"""Spoiler Alert""" ... Long ago there was a children's Christian show called Davey and Goliath. It was a stop motion animated clay style of show or Claymation as the style is called. Moral Orel is a spoof of that show. And like with Davey and Goliath, every episode brings a new moral lesson. However the quality of this show is much higher than the Davey and Goliath show. But the lessons that are learned by Orel are similar to the lessons that the kids it the animated show South Park learned (but with less extreme results usually). Orel's Father usually ends up taking Orel to his study to beat him with a belt (though the spankings are never shown). Afterwords his Father explains what Orel did wrong and presents one of the "Lost Commandments" that this show is famous for. In this show the Father doesn't know best and the characters are about as obsessed and confused as people are in real life. This show is great fun if you are not easily offended but if you are too sensitive then you might be better off passing on this title up and watching a religious program.

I was not prepared for the extreme laughter that I experienced watching Season One, front to back on DVD tonight. When religious hypocrisy is exposed with that much skill and enthusiasm, I find it very compelling.I watched Davey & Goliath shows on pre-dawn TV as a young kid, and I did so even though I was not allowed to - because it was about a Protestant family and my mom felt it was somehow anti-Catholic. This was before there were any controls on televisions, and my mom wasn't serious enough in her admonition to get up that early and make me stop watching it.I've only seen Season One but I learned here there were two more seasons, so now I have to watch them, too. My favorite so far was episode #5. So funny that I laughed myself to the point where I almost could not get enough oxygen. Ouch :-)

Most Christians will probably be severely offended by this show, but that's part of its charm. Its offensiveness is riding on the shoulders of an innocent little boy who simply doesn't know any better. He misinterprets others' advice and chaos ensues. The same could be said about religion itself. What I find so continually compelling about this show however, is that it dares to be different. The line-up on Adult Swim has swiftly shifted to gore porn as of recent (Metalocalypse and Robot Chicken being perfect examples), but Orel focuses its sights on the way religion controls people, changes them. Lying beneath the bitter sentiments however, is something even better: character development. Throughout the series, we see the various demented characters of Oralton for who they really are. This really kicks off in season three (which is currently nearing its end) and it's truly gripping. What you thought were one-off humor characters in the first season are revealed to be deeply troubled human clay-things in the second. Speaking of, the series gets quite dark at times, and with only the personalities of the characters... Yes, things can be dark without buckets of blood. But in the little town of Oralton, Statesota, we see much more than a bewildered mass. We see a portrait of the American psyche. (other psycho-analytical jargon here)

Network: The Cartoon Network; Genre: Parody, Satire, Animated Comedy; Content Rating: TV-MA (for scatological humor, strong sexual content and animated violence and gore); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4); Seasons Reviewed: 2 seasons A straight-up, straight-faced parody of "Davey and Goliath", the stop-motion animated "Moral Orel" is going to be either loved or hated. It follows the adventures of the ridiculously named Orel, a grade school child of a repressively-angry fundamentalist Christian family in a repressively angry, fundamentalist Christian community trying to sort through the gray areas in life with only black and white scripture, commandments made up by his father and a seemingly deranged preacher to guide him. But when the ever-cheerful Orel takes the bible literally, all hell will break loose.Some will call it blasphemous and, if it where more popular, get it ripped off the air without having seen it. Others will call it enlightened, true to life and open-minded while at the same time telling you to ignore any other opinion about the show. So "Orel" succeeds in being divisive. The members of these two camps will all say the same things in their favor. Why? Because "Orel" is so superficial and one-note that it doesn't inspire more than a simple "for" or "against" thought about it. A great satire pin-points onto a topic, rips it apart at its very core and leaves you pondering your own opinion on the subject all the while - hopefully - making you laugh. Creator Don Stamtopoulos ("TV Funhouse") has a solid track record, but he mis-steps here in a big way.Stamtopoulos has one goal here: mount a full-scale attack on Christians. But "Orel" is too broad. If giving the characters names like "Clay", "Shapey" and "Stopframe" sounds clever than this may be right up your ally. If you belief the media line that America is being taken over by fundamentalist Christianity, then you might find the show useful too. But this show doesn't think, it reacts. It doesn't challenge anybody; it simply reaffirms a Hollywood message that Christians are dangerous, brainwashed lunatics. True satirical comedy takes on those beliefs that people think are sacred, however exercising free speech hardly makes anyone inherently funny or clever.Stamtopoulos can't resist the urge to wink, nudge and laugh to his own commentary right out in the open. Let's look at a specific example of why this mess fails so miserably: the sermons of the Reverend that are supposedly the catalyst for most of the episodes. The sermons are nothing that any Reverend would actually say. He is simply Stamtopoulos talking directly to us, giving us both the set-up and his response in the same breath. The religious characters in this universe constantly appear to be making fun of themselves and their own beliefs instead of Stamtopoulos making their beliefs feel genuine and then finding a logical way to rip them apart.Now don't mistake my total disdain for this show as an affirmation that religion should not be made fun of. I just want some originality to it. Look at Matt Groening: devout atheist, makes fun of religion every chance he gets, however when fashioning "The Simpsons" he gave the family and the show a strong religious, faith-based backbone simply because he recognized that it was something that you just never see on TV. He is still right.Even more so, it is hard to watch "Orel" and not think about the comedy gold that Trey Parker and Matt Stone could spin with this exact same material. One just need look at the "Christian Hard Rock", "Red Hot Catholic Love", "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?", "All About Mormons" or "Trapped in the Closet" episodes of "South Park" to see some really funny, sharp, insightful and no less punch-pulling religious satire. With a masterpiece like "Park" on the air and Adult Swim's own left-wing, iconoclastic masterpiece "The Boondocks" around, why settle for this 10-minute exercise in creative bankruptcy? In fact, "Orel" actually is what I would imagine "South Park" looks like to people who don't get "South Park" - scatological, shock humor for the sake of it.The show is so busy looking down on Orel, thinking of new ways to torment him and make fools of the family and town, that it doesn't give us any reason to like him, hate him or feel anything for anybody in its universe. Orel drinks his own urine to purify his body. Orel rapes neighborhood women in their sleep to stop himself from the sin of masturbation. His mother silently represses her rage, his father is a an in-the-closet drunk. Whoa, does the fun ever start? Let's also not forget how gut-less "Orel" is. As a satire its targets are stationary and passive. Parker and Stone will boldly go for an episode like "Cartoon Wars" in which they take on the image-of-Mohammad controversy where the penalty is a potential beheading from a radical Islamic terrorist cell. "Orel", at the very worst, might be the victim of an angry letter writing campaign. Ouch.* / 4