Gazing into the abyss of Mr. Birchum



Support me on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/ThoughtSlime

Follow me on Twitch:
https://twitch.tv/ThoughtSlime

One time tips on Ko-Fi:
https://ko-fi.com/Thought_Slime

Want more Thought Slime videos? Check out Scaredy Cats! Horror content, every Tuesday at 12 pm EST :
https://youtube.com/ScaredyCatsTV

CGI-Sewer Background courtesy of Andrea Jörgensen:
https://twitter.com/AndiJorgensen

Eyeball Zone solicitations can be sent to [email protected], please include your pronouns and use the word “eyeballs” somewhere in the subject line. I do not accept sponsorships, so please do not e-mail me about it.

The Eyeball Zone Masterlist:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PSzDDfsDnvWZjoTUQQfWulK6uwfP9oKwi_y1SBL3WdM/edit?usp=sharing

source

29 thoughts on “Gazing into the abyss of Mr. Birchum”

  1. The most annoying thing about this show (or any other show like this) is that… if they want to do a conservative sitcom, why not just, you know, DO EXACTLY THAT? If they weren't so obsessed with "owning the libs" or whatever the fuck they could just do a tv show about a conservative guy who has a heternormative family, goes to church and teaches woodwork in a high school. They could just pretend like LGBTQ people don't exist. Set the show in the 80's or something.

    This feels petty and childish on top of being deeply unfunnny and hateful.

    Reply
  2. I can't get over the homoeroticism in this show given this was made by homophobes. A woodshop teacher in an unhappy heterosexual marriage whom fantasizes about a cowboy named 'Burly man' and danced romantically with the effeminate rival teacher that he supposedly hates. Like it's all too believable that Birchum is a gay man that represses his sexuality.

    Reply
  3. I can kind of squint and see what the joke where the main character gets Ross Gellered was supposed to be. "Its funny because he should be upset about his wife leaving him for a woman, but instead he's just so manly there's no way he'd ever be vulnerable". In your version it's funny because the joke is on him trying to weasel into their sex life, but in their version somehow the joke is supposed to be on the wife leaving him because the audience would assume he cared about her, but he really didn't? Idk, it has the sad vibes of pretending you weren't rejected by acting like you weren't actually asking the woman out and she was crazy for thinking you were… and then presenting that as aspirational.

    Reply
  4. Carola's performance feels like it needed a lot of massaging digitally in order to get anything out of it, but seemingly that just didn't happen

    When I listen to these clips at 1.05 speed I feel like they're a lot closer to what they SHOULD sound like, especially the meal team 6 line, But in the actual show he just drones on slowly without any energy

    Reply
  5. The closest thing to cogent commentary I can find in Bircham is maybe conflating the needless tech in all the tools to the needless proliferation of "smart devices". I know I just want a TV that doesn't connect to the internet or need a bunch of apps.

    Even that's a stretch though.

    Reply
  6. I hate to inflict this on others but I think you'd enjoy thw videogame Danganronpa V3, maybe even by itself without the full context of 1 and 2 solely on themes

    Reply
  7. Im gonna add something that might add to your point about this show being anti fiction and even anti art: I might know one of the main studios that produced the animation for this. And they might have never talked about it more than they had to. They might actually had been ashamed of it from before they begun production. They might have no mention of the show on the studio s website. And they might had taken the job only to survive. And I hope the many mights are legal enough for me to be safe.

    Reply
  8. I remember hearing Mr. Birchum on KROQ (Los Angeles) in the 90s. That was also when Adam Carrolla hosted Loveline (the show where i got a lot of my sex education, sadly.) He was a regular recurring character on the morning show. It was funny at the time, to my teenage self. The character was a bit more self deprecating and not overtly political.

    There was a Christmas-themed album they put out for very cheap every year, "a bunch of B actors and second-rate bands butchering Christmas standards" according to Birchum/Carrolla himself. The 1996 cassette had a bit called Mr. Birchum's gift guide" where he gives a long list of things you shouldn't buy as Christmas gifts. He then says you should go for the big three and don't stray: booze, porn, or cash. He then goes on to list a bunch of fake porn titles based on different themes.

    I've got a bit of nostalgia for Mr. Birchum. But once I saw it was going to be an actual show, knowing Carrolla in recent years, I knew it would be bad. Carrolla has basically just become Mr. Birchum, unironically.

    Reply
  9. Having watched a fee videos on this including Joes that goes quite deep I didn’t think there was much new to hear on this but this was a very interesting and thought provoking video, thanks slime.

    Reply

Leave a Comment