Unpacking Moral Orel | An Underappreciated Masterpiece

this video is brought to you by my wonderful patrons there's an extended cut of it on my patreon so if you'd like to see that and get other benefits you can join for as little as two dollars a month which would be awesome because this is most likely going to be copyright claimed either way though i hope you enjoy the video thank you the term flanderization describes a change that occurs in the writing of a character usually in a long-running tv show over the course of time a once dynamic multi-layered character gets morphed into something more static and dominated by a few exaggerated characteristics the term gets its name from ned flanders the do-gooder ultra-christian next-door neighbor to the simpsons family and i'm honestly unsure if i need to explain who stupid sexy flanders is at this point but i'll err on the side of caution i guess feels like i'm wearing nothing at all regardless it wasn't just flanderization for flanders in that show but flanderization for all the first full episode of the simpsons aired on december 17th 1989 and just a week before christmas that year and just over a week since my own birth and some people lost their [ __ ] family to make american families a lot more like the waltons and a lot less like the simpsons now in the year of our lord 2022 it's a bit difficult to remember what the world was like back then it's especially hard for me to remember because i was still just a wee little baby but things were much different the berlin wall was still bits of rubble on the streets of a reunited city the u.s was gripped in a panic over devil-worshiping cults using dungeons and dragons and that dang grunge music to corrupt their children i mean we've all seen stranger things you get the picture so it shouldn't be much of a shock that the simpsons was considered counter-cultural risque or even offensive to some viewers when it first aired the show peeled back the layers of the by then wrote image of a fake sitcom family and instead made fun of a much realer more grounded take for that time of an american household one full of warts dysfunctions and downright abuse by today's standards however season after season wore on the writing room shuffled members around and the writing itself got sanitized by the general force of the show's own popularity and syndication and as all these things changed so too did the characters over time the flanderization spread and all of springfield got the treatment in an interview with vice magazine moral oral creator dino stamitopoulos said of that first season i realize i'm in the minority here but the first season of the simpsons was the best season because it was about the most real family on tv i wanted moral oral to have the opposite of the progression that happened in the simpsons in contrast to the simpsons moral oral aired its 33 episodes between 2005 and 2006 on adult swim all in a post-9 11 america still rocked from that event and taking out its considerable fury and bloodlust in the middle east many americans were disillusioned and pessimistic about the world a fairly normal reaction to such a traumatic event and that was being reflected in the media at the time said stanton populist in that same interview bush was in the white house and the religious right was out of control they still are but 2005 was sort of the scary beginning of it i feel it was just the perfect storm for this show [Music] moral oral was the first example i can think of where a cartoon loses its own innocence really allowing itself to dive deep into the consequences of the seemingly episodic events that happen in the show turning it into something more serialized it was this vice article that got me to re-examine the show after only seeing a few episodes when it was still airing back in my teens the article claims that moral oral had walked so that shows like bojack horsemen could run i had thought it was just a funny show where they all make fun of the super serious jesus people but wow that was not the case at all it starts out fairly innocently with things like oral getting addicted to crack and this sort of oh shucks kids will be kids sort of way contrast that to the second season ending with his father in a drunken stupor shooting oral in the leg with a rifle and then blaming him for it and it's all played completely straight other than the art style of the claymation by the last season when you look back at the first it's completely unrecognizable if it wasn't already obvious then be aware of spoilers for the entirety of the show even if it did go off the air like a decade ago the show follows oral a child in the city of morrilton state of soda which i guess just kind of nudged missouri over to the right a little bit oral is the eldest child of clay and bloberta puppington you heard that right his mom's name is blow berta with a b and another b other than those three oral has a younger brother shapi who is coded as neurodivergent which we'll talk about later the town of morrilton is ironically one of few actual morals the people twist the bible's teachings to fit their own agendas and the reverend rarely uses his pulpit for anything more than personal rants it's very clearly a critique of the southern baptist bible belt and their hyper-religious world views but we'll see that pretty quickly so we might as well get started the first episode sets out the tone and the structure of the show at least for the first couple of seasons that formula is basically oral encounters something he thinks god will be mad about and over corrects hilarious hijinks ensue and then he gets a belt whipping from his dad in the study early moral oral is a very irreverent and episodic sitcom like many other cartoons despite the sometimes extreme trouble that oral gets himself into there are never any lasting repercussions for himself at least that we the audience know about anyway for example in this first episode oral thinks that dead people are sinners because they refused god's gift of life all of this was based on his misunderstandings of reverend putty's sermons at church so his solution is to use the necronomicon of course the book of the damned which he found at his local library all to resurrect his friend doughy's grandfather completely missing the point somehow that doing so would be a huge heresy to his religion however things of course go awry and doughy's grandfather creates a zombie apocalypse in morrilton of course clay his father is not pleased when he finds out he tells oral to meet him in his study causing oral to gulp i think you should meet me in my study this happens nearly every episode it's like the moral oral version of kenny dying in early south park meeting in the study means oral is going to get a belt whipping and a lecture except clay's lectures never really address the real issues at hand clay isn't worried about the little things like zombies taking over the town or that oral used a demonic text to summon them in the first place rather he and the whole town really are just mortified that all the zombies are naked they're disgusting exposed bodies oral and doughy went around disrobing them don't worry it's not a sexual thing don't ask so the episode concludes with clay making oral handout clothes to the zombies and that's it episode over everything is reset next week despite everything i've just said even early on there are hints of a more serialized plot that is a plot that continues between episodes that's told over the course of an entire season at first it's just the little things for instance there's a great scene which shows the morlton school coach watching clay p right outside the bar at first it seems like he's waiting but um i'd give it one more shake oh all right thanks buddy by the way my name is later pally over the course of the series a relationship between the two is revealed and allowed to grow or there's this christian metal song heard at the beginning called burn in heaven that we can see posters for in the town throughout the series [Music] like i said small things at first probably things that wouldn't stick out on a first viewing but let's move on so in episode 2 oral impregnates all of the women in morrilton without their consent now i can't rightly say that without explaining so here goes the episode begins with oral experiencing the joys of masturbation which he calls number three number one gold is the sun number two i need to go poo number three set my sperm for oral you've been masturbating he's uh shaking hands with the milkman if you will in the school bathroom when the janitor barges in eventually oral gets sent to the reverend who has these amazing banners hanging the good reverend tells him that the reason masturbation is a sin is because it's wasting his seed but rather than the argument convincing him to stop it causes oral to decide to find a way to do it without wasting his jizz but he doesn't yet know how so he goes to his dad you might see where this is going clay in turn avoids the question by reading an answer out of a book babies are made by god's chef visiting ladies at night while they're asleep and injecting them with the delicious glaze from his holy pastry bag putting two and two together oral decides that he just needs to act as god's chef himself putting his seed into women while they sleep with the use of a piping bag you know that thing bakers use to put icing on cakes why did i have to speak this out loud of course when they find out the women are well they're not happy to be pregnant uh yeah despite that there are no lasting repercussions for oral or at least that's how it seems i'll take him from here don well to my study once again his father isn't mad at him for getting the town pregnant but instead he's just disappointed that oral didn't do it in a missionary position like god would have wanted so in the third episode oral gets addicted to crack it starts with clay teaching him to never waste anything then in church reverend putty says to help the poor and needy so combining the two lessons ortel gives money to a homeless man who refuses to take it for nothing giving him a bag of crack in exchange and since clay told him to never waste anything he uses it becoming addicted but it's okay because oral's parents are really tuned in to their children's problems what do you suppose he's going upstairs to use exactly oral turns into a junkie and beats up his boss jonesing for some money to get another hit finally clay learns what's been happening but of course he's mad because crack is a gateway to slang slang yes but more importantly the real evidence that we see of not all being well in the puppington house you know aside from the whole crack thing it's already apparent that clay is miserable himself as every night when he walks in the door he complains the same way stinking dead and job clay buys what appears to be hard milk yuck from the convenience store and then chugs it before church during the sermon we see him burping cartoon drunk bubbles which bluburta smells and does not look too pleased about it's the first time we see any sort of friction between the two though it's sort of a blink and you'll miss it moment by this episode it's clear that shapy the other puppington kid is coded as developmentally challenged for the most part he is non-verbal using screams to get his way there there little one and is generally treated at best as an afterthought or at worst as an active nuisance to the family there's not much more to say about shapi yet except that it's revealed how little his parents care for him as his bedroom is more like a large storage closet it's filled with miscellaneous cardboard boxes one of which is labeled like sharp objects there's no decorations or any type of the typical bedroom furniture and there are drawings on the wall that look like the ravings of a prisoner the rest of the first season mostly plays out the same way as these first few episodes introducing us to new characters and more shenanigans for oral to get into on the advice of different town members i'm going to skim over some of the following episodes because otherwise we'd be here all day episode 5 sees the introduction of the one genuinely nice person in morrilton outside of oral himself stephanie she is an outsider completely counter to the espoused values of the town she works in a sex toy shop which oral visits this episode upon his request to help him please his future wife stephanie gives oral a prince albert piercing which uh ouch and there's the cream i platonically applied some sav to the sensitive areas oh unsurprisingly dear old dad doesn't much like stephanie telling oral that she can be nice because she's different while normal people when you're normal like everyone else here in morrilton you have the luxury of not being pleasant by this episode we are seeing a number of different clues which point to a grounded and in some cases darker truth with multiple moral tonians we see dad and coach having a very sexually charged phone call clay it's danielle saw a little addition to your son's anatomy just now and i'm hoping it's not genetic we see reverend putty exposing his perpetual loneliness in his sermon i think to myself that man doesn't know how good he has it i should be with her to show her what a real husband is like and we see bloberta going slightly insane in her loveless marriage putting all her energy into cleaning literally cleaning the cleaning products themselves episode 8 gives us our introduction to joe coach stopframe's nephew and an absolutely puckered little [ __ ] die you dirty ants that's for moving our dirt around yeah he convinces oral to beat up on some gay kids who are coded in the cutest most wholesome way possible you're nice you're nice nothing weird going on here upon hearing about his activities a totally shit-faced daddy clay swerves through the forest and his car to pick up oral now imagine my surprise when he wasn't actually mad about the gay bashing but instead that oral had left his other friends out to do it you went out romping around and gallivanting with joe and you never asked those three longtime pals of yours to join in hmm you really think that's what bothered me are you questioning me young man oh an omelette face mask omelet face mask huh that's pretty good no i won't explain that at least the gay kids get a happy ending though you're nice you're nice finally in the penultimate episode of the first season we really start to see the cracks becoming exposed oral is trying to manage his brother because his parents are too uncaring to do so themselves which results in oral being shot in the face with a bb gun this prompts clay to chide oral for being at fault because he isn't mature enough so earl sets out to learn what it means to be mature he starts out following some of the other adults which eventually leads him back home to observe his parents there he witnesses them in a really ugly fight one where they are using sex as a tool for manipulating each other why would i be on the side of a self-destructive alcoholic i can't believe i give you the privilege of satisfying me every night the things they say in the fight are not something a truly happy couple says to each other however the music apparently doesn't agree which is something that we will come back to in just a moment so if episode 9 showed the first cracks then the season finale reveals the first big break in the formula that the series has been building up to this point the episode is the christmas special and in it oral becomes convinced that his brother shapi is the second coming of jesus christ he begins worshiping shapi and even destroys a nativity set outside the church because his parents consumed with their own issues aren't paying attention as usual i say as usual but this time we actually get a window into seeing what's going on in their world too we also see some other interesting bits like the introduction of jews for jesus the christine family who joins the morrilton church it's implied they're trying to fit in since the town is so intolerant to outsiders the finale begins like most other episodes with the puppingtons heading to church and listening to another fire song if the lord [Music] the reverend gives a sermon about how people who raise children that aren't their own are very good people and should be praised just as joseph was to be praised for looking after the baby jesus yet the puppingtons assumed that the sermon was about them shapi in particular who was apparently not clay's biological son at some point bloberta stepped out on him with coach stopframe the same coach who clay is now in a secret sort of but not really relationship with we see them in their room that night for the first time noting that not only does the couple not sleep in the same bed but they also have some sort of privacy wall between them called the lust guard 6000 they're fighting over the sermon and shapi's legitimacy over a silent background no music at all completely deadpan you know the reverend was referring to you not wanting shapey that's ridiculous how would he even know don't be an idiot everyone knows you didn't want him yeah well i had my reasons i think it's kind of strange that i don't even remember conceiving this kid one thing i haven't mentioned up to now is the music moral oral has a very peppy soundtrack just like many other irreverent cartoons especially those more geared towards children in fact he may already be here there might be a little child right now running around somewhere who's the second coming cool and this is true for much of the first season right up until we see this couple fight in episode 10 when the soundtrack is notably absent at times however they fought in a similar way in the previous episode but the music was still there so what's the difference well it's oral oral's presence is the difference i never asked for a second child and then boom shaping magically appears explain that shapey in the first fight we the audience are seeing them fight from oral's perspective and he is still an innocent kid who doesn't really understand the implications of such an argument in contrast the fight which begins episode 10 is only between boberta and clay so it seems that the music expresses oral's innocence it is the background music of a kid going through life in ignorant bliss and as the series goes on and that innocence is stripped away so too is the peppy music though it isn't an immediate thing the fight comes to a head when bloberta tells clay that she is unhappy and that she wants a divorce you are disgusting i want a divorce fine i'm gone live it up baby we see her lying in bed the next morning eyes wide and unable to sleep slipping into existential dread once again in silence after their fight as the two boys are tearing up the nativity scene their distraught mother comes to finally take them home oral asks about their dad innocently insisting that he has to be there for christmas and not understanding the weight of the events unfolding bluberta doesn't take it well then i suggest you go find your precious father and the two of you spend christmas together [Applause] the episode ends with oral peering into the window of the pub where his dad is drinking away his sorrows oral doesn't bother him but he realizes that there are still a couple of minutes left for christmas to be saved so of course he prays to god to do so but you still have two minutes left and i have faith in you and as he waits in vain for some miracle to occur the camera begins to zoom out the scene dressed in utter depressing silence we continue moving up and away taking the perspective of a god yet we witness no answer just the thick sheets of snow falling on an empty street with oral standing alone in the frame and finally the feeling that the entire episode has been building towards hits you there is nothing more this is it and then the realization that it wasn't just this episode but the entire season was leading us down this path this entire first season and the bait and switch that it pulled was to put plainly art it's beautiful in its simplicity yet deceptively complex just beneath the surface fun fact when the show first aired on adult swim the pilot they showed was this 10th episode when asked why on earth that was the case creator dino stomp and octopus responded so it's 2005 and season 1 isn't starting because standards and practices is too afraid to put this show out december came and they said it's almost christmas now let's have that episode be our debut this is one of our strongest episodes in terms of blasphemy if we can air this episode and show smp that no one is going to pick at us then you got a better chance to air all the episodes unfortunately for the team behind moral oral this meant that many people's first experience with the show was this climactic moment that needed to be experienced after building up the surrounding context imagine being one of those people that watched avengers in game without ever experiencing any of the other mcu movies and you sort of see why that might be a problem so then season two airs and things are mostly back to normal wait what yeah so most of the season 2 is just like the formula that the first season set up a happy-go-lucky oral getting into trouble with his pals complete with the goofy music and the bad lessons from dad only something doesn't feel quite right it's not quite the same as the beginning of the show there is something dark just beneath the surface that isn't always visible but it can be felt oral isn't living that totally untainted life anymore he's lost a piece of his innocence and in a way so have we the audience now we know what's happening behind the curtain so the jokes don't hit the right way anymore don't get me wrong though that just adds another layer to the complexity it's still a fantastic show and throughout the season the writers really begin to tighten the screws on that idea in the first episode back the writers remind us that everything that happened in the finale wasn't just a bad dream it actually happened and truly resulted in lasting consequences yet clay takes oral to lunch to assure him that he and bluberta have decided to stay together the last thing we want people to think is that we don't care about our own kids that's one fact that is none of their business in the drive from the chinese restaurant the topic of race comes up and we find out that blue berta is canonically racist and approved segregation so that's a thing we all know now at church later we get the typical set up with a heated sermon from reverend putty proclaiming the favor that jesus has for people that look like him which of course means white people but not even just white people like the real kind of white people you know please tell me you know because i don't and i nearly had an aneurysm both writing and speaking that sentence anyways oral takes the sermon literally pointing out that the figarelli kid billy isn't white like the rest of the boys this realization gets adopted by the adults which eventually leads to them segregating the town down the lines of the figuerillis and everyone else only this episode is somewhat of an unfortunate mess as the satire is nearly lost instead just straying into recreating segregation in its entirety but for the comedic elements of the figarellis being segregated upwards [Laughter] there's also the usage of an unfortunate inward pun using the figarelli name which you get the picture that didn't age too well which is a rare miss for the show the message of the episode is pretty muddled for anything beyond segregation bad actually which i mean like yeah pretty hot take i guess regardless of that though it ends with the figarelli's new segregation mansion burning down which leads oral to burn down the rest of the town to make things equal this isn't like when he impregnated the town's women though this will have consequences down the road one interesting note is the return of the christians the converted jewish family they offer shelter to the figarellis before things become ugly for them didn't simon have the hoods but to help jesus when he was schlepping that forgot the cross no thanks christine jesus will take care of me yet mr figuerelli declines but more interesting than that is just the existence of this hiding spot it shows that despite the chrystine's conversion in an attempt to fit in they know that deep down the town may never truly accept them the existence of their secret attic tells us that they know it might have to be them up there at some point that's [ __ ] dark for a claymation cartoon so the second episode forces oral to watch as his dog is taken to be murdered now if you're saying to yourself hang on i don't remember oral having a dog then yeah you'd be right bartholomew the dog is introduced this episode oral finds him while out in the park with his family despite the briefness of his appearance though he is still the best dog and i love him what do you think we should call you jesus jesus [Music] jesus that's it bartholomew one of our lord's lesser known yet very important disciples in case you didn't catch that he's trying to say his name is jesus in case it wasn't on the nose enough but of course something so pure so loving is not long for the town of morrilton very quickly some of the town's people have beef with bartholomew not because he pissed on their shoe or bit anybody in the dick just because the kids liked him more than the reverend for just a minute or he miraculously made a girl able to walk after dr potter's wheel said there was nothing he could do hurting their egos you know that old chestnut oral realizes that he actually loves bartholomew more than he loves jesus which is a big no-no so he decides that he has to just try loving jesus even harder however his dad and the reverend catch wind of this development and use it as an excuse to make oral get rid of bartholomew giving the dog to dr potter's wheel who outright says he's going to kill it gee dad does he have to die with all that love being spread everywhere this dog is dangerous [Music] this episode really [ __ ] with me not just because i have this love for dogs but also because some of its deeper implications likely the reason oral was so quickly enamored with bartholomew is that he has never before experienced that kind of unconditional love from anyone else before certainly not his parents so of course when he found it he clung to it but also because even after making oral give the dog up his mother rubs salt in the wound by telling him that bartholomew won't be going to heaven does that mean bartholomew is gonna burn in hell not that either you see animals have no souls whatsoever that's what makes it so tasty when we eat and drink them and that's the way most of season two progresses similar to season one as i said but just with a darker tinge to everything nothing is quite as fun as it was the first time around everything is just a little crueler and peppered in are reminders that everything that happened in the puppington household is continuing to have consequences going forward this season is twice as long as the first though so we'll need to speed things up a bit in episode 3 coach and dad's relationship nearly goes full steam ahead reverend putty gives a homophobic speech and the coach joins a satanic cult to try performing a ritual to make clay finally be with him except the satanic cult is really just a bunch of nerds more concerned with earthly pleasures and sticking it to the church than really worshiping the devil kind of like in real life it's not like the uptight christians um listen i don't know where you get your information but christians do eat candy bar no not this example in episode 4 we find out that oral's parents are trying swinging in their own weird way and in episode 5 oral gets eggs outlawed because they come from a sexual place we get this really weird scene of a farmer sexualizing his chickens which is another sentence i never thought i'd have typed jezebel pouring slutzy harlotta and prostitution gee why are they so high up farmer hush boy corey looks like she's about to put on a show in episode six we find out that any kids who question the reverend about his views on science get sent to a special ed class which is a really poignant message about othering people who think in different ways except for the unfortunate and frequent usage of the arsler we also learn about super god which is like god you know but super more powerful than all powerful can create a rock so heavy that even regular god can't lift it now you may have started to sense a pattern with the episodes thus far in season two they all served to destroy the innocence of oral while oral got into trouble in the first season it was always played as just silly hijinks nothing more but let's review what we've seen in this season so far oral is exposed to racial segregation he is forced to lose something that he loves in bartholomew he learns about homophobia and is suspicious of sex and he learns to judge people that don't conform to his beliefs and it doesn't stop there episode 8 is pretty important because oral finally finds love and he learns that even if you worship the same god if you do it in a slightly different way you're evil in going to hell a family moves into the house next door and they are a carbon copy of the puppingtons with the only major difference being oral's doppelganger she is a girl named christina however the family doesn't say grace the same way as the puppingtons do and chaos ensues debtors trespassers what are you nuts get out well you think you know someone yet despite the families hating each other oral and christina sneak out at night to be together we even see the first example of oral directly betraying his beliefs and his parents in saying the prayer the way christina's family says it something he immediately regrets doing though get it right right right right don't look at me like that this episode also cements the affair between nurse bindi and the principal of oral school that we first saw way back in episode 9 of the last season and this will take center stage shortly more importantly though shapi gets accidentally swapped with this doppelganger and nobody notices for a while except for oral he tries to tell his family but he never quite gets it out and it stays that way for a while episode 9 shows oral once again going against his faith a rabbi doctor is injured by a jesus figurine leaving a jesus-shaped wound on the man which of course the town takes as a sign from god given that they refuse to heal him which would destroy the sign in fact they line up all the other sick patients to come in and kiss the wound making it worse festering with all the newly introduced bacteria and god knows whatever else however as the rabbi is near death oral finds a way to give him medicine while still having plausible deniability maybe if i put this jesus figure close enough it would help you you yeah great um here i'll put it on this trait episode 10 is another important one that creates an ongoing storyline once again cementing the change towards a more serialized storytelling and away from the original formula oral convinces stephanie the sex toy shop worker to go to church with him though it's revealed that she only goes to confront her father reverend putty it seems her mother while a devout christian that didn't have sex out of wedlock decided to steal some of reverend's um used tissues to extract his semen and impregnate herself you know how people do remember he chastised oral for doing the old number three last season the episode mainly focuses on stephanie and referend putty as they try to navigate this sticky situation thank you thank you you too however it ends in a rare wholesome moment where he tells her she can call him dad accepting her as his daughter in one of the few examples of a warm relationship in morrilton it seems that despite her appearance and her profession things that the good christian people of morrilton look down upon stephanie is the only true rational and genuine person and this spreads to the people she interacts with episode 11 is oral's metaphorical awakening the moment that he is really forced to face the truth of his shitty parents and the events that we have seen in the show he is practicing for a praying bee where contestants are judged on their praying prowess perhaps producing a perilous panic and oral purportedly pointing at his predetermined performance he kind of freaks out and injures his hands during his prey practice okay that's the last one i promise and so he goes to the one person that has been truly helpful to him stephanie she gives him some things that facilitate meditation which of course dad doesn't like regardless it helps him enough that later in the heat of the bee when he is unable to concentrate on praying oral goes back to meditation and when he meditates he is visited by a vision of buddha with a weird bumpkin accent but i couldn't help been overhearing that your nothingness suddenly has become a lotness buddha reveals to him the reason that he is having trouble the reason that he's been feeling weird lately however having the truth revealed to oral doesn't immediately make things better quite the opposite in fact for the rest of the season and the show really we see him going through the different stages of grief denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance the grief of the loss of his innocence his childhood and of the perfect family he thought he had in episodes 12 and 13 we see oral going through the stages of denial and anger in 12 principal fakey is having problems of guilt due to his affair with nurse bindi oral steps in for the reverend in the repressional and tells him to just deny that it's happening and then it'll be like it really isn't happening fakie finds out that he has an std and blames it on his wife because he clearly is not the one sleeping around there's now no decency [Music] oral briefly feels responsible for causing fakie and his wife pain but reverend putty gives him the same advice to repress his feelings and the episode ends with oral skipping off happily in denial of the pain that he has caused and is feeling himself in episode 13 oral starts by listening to this song which has been stuck in my head ever [ __ ] since you've got to turn the other cheek turn the other cheek show the world how strong you are by simply acting weak inherit all the rules [Music] and using the message of the song he lets a bully walk all over him but clay teaches him that turning the other cheek is for the weak so oral begins to take his anger out on not only the bully but anyone that makes a fist including this cat they'll turn the other cheek they'll learn about the bible with your whole violence you never know even turns clay's advice around and beats the hell out of him too so rather than punishing oral thus admitting to being wrong in his advice the two just sit in the study for a full minute because well we had to cast what's called a smoke screen a smoke screen yes it's a valuable tool i use in order to give your mother the illusion that i'm actually doing my job as your father neat episode 15 gives us a glimpse into doei's household and why we've never seen him with his parents they are the perfect distillation of the high school sweethearts who never grew out of that mindset with a dad still wearing his varsity jacket and the mom in her cheerleading outfit at best their attitude towards doughy is indifference and at worst contempt just shoveling money at him to go away later because their teacher mrs sculptham shows even a sliver of kindness towards doughy he instantly falls in love and tries to buy hers meanwhile oral tries to find a way to make doughy happy making a deal with a pedophile ice cream man in a way he is helping joey in the same way that he needs to be helped in episode 16 a washed-up christian folk singer comes to live in morrilton writing this play in which oral plays judas and sings this song i hate you jesus you rotten little think your sermon never pleases and your parables all stink your eyes are beating noses weird a goofy basket case i'd like to take your stupid beard that's basically it nothing much else to say yet in episode 18 oral's movie premiere is where some real [ __ ] starts to go down oral premieres the stop-motion movie that we've seen him working on in the end credits after every episode many of the morlton townsfolk are in the audience to watch the movie is a pretty frank look at the life in morrilton and covers many of the events from season one it reveals what happened with the reanimated corpses in the first episode and how he got the town's women pregnant it lays bare clay's drunkenness hey hey popping tongue my son look good yes clay puppington my father who looks like a puppy because he is loyal and good hey you don't have to hurry and the reverence crippling loneliness for all to see i love jesus so much that nothing else matters to me i don't need girlfriends or wives or anything like that i'm happy being all alone forever midway through [ __ ] joe takes over the voice over doing mocking voices and reveals principal fakie's affair with bindi hey that actually looks like principal fakie the dumb guy at school he cheats on his wife with the dumbest girl ever nurse bendy the movie also reveals to the town clay and orals ritual belt meetings in the study and dr potter's wheel asks the question we have all been asking ourselves for this entire series is his dad molesting him what of course nobody is happy with oral though we didn't really get to see the aftermath yet that's too bad yeah i guess sometimes certain things get misinterpreted like what hmm not sure if 18 was a dive off the deep end though then episodes 19 and 20 are where moral oral hits the bottom of the [ __ ] pool directly on its face and we just watch as the metaphor grows out of control as oral lies unconscious at the bottom and the blood pulls on the top of the surface of the water right i guess i'll begin at the beginning these episodes are really just a part one and two of the same story which is a first for this series episode 19 begins in media res at the end of one of oral's punishments for some vague offense i'm never gonna do that with those in there for that long ever again good boy son clay decides that the two need some bonding time and so they go on a hunting trip by what we've seen so far this isn't really something that they've done in the past in fact clay shows oral and endless hall full of guns right in his study on the other side of the room which we haven't seen because the camera always points the other way though oral never saw it either so i don't know anyways clay gives oral a gun that his father once gave him and some sort of family tradition called old gunny for years it's been a grand puppington tradition that the head of the household would hand off old gunny to his first born son after loading up the car and clay throwing away basically everything that oral packed they head off towards the wilderness the first thing we see is clay making a little tint for all the booze that he brought and immediately starting to get shit-faced which is making oral visibly uncomfortable one interesting thing about this episode is that it's really the first time we've seen these two interact alone for an extended amount of time it's uncomfortable just sitting there and watching the events unfold we empathize with oral who is clearly just as uncomfortable as we are and this is just how things are going to be going forward all the things that the early show just cut out or didn't show us are on full display and it leaves us to wonder if this is how things really were the entire time and we're only now just seeing the full picture or if the relationship really has decayed this much plus clay keeps referring to different objects as nature's things like so with one of these honeys we're mercifully letting animals take what we like to call nature shortcut everyone knows that grass is nature's carpeting clay who is completely drunk at this point makes oral go and try to shoot his first animal asserting that killing something will make him more of a man however oral doesn't want to do it and instead he just befriends all the animals they encounter slowly causing his father to become enraged finally clay takes the gun from him and kills a deer himself which quite visibly traumatizes oral he then shoots a dog in his drunken stupor saying oral hunting dogs are just nature's rabbits so he's the worst character and i hate him the two run away from the dog's owner and we next see them by the fire with a very diseased looking dog corpse spit-roasted over the fire and clay eating an even more diseased looking paw it's clearly designed that way to evoke disgust if we already didn't feel it towards the drunk bastard and then finally oral snaps well i think you might be too drunk we've been waiting for this the entire season but all the trauma built up finally causes it to happen and he talks back to his dad for the first time calling him out for being a drunk and a mean one at that this sets klayoff on a diatribe why do you quit working on me she always fools me oral i'll make things better dear drink me put me inside you i'm great and she chokes me just like every other [ __ ] out there the tension keeps building and building until oral who is holding chekov's old gunny accidentally pulls the trigger [Applause] it's played as a cliffhanger leading into episode 20 but in actuality he only shot one of clay's bottles which was actually probably the worst thing he could have done this sets off clay even further he gets so frustrated that he can't do anything properly due to his drunkenness that he has a child's tantrum [Music] he then picks up a rifle and accidentally shoots oral in the leg don't [ __ ] me [Music] but it doesn't end there clay immediately blames oral for it you've got to learn to be more careful son well it's supposed to pain is nature's spankings and when he finds the first aid kit that he told oral not to bring rather than helping his son he just drinks the entire bottle of rubbing alcohol he passes out in a drunken stupor next to the gravely wounded oral when a bear comes across the camp forcing oral to shoot the animal and lose that last little bit of his innocence clay doesn't wake up until well into the afternoon of the next day and we just watch as oral lays there bleeding out and when clay finally does get up he blames oral again for standing in the way of his gun oh i don't remember that so that means it's not my fault well we should get you none of this is played as a joke it's shown completely flat forcing us to just sit there in this highly uncomfortable and cruel experience that the show is morphed into and it's very surreal this show which began with a silly raising of the dead plot and a funny lecture over the nakedness of the corpses has led us to oral being shot by his own father bleeding out for an entire day in the forest and then being gaslit about what happened watching the first episode and these two feels like watching two completely different shows because in effect that's what they are episode 20 in season two itself ends with oral laid up in bed his leg heavily bandaged his mother comes in to check on him and he asks why she married clay in the first place she first responds flippantly basically saying that if not for that then everybody would just be gay which is super sound logic but then she just says oh well why not well it's just that when he drinks he changes oh he doesn't change oral that's just his true nature coming out we fade out once again ending a season not on a major event but on a lack of one silently watching as oral contemplates the answer and really his entire life as he eats his cereal in bed the second season has shown us the depths of clay's cruelty but also that nobody in morrilton has clean hands blueberda is an out-and-out racist and homophobe and never even notices that one of her two sons was swapped reverend putty is a raging hypocrite in more ways than one principal fakey is a serial adulterer mrs sculpton the teacher uses kids to derive any pleasure out of life doughy's parents are horrible and the ice cream man is a sexual predator nobody is clean and season two even more so than one opened both our eyes and orals to this truth actually other than oral and christina there's really only one person who hasn't fallen into the pit of the town's depravity and that is stephanie the girl that they all look down upon for being different in other words having piercings and tattoos this isn't really an allegory or metaphor it's a direct criticism of ultra orthodoxy christianity and the rampant hypocrisy that is so often packaged together with it and found so prevalently in the southern bible belt and in the years after 9 11 especially much like today that was very prevalent in american society but more important to the show is this young boy oral who was indoctrinated into this belief system he is someone who is wholeheartedly devoted to this christian dogma but also blinded by his childhood naivete about all the people that surround him and their agendas ultimately the show season two in particular is about opening his eyes to the truth and if that's the case then season three deals with the fallout of that awakening if we continue with the idea of oral going through the stages of grief then it's hard to say whether this final season represents the final stage acceptance or if he is still stuck in depression often the season teeters along that line regardless of whatever else can be said is that season three is a major departure from the first two seasons gone is the happy-go-lucky music saved for a few episodes where we flash back to past the world before the hunting trip gone are most of the comedic aspects of the show in general in their place we are served this grim look at a town rife with religious fanaticism and none of the moral fiber that it supposedly should come with if the show is the perspective of moralton through oral's eyes then while we saw the show in seasons one and two through the eyes of a child in three we are seeing it through more adult eyes eyes that are able to see nuance and sadness and strife in actuality though a fair bit of season 3 doesn't even involve oral but instead looks at the events happening all around him but centered in the season is the hunting trip sometimes looking at the events that led up to it and others looking at the fallout the first episode begins with the song no children by the mountain goats we watch silently as the puppingtons wake up in their separate beds going about their separate routines avoiding each other unlike basically all the other songs in the show to this point outside the silly background music this song is non-diegetic meaning it's not actually playing in the world only the audience can hear it and it describes what's happening it's this extremely dark song with the lyrics i hope you die i hope we both die the singer is voicing a vast frustration with a destructive relationship which has warped into this hate for everything and everyone and it perfectly fits with the story of clay in bluebird in fact the soundtrack for the season is filled with songs like these each one carefully picked to express the feelings of the characters simultaneously melancholy and angry all for different reasons there are a few more from the mountain goats as well as some from other artists like the choir practice iopiri and savoy i highly suggest checking out each of them as they're all pretty great songs anyway we get to see things from bluebird's point of view while oral and clay are on the hunting trip she finally realizes that shapi has been swapped and goes to swap him back but winds up with both somehow there is very little dialogue here but it's clear that she is just a very unhappy lonely person she goes from having alone time with her dildo collection to begging reverend putty to sleeping with her when none of that works and even her largest toy doesn't satisfy her she goes to the hardware store to pick up a jackhammer to do the job but this of course injures her pretty badly so she has to go to dr potter's wheel who doubles as an ob gyn apparently he gets a sick pleasure from her pain though and tells her not to worry about the injury prescribing painkillers and telling her to hop back on the horse so to speak and when the pill cease to have any effect just come in and i'll take a good hard look then i'll raise the dosage but this of course leads to re-injury and on the return visit the doctor climaxes as she describes her pain this is steady throbbing bang pulsating through my whole lower body burns intensely as it creeps down from my hips shooting ever so slow doctor she realizes this and latches on to it looking for anything to fill the void in her life even when it means literally destroying her body and dignity to get it it's only after she realizes this when she comes back to the doctor without any injuries because she no longer needs her collection he no longer looks at her the same way and he basically throws her to the curb then we see him get the call that oral has been shot the episode ends exactly how it began with a symmetrical top down shot of the couple laying in their separate beds the frame divided by the lust guard they upgrade time has passed major events have happened but at the end of the day nothing has changed between the two the second episode takes place before the hunting trip so the peppy background music is back to a degree it begins with clay catching oral bathing in human blood no reason is given yet but keep that in mind because it'll be coming up in a bit in fact this season in particular weaves together a web of events all happening roughly simultaneously and we often see these things crossing over in multiple episodes because of oral's little hemoglobin soak clay realizes that normal punishments aren't really working so he bans him from going to church instead this sends oral into a spiral and we see that after two weeks he has gone completely insane reverting to a primal state and building a church costume for himself i sure do wish god would use his tricky magic for once and make church walk to me hooray he runs into doei who suggests finishing the costume with a cross which leads to oral's death by lightning strike only oral doesn't see heaven or hell when he dies instead he's left floating in a void which concerns him he is resuscitated by dr potter's wheel at the hospital but due to his experience he takes to killing himself again and again to try to figure out the afterlife seeing stranger and stranger visions each time even including ones of the future after the last time being resuscitated he tells the doctor his father and doughy what he saw or he tries to anyways as soon as it's clear his vision isn't consistent with their brand of christianity clay silences him oh wait no i remember that's because what oral saw was fuzzy clouds and fuzzy angels and and isn't that right son um i don't think so well then let me help you remember in my study the episode ends with the reveal that the punishment oral received because of this was what led to the hunting trip which is dark when you considered what oral went through and where it would lead episode 3 goes back a little further the townspeople have a meeting in the church about oral and the damage he's caused the town vis-a-vis hijinks and the song he sang last season in the play thinking events such as the dead walking as signs of the apocalypse at first they blame oral for all of it but then it is my considered opinion that the child may have been [Music] misled their solution is just to not give oral advice anymore of course that doesn't last long though oral immediately goes to dad for advice but he just hides away in the study to avoid damning the town he then goes to reverend putty who sends him to who sends him to who sends him to anyways oral eventually goes to coach stop frame who doesn't give a [ __ ] about the town's decision or really oral for that matter or much of anything but so that means that that if i bathe in vert gym blood i could see a child and then i'll be you know sin forever right so this is the issue that led up to episode 2. also i don't know where oral got the blood of the innocent but it would seem to imply that he and his friends killed a number of children to get a bathtub nearly full of blood dark the next seven episodes go even further back into the lives of the main characters and oral plays a relatively small part still though everything revolves around the hunting trip we get constant references to it throughout the season so that no matter how far back the story goes or how far it strays from oral's perspective we always have the event in the back of our minds thinking about how everything we're seeing led to it or affected it in some way in the next episode called alone we see a day in the lives of three of the women in the series nurse bindi ms sculpton the teacher and the librarian miss censored all they live lonely lives as they have all been pushed to live away from society in the spinster apartments because none of them have children nurse bindi is basically a fully grown child and is deluded in the belief that her teddy bears are her family oh you're so childy so are all you family hungry as her actual family was taken away from her by her baby daddy her child kept from her she suffers from the trauma of not only that event but also that she is just never taken seriously by anyone in the town and at best is just used as a plaything like in the case of the affair with principal fakie we all need people who aren't mean to me or that don't act like they only care about doing dirty awful things to you so at home she escapes into her delusions miss scope them has severe ocd clicking her light switch multiple times when she enters the apartment checking her locks over and over again all because she was raped by the ice cream man the same predator that went after doughy [Applause] [Music] in the episode she is still clearly suffering from severe ptsd and even possibly hallucinations we see things like the radio host and the news articles unwilling to call the ice cream man a rapist and just overall victim blaming we also find out the reason behind miss sincerdoll's obsession with eggs she doesn't have any in her body my lack of eggs is not a hindrance it is an asset don't push me down like that when you did this to me well then what good was relieving me of my reproductive parts if i cannot be an expert on the matter she is a controlling person and believes herself to be in control of every aspect of her own life demonstrated by her prim demeanor and overly tidy apartment she sees herself as the matriarch of the town even owning a scale model of it in which she controls everything we find out that her trauma dates back to her birth when she had a salpingectomy according to the wiki in other words her fallopian tubes were removed also removing her ability to have children her eggs and causing her to age much faster and she blames all of that on her mother regarding the episode dino stantopotamus said in the same interview with vice i delivered a rough cut of a loan to adult swim executive lazzo he read it and said that's it i gotta pull the plug it was really a one two three punch but alone is what did it he said that the show had gotten too dark and looking at the episode in question yeah i can see that it was definitely a risk but i think ultimately it told a really real story of trauma faced by women in america especially in these bible belt towns side note i'm going to link this pretty great reddit post on the topic in the description but ultimately the episode reminds us that a oral isn't the only person suffering in morrilton and b it's not just clay being cruel the system itself is cruel and it encourages and rewards cruelty in the town's people in the next episode we learn more about doei's inner world he is once again pushed out of the house by his parents who want nothing to do with him and thus he goes to oral's house this is again before the hunting trip when clay is teaching a world to shoot but not having much luck with it in contrast doughy reveals himself to be a great shot and tells oral the trick to shooting how'd you do that joey i don't know i guess you just have to try to pretend that no one cares like nothing you do ever means anything to anybody you know like you're totally invisible now joey's got the right idea he is completely traumatized by the years of neglect and this leads him to try warming his way into oral's life even if it means getting rid of oral himself he acts sabotaging oral's efforts learning to shoot belittling him and ultimately trying to push him out of his relationship with clay but it backfires pun intended when his plan also pushes oral into that same uncaring attitude that supposedly made doughy a better shot oh dewey that was just a ploy to get oral to shoot better why you could be lee harvey oswald and i still wouldn't bring you on that trip with me ah episode six tells us the ballad of joe the dickwad we see that there is some reason behind the little [ __ ] heel that joe is his mother supposedly died in childbirth or at least that's what he's told and his father is extremely old unable to have a normal relationship with his son the only reasonable person in the family the only reasonable person we see in morrilton outside of stephanie herself is joe's half-sister miss second opinion son yes that's her real name second opinionson and though it's never said outright she is coded as trans in many ways this was a very progressive depiction of a trans woman especially at a time when they were usually relegated as both the setup and punchline to jokes if they were included in media at all she is shown to be caring and kind to joe willing to speak with him levelly and treat him as a person which is a rarity in morrilton and there really aren't any jokes at her expense however the one exception to that her overly deep masculine voice is a bit yikes while it's never called out by any of the characters it's clearly supposed to be at least amusing as she pinches her nose to speak with a more feminine voice when speaking on the phone recently you're getting worse second opinions oh hello nurse bendy regardless joe lashes out at her and his father just like he does everyone else in his life until he finds out that nurse bindi is his mother once he confronts her joe and bindi have one of the few happy endings in the show i'm kind of hoping now that you could work the way sunny used to oh like this no like this hmm time we see any kind of happy endings in the show it's always and only the comfort of a wholesome relationship which brings true happiness to the characters in episode 7 we finally get the answer to oral's question why bluberta married clay the episode is mainly from her perspective and delves more into her manipulative tendencies she was always the odd one out in her life with her abusive mother and cowardly father rest of her family even her friends the societal pressure for young women to get married along with all her friends doing so first led her to seducing clay we see that when they met he was not yet an alcoholic and she was complicit in corrupting him when he rebuffs her initial advances she punches him and then gaslights him about it and manipulates him into getting married see i help you need me around to help we had seen the depths of clay's depravity with oral but clearly belberta's hands aren't clean either episode 8 centers on clay and his childhood we see the young clay was much like oral but with yet another overbearing mother this series sort of has a thing with domineering women only mrs puppington was more of a helicopter mom which his father did not approve of his father tried to make clay into a man by holding old gunny which we later see repeated in the hunting trip episodes but just like oral this young clay did not enjoy holding the gun by accident clay finds out that he isn't really an only child but instead had like a half dozen brothers and sisters who all died in the womb he it doesn't take this well and in a childish fit of anger fakes his own death using old gunny and ketchup his death and sudden revival cause his mother to have a heart attack and because it's moral oral the father blames clay for the mother's death he's about to hit him but then you're not even worth it not worth it clay internalizes this reasoning that if he gets hit then his father must care about him so he speaks out constantly insulting his father saying anything to be punished and feel cared for pretty [ __ ] up so in his own twisted way beating oral is a way of expressing his love although it also confirms that he has no such love for shapi episode 9 lets us in on stephanie's backstory who grew up in morrilton and went to school there she was in love with the cheerleader even though said cheerleader was just leading her on and using her to prank a young reverend putty it ended when stephanie expressed her love for the girl but was basically laughed at oh and that girl she went on to become mother teresa feel old yet no but she is doughy's mom the one that never grew out of the high school phase we also see more of oral this episode again its events occur before the hunting trip he decides to reconnect with christina and takes her to the dance despite their differences stephanie helps the two get to the dance together where the reverend finds her they have a heart-to-heart conversation and she basically comes out to him well don't worry nothing came of it i just hope oral has better luck with love than i did are you kidding me you can't compare you and her to oral and his little orolette why cause we're two girls and tolerance is only a pretend theme no because she never cared about you it shocked stephanie as much as it shocked me clearly the writers are very adamant about how love can open a person up making them better episode 10 introduces us to florence and dottie two characters we haven't seen much of yet and we won't really see much more going forward honestly while this episode is great in its own right it really is it doesn't really connect back much to the larger story except in that florence is in love with a reverend and they sleep together even though she's still technically married i think to officer papermouth it seems like they may have had more plans for florence and dottie in future seasons or something but alas that wasn't to be episode 11 finally starts to deal with some of the aftermath of the hunting trip in fact from here on out all the episodes occur after that event here we see things from clay's perspective literally so at the beginning of the episode we see through his eyes when oral asks why his mom married him well it's just that when he drinks he changes clay then goes to the bar ready to drink away his sorrows yet again if i go to work today i'm gonna kill somebody only the reverend comes in too and then officer papermouth and then dr potter's wheel clay takes out his rage and frustrations on each of the men as they enter first arguing with the reverend about the morality of jesus look once you get crucified you can do no wrong everybody loves you well some of us don't have that luxury there's a little thing called supporting a family that jesus never got around to doing then goading the officer about florence sleeping around and taunting the reverend that he knows it was him you can't even score a little tail and already that fat pig florence has got some loser grunting and snorting up and down her flesh and then finally attacking dr potter's wheel accusing him of killing his wife when he's really just mad that he found the doctor's handkerchief in bluebird's things the diatribe is starkly reminiscent of the hunting trip clay is stuck in the cycle of unhappiness taking it out on whoever gets near we then see that all of it was a ploy that he was deep down trying to goad them into hitting him he was looking for comfort and he was taught as a child that being hit meant being cared for it meant he was worth it despite spending the time to go back and reveal the events and traumas that led to the characters we know as oral's parents despite the humanity those episodes reveal and the empathy they may impart to us as viewers the show does not excuse their behaviors it never tries to explain away the cruelty of their actions the knowing simply adds even more welcome nuance we can see clay's desperation when he lashes out in the bar we can see him questioning his own actions in real time his more benevolent childhood self momentarily peeks through though he quickly hardens and ultimately tosses those questions aside these things make the clay figures of bluberta and clay ironically some of the most real characters on television especially for the time and while it's depressing as all hell it's also beautiful to behold in episode 12 we finally learn what the stinking dead-end job is that clay constantly comes home complaining about dad what are you doing here you're you're the mayor don't remind me it's as much a shock to oral as it is to us the audience which is really odd like how did he not know wouldn't he have had to campaign stuff and wouldn't his family have been involved it implies that the extended alone time that we saw in the hunting trip likely was the longest they had ever spent with each other on or off camera we see oral go to him in a flashback in the previous season when he is trying to get eggs banned and the visit resurfaces clay's traumatic memories which result in this hallucinogenic scene oh back in the present we see that miss cincerdall is trying to get the eggs unbanned and because clay okayed oral's original band proposal she decides to run against him for mayer as punishment for sliding her in fact oral is working as her campaign manager we even see that their pamphlet questions clay's story about the hunting trip that oral accidentally shot himself clay tells oral to meet him in his study after the rally but oral is done with his [ __ ] not caring about the beating or the lecture you had six months to talk the last six months we're not filled with you helping a mad woman campaign against me and my job you don't even like your job like like no one likes their job but at the campaign debate sincerdoll drops out as suddenly as she entered the race when she sees how vulnerable and easily manipulated clay is the episode ends with clay and coach stop frame about to kiss in the bar but they're interrupted by cincerdal some months have passed since that debate and clay desperately wants to know what she is up to she on the other hand found it the perfect time to strike and walks the disgusting line between mothering and being overtly sexual with him that my dear mayor is the only egg you'll ever find down there they have a very homelander and milk bottle type relationship of course coach stop frame doesn't take this well the series finale is about acceptance about oral finally accepting the truth behind his father's abuses and trying to come to terms with them after everything that has happened oral is totally disenchanted with his father yet he still wants to find some reason to honor him as the bible instructs so he goes to the reverend for advice who sends him to coach stop frame the one person in town that seems to be able to find a redeeming quality in the man the two have a nice day together finally getting to know one another yet at the same time the coach is clearly just stalling because he too has fallen out of love with clay finally oral puts the pieces together in his mind and realizes that coach stopframe loved his father not just as a friend coach you like my dad the way my mom likes my dad don't you your mom likes your dad speaking of clay cottons on to what is happening spying on them throughout the day and he is none too pleased finally he breaks announcing that the family is going caroling in a ruse to interrupt oral in the coach and i'm just gonna let the rest of the scene speak for itself and i i i love you we should go i love you i love you i love you i love you oral come on dad it's late no he's right it's too late this is the last we see of the puppington family as they re-enter their house dejected one and all except for shapy they have all been through the ringer in one way or another most of all oral who as the lone sane person in the family is left to pick up their mess and carry their baggage they cannot deal with it themselves clearly what happens to them after this episode is left up to the viewer's imagination but though the truth is finally in the open nothing has been resolved luberda and clay still hate each other still hate themselves and their lives still feel nothing for shapy and barely more than that for oral and there's no indication that any of it will change oral's face begins to shift gets older and finally the episode ends showing his own family and for only a third time in the series we see a happy ending oral has a family with a woman that looks very much like christina a son and a daughter and a dog that looks like bartholomew we see a cross on the wall despite everything they still hold their beliefs and as the episode fades we see them spending loving time together happily content in their home moral oral stands as a unique take on the evolution of characters and the concept that i think i coined reverse flanderization the show was aired well before its time in an era where adult swim was looking to experiment but not if things got too serious unfortunately because of that we never got to see dino stantler puss's vision completed one wonders where they would have taken the storyline would clay get redeemed would they find a way out of their loveless marriage would we get any more info about florence and dottie would we see why dr potter's wheel is turned on by bodily injuries please god no not that but in the interview dino gives us some examples of where he wanted to go in the following seasons oro's grandfather was supposed to move back with the family because he's dying clay would have thrown him into oral's room so he'd be sharing his bed with a dying man who is no longer religious and more pragmatic after his grandfather died he would have become more of a goth kid and gotten into death rock but not the christian kind moral oral is a deceptively deep show one that holds up a mirror and shows us the destructive cycles of abuse and deception even in the most privileged family it is a dark look at how these hyper-religious communities don't allow for the imperfection of humans that they warp piety from an ideal into a whip and how they can break a child however that isn't to say that it was a complete refutation of religion as a whole clearly the writers believe that a happy religious family is possible given the final scene it's just that when taken to the extreme or used as a crutch it can be as destructive a force as any ultimately i think the creators agree they have said that the show is all about interpretation that oral ultimately kept his religion because he was never mad at god only how the people in the town warped him interpreted him and unfortunately because in those communities there is no room or language for questioning belief he was never able to express that i fully agree with the vice article when it says that moral oral walked so that shows like bojack horseman and rick and morty could fly it showed that deep emotional story lines can be told in any medium as long as they are told well and even with the exception of some rare missteps it was far more progressive on many fronts than nearly all of its contemporaries thank you for watching my video as i said at the beginning there is a longer cut of this video for patrons only so if you want to see that you can donate there whether or not you do though i want to thank you all for making it this far though i have no idea why you did i will see you all in the next one i hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us i hope we come up with a fail-safe plot to piss off the dungeon that forgave us i hope the fences we mended all down beneath their own weight and i hope we hang on past the last [Music] and i hope the rising black smoke carries me far away i [Music] i hope you'll die i hope we both die [Applause]

Channel: Meromorphic

Views: 1,354,023

Keywords: moral orel, moral orel analysis, moral orel explained, moral orel watch free, adult swim shows, claymation, cartoon, animation, animated, video essay, explained, tv show analysis, orel, unpacking moral orel, reverend putty, bloberta, puppington

Id: ANuxOmACFQ4

Length: 77min 25sec (4645 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/kittylomein]

Blew my mind that this was by Starburns lmao

[u/clamshellconundrum]

The creator of this show is also a long term cast member of the show Community and directed/wrote a bunch of the episodes.

[u/nonrebreather]

I absolutely adore this show. It's something I can't seem to get people in to because it's claymation, or because it seems at first to be mostly one offs.

It's touching, and anyone I know who actually watches it from start to finish is moved by it. I can't hear a song by The Mountain Goats and not think of Moral Orel.

"Why? Why not?"

[u/ConvenienceStoreDiet]

Haha, I worked on this show years ago.

Sometimes I don't really know how important a show I'm working on is or isn't to the audience. Robot Chicken was popular and when I worked on it I get the "dude, I love that show. I used to watch that all the time when I was stoned." But I was at some convention and somebody mentioned Moral Orel and the crowd burst into a loud applause. I think then I realized it was culturally significant to the people who ended up seeing it.

[u/zerozed]

Great show, but the final episode was so dark and depressing I never got through it. That's not a criticism - to the contrary - great art should challenge you.

[u/Listentotheadviceman]

Oh wow, season 3 of this show is amazing. It leaves the “Orel misunderstands a sermon” formula and uses the established town to make this heart-wrenching examination of the characters’ inner lives. The creator Dino Stamatopoulos used to hang out on the Adult Swim message boards & he said that he explicitly tried to make it like a depressing version of The Simpsons.

[u/trashcatt_]

I heard a story that when he sent scripts in for one of the seasons Adult Swim said "there was only like one joke in the whole thing" and Dino replied with "where is it, I'll take it out"

[u/AskMeIfImAMagician]

The episode "Alone" got them in trouble with the network. Really fucked up episode.

[u/RenAndStimulants]

This show is amazing. Over the course characters start to lose it but Orel keeps being positive and innocent, but still does things he doesn't know are wrong because of the abuse of the world around him he thinks it's normal.

Sad and true to life. It's great in that way