It’s not unusual to laud a channel or a production company for cultivating a unique brand. HBO runs on brand reliability. A24 promises counterprogramming to the familiar and safe. Cartoon Network supplies family friendly content for kids. That is, until their bedtime. Starting in 2001, evenings on Cartoon Network have increasingly become a new channel with entirely different sensibilities known as Adult Swim.
If Cartoon Network provides reliability, Adult Swim has cultivated years of programming unreliability and unpredictability—truly some of the strangest content to ever come out of a traditional media company. It’s about as close to punk rock as cable can get in the 21st century, whether the myriad shows from Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim or the edgy animated ensemble Aqua Teen Hunger Force to its recent mainstream turn in Rick and Morty.
There is perhaps no way to convey the strangeness of so many of these shows, the avant-garde silliness and experimentation with form that has become popularized in internet content today. Meme culture, Tik Toks, and YouTube are the Wild West, uncensored and free from traditional corporate oversight, and they may exist because of the true experimentation and goofing around that manifested on Adult Swim. So how did Adult Swim manage to do all of that before internet culture found itself and under the umbrella of a cable channel? This is the subject of Michael Walsh’s Nerdist article, “Why Adult Swim’s Strange Early Days Can Never Be Replicated.” We hear from him about the miracle that is Adult Swim.
Later in the show, Adult Swim personalities Tim Heidecker and Joe Pera discuss their craft and process. Heidecker created and starred in Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, Beef House, On Cinema at the Cinema, and Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories. He now runs the Hei Network can can be heard in The People’s Joker, which is playing in limited engagements now. Pera created and starred in Joe Pera Talks With You, Adult Swim’s answer to Mr. Rogers that ran from 2018-2021. He is currently performing the Peras Tour around the country. Both of these interviews originally aired on Riverside Chats, where you can still hear the full conversations wherever you get podcasts.
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15. The Miracle of Adult Swim