TVSquad

Last night I serendipitously stumbled upon Adult Swim's Moral Orel: The Best Christmas Ever. I knew I was going to like it the moment the clay-animated family began to sing along to a commercial jingle which asked, "If the Lord were alive today, what would you get Him this Christmas?" Then I noticed the special was created by Dino Stamatopoulos, a former writer for Mr. Show (a personal favorite of mine). The show was supposedly picked up by Cartoon Network for a ten episode run, but there doesn't seem to be much information about it beyond this particular holiday special. Hopefully it will get picked up, because it's hilarious. Aesthetically, the show resembles Davey and Goliath, but it pits the childish wonder of its titular character against the harsh reality of the world in much the same way South Park did in its early seasons. When Moral finds out his father (whose name is "Clay," get it?) is not actually the father of his younger brother, it leads Moral to believe his sibling is actually the second coming of Christ. The two of them celebrate by destroying a Nativity scene on the front lawn of a church in celebration of the apocalypse. There's plenty of blasphemy for the whole family, but also a kind of weird innocence. According to the opening credits, the animated special is filmed in "Righteouscope" using "God's Planimation." If that's not Christmas, I don't know what is.