Unless you’ve been under a rock the past couple weeks, you’ve probably heard of “Too Many Cooks,” the 11 minute oddity that debuted on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and took the internet by storm. In case you missed (or avoided) it, it consists of endless opening titles for a non-existent 80s/90s sitcom that keeps changing genres (including a cop show and a sci-fi series) and is besieged by a schlubby looking serial killer before basically imploding. It’s all set to an insufferably catchy theme song that gives Full House and its cheery ilk a run for their money.
There’s no denying that “Too Many Cooks” is weird, which is one reason its popularity is impressive. It’s also extremely detailed and well made, with solid production values, intentionally hokey special FX, and clever music cues that reference shows like Law & Order without directly imitating them. But in this day of YouTube fueled fifteen minutes of fame, it’d be all too easy to dismiss the video as just another would-be breakout for aspiring filmmakers, soon to be consigned to the same viral fad dumpster as all those LOLcat vids.
That would be a mistake, for “Too Many Cooks” seems to have deeper underpinnings beneath all the satire and strangeness. The fact that it encapsulates so many actors and genres serves as a commentary on our world of on demand streaming content, where almost any show or movie, no matter how banal, can be accessed at any given time. The shifting of genres mirrors the experience of bingeing on Netflix Instant, with slasher flicks, sitcoms, and police procedurals all blurring together. The non-stop parade of actors and titles could even be a reference to the current lack of traditional movie or television stars; they’ve been supplanted by a mass of hard-working players who are familiar, but not marquee level like the Cary Grants and Bette Davises of yesteryear (or even the Michael J Foxes and Carol Burnetts).
Lurking in the background of the earlier titles is a slovenly middle-aged man who eventually begins slicing and dicing the cast. In two of the segment’s better gags, a terrified actress’s hiding place is given away by her glowing credit (which follows her wherever she goes) and another is decapitated while in the process of spinning, Wonder Woman-style, into a superhero. (This thing is so crammed with in-jokes that it’s like the Inception of pop culture references.) The killer not only introduces another genre into the mix, with graphic gore straight out of a Friday the 13th style movie, but also darkens the tone from goofy parody to pitch black comedy. I may be reaching here, but I feel like he represents the violent and troubled state of the real world we all try to escape every time we tune in to an episode of Parks and Rec or Star Trek. Such entertainments distract us from day to day concerns and global anxieties, but they’re still lurking in the backs of our minds—and all it takes is a flick of the channel to CNN to bring them crashing back into our consciousness. The murderer jolts us out of “Too Many Cook’s” artificial cheeriness, and though the short returns to jollier highjinks, it concludes with its ALF surrogate, SMARF the cat puppet, dragging its bloody carcass across the floor.
But maybe I’m reading too much into all this; after all, college papers have been written about the most superficial movies and TV series. “Too Many Cooks,” though, may be deceptively shallow while harboring a fascinatingly complex subtext.
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