Code Monkeys — Season One

Code Monkeys apparently like Fritos, Tab and Mountain Dew, in addition to negative racial and sexual orientation stereotypes, boobs, poop, 8-bit animated penises and old-school Nintendo games. That’s right, this is a show for all those obese "X-Philes” and Star Trek fans that played D&D in high school and frequently masturbate to World of Warcraft characters. Set back in the ’80s, when Atari and Intellivision were the bomb, Code Monkeys centres on two game designers for Gameavision, Dave and Jerry, after the company is bought out by a redneck Texas millionaire. They spend a great deal of time smoking pot, micro-waving their faeces and urinating on foodstuffs while "Black Steve,” the accountant, shoots everything, Mary designs feminist videogames, Todd designs fantasy games and begs prison inmates to sodomize him, receptionist Claire flirts with everyone and gay Clarence sings about wanting anonymous dick. It’s all incredibly scatological and has absolutely no episodic structure. In fact, there are episodes where initial plot devices are forgotten entirely about half-way through and never resolved, giving the impression that most of the writing was done while under the influence, or by a nine-year-old. If some effort had been made to give even the tiniest bit of heart or linearity to the show, the profane antics might have occasionally come across as amusing rather than being just an endless blur of offensive, juvenile ranting. Simply having a gay character stand in the middle of a room acting out a stereotype is only amusing on an irreverent level if done with irony or juxtaposed with an incongruous element that makes it particularly inappropriate or unexpected. The only area of this program that wields any sort of cleverness is the many videogame references peppered throughout. Gamers will recognize nods to games such as Asteroids, Final Fantasy, Super Mario Brothers, Dig Dug, Castlevania and Doom, etc. They will also find amusement in the many game industry cameos by folks like Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder), David Jaffe (God of War creator), Gary Gygax (D&D creator) and Doom creator John Romero. The DVD includes original Gameavision games, in addition to wallpapers and posters for your PC. Also included are "Behind the Scenes” and "Interview with” featurettes with creator Adam De la Pena, who seems like the kind of guy who would create a show like this.