Oh no! I feel really bad for posting this now. I had no idea how awful that sketch was gonna be and I feel really bad for promoting it. I thought it was just gonna be some lighthearted parody of Homestar Runner but boy was I wrong. That may have been the single most mean spirited "joke" I've ever come across on adult swim period. So to any Homestar Runner fans who thought I was praising that garbage, I completely apologize. Aside from the Family Guy episode, Brian's a Bad Father that scene is by far one of the most downright despicable scenes that have somehow made their way into an otherwise good cartoon. They could've done a decent Homestar Runner parody but they screwed it up big time. To quote the infamous scene from Game of Thrones "Shame! Shame! Shame!"
So I recently got one of my friends hooked on Robot Chicken and we decided to binge all the season premiere/finale episodes together. However that horrible Homestar Runner sketch was from a season premiere, so when we got to that episode I quickly fast forwarded through that scene. Curiously, my friend asked me why I fast forwarded a specific clip and I explained to him that it was something so unbelievably stupid and childish that it isn't even worth watching and I don't want to subject him to such filth. He understood and we moved along with our binging session but honestly what I said wasn't entirely true. While I certainly don't want him to see that terrible sketch, I really don't want to expose MYSELF to that one ever again either. There's a reason why despite every other sketch in that 15-minute episode being funny, I've decided to avoid that particular episode like the plague. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not some sort of SJW who will start a riot when I see a show do something offensive. I am a firm believer that you can joke about almost anything (with recent tragedies being the only exception. I also have that "Too Soon" mentality when it comes to those types of dark jokes). But it all comes to down to HOW the joke is executed with whether it offends me or not. For example, I will laugh at a racist joke when I know it isn't meant to be harmful in any way rather than actually being used as a platform to spread hate speech. They stole the Homestar Runner character designs, killed them for absolutely no reason other than teenage boy-style rebellion and simplistic shock value, they said some pretty hateful things about the characters they literally just stole, and to top it all of for some odd reason they used those Homestar Runner characters as a political platform (?) by shoehorning in a pointless yet brutal Trump reference at the end that had nothing to do with the rest of the skit whatsoever. The only part I kind of thought was slightly funny was when they referenced Forrest Gump by making Homestar say,
"Awh, something bit me!".
But the only reason I like that particular line is because I consider Forrest Gump to be one of my favorite movies of all time and I wasn't expecting to see them reference it. Why I'm bringing this up again is because a lot of people STILL don't understand what the big deal is about their portrayal of Homestar. Every time I bring up how despicable the Robot Chicken sketch is to my parents, they always tell me that I'm overreacting and getting offended over nothing. They also tend to bring up how I'm not a Homestar Runner fan so why should I of all people feel upset over it. Well, there's a perfectly good reason for me to bothered by the sketch. While it is in fact true that I am not a Homestar Runner fan myself (I've tried to watch it before and can't really get into it), I'm still offended by it because whenever I think of this skit I like to put myself in the fandom members' shoes and imagine how offended I would feel if they had done the same thing to a Flash cartoon I enjoy:Happy Tree Friends. I would be furious if they stole the character designs of my favorite independently produced Flash cartoon and used it to spread hatred towards the characters I've grown to love and rightfully so. I really wish people could see how wrong Robot Chicken is for doing this and understand their true sinister intentions behind it. Think of it this way:I am possibly one of the biggest Robot Chicken fans out there so if they offended ME, one of their most loyal hardcore fanatics then they obviously weren't doing something right there. So the bottom line is, I may not be a Homestar Runner fan but I still have a perfectly logical reason to feel bothered by the Robot Chicken parody despite that.
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