Monday, October 25, 2010

Xavier: Renegade angel

I was drunk(ish) and it was late at night, or early in the morning, I don't remember.  I was staying in my sister's apartment watching Adult Swim, the same old non-sense type shows that Adult Swim regularly airs.  The type of shows that make the viewer wonder if it's genius or insanity, absurdist humor or just garbage produced by a team of lazy animators.  I think most of the shows on Adult Swim are a combination of all four, but I digress.  I was watching Adult Swim and a show came on that changed my life forever ......... okay, not really, but the show was really really good.  

The show is called Xavier:  Renegade angel.


If you haven't seen it yet, it's time you do.  If you're a fan of the show Wonder Showzen, rejoice, because it's a product of those same depraved minds.  The only thing, however, that this show has in common with Wonder Showzen is the dark, surreal, absurdist comedic madness, which is what makes John Lee and Vernon Chatman's work so amazing.  

Xavier:  Renegade Angel, follows the wandering angel, Xavier and the events that unfold as a result of his delusional thinking.  The plots of each episode are always non-linear and mind bending, they are, to put it bluntly, fucked up.  

Xavier himself looks like a furry raised in a toxic waste dump.  He has a humanoid body covered in brown fur, a bird beak, blond hair, one blue eye and one brown eye, six nipples, and his left arm is a snake.  His attire consists of a Native American-esque loincloth and white tennis shoes, and a necklace.  And for some reason, his knees bend in the opposite direction, like a flamingo.

Like I said earlier, the show is fucked up (in a good way.)

While watching the show, I wondered to myself, is there a deeper meaning behind all this madness?  The answer came after I watched the audio commentary of the first episode.  It turns out, the answer is yes, maybe, probably. 

The strange attributes of Xavier's appearance symbolize different aspects of new age religions and their contradictory nature.  The "deep thinking" of Xavier and the mayhem that inevitably ensues, pokes fun at people in real life who do the same, for their pondering and questioning of things, such as, "what is the meaning of life," are always unanswered and never will be answered.  We are born and we live and then we die.  We don't know why we're here or why we do the things we do, but we do them anyway.  When you question these things, you stop living.  New age religions (all religion, for that matter,) and philosophical questions never provide answers, only infinite loops. 

In episode 1 of Xavier:  Renegade angel, Xavier asks a computer the question:  "what doth life?"  The computer subsequently has a meltdown as a result of the mind fuck, and all the computers in town end up malfunctioning due to Xavier's question.  Three rednecks, who previously beat Xavier up, decide to dump the computers in the landfill, Xavier, however, tells them to dump them in the lake instead.  The three rednecks take his advice and end up contaminating the water supply with the computer virus, which then infects everybody who comes into contact with the water.  Xavier's attempt to combat the virus involves him infecting the computers with a human virus.  That concept, like cures like, is a common theme in "alternative" medicine, specifically homeopathy.  Homeopathy, by the way, is bullshit and doesn't work.  In this way, the show ridicules alternative medicine.  

All this information comes from the audio commentary, by the way.  Maybe I'm just over thinking this. 

But all that aside, the show is great and everyone should watch it.  

I give Xavier: Renegade Angel, a solid:
10/10


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