Season Review: 12 oz Mouse Season Three

 

 

When the “Invictus” special happened…I was worried. I thought, maybe a 12 oz Mouse revival is too much to ask for in 2020. What with COVID-19, hurricanes, earthquakes, and PC culture doing everything it can to ruin this year, a flop by 12 oz Mouse would’ve ranked as possibly the worst thing to happen. Fortunately, I’m here to report, we avoided catastrophe and got an enthralling third season of the Matt Maiellaro created/written series.

12 oz Mouse season three picks up right after “Invictus” as we see the results of Mouse & Co. going through a portal and all getting split up in various parts of the universe. New worlds means running into new characters and we do a lot of that this season. Just as prevalent, constant throwbacks to a now bygone era at Adult Swim when heavy metal, Adobe Flash, and George Lowe reigned supreme. It’s a perfect mish-mash to go along with a juicy arc-filled plot that makes this show one of the few binge-worthy series on the network.

The quarter-hour series introduces recurring guest star Mary Splender as “Aria”, Mouse’s cohort for the majority of the series that does everything she can to help restore the titular character’s memory and eventually do battle with Professor Wilx and soon Shyd Industries. Swedish metal band Amaranthe also joins the fray as both producers of opening/closing credit theme songs and as the crew of “Castellica”, an integral ship that soon helps unite all of the show’s characters into an all out assault on Shyd.

The action sequences, however few they may be, are excellent and is some of the most ostentatious examples of Radical Axis’ work. The problem is that with 11-quarter-hour episodes, there are so many characters to account for that we don’t get a lot of the aforementioned action, however, the David Lynch-esque space opera plot is so damn good you kind of start to be okay with this. And, most importantly, the show is hilarious. Familiar faces like Peanut Cop, Joe, Rooster, Skillet, Businessman/Shark, Buzby, and more are all accounted for and everybody is bananas. Even the newer characters, with special attention to the hilarious banter between Elise Ryd and Olof Morck on that disgusting monstrosity they call a ship, provides added value to an already worthwhile knock-a-round.

More episodes of 12 oz Mouse are on the way on an already ordered 20 which means we can expect probably some specials to go along with the typical season numbers that Adult Swim has been ordering as of late (six episodes). How the show will continue to survive with what will be incoming limitations on the way will be interesting to see, but Matt Maiellaro is at the top of his game with this one.