Adult Swim is the home of late-night television programming for (im)mature audiences. In the after hours, a strange array of shows keep the viewer awake or lull them into thinking their mind was having an insomniac daydream. The nighttime identity of Cartoon Network runs from 9 P.M. to 6 A.M. for those sleepless night owls at home. Adult Swim is alternative basic cable, syndicating shows with little to no editing, both live-action and animated.
Adult humor in the form of innocent cartoons has been a favorite of fans since the channel’s inception in September 2001. One show that started this wave of surreal absurdism was Sealab 2021. Before Adult Swim existed, Cartoon Network aired its first three episodes alongside other classic shows that got their start on the network, like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. The left-field thinking, disjointed banter, and clever situational word associations make Sealab 2021 an Adult Swim diamond in the rough.
Eco-Funny
In the beginning, creators Adam Reed and Matt Thompson (both of whom went on to work on the spy parody Archer) were hard-pressed by Cartoon Network when their original pitch for the show was deemed unfunny. Reed and Thompson’s first show with Cartoon Network was High Noon Toons in the 1990s, where they hosted as cowboy hand puppets. Being intoxicated during the creation of the show, leading to them starting a fire on the set, didn’t help their future pitch either. Similarly, the freewheeling duo would go on to create their own cartoon by destroying (reinventing) another.
Everything about Sealab 2021 was a happy accident. First, Reed and Thompson discovered a tape of a 1970s Hannah-Barbera cartoon called Sealab 2020. They wrote replacement dialogue for its characters to give it an almost illogical and irreverent tone. Ironically, Cartoon Network purchased the show at the same time Adult Swim was created. Poking fun at the way adults took matters seriously, and in children’s cartoons, was the foundation for the series.
Self-Aware Parody
Like other Adult Swim shows, Sealab 2021 used shock comedy against stock footage of old cartoons to stir up unexpected self-awareness and awkward non-sequiturs. Sealab 2021 parodied science fiction and environmentalism from the original Hannah-Barbera cartoon to create this comical contrast. Characters are themselves and not themselves at the same time, keeping the show endlessly fresh and familiar.
Captain Hazel “Hank” Murphy (Harry Goz) is an incompetent leader who regularly takes questionable liberties with and without his crew. The first episode of the series has Murphy battling the FCC and their regulations when he uses the headquarters to host a pirate radio show. Self-referential, tongue-in-cheek nods to art imitating life like this make Sealab 2021 both a personal and subversive show.
Nonsense Makes Sense
Warner Bros. Television
Another idiosyncrasy of the show is its lack of continuity. Episodes kill off and bring back the same characters as an inexplicable running gag and satire on linear and nonlinear storylines. Crew members are given incredible backstories that remarkably give them credibility in an incredible world. Station engineer Marco Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Erik Estrada) is named after Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar from the Spanish epic poem Cantar del Mio Cid and Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez. Despite his namesake, he is merely an affectation of a Spaniard with no Spanish heritage or true knowledge of the language. Marquez also happens to be one of the rare few that gets a word in edgewise with Murphy.
Children aboard the government research lab are orphans, erasing any semblance of a larger, futuristic society. School teacher Debbie “Black Debbie” Allison Love (Angela Gibbs) is a proud black woman who reverses gender politics by being a Heisman trophy winner. Close quarters lead the crew to be at odds with each other, often with dire consequences and crazed self-interest. Dr. Quentin Q. Quinn (Brett Butler) is the cliché poverty-stricken, educated man whose intelligence is taken for granted. He is forced to solve the problems that his crew members cause, leading him to hold his self-proclaimed genius against them. As retaliation, Murphy docks Quinn’s vacation time to prevent Quinn from negating his indentured servitude.
A regressive display of ignorance and selfishness makes Sealab 2021 uncharacteristically but appropriately progressive due to the self-awareness of its contrarian nature. The show wears many hats and masks more often than Hesh Hepplewhite (MC Chris) wears dresses. It isn’t afraid to dress up or dress down its appearance or point of view to meet its transient and poignant punchlines. In-jokes become social commentary, deadpan becomes stranger than fiction, and duplicity becomes relatable. By overcoming expectations, the series is able to be a comedic chameleon, a lowbrow parody disguised as highbrow comedy as much as it is a highbrow comedy disguised as a lowbrow parody. Thanks to its uncanny talent for celebrating and critiquing pain, pleasure, comedy, and tragedy all at once, Sealab 2021 is one of the smartest dumb shows to ever exist.
