In case you missed this when it basically took over the Internet for a couple of weeks last fall (late October to early November 2014), I give you Too Many Cooks, which I think has been described most ably by Simon Pegg: “Too Many Cooks is so deftly engineered to unnerve stoned people in their mid 30s, it might actually have been created by the US government.” Imagine a 1980s/early 1990s American sitcom gone terribly, horribly, cosmically wrong. Then you’ll have the barest inkling of what’s in store.
Too Many Cooks originally played during the wee hours of the morning on Adult Swim’s “Infomercials” programming block, showing up with no warning or fanfare and simultaneously amusing and traumatizing viewers everywhere. I warn you that it’s definitely not for the squeamish, nor for the easily offended. People who enjoy having their reality hacked, however, are advised to watch. And although I basically agree with The Atlantic when it cautions that the less you know about this thing in advance, the better, I’ll issue this one additional piece of advice: that you refuse to give in to the temptation that may arise to stop watching after a few minutes because you think you’ve already gotten the joke and it’s getting boring. Just push on through that feeling if it arises, because after several minutes of a hilarious but increasingly annoying (because apparently endless) parody of sitcom opening credit sequences, the universe itself basically goes off the rails.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Too Many Cooks for days after I watched it. And since you’re somebody who is attracted by invocations of the names of Ligotti, Lynch, and Dick, I suspect the same may prove to be true of you.
The follow-up, Unedited Footage of a Bear, is even better.
Yes, it’s a pretty astounding piece of work, isn’t it? I’m not surprised that it didn’t go viral like TOO MANY COOKS, though. I think masses of people could appreciate the Cooks piece because of the novelty and overt humor, but UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A BEAR is just pure dark through and through except for a few fleeting moments of satire near the beginning. It’s one of the most deeply disturbing things I’ve seen for some time, and I think it appeals for that very reason to a smaller and more rarefied audience.