CREDIT: ADULT SWIM
A distinct limited-animation look adds to TGTTM's 'What the hell?' charm.

If you’re a college student and enthusiastic TV watcher, chances are you’ve been exposed to the insanity of Tim and Eric.

The comedy duo’s various projects on Adult Swim, their most famous being Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job!, are pure stoner food, completely ramped in surrealist comedy and incredibly specific parodies.

Their earliest work, and probably lesser known except for the more hardcore fans, include Tom Goes To The Mayor, an animated sitcom that ran for two seasons.

TGTTM carries all the hallmarks of an Adult Swim comedy. It includes the aesthetic of cheap digital animation seen in Space Ghost Coast To Coast and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and incredibly bizarre and improbable scenarios (with characters to match). It also carries little continuity between episodes (with characters dead and dismembered at the end, only to return whole and unarmed in the next week).

Although the early signs of Tim and Eric’s trademark comedy style, a parody of infomercials and low-budget local television are there, the show itself is more than a framework for these skits. In fact, for fans of T&E:ASGJ!, TGTTM depicts the kind of world where those bizarre commercials would exist as normality, a look at the reality of what the creators called “the nightmare version of television.”

Another facet of the show that makes it interesting beyond its bonkers presentation is its rather realistic portrayal of small town hell: a place that isn’t exactly an economic or touristic powerhouse but still wants to be taken seriously by the rest of the world.

The portrayal is of course done in an off-the-wall sort of manner. But regardless, the episode where “local entrepreneur” Tom Peters suggests giving the squalid town of Jefferton a tourist attraction is reminiscent of what some communities try to place all their chips on in a desperate attempt to stay. Like the town of Livermore, California’s overenthusiastic (and crude by modern standards) promotion of their town’s centennial bulb, a light bulb in a fire station that continues to stay lit after a hundred years, for example.

However, approaching the show must be done with caution. If you think that the exploration of these themes through surrealist humour is worth checking, know that it’s still quite polarizing. Even die-hard T&E fans either love or hate this show. It isn’t easily digestible, but Tom Goes to the Mayor is unlike any show you’ll have ever seen, and its gross-out uniqueness is worth at least giving a chance to.

Watch it on AdultSwim.com