Are you watching “Childrens Hospital?” If not, you need to get on it. All the time these doctors spend goofing off and not actually treating their patients is in vain if nobody is there to see it! A medical “drama” like none other you’ve ever seen before, “Childrens Hospital” got its start as a webseries before Adult Swim decided to make it part of their regular programming. Here we are, several years later, and we’ve got four seasons with the fifth one scheduled to premiere July 25, 2013. Set those DVRs and get ready for wild ride.
The show follows a group of doctors as they ignore patients, perform duties they’re woefully unqualified to do and let their personal lives completely wreck their job performance. The doctors are careless, egotistical, and juvenile, making this an excellent guilty pleasure to gobble down. Rob Corddry wears a hat of many colors, being the creator, writer, as well as an actor in the series. “Childrens Hospital” doesn’t follow the typical format of regular television shows, as each episode only runs about 15 minutes long. Honestly, it’s a good move on Corrdry’s part for opting to go this route. There’s a lot of wild, offensive humor slapping you in the face and keeping it to smaller doses keeps things from feeling dragged out. It also lets you get a breather from the sheer insanity.
Now, don’t think I’m saying watching “Childrens Hospital” is like a slap in the face in a bad way. If anything it’s a love tap that you enjoy, laugh at and in the end beg for more. What I am saying, gentle reader, is that the show is both genuinely funny and cleverly offensive. For example, one of the minor characters is named Rabbi Jewy McJew Jew and a doctor has sex with what looks like a grown man but is actually a six year old boy with a medical condition that makes him grow at an exponential rate. And she knows that the kid is six, she’s just so dang hot for him that she doesn’t give a Hippocratic crap about it.
A great roster of actors make up the cast, and each episode features a slew of guest stars. At the core of the show are Ken Marino, Malin Akerman, Rob Corddry, Rob Huebel, Megan Mullally, Erinn Hayes, Lake Bell and Henry Winkler. You can also expect to see appearances by Alicia Silverstone, Matthew Perry, Nick Offerman, Nick Kroll, Lizzy Caplan, and Ernie Hudson to just name a few. Plus there’s also Michael Cera as the PA system announcer. Cera’s announcements are soft, and often in the background of other jokes, so these subtle gags help add a great layer of re-watchability to the show. Here are a few of his choicest announcements:
Attention hospital staff, I have a screwdriver in my hand. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.
Attention: Will the owner of the red jeep with the spoiler and 18 inch rims please stop lying to himself.
Attention: What is the difference between having a friend and nobody to talk to? Everything.
Attention Hospital staff: Cheetos flaming hot crunchy snacks are dangerously cheesy.
Attention hospital staff: Buzzed surgery is drunk surgery.
The show can be found on Netflix’s instant queue, but what you won’t find there are the mock advertisements that run with the show on Adult Swim; which means that you’re not getting the full experience. These mock ads have turned out to be such a big hit that they became spinoffs of their own, including “NTSF:SD:SUV” (“National Terrorism Strike Force: Sand Diego: Sport Utility Vehicle”) and “Newsreaders.”
“Childrens Hospital” is overflowing with wacky, crazy, offensive, and funny gags. Part of the beauty of Adult Swim is that you’ll see gags there you wouldn’t see anywhere else, in part because they give few craps about the censors, and also because their shows tend to be in fifteen-minute chunks. Some of “Childrens Hospital’s” wildest gags include:
Blake Downs (Rob Corddry) may be a doctor, but he believes in the “healing power of laughter,” which is why he’s always dressed as a creepy, blood-spattered clown. Also, apparently he didn’t go to medical school despite having been practicing medicine for a while now, so the hospital superintendent declares that having him spend one day as an intern will even it all out.
A politician’s wife wants to abort her sixteen-year-old son, but her husband is an anti-abortion politician.
“Childrens Hospital” is filmed in the same abandoned hospital “Scrubs” was filmed in, something that the cast indirectly refers to during their deliberately bad, fourth wall-breaking “live” episode.
When the air conditioning goes out people run wild with lust… and then just run wild in an all-out brawl that includes the police, someone calling for the death of Henry Winkler and a Chinese parade dragon.
One of the doctors gives birth to a full-grown man. She dies from this ordeal, but not really, because she comes back later, still alive, but without any knowledge of how to practice medicine.
To prove that they’re not actually cops in disguise, two undercover cops are forced to conduct an anal examination in front of some drug dealers.
The only thing you can predict about “Childrens Hospital” is that you will never be able to predict what’s going to happen next. This show pulls no punches when it comes to comedy, making it a non-stop beatdown of laughter as well as being one hell of a guilty pleasure.
