Review: WTF 101 “Behind the Scenes”

A sloth feces email chain is probably a lot more interesting if you’re on it than if you’re just hearing about it.

Overview

After the close of Dropout TV’s ten-episode season of WTF 101, the show’s creators have compiled most of their promos, with some new footage, into a short behind the scenes episode. The series interviews CollegeHumor big boss Sam Reich, series creator Mike Trapp, the cast and crew of the show, as well as showing what goes into making an episode of WTF 101, from script to vocal booth to New Zealand for animating.

Our Take

Normally, I wouldn’t just review promo footage, but DropoutTV wanted something to put out on a Monday and called this WTF 101’s eleventh episode, so here I am. I’m not going to judge this episode on the same scale as the others—I am aware it’s a featurette that merely happens to be the same length as an episode of the show—but it will be judged for being what it is.

I had already seen most of this footage before. In the pre-season promo, most of the character interviews, as well as the portion with Mike Trapp had already been plastered all over CollegeHumor’s website and YouTube channel, as well as the same for any of their affiliates or contemporaries. The new content was mostly in the back half of the special when the creative team described how they made episodes of the show. This mostly took the form of showing what a fun-loving and interesting environment the show cultivates, how the writers’ room works, and the pushback that the creative team gets from management.

None of it, however, is terribly interesting. While it is fun—on the surface—to debate the finer points of sloth excrement or topless dueling, it’s actually just the business of making lurid and titillating entertainment. The show needs to shock audiences—that’s its bread and butter, but it can’t give them such a fright that they never come back to Dropout to watch the next episode. That negotiation is compelling from an industry perspective, but it’s never quite as cool as the cast and crew seem to think that it is.

This attitude can be extrapolated all the way out to become an indict of the show itself. The show is a crass adult animation series disguised as children’s entertainment. That’s it. There really isn’t any more to the series. The end of the first season hints at quantum physics shenanigans and character development, but it doesn’t really deliver on them. The show doesn’t have compelling characters (Professor Foxtrot’s admirable performance aside), it has a very little plot to speak of, and it truly has no edge.

In the past, I’ve lambasted the show for various places it fails to have a take on its absurdity. The show only features the foibles of white people, and it has an intense fixation on the mating and excretory habits of animals, but it has nothing to say about either other than “boy, isn’t the real world gross.” This show has to be for children who’ve taken their parents’ credit cards because I can’t see what an adult would get out of a show that only reminds them of the banality of nature and the cruel stupidity of man. The ending ‘lessons’ are merely ad hoc attempts to try to justify and tie together a series of vomit-inducing images drowning in the show’s miasma.

I’ve never missed an opportunity to point out WTF 101’s immense debt to its two obvious inspirations, Rick and Morty and The Magic School Bus. This featurette finally allows Mike Trapp to acknowledge at least one of them (the one he’s parodying, not the one he’s borrowing from), but it still feels insufficient. Dan Harmon should be cashing a check every week this thing is airing new episodes.

If WTF 101 wants to have a second season, it’s going to need some personality of its own. The soft reset they’ve given their premise at the end of the first season finale gets about half of the work done. It’s left them with the ability to retool what the show could be, and what the ratio of character bits to information dumps is. For my money, they had better figure something out if they want anyone to tune into season two.