It’s amazing to think that Robot Chicken first premiered nearly a decade ago. This strange dissection of pop culture via stop motion & Claymation action figures has become one of the bedrocks for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Not only that, the show is now a gateway for popular series and companies to poke fun at themselves (for proof, see George Lucas’s participation in the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials). This Sunday night, Robot Chicken’ s 2nd DC Comics Special: Villains in Paradise premieres – and it’s another fascinating example of the show’s ability to ‘eat its cake and have it too.’ The episode, the most plot-heavy Robot Chicken has ever done, focuses on DC Comic’s villains – Lex Luthor, The Joker & Gorilla Grodd among others – as they travel to the beach for a summer vacation. The episode, a knowing homage to the beach pictures of the 80s, is at once both a love-letter to these well-worn characters and a merciless skewing of their ‘brand name’. It’s this juxtaposition between reverence and criticism that makes Robot Chicken as endlessly watchable and timely as it was when it first premiered.
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