Born in '92, I grew up a bit too late to enjoy MTV when the M was still accurate. However, I've recently gained some faux-nostalgia for the channel's heyday with shows like Daria as well as falling in love with musicians highlighted on Amp, such Mr. Oizo and Aphex Twin. I was just the right age when Wonder Showzen ran in 2006 and, wow, did it make up for the MTV I missed in 80s (as far as I know)!Mocking the aesthetic of classic children's educational shows like Sesame Street, I was amazed to find this show(zen) appeared to be more than just a "parent's worst nightmare" blend of gross-out and shock- based humor, though it had plenty of that. The wonderful kid actors on segments like "Beat Kids" tricked me, in a good way, into thinking it has just as much heart, while the puppet ones nearly fulfilled my fantasy of an Oscar the Grouch/Triumph the Comic Dog team-up.Wonder Showzen is undoubtedly one of those programs that people will envy you for if you're just discovering it for the first time, which isn't to say the laughter ceases after just one viewing. Since doing so myself, I've followed creators John Lee and Vernon Chatman through the their stints on Superjail! and The Heart, She Holler. While all their projects have their moments, this was by far the two's most successful one to date.

"Wonder Showzen" is everything it set out to be: outrageously funny while at the same time standing against everything right and good in this world. Abortions, sex changes, atheism, child abuse... alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide... if they haven't touched upon it, it probably hasn't been invented yet.Obviously, the show isn't for everyone. Kids shouldn't be watching this, most likely. Religious people or conservatives may be grossly offended. Vegans might be a bit upset. So, if you're uptight about anything, just stay away. If you're jaded like me, though, you'll love this.My only complaint is that the shock value wears off quickly and the show's jokes get repetitive once you catch on to their targets. The first episode is by far the funniest, with the following shows being funny but more derivative of the opener and not nearly as original. That, and after you hear "a cougar in Wyoming is having a nightmare", there's really nowhere else to go.

Network: MTV2; Genre: Parody, Satire, Comedy; Content Rating: TV-MA (for strong language, adult content, animated blood and violence, scatological humor and - what the hell - crazy puppet sex); Available: Uncensored DVD, MTV; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);Seasons Reviewed: 2 seasons Tucked a way on satellite-only MTV2 and trading in a Tom Green-style post-modern anti-comedy, "Wonder Showzen" is truly the hip show watched only by those in the know. So, I know exactly what I'm supposed to say about it. I know I'm supposed to point to all the reality shows, mindless sitcoms and procedural crime dramas on TV and call "Wonder Showzen" a brilliant work of originality. A piece of absurdist art. That there is nothing else on TV like it.Usually, with TV we are just happy if we see a show with some guts or that just doesn't embarrass us with stupidity. But "Wonder Showzen" is bad in a different way, a way that we aren't used to on TV. "Showzen" passes all these rudimentary tests and then fails spectacularly on the next level - I think it just doesn't achieve the lofty goal it sets for itself.The creators of this surrealistic nightmare of a puppet show, Vernon Chatman and John Lee (of the Brooklyn band PFFR), like its fans, would probably tell you that it is a satirical parody of the kid shows of yesteryear. Immersed deeply in a perfect recreation of every kid show we suffered through as children, the show's only saving grace is that everything it does is with an unblinking straight face. But what about kid shows is it satirizing? "Showzen" seems furious that children's shows exist and are pumping young minds with lies sanitizing the horrible state of the world. "Showzen" is going to correct the record.The kids show that is "Showzen" is hosted by Chauncey (Chatworth), a puppet rag of an indecipherable species (Chauncey as a stoned hippie gets my biggest laugh). A cast of other puppets (including Mother Nature having a sex change and piles of crap with eyeballs) and real kids (the subject of some heavily edited voice-overs to make them say the darndest things) join Chauncey. Lee performs street-interviewer Clarence with a voice so adorable it lets him get away with saying just about anything.Why do I feel like I've seen all this before? Comedy Central has based countless series over the years on taking the template of a children's show and juxtaposing it with something adult, bloody or blasphemous and letting the hilarity ensue. "Showzen" is another drained exercise in the concept that this juxtaposition is just inherently funny. It most recalls Robert Smigel's short-lived children's show parody "TV Funhouse" (as well as Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog) only less focused, not nearly as clever as it thinks it is and not a fraction as funny. This is your chance to see what "Funhouse" would look like running around on a violent cocaine high. Funny. Not Funny.What it lacks in skill, it makes up for with balls. "Funhouse" found laughs in racial and scatological jokes. "Showzen" finds them in race, vulgarity and angry left-wing middle-school-age anti-war, anti-capitalist politics. What is the show really saying about slaves, American imperialism, God, the meat industry? Nothing really. It is just a subversive re-affirmation of what an angry viewer already believes. Which takes me to its biggest crime: how derivative it becomes, repeating the same jabs on the same targets over and over.The show desperately wants to be controversial, but Nazism, plantation slavery, mushroom clouds, the meat industry and "He Haw"? The show's targets aren't just stationary, they are decomposing. As a result, its desire to be a dead-on retro parody and a contemporary social satire crash into each other. It cycles between making sharp jabs, taking back those jabs and straight-up lecturing us. After the DVD comes out, the show lectures us about pirating DVDs. Season 2 goes off, almost entirely, on a rant voicing the liberal fear that Middle America (literally, a puppet shaped like a red state - get it) and "He Haw" watching hillbillies are trying to take over the world.It might sound like I'm contradicting myself. How can the show be unoriginal, gutsy, irrelevant and iconoclastic all at the same time? To understand that is to understand that there is a fundamental disconnect going on between TV and the public - the traditional TV viewers it wants to offend and every other TV show out there pushing the same buttons also trying to offend them. Yes, its true, the "He Haw" crowd that still exists would surely get up in arms over a blasphemously amusing bit called "God's Biggest Boners" or God killing himself with a pistol over loosing a game of rock, paper, scissors. However, when you look at it in the context with the rest of TV – as I am - none of this is that revolutionary. Some time in the last decade all this became TV normality. The difference between them and "Wonder Showzen" is passion. To say that "Showzen" is angry would be the understatement of the year.So, forgive me if I roll my eyes at this show's pre-teen level rebellion against authority. This is normally the type of twisted enterprise that I like, but "Wonder Showzen" is more a dull, crass, mean-spirited, nearly unwatchable and socially irrelevant exercise that delights in torturing its audience for 22 minutes to make unoriginal points. It is like being hurled around in a cyclone of dementia, anarchy, pedophilia and puppet sex."Wonder Showzen" has gotten being awful down to a science, but there will always be an audience for this and if you are going to watch an angry, cheap, mean-spirited, pure ideological spit-wad show, this is the one to watch.* ½ / 4

Seeing this show gives me respect for MTV, though i imagine that MTV sees this random, edgy material as its main selling point and is much less concerned with the pertinent truths it expresses. I write and play music for a living and this show gets me really emotionally riled up. For me, Wondsershowzen serves a completely distinct function from most TV. Instead of dulling or distracting the senses, (which can be often really nice at times), it awakens my spirit of right and wrong. It makes me very uncomfortable, but in a very comforting way. I don't think a lot of viewers absorb most of this show's content, but if they do, kudos to television viewers everywhere.