Childrens Hospital - Season 3

I feel like this year, Childrens Hospital really cemented itself as the best show on Adult Swim that isn't The Venture Bros. Maybe not the highest praise with some of the channel's best stuff no longer airing,but that doesn't mean Hospital isn't itself great. Television comedy is doing extremely well in general right now, but Hospital definitely holds its own against some of the better known shows that have the privilege of airing before midnight. The entire cast is great, the writing is sharp and unafraid to go anywhere, and they seem to be able to draw from a bottomless well of ideas, sending up medical dramas, the business of television, and pop culture in general. There seems to be nothing they won't try.

Plenty of episodes that would be wacky digressions on almost any other show feel pretty standard on Childrens. Kids being trapped in quicksand, a doctor's former police partner being trapped in a blocked off ward with insane patients, an episode all about a creepy, possibly nuts ambulance driver, all just seem like another day at the office for the staff. I loved the return to the news show that went over the history of the show last year and explores all of the cast members' various spinoffs, and stuff like the Our Town parody and the brief Party Down reunion was great as well. The latter is a good example of the show's fantastic casting, which can get pretty much everybody you've seen in alt comedy, and even guys like Jon Hamm, to show up and do something silly for a few minutes. Every episode is unique, and though they're only about 11 minutes long, most of them have more fresh gags than most episodes of sitcoms that are double the length. Season four is coming, and the wait won't be that bad with the way the show has caused an influx of solid comedies parodying various genres of hacky television.

Party Down

Co-created by Paul Rudd and Veronica Mars' Rob Thomas among others, Party Down is a pretty fantastic little comedy that didn't last nearly as long as it should have, which probably makes its twenty great episodes seem all the better. It's about a catering crew led by Ken Marino's Ron, staffed mostly by actors who are either trying to make it big or have already given up on that dream. Adam Scott is Henry, an old coworker of Ron's who's returned to tend the bar after quitting acting. Lizzy Caplan is Casey, a comedian/actor who ends up in a casual hook-up relationship with Henry. Martin Starr is Roman, a nerdy writer of "hard sci fi" who has his eyes on Casey. Ryan Hansen is Kyle, a dim-witted actor/model/musician who has a bickering friendship with Roman. Jane Lynch is Constance, an older former actress that shares a kinship with the similarly blond Kyle. She's replaced in the second season by Megan Mullally, an irritating-yet-likable divorced mother of a young aspiring actress. You see how I chained all the main characters together like that? Pretty good stuff.

What's sort of interesting about Party Down is how there isn't a single scene where the characters aren't working their jobs, with two qualified exceptions. They screw around all the time, but every episode takes place entirely at the event they're catering, as their personal lives and disagreements boil over and affect their work. The writers do a solid job of mixing together wacky catering hijinks with longer term character development, in a way that serves both while sacrificing neither. There's a certain level of sadness to most of the characters that is a central jumping off point for the humor, a dichotomy that you often find in the best TV comedies. Everybody's frustrated with their careers and their distant ambitions and their love lives, and it leads to some pretty entertaining explosions of emotion and resentments that are played out in pranks and sabotages.

It's also just a well-acted show, with the main cast doing a terrific job and surrounded by a veritable revolving door of recognizable comedic talents. It's Starz so they're allowed to get away with a lot, though some episodes are definitely dirtier than others, such as one centering on an orgy that never seems to really get going. the tension between Henry and Casey is the main focus of the show for the most part, though Ron's hilariously pathetic life gets a lot of attention too, and no main character ever really gets short shrift. I would have liked to have seen where they'd go with a third season this year, but the show does a pretty great job with the time it has and ended up closing on a solid moment of hope without getting too sweet about it. Maybe if it had a little more in the way of people with swords stabbing and screwing each other it could have lasted longer, but what it is still ended up being pretty special.

Childrens' Hospital - Season 2

I enjoyed the first season of this show, which crammed the ten original web episodes into five fifteen minute segments. But when they started actually making it for TV, it really came into its own. Malin Akerman and Henry Winkler are fine additions to the main cast, gelling well with the rest of the cast and the show's surreal sense of humor. Things like the six year old with advanced aging disease and a doctor discovering a cure for cancer in butterfly fluids are fun even when they aren't entirely clever, and luckily it is often pretty darn smart. It's a show that doesn't bother terribly with character development, and it really shouldn't, as it's the most fun when everyone's just bouncing off each other and the jokes are flying every five seconds. The guest actors are a lot of fun too, with Michael Cera returning to read the dispatches and the imminently recognizable Kurtwood Smith as the representative of a government agency that wants the cancer cure stopped at all costs.

Although it's not the most inspired subject matter, the show is actually often at its best when it acknowledges that it's a TV show, like the episode that's a cast reunion after the long running series is canceled and especially the completely amazing "live" season finale. It's funny that it aired so soon after 30 Rock's terrible live episode, but it's really a send up of all silly TV stunts, as everything that can go disastrously wrong does. Cameras get broken, actors quit or injure themselves in the middle of filming, and crew keep accidentally getting caught on screen. It's mostly a single take of absolute madcap brilliance, and just the epitome of what this show can do when it's on its game. It's a bit too silly and niche to be a comedy on a real network, but it embraces that and fits perfectly with the Adult Swim lineup despite the relative high profile of its cast. Season three is coming, and it should be fun.

Childrens' Hospital - Season 1

This is a bit of a unique situation, as Childrens' Hospital was originally created as a short web series before Adult Swim picked it up as a show for their late night lineup. So "season one" is the ten original episodes packaged together in pairs, with a bit of new content, a "commercial" between the two parodying overly dramatic shows like NCIS and humorous wrap ups by creator and star Rob Corddry. They'll begin airing brand new episodes in two weeks, and based on just what I've already seen, they're probably gonna be pretty damn funny. Childrens' Hospital is a parody of overwrought medical shows like Grey's Anatomy, with all of the doctors constantly getting together, breaking up, and basically doing everything except pay attention to their patients. Unless they want to sleep with them. Even if they're six year olds in the bodies of adults thanks to advanced aging disease. Yeah, it's that kind of show. A few of the jokes don't hit, but enough do that it's a pretty enjoyable, wacky watch. There are bit parts by some pretty good comedy actors like Nick Offerman and Ed Helms, and while I don't really know any of the regulars besides Corddry and Megan Mullally, they all do a solid job. I'm not sure how much the switch to writing for television will change it, but I suspect not much.