The Boondocks is back.
It hasn’t changed or skipped a beat.
And while on one hand this is phenomenal news as it is a very entertaining show that takes consistent bites on African-American culture, it also takes forever to delivers its new episodes. Aaron McGruder and company took their sweet time developing the episodes for Cartoon Network and the end result was a fanbase that was consistently yearning for new episodes while at the same time become absolutely livid at the snail pace of new content. It almost seemed done on purpose.
The Boondocks: 8 years, 43 episodes. By the end of its run it would have had only 4 seasons.
That means it was around 2 years in between seasons, and even then the average hides the fact that Season 3 had occurred in 2010. Can you honestly name an acclaimed and well-liked show that had such an awkward run? Futurama would be the only other show in mind, which faced a ceasing of production twice before having a third run on a third different network in Comedy Central.
You can’t rush art; this is most certainly the truth. Nintendo is a notorious company that couldn’t care less how long it takes to release a game as long as the final product is quality. That I understand. But The Boondocks will never ever go down in history as one of the greats, no matter how good the episodes might be. The momentum was never built, the momentum was never sustained, and it just couldn’t maintain its audience because of its inability to consistently deliver new content.
Furthermore, the episodes that do lampoon the culture and do attack certain people taste a bit dated since they lampoon a subject that had already crossed the mainstream and airwaves and had already disappeared before The Boondocks can chime in their two cents. For example the first episode of the fourth season featured a Chris Brown-like character being exposed as someone that is causing trouble only to maintain on the spotlight and be able to sell his image and music through the controversy. And then they double-down on the criticism by taking on the stupid fanbases of the woman-beating-trouble-causing-wannabe gangsters that will forever look the other way whenever the criminals make their audacious mistakes.
Did this episode click? Of course it did, it nailed all the right points. But the Chris Brown dilemma happened way back in 2009, and the aftermath when he created a ruckus on Good Morning America occurred in 2011. We had forgotten all about it. We stopped caring that he took off his shirt when he walked off the building to a screaming crowd. We stopped caring about Rihanna and her messed up face. It was good criticism, but delayed criticism. It would be similar to you disapproving of your daughter’s relationship with a drug addict two years after they already got married. Too little too late, even if your heart is in the right place.
The Boondocks had its share of South Park-like humor as it tackled important subjects in humorous scenarios. But it doesn’t work if the culture and the subjects are contemporary or little blips in the news. The infamous Martin Luther King Jr. episode from Season 1 has its spot in television history because it took on a much, much bigger problem that was rampant in black culture. But the battles against Tyler Perry and Oprah? Leave it to television shows that can produce segments at a far, far, far quicker pace (See: South Park’s low-budget ways and The Simpsons’ massive production crew nowadays). I am fine with biting criticism, but it has to be fresh, or it won’t taste as good when aged.
As a big fan of The Boondocks (When its actually on television), it hurts to see the show ending soon, it hurts to see it end without its original creator Aaron McGruder, and it hurts to never be able to cement it in animation and television history with other animated greats like The Simpsons (The best of all-time), South Park (Arguably the most consistently funny cartoon ever), The Flintstones (The benchmark), and Animaniacs (Still the best children’s animated show in history bar none). It could have been one of the greatest out there if they simply had increased the budget and increase the staff, and not be perfectly fine with running on CPT.
The Boondocks will be known as one of the great coulda, woulda, shouldas in entertainment history---pure amusement when it aired on Cartoon Network, and pure frustration as we waited years between seasons without glimpses of something coming up.
Good run, probably great run-----but it coulda been epic.
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