TVSquad

The funny man behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is creating an animated series for Fox. The series is called Animals and it's described as "a parody of suburban life using the animal kingdom." Smigel will write the series with Greg Cohen, writer for King of the Hill and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It's being produced by Adam Sandler's company, Happy Madison (the two remain close from their days on SNL and Sandler regularly casts Smigel in his movies). Animals is meant to round out Fox's Sunday night animation block, which already includes The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and American Dad. It's about damn time somebody gives him his own series.

Smigel also pens the "TV Funhouse" cartoons for Saturday Night Live... including The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The Ex-Presidents. The Reuters article about the new series doesn't mention whether he'll continue as Triumph or for SNL.

I don't know what Jimmy Fallon did to anger Robert Smigel (or maybe Smigel knows Fallon can take a joke), but I totally appreciated the long-running joke about Ace and Gary thinking he was the best actor ever on SNL. Later on, when they're looking for Jimmy Fallon, they get into a fight with Andy Samburg and Jason Sudeikis and Gary's butt ends up in Andy's face. They also end up wrestling, bringing Jason and Andy's... ahem... relationship into question. And it all ends with Jimmy Fallon (!) pretending to cry as Ace and Gary fly off in their penis-mobile with a naked Jason and Andy. That was a great bit.

There were so many animated shorts in this episode, that I'm only going to write about my favorite ones:

I would say that there are two shows that I'm most looking forward to this year. One is Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60, which will debut on NBC this fall, and the other is the special that the same network has this Saturday night. The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse will run in the 11:30pm slot, and will feature the best of Robert Smigel's cartoons and other video projects. The show will be hosted by The Ambiguously Gay Duo (voices of Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell),  and we'll also see The X-Presidents, Fun With Real Audio, satires of Michael Jackson, Disney, and everything in between.

The New York Times has a story on the special and on Smigel himself.

I haven't watched many of SNL's "Best of" specials, mainly because I don't particularly want to see sketches that I've already seen a number of times (although Chris Farley dancing at Chippendales never gets old). But the next "Best of" special I'm going to want to record. Why? Because on April 29, NBC will air The Best of TV Funhouse, hosted by Ace and Gary, otherwise known as the Ambiguously Gay Duo (voiced by Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, by the way). Not only will the show air the best of Robert Smigel's shorts from the last 10 years -- a period where often the Funhouse segment was the only thing funny about SNL -- but there will also be a new AG Duo short.

I'm especially looking forward to the Charlie Brown Christmas parody, because Smigel so accurately apes the odd speaking patterns of the Peanuts kids-- and the ultra-cheap 1960's animation -- it's scary. If I had a TiVo, I'd probably put this on one "Save until I delete" status.

[via The Futon Critic]