TV REVIEW: 'CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL'

A 5-Minute Web-Show Produced for TheWB.com Gets Life 2 Years Later on a Network Line-Up

I propose to you a bizzaro reality where the Robin Williams flick Patch Adams was actually funny. Or where Patch Adams spent most of the movie covered in blood…and refused to administer medicine. Prepare to be shocked! This reality is ours! But this new, warped Adams is called Children’s Hospital and it rocks out with its punchlines out (better than mine) on Sunday nights at 10:30 on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim line-up.

Originally produced for TheWB.com, these not-so-webisodes-anymore depict a Children’s Hospital where children and their health are the last concern. In an absurd lampooning of the adult medical drama genre, Hospital lacerates something like Grey’s Anatomy in as short as five minutes so that that show would be beyond repair at its own hospital. Children’s makes the antics of the cast over at the now shut-down Sacred Heart, aka Zach Braff et al on Scrubs, look like an actual children’s show, even though they themselves started the medical drama lampooning.

It’s not that all Scrubs were bad, though toward the end, no one knew when to pull the cord…or that something like Grey’s can’t be taken seriously. I guess I wouldn’t know. Can it? But I digress. Children’s is Grey’s for me and other 18- to 30-year-old dudes. It’s five minutes long, it’s funny, and chicks still make out with each other. Or sneeze on each other. Whatever, that still works.

(Cartoon Network) Now let me tell you how the bald Rob Corddry is exactly like George Clooney. The Daily Show alum and creator of Children’s somehow managed to amass not an Ocean’s 11, 12 or 13 but an Ocean’s, like, 20 of comedic talent for a show that once never had the promise of network life. If you chomp on comedy outside of Leno or Katt Williams or Dane Cook specials, much of the cast will be recognizable and appreciated to you. Look! It’s Ken Marino from Party Down! Oh crap! It’s Rob Huebel from Best Week Ever and Human Giant! Lake Bell? Well well well, what are you doing here? Come here often? Wait — was that Michael Cera with Megan Mullally? And was that the Fonz?! I’m telling you, Children’s is stacked. I didn’t even mention others, like Nick Offerman, aka Ron Swanson on NBC’s Parks and Recreation…until I just did because I love that guy.

So while my eyes rolled around in my cranium from bobble-heading through the cast while watching comedy, there were some wickedly funny and I suppose lewd lines that I hesitate from transcribing here, but in just ten minutes, consisting of two webisodes, a whole playbook of comedy go-to’s were played up. From straight-up parody to racial stuff, child endangerment, and even one character’s assertion that he was pretty sure “9/11 happened in early January.” Nothing’s sacred at Children’s.

Another interesting thing Children’s has going for it is its whole process to screen. Just 10 or 15 years ago, this straight-up wouldn’t have happened. A five-minute webshow produced for TheWB.com somehow gets life two years later on a network line-up. It just shows another evolution in the media mutant that’s growing out there, where one’s best pitch to a network might not be moving to LA and trying to sell a script but putting five minutes of your best on YouTube and crossing your fingers. Well, uncross them, actually — you’ll need them to tweet and share the crap out of your stuff. And you’ll probably need Michael Cera and David Wain’s phone numbers. But if you don’t have those yet, all is not lost — you can still watch Children’s Hospital to pass the time. I don’t see this one going terminal. (Again, keep in mind this show has better punchlines than me.)