predecessor of
Xavier: Renegade Angel.
Wonder Showzen contains examples of the following tropes:
- Anti-Humor: Some segments seem to exist purely to irritate the viewer. The "Patience" episode seems built around this concept.
- Brother-Sister Incest:
Boy: "It was that summer I developed a crush on my sister."
Girl: "That wasn't your sister!"
Boy: "It wasn't? Ew."
- Butt Monkey: Wordsworth
- Chess with Death: Rock-Paper-Scissors with God over the fate of the Earth.
- Content Warnings: See the page-topping quote.
- Crapsaccharine World
- Crawl: Used to great and exaggerated effect in the mock news segments.
- Creepy Twins
- Cringe Comedy: Yes
- Dead Baby Comedy
- Deranged Animation
- Divine Race Lift: God is black and he blew up the planet because they were keeping the "black man down".
- Double Standards: Invoked.
- Driven to Suicide: God.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: From "Space", God blew it up because he hated how they "kept the black guy down".
- Fluffy Cloud Heaven: In episode "Space".
- From the Mouths of Babes
- The Gambling Addict: The Beat Kids reporter finds an old man at a racetrack and offers to do an impression of him: "Gamble gamble gamble die."
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Too many examples to count, which, considering the show aired on MTV2, should tell you something.
- God Is Dead: He killed himself...
- Grossout Show: How about some time-lapse footage of a fox decomposing, for a start? Or a sex scene between two letters of the alphabet that would put Team America: World Police to shame? Did we mention that both of these events happen in the first episode?
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Dick Gregory plays the sun in one episode.
- Holier Than Thou: "Do you know where you're gonna spend the rest of eternity? You're gonna spend it with me. Talkin' about Jesus."
- Homeless Hero: Parodied with "The Winobot".
- I Am A Humanitarian: In the second episode "Space" the a couple of kids talk about eating Jeremy because he was bad. "Murderlisous".
- After God kills himself they eat him.
- I Lied
- Kent Brockman News: The "BREAKING NEWS!" segment, complete with a warp speed Crawl.
- Kids Are Cruel
- Menstrual Menace: Aunt Flo, the physical manifestation of a woman's period, takes a young girl on a tour of her own ovaries, complete with stomach cramps and a river of menstrual blood.
- Mind Screw: Many of the show's finer moments come from these.
- Missing Episode: The episode Health was only broadcasted on MTV 2 once due to the Beat Kids segment with a kid dressed like Hitler. Doesn't seem like too much for Wonder Showzen? This episode aired on the day of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) in Israel, which is also potent in the US.
- Moral Guardians: The NAACP and the Catholic League both expressed outrage with the content of the show. Unsurprisingly, this just makes it funnier.
- National Stereotypes
- No Fourth Wall
- No Periods, Period: Brutally averted in the above mentioned Aunt Flo sketch.
- Overly-Long Gag: The first season finale. PATIENCE! PATIEN! PATIENCE! PATIEN! PATIENCE! PATIEN! PATIENCE! PATIEN! PATIENCE! PATIEN!
- Overused Running Gag: During the second season, they were really pushing it with Horse Apples, trying to insert elements from it into a lot of episodes and a lot of the bonus features on the Season 2 DVD were related more to Horse Apples than Wonder Showzen.
- Parody Commercial: In the episode "Health", Christopher Meloni is good enough to warn us about the dangers of cooties.
- Refuge in Audacity: Practically the sole reason for the existence of the "Beat Kids" segment, where a young boy can dress up like Hitler and march down a busy street in New York because he's a kid.
- Refuge in Vulgarity: Most of the main program and around half of the animated segments.
- Shallow Parody: Horse Apples. The entire plot and style of humor is basically Blue Collar TV...but more disgusting.
- Show Within a Show: Horse Apples.
- Southern Belle: The sole female character, Sthugar, during a parody of To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Spinoff Babies: The "Wonder Showzen Babies" sketch
- And its spinoff show "Wonder Showzen Fetuses."
- Subverted Kids Show
- The Cameo: David Cross, Zach Galifinakis and Amy Poehler (just to name a few) all appear during the series.
- Vox Pops: "Clarence's Movies".
- Writer Revolt: The last two episodes.
- Your Head Asplode: Celebrate our Differences!
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