Seven years ago, Too Many Cooks confused groggy Adult Swim viewers. The surreal video debut on October 28, 2014 at 4:00 am as part of the experimental Infomercials and quickly went viral. At the time, Too Many Cooks perfectly captured Adult Swim’s magic. It’s bizarre, clearly meant for adults, and turns the mundanely normal into something indescribably absurd plus it has that insanely catchy theme song that puts actual sitcom themes to shame.
If you haven’t seen Too Many Cooks, don’t remember it well, or haven’t seen the 11-minute short film in a while, watch it. We’ll wait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8
Now that Too Many Cooks is burned into your short-term memory, you can truly appreciate how much thought went into the 70s, 80s, and 90s sitcom references. The opening is taken from Full House, most of the sitcom parodies invoke ABC’s TGIF favorites, Smarf looks like he’s made from leftover Alf parts, the rotating camera at the dinner table invokes Roseanne, and the actors’ spinning to change into a costume recall Linda Carter’s Wonder Women albeit a dizzy one with a costume taken from Spirit Halloween.
Once you look past the familiar sitcom elements, Too Many Cooks gets interesting. At various points, Too Many Cooks is a parody of crime dramas, stars Matthew Kody Foster as “Coat” and Lars Von Trier as “Pie”, and becomes animated in the vein of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero all before the kicker. As you’re starting to grasp the strangeness of this purported show, it turns into a slasher film as a random actor, who may be an homage to Bob from Twin Peaks, chases after Katie Adkins. Katie thinks she found the perfect hiding spot, but the closet has slats, so her slasher can see the light from her name through the door.
At this point, you realize this 11-minute film has more twists and turns than the average superhero movie. You probably gave up trying to predict what’s next and embraced the lunacy. One moment, Too Many Cooks seems to be like Dallas or Dynasty; the next it’s a low budget take on Star Trek and My Favorite Martian. It gets even stranger when an actor is in the hospital and a doctor comments that he hears the theme music in the man’s heart. The doctor receives his own lower third and is afraid he’ll be killed now that he’s part of the cast.
Smarf finishes the slasher portion by pushing a button as he bleeds to death. Suddenly, Too Many Cooks cuts to the cast in Brady Bunch squares and ends with a final photo that has everyone smiling like the weirdness of the last 10 minutes never happened. This fever dream ends with the opening scene of the nonexistent show being cut midsentence and the end credits scrolling by too quickly to read.
It’s a lot to take in. If you’re really interested in the history, Inverse published an oral history with creator Casper Kelly and others involved in the creation of Too Many Cooks.
While Too Many Cooks is fascinating on its own, reminiscing about it reminds you that Adult Swim lost its cultural cache long ago. Rick and Morty may be keeping Adult Swim on everyone’s pop culture radar, but the glory days of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and Aqua Teen Hunger Force are in the past.
Despite Adult Swim’s a prior minor success with the similar Paid Programing, also known as Icelandic Ultra Blue, and Informercials having a major success in Too Many Cooks, the programming block never found another viral hit that captured the internet’s imagination. (Meme machine Rick and Morty doesn’t count.) While you may think Adult Swim realized they couldn’t follow up greatness, that’s not the case. Infomercials is still alive. The most recent short video is Danny Ketchup, written and developed by none other than Casper Kelly. In fact, a random collection of Infomercials episodes can be found on Adult Swim’s website. Go decide for yourself whether Too Many Cooks was a fluke or we’ve been ignoring brilliance because it’s hidden at an hour usually reserved for actual informercials featuring the likes of Vince Offer.
