Review: Mike Judge Presents: Tales From The Tour Bus “Rick James Pt. 2”

You make me want to be a better man.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

While Part 1 deals with the highs of Rick James’ career, Part 2 deals with the lows. Turns out, MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” was the least of Rick’s worries as drugs, lack of MTV exposure, and the rise of music rival, Prince, more or less destroyed the funk legends career. Fortunately, we still got a slew of stories out of it including parties with women, Rick James running into Steven Tyler at rehab, and the likes of Don King, Eddie Murphy,  and Sly Stone getting some screen time.

Our Take

This week’s episode of Mike Judge Presents might be the most powerful one of the show’s two seasons thus far. As funny as the show is, which of course is Mike Judge’s magic touch, for the first time really since King of the Hill, Judge produces us an effort that shows us his exquisite strike of emotional storytelling. We somehow managed to get an episode that not only is hysterical, but morose, with an ending that sideswipes you much the same way some of the great articles in Rolling Stone used to do back in the 70’s.

That’s the service that Mike Judge Presents. We don’t have a decent Rolling Stone anymore, so this series has provided an excellent purview into musical history that isn’t found any more. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve seen animated docu-series feature stories about musicians, but I’m not quite sure with the same level of voracity that this show exploits. Another thing I noticed, from an animated production standpoint, Wes Archer is a creative consultant. Wes is all over the place, The Simpsons, Rick and Morty, and I’m sure a dozen other programs that I don’t feel like researching right now. The point is when Mike Judge wants to make something, he gets the BEST PEOPLE in the business to work with him, and every level of that works here. The writers, the soundtrack people, the animated production, and because of that I’m gonna leave this right here…