January 8, 2006

• The Samsons

  The most popular show you’ve never heard of is taking Imaginary Cable
  Vision by storm.  It’s not quite “Book of Daniel” but the buzz
  around ICV network’s edgy new animated series “The Samsons” has folks
  all over the country exchanging quotes by the water cooler and buying
  popular action figures for their children.  The show’s delightful
  theme music is composed by the award-winning Davey Dwarfman.  

  Summarized briefly, “The Samsons” is the amusing tale of muscle-bound
  Judge Samson and his trophy wife Delilah, two ex-hippies raising a
  family in that quaint little everytown, Fallfield.  Their
  skateboarding, wisecracking, underachieving, dopesmoking GEN-Xer son Dart is the
  last of his generation attending the second grade at Fallfield
  elementary school, and much of the humor revolves around his antics and
  teasing of his brainy, chofar-playing little sister Elise.  

  Judge Samson has turned from his long-haired hippy past to become a
  musclebound, long-haired observant Orthodox Jew and gold-medal winning
  Olympic power-lifter.  He’s constantly using his super strength
  and speed to save Fallfield from one imminent disaster after another,
  such as when he whips together an ark from recycled plastic jugs so the
  townspeople can ride out a flash flood resulting from man-made deforestation. 
  Shortly thereafter he confronts LumberJack Man, decimating his
  bulldozer fleet and saving the local spotted owl population.  In
  the next episode he destroys all the pollution-causing automobiles and
  factories and forces people to ride bikes in order to save them from poor
  air quality.  In the courtroom, he makes sure that evildoers can’t
  do evil, including an episode where LoserMan attempts litigation to
  prevent his wife from having an abortion.  Samson’s stern lecture
  on the Constitution and creative sentencing puts LoserMan in his place,
  barefoot and in the kitchen with a 40-lb weight tied around his gut to
  carry for 9 months.  In another episode, Samson circumvents a
  misguided optometrist and protects a patient’s
  Constitutionally-guaranteed right to his preferred glaucoma medication, which
  just happens to be cannabis.

  Like a traditional father, Samson's iron hand rules the
  family.  As he tells his wife, “Yes, Delilah, I’ve gone from being
  a lazy,
  good-for-nothing hippy to an important judge, but ONE thing I’ll NEVER
  do is cut my hair.  Or drink.”  “That’s TWO things, dear!” she replies.  Samson's long hair irks
  Delilah to no end, and a recurrent gag is her attempts to convince her
  husband to get a
  haircut.  Unbeknownst to Mr. Samson, she’s continually slinking
  off to her relatives for advice
  and plotting on how to get rid of his unruly mane.

  
  I asked head writer and producer Justin A. Theest to explain the show’s appeal:

  “Well, first of all, chicks dig it ‘cause Samson has whoppin’, poppin’
  muscles.  Kids love the superhero stuff.  The cool kids relate to Dart and nerds relate to Elise.  Delilah’s not
  bad-looking for a cartoon character.  Plus, we mix in some serious
  social commentary with the humor.  So I think we have a little
  something for everyone there.”

  
  What about the people who say it’s just a “Simpsons” clone?

  “That's flattering, but any resemblance to ‘The Simpsons’ is entirely coincidental.”

  I’m not sure how to bring this up, but the immense popularity of your
  show
  has given rise to a small contingent of very vocal opposition.  In
  the words of extreme bumpkin Dexter Pinion, conservative Christian
  spokesman for the Family Values Conglomeration,
  “Besides being sacrilegious and inane, 'The Samsons' is no more than a
  Trojan
  horse for Hollywood’s anti-family, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual
  agenda.  Mr. Samson is supposedly ‘based’ on a Biblical
  personality but is
  in
  reality just another in a long line of un-elected liberal activist
  judges usurping the role of the legislature.”  What do you say to
  that?

  “Well, frankly, I’m not sure what he’s getting at.  I think our
  Nielsen ratings indicate that we have widespread appeal among
  those Bible Belt rabble that he’s trying to rouse.  The religious
  aspect is something that we chose intentionally to appeal to the
  demographic that made ‘The Passion’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, and ‘Narnia’
  all such a huge success.  We’re certainly tapping into the market for
  religiously-themed material, but what’s ironic about comments like Mr.
  Pinion’s is that we’ve done our research. 
  Yes, we’re edgy, but we work very hard to be respectful of Biblical
  themes and down-home values.  Samson and his family are
  teetotalers and devout
  Jews--and like any good Jewish family we show them attending mosque
  every Sunday.  We’ve even been accused of being a little preachy
  sometimes:  Our “Two Moms Are Better Than One” episode took some
  heat for being critical of single parenthood, a la Dan Quayle. 
  Honestly, I think we’re already doing all we can to make the normal
  Christians happy--every episode ends with Judge Samson saying
  ‘Thanks to the big, cool presence in the sky that makes us all warm and
  fuzzy inside!’  Dexter Pinion’s a loony who only represents a
  very
  small percentage of our population, thank Ground-of-Our-Being. 
  It’s a cartoon,
  Dexter!  A cartoon, for sky’s sakes!”

  Tune in to ICV network Thursday nights at 7:00 CST for “The Samsons”  

  • 6:32 pm
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