When I was a child, I would wake up early every Saturday morning and watch cartoons with my dad. Usually, over huge bowls of Frosted Flakes, we would coast through the adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which my mother never wanted me to watch for fear that I would pick up the phrase "Cowabunga!"), and during the commercials, he would tell me about the cartoons of his own youth. In a splash of sepia-tinted nostalgia, my dad would recount the adventures of Space Ghost, Astro Boy, and Birdman. It wasn't that he would go into a nerdy series of overblown accounts about each and every episode, but the way he spoke about these cartoons proved how much they meant to him.
So, when I received the second season of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (the irreverent part-parody/part-postmodernist remake of the original Birdman show now on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim), I wasn't quite sure what to tell my father. I am sure that he has some awareness of what the Cartoon Network has done to the cartoons of his childhood - Space Ghost: Coast to Coast hit the airwaves more than ten years ago, after all - but much like he tried to make me believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, I try to keep him away from that awareness.
The problem is, sometimes I would like to share Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law with him, simply because most of the time it's so damn funny. Episodes such as "Studying Environmental Law Through Pop Culture" and "Malpractice Law and Plastic Surgery/Home Improvement" are just plain laugh-out-loud hilarious. It's shows such as those that remind the world how stupid it is to think cartoons are just for kids. And even when the episodes aren't quite up to par - "Your Body and You (for emerging superheroes)", "Gas, Ass or Grass: Nobody Shrinks for Free - Semiotics of the Booty" - a good belt of gin makes it all the funnier.
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