Beavis and Butt-Head 08x01/02: “Werewolves of Highland”/”Crying”
Beavis and Butt-Head are well-known figures within popular culture, but given my age (20), I grew up with nothing more than a vague recognition for who the characters are. When MTV cancelled it in 1997, I was six years old; apart from seeing them in a video game when I was only slightly older, the two had never been more to me than characters in that cartoon I had never actually seen, or really knew anything about.
For whatever reason, I had never felt any urge to go back and relive the series as I got older. The episodes are filled with 90s video clips and other pop culture tidbits which would seemingly have no relevance to myself in 2011. But news of the revival of the show this year piqued my interest, perhaps interested how a show such as this one would handle current popular culture tropes, given its extreme reliance on it previously.
Which is why it was pleasantly surprising to see that Mike Judge has plenty of content ready at his disposal. Despite that, watching the show may have convinced me to watch the original run of the show. A great deal of the satire within Beavis and Butt-Head both strikes me as working in both a timely and timeless manner. Given the audience is subjected to a great deal of this popular culture rather than make sly references to it, it is easily understood, probably even in another 15 years. Perhaps they can look back at this episode and wonder what the fuck Skrillex or Jersey Shore was all about.
That isn’t to say these aren’t easy targets. Beavis and Butt-Head, in between the two main stories, riff on MTV reality television and ridiculous pop music videos. In the first story, Judge analyses the weird obsession the world has with vampires and more specifically Twilight. It isn’t biting satire or a deep deconstruction of any of these, but it remains funny throughout. Beavis and Butt-Head, perhaps much like Judge himself, have grown out of touch in thirteen years (complete with their Metallica and AC/DC shirts) and this is them making sense of this crazy new world. Because I haven’t seen the original run, I’m not entirely sure of its intentions. But as long as it stays as funny as this episode, I’m not really too bothered.
Also the second story had nothing to do with pop culture but it more examined the relationship between Beavis and Butt-Head and it was cool too.
