In the old DVRing days, I recorded this show and my beautiful wife and I watched, what, the first two episodes? I thought it was in the pre-children days, but apparently this series aired in 2016, so it would have been in a period when we were watching television together regularly–Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Jessica Jones, Cage, Downton Abbey, Almost Human, Human Target, and Sleepy Hollow, and The Blacklist come to mind–we made it through all of many of them, but I gave up on Sleepy Hollow and The Blacklist after a while, and our shared television watching petered out.
But last summer, for some reason, I though of this show, and so I ordered the DVDs on Amazon. And it took us about this long to get through the two discs half hour episodes (13, I think Wikipedia or IMDB said).
So, the premise is that a He-Man/Thundarresque cartoon barbarian comes to Orange County, California, to connect with his teenaged son. He, the teenaged son, named Alangulon, lives with Zorn’s ex-wife and her fiance, Craig, a squishy therapist played by Tim Meadows. The series mixes cartoons with live action, where Zorn and people from Zephyria (his homeland, an island somewhere) are cartoons and the other characters in Orange County are live actors. So, yeah, the whole schtick is a barbarian fitting into the modern world and how that intersects with modern sitcom tropes such as workplace intrigue and parenting struggles.
My wife did not enjoy it as much as I did, but she was amused at various moments. The series features cartoon gore, and although in many cases the out-of-touch father figure plays a part, it’s more because Zorn is different than because he’s dumb. The young people are not overly precocious or more knowledgeable than their parents, so it really does seem to be a throwback to older sitcoms. Although I guess I’m not one to talk; the latest sitcom I have seen was Whitney which was, what, 2011? Or whenever I got around to it on the DVR. Whatever I’ve sampled has been crass, but Son of Zorn is not exactly that, but some of the gags are based on how a barbarian would take on a modern problem. Inappropriately.
So it was a fun little bit, and it has Tim Meadows in it. Man, I remember him mostly from Saturday Night Live, but that was over a quarter century ago. But I’m going to keep my eyes out for a copy of The Ladies Man because I haven’t seen that in that time span after I took my poor beleagured wife to yet another SNL-skit-turned-into-a-movie (she has maybe forgiven me for, or just forgotten The Ladies Man, but never MacGruber).
