(Rewatch Too Many Cooks before reading, it’s still great)
I think the peak of 2010s comedy, as well as 80s nostalgia baiting, was probably reached with 2014’s Too Many Cooks. Because this thing is hilarious, meta, and captures the spirit of garbage filler TV better than just about anything this side of Everything is Terrible!.
Something about the way Adult Swim combines awkward humor and parody with a low-budget sense of half-hearted effort seems to perfectly capture the kind of comedy that scores in our post-post-ironic internet age.
I don’t want to write an academic essay about the levels of insincerity in recent internet memes, but It’s not hard to connect something like this….
…with the comedy in Too Many Cooks.
The sense of sincere, nostalgic reverence for a time back when media was simpler, less overtly political, and overall lower-quality, mixed with extreme self-awareness and a chaotic mix of genres… That’s exactly the kinds of stuff that makes the internet go crazy these days. It both hearkens you back to a different age and keeps you firmly grounded in the present.
This is what Too Many Cooks spawned. This is what it gave us: the modern internet.
Basically what I’m saying is that Too Many Cooks is a way better version of Vaporwave and Vaporwave sucks.
