A Cartoon Version Of MTV's Real World?

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What happens when eight strange cartoon characters, picked to live in a house and have their lives taped, stop being polite and start getting real?

That’s what Comedy Central purports to find out with Drawn Together. Plugged as television’s “first animated reality show,” the series’ irreverent debut episode, “Black Chick’s Tongue in My Mouth,” premieres next Wednesday.

Although the show is completely animated, creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein claim that their show is just as much “reality” as any other reality show.

“We manipulate our characters in the same way,” says Silverstein.

Okay, so technically Drawn Together is a parody of the Real World-Big Brother variety of reality TV, right down to the communal hot tub. But calling it “the first animated reality show” makes for more interesting marketing copy.

The ‘toon “stars,” drawn traditionally and in 2-D digital ink and paint animation, include: Clara, a sheltered, song-singing fairytale princess, is quick to discriminate; Foxxy Love, a strong-headed musician, has her pants off more than on; Wooldor-Sockbat, a yellow whatchamacallit, vies too hard for attention; Toot Braunstein, a pudgy heartthrob, is manipulative underneath her doll-faced exterior; Xandir, a videogame warrior, is sexually ambigous; Ling Ling, an Asian trading-card monster, is a sociopath; Spanky Ham, an uncouth pig from the Internet, farts on command and urinates to mark his territory; Captain Hero, a self-absorbed superhero, is misogynistic.

Unlike most reality stars, these hassling housemates have already had their 15 minutes of fame–they’re each based on archetypal ‘toons.

Wooldor-Sockbat is reminiscent of SpongeBob SquarePants; Toot could be Betty Boop’s sister; Ling Ling has Pokémon in her pedigree; Xandir looks like he came straight from a Final Fantasy game; Princess Clara has Disney DNA; Foxxy Love could have sat in with Josie and the Pussycats, and so on.

The entire article can be read here.

Credit: Lindsay Kuhn, E Online, Yahoo

Murtz Jaffer is the world's foremost reality television expert and was the host of Reality Obsessed which aired on the TVTropolis and Global Reality Channels in Canada. He has professional writing experience at the Toronto Sun, National Post, TV Guide Canada, TOROMagazine.com and was a former producer at Entertainment Tonight Canada. He was also the editor at Weekendtrips.com.