Comedy Central is out with a new adult animated comedy called Legends of Chamberlain Heights that airs on Wednesday nights after South Park. The show is about three freshman basketball bench warmers - Grover, Milk, and Jamal - and their antics in their quest to become “legends" at their high school. The result is quite possibly the most disgustingly foul-mouthed, outrageously offensive, obnoxiously over-the-top, and purposefully inappropriate show I've ever seen.
In the premiere episode, “Jamallies,” the cops have raided all the kids' drugs from their lockers (yes, all the high school freshman do drugs and have sex.) Everyone’s upset that the big party that weekend is going to be lame, so the three “legends” create their own drug, Breaking Bad-style, from Milk’s mom's prescription drug stash. Unfortunately, the delayed side effects of these “Jamallies” are projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea, and penises falling off. Yup, that’s the maturity level of the show’s writers, who seem to be 13-year-old boys themselves.
The obscene visual gags continue throughout the episode, including the white boy, Milk, having sex with a black blow-up sex doll, his step-dad giving his mom a giant black vibrator, and the boys' nemesis spreading his butt cheeks to show his anus. The show goes to great lengths to be unnecessarily outrageous, even showing a cat humping a dog during an establishment shot.
The show is full of racist and misogynistic stereotypes, but there is one black social justice warrior in the group: Grover’s little brother Malik, or “Cornel Pest” as he calls him. Malik refuses to go to school to “memorize those lies in the white man's books.” Instead he sells drugs to white people and white people only - “I would never join the white devil in the degradation of my people, but I would participate in his profits by giving him a taste of his own medicine.”
The second episode, “Child Please,” touches on abortion as the kids are assigned a robotic baby to take care of in their “Scared Celibate” health class program. Shocked they’re being taught what it’s like to raise a baby, Jamal asks, “What you mean ‘raise a baby?’ Can’t we just go to Planned Parenthood - I got a coupon!” After Grover kills their robotic baby, he tells his partner, “I promise I won't kill our kid again, unless that's what you want - Your body, your choice.”
Sadly, Planned Parenthood targets minorities in inner cities like the fictional Chamberlain Heights. They like to pretend that they're not all about abortion, but one in eight people who go into a Planned Parenthood get one, and even these high schoolers know Planned Parenthood kills babies. And the coupons are real, by the way.
To give you a sense of how explicit the show is, between both episodes, various versions of the N-word were used 37 times, the words “ass,” “shit,” and “bitch” were aired uncensored a total of 99 times, and the F-word was bleeped an additional 37 times. It's all done for shock value, catering to the lowest common denominator, with absolutely no redeeming social value.
The fact that this show even exists is a damning indictment of that state of today's culture and society. I'm embarrassed to watch it, in fact, nobody should be subjected to it, but astoundingly Comedy Central has already announced the show will be renewed for a second season! The terrible reasoning? “This show pushes the envelope far enough to warrant a second season before Season 1 even airs,” Comedy Central President Kent Alterman said. He must have been taking some Jamallies when he said that.
Contrary to what many of today's "comedians" think, outrageousness and shock value themselves alone don't equal comedy. Sure, South Park, the lead-in show, is also wildly offensive, crude, and vulgar, but it still manages to be smart, funny, and poignant with its social commentary. Legends doesn't accomplish any of those things, it's just vile.
Two episodes in and Legends of Chamberlain Heights is already legendarily awful.
