thecelebritycafe.com: TV Review - Wonder Showzen

Original Article

Bizarro-Sesame Street offends and/or makes you literally roll on the floor laughing.

MTV2’s “Wonder Showzen” is Sesame Street for adults – for adults with a sense of humor as black as tar. It has all the ingredients – puppets, cute, innocent children, lessons for life. But you definitely shouldn’t let your children watch it. In fact, every episode starts off with the following warning: “Wonder Showzen contains offensive, despicable content that is too controversial and too awesome for actual children. The stark, ugly, profound truths Wonder Showzen exposes may be soul-crushing to the weak of spirit. If you allow a child to watch this show, you are a bad parent or guardian.”

That much is true: Because in the world of Wonder Showzen, the numbers and letters are star-crossed Israeli/Palestinian lovers and have on-screen sex. The cute children ask random people on Wall Street questions like, “Who did you exploit today?” and “Where will you hide when the revolution starts?” The inspirational songs have titles like “Thank you, slaves,” (see video below) and kids write letters saying, “Dear Jesus, when I’m done writing this letter, I’m gonna throw it in the garbage. Cause at least the garbage is real.”

If you are easily offended, Wonder Showzen is not for you. The show makes balancing on the verge of bad taste its credo. More than once, it crosses the line.

But it is much more than an assault on good taste. Wonder Showzen is the epitome of what MTV once was: Ground-breaking television that’s different from anything else. There is definitely nothing that compares to this show. It cleverly combines absurdity and randomness with social and political commentary. The juxtaposition of the format of a children’s program and kids as protagonists with total political incorrectness makes for great entertainment – again, as long as you don’t mind exploiting taboos for comical effect – to quote the Wonder Showzen puppets: “This is the Chernobyl of TV shows – only with less laughs.”


Watch “Thank you, slaves”: