Will the new "Beavis & Butt-head" be worth your time?
(CBS) After 14 years, "Beavis & Butt-head" is returning to MTV. Heh heh.
While "Beavis & Butt-head" was culturally relevant back in the '90s, the music videos about which the two made their snide comments are long gone from the network.
To "modernize" the slackers, creator Mike Judge will have his two protagonists make fun of viral videos and MTV reality TV shows, with some music videos thrown in. Don't worry: The potty humor and childish tone will stay the same.
On the premiere episode, Beavis and Butt-head are inspired by "Twilight," and search for a vampire to bite them so they can score with the ladies. The next segment shows Beavis dealing with being made fun of for appearing as if he was crying -- he actually cut an onion -- during an episode of "The Bachelor."
If you were a fan of the original run of the cartoon, critics claim that you won't be disappointed. But don't expect the television show to elevate the art form either.
"Is it all as innovative as it was in the 1990s? No; it can't be," James Poniewozik from TIME wrote. "But though I was skeptical about it at first, having seen the new Beavis, I think of it less as a revival of a franchise for a new era, and more like the latter years of a long-running cartoon satire, like "The Simpsons" or "South Park" - one that just happened to be temporarily interrupted for 14 years. It's not essential anymore, but it's still welcome."
If you had problems with the show to begin with, well, you probably won't be won over as a new viewer, says Mark Zoller Seitz of Salon . "It's all faintly amusing, just as the original 'Beavis and Butt-head' was faintly amusing," he explained. Seitz said viewers might well feel as if they had returned to their old high school but didn't feel nostalgic.
Still, whether you liked "Beavis & Butt-head" or not, you can't deny the influence it had on pop culture. Robert Lloyd with the LA Times pointed out how his fully-grown male friends still snicker like Beavis at anything that could be vaguely construed as sexual. That may be the show's strongest selling point: 14 years later, people still make immature jokes. Seeing that boys will always be boys, it will be interesting to see whether the show can appeal to a new generation.
"Beavis & Butt-head" will air Thursdays on MTV at 10 P.M. ET.
