What’s up party people. I’m back to do another one of these overview thingies for another one of my favorite shows. Today we’ll be looking at another [adult swim] show, one that still feels relatively new to me since I’ve been with it since the beginning, but as a show it has been in existence as far back as 2007 when the pilot first premiered among four others as a part of this promotion for new shows that [as] had picked up. I really don’t remember that much about many of them in all honesty; I know one was a show based on the Drinky Crow character that was promptly cancelled, another was a live-action show about a fat guy stuck in the internet that got cancelled after one episode or something, and then there’s some other random pilot which turned into that Freaknik: The Musical special starring T-Pain as a Pac-Man ghost with an auto-tuned voice. At least one managed to live on past its pilot and first season, however, and that show would be the ultraviolent animation playground known as Superjail.
The general concept of the show is pretty straightforward. It stars a character known simply to everyone as The Warden, described by the creator of the show, Christy Karacas, as a “sadistic Willy Wonka”, and his pursuits running an ever-unstable jail system through a process of controlled chaos. He has a minor staff consisting of his constantly stressed and emotionally stable assistant Jared; the brutish, transgender head guard Alice; an extremely obedient and friendly mute robot called Jailbot; and a man known simply as The Doctor, a gnarly European man who spends his time performing gory and torturous experiments on the jail’s residents. Among the staff exists another mysterious pair of characters known as The Twins, aptly named for being identical and speaking in tandem with each other. More often than not, they’ll appear (accompanied by a techno beat, no less) to cause some kind of mischief that provides the catalyst for everything in each episode to go haywire; though at the same time, their motivation for doing this is left ambiguous and is most likely done for their own entertainment rather than for any outright malicious purposes. And then of course you have the unlimited supply of inmates residing in the jail who for the most part are pretty much there just to die in the most elaborate and absurd deaths as possible.
Like the other shows I’ve covered, I find it best to run through the series in seasons to showcase the changes that it has gone through over the years. So rather than have me ramble on, let's get right to it.
Season 1
Like a lot of other shows, the first season of Superjail follows a pretty cut-and-dry format for each of its episodes. First off, each episode begins with a cold-opening of a low-level convict named Jacknife getting apprehended by Jailbot for some sort of crime, leading into the actual meat of the episode. This aspect of the series remains consistent throughout the show’s run, with only one episode from Season 2 not having the cold open. As for the standard plot synopsis for a Season 1 episode, one will normally start out with some sort of change instigated by The Warden in order to quench his near-insatiable thirst for entertainment. Then, through some sort of interference, more often than not as a result of The Twins, things begin to go haywire, and everything culminates in a gigantic, intricate montage of inmates being slaughtered left and right. From here, episodes could either end off on a somewhat conclusive note or it would spiral off into a bizarre and amusing nonsequitur which would be reset at the beginning of the next episode.
Normally when it comes to the first seasons of shows I’ve watched, it’s hard for me to really rank them as high as later seasons due to the writers having to find their footing before they can start to crank out their best material. Luckily, this isn’t the case with Superjail. A lot of the reason why is probably is in part due to how the show relies on delivering rapid-fire visual gags as the real meat of the show. You get a good idea of how each character functions and behaves based on the way they’re animated; Jared, for instance, is pretty much consistently portrayed in a wide-eyed, unstable posture while The Warden is very elastic and prone to shapeshifting in order to portray his vivid imagination.
The one aspect that keeps this set-up fresh throughout the entire run of the first season is the way in which each episode follows an individual theme in one way or another. If you find yourself on board with the show from the very beginning, I doubt there will be any episode during this season that will communicate that the concept has grown tired in any way whatsoever, in part due to the fact that both the animators and the writers put a lot of emphasis on making each violent mishap as unique as possible. Some examples of the kind of themed mayhem showcased in some episodes include one centered around size manipulation, one centered around hallucinatory drugs, and even one based on the limitless potential of dreams. They really don't make these concepts go to waste either, as nearly every gag one could think of regarding a certain subject is most likely utilized. It's part of what makes the episodes feel so jam-packed and ripe for multiple viewings.
The season is also very self-contained, with each episode getting crazier and crazier as the season progresses until everything culminates the two-part season finale “Time Police”. The previous episodes don’t need to be watched in any particular order, but watching through the season from start to finish provides a sense of payoff that you really won’t get if you skip right to the end. In fact, the climax of the finale is so good that it probably could’ve sufficed as a satisfying series finale if the show never continued. And at first, that may have actually been the case, though eventually the show would be picked up for another season. Speaking of which, let’s talk about Season 2!
Season 2
After the first season struck a chord with a lot of [adult swim] fans, the immediate response was when they could possibly expect a second season. And for a while, we didn’t really get an answer to that. Word of a Season 2 was pretty sparse at first, and with the way the first season ended some started to believe that it may not get another chance. However, we eventually got word of Season 2 happening for sure, which would end up airing two-and-a-half years after the first season ended. I’m assuming that part of the reason for this long delay was because the original studio that produced the animation, Augenblick, had other projects they were working on at the time, so the show needed to find another studio that could produce it.
Enter Titmouse Inc, an animation studio that produced a lot of animated shows for [as] and other networks nowadays but at the time was only really forerunning a small handful of shows. This shift to a new studio made some fans a little worried since they weren’t sure if Titmouse would be capable of producing animation with the same kind of raw energy and exaggeration that the series had when animated through Augenblick, and while there was a subtle difference in the way the show looked, the animation didn’t have to be sacrificed just for another season to be made. In fact, if anything, once the animators found their footing after the first few episodes that they worked on the show, the animation saw a pretty big improvement in how dynamic the ultraviolence could get when needed, as opposed to being pretty flat and sketchy in Season 1.
Along with the change in production studio, the format for this season’s episodes changed quite a bit also. In a rather stark contrast to the first season, which was primarily just an animated spectacle of ultraviolence centered on a jail and its staff, this season takes the spotlight and puts it on the staff itself, along with other inhabitants of the jail. The show still retains its violent tone, but that more often than not takes a backseat this season in order to give the characters some time to strut their stuff. A new character named Lord Stingray, who is essentially Superjail’s answer to the Cobra Commander, gets introduced as the show’s first real antagonist that has a clearly communicated motivation to oppose The Warden and his control over the jail. Characters who appeared in the first season mostly as recurring background characters end up getting names and some notable spotlight in this season also; the gay inmates are named Jean and Paul and have an episode centered around them getting married, and the friendly burn inmate from the Season 1 episode “Mr. Grumpy Pants” is given the name Ash and has an episode with him trying to overcome fear of a scary movie. Among other things that are elaborated upon include finding out what exactly The Twins are and where they come from, how Jared, Alice and Jailbot joined the Superjail staff, and the return of the one-off all-female counterparts of Ultraprison from Season 1 at the end of the season finale, which would end up being a cliffhanger leading into Season 3.
The general reception to this season was rather wishy-washy. For the most part, it seems as if fans were either not a fan of the crazy escalating chaos of Season 1 episodes being upstaged by more character-driven episodes, or people liked Season 2 just fine, but not as much as the first one. Either way, a good majority of fans seemed to miss the format of the first season quite a bit. I myself was sort of sad to see that format go after I first finished watching the season for the first time. I think the problem wasn’t that the violence and chaos of Season 1 wasn’t there, because it most certainly was, but due to the fact that the episodes were more character-driven, the chaos is spread out pretty evenly throughout the episode rather than slowly building up to a climactic bloody payoff, which in a way was a signature for the Season 1 episodes and made each one stand out. Karacas himself was pretty well aware of how different this season was from the past one, and while he doesn’t have any issue with the way it turned out, he could tell that there were plenty of people who would want to see the old format for Superjail come back. Which leads us into Season 3…
Season 3
Thankfully, no production issues took place between the break between seasons this time, with the length of the wait being easily a year shorter than it was before. During the wait for the season this time, Karacas and Warbrick were pretty vocal about thinking that this season was some of the best material that they’ve ever produced for the show. They also insisted to fans that they listened to some of the responses to Season 2, and went into the third season trying to form a compromise “between the violence of Season 1 with the characterization of Season 2” and that they were very hopeful that fans would really dig the stuff they were coming up with this time around. It sounds pretty promising, but would these statements end up holding true when the season premiered? To put it simply, yes. And then some.
The transition between the Season 2 and Season 3 formats is pretty seamless thanks to the cliffhanger on which Season 2 left us. As I mentioned earlier, the Mistress and the rest of Ultraprison have come back from their first humiliating defeat in the Season 1 while Warden and the other inhabitants were trying to return from a vacation gone horribly wrong and have taken over the jail. Stingray woos The Mistress as soon as they arrive and manages to establish a pretty one-sided romantic relationship with her, giving him the control of the jail that he always wanted as well. With the jail now being co-ed the environment has become even more hostile than usual, which leads Jared, Alice, and Charise (Jared’s female Ultraprison counterpart) to hatch a plan to get The Warden back in power. I’m not going to reveal exactly how they manage to succeed, but needless to say it’s probably one of my favorite climactic turns that the series has taken thus far and ultimately proved to me that the writers were definitely delivering on what they promised going into this season.
Going into Season 3, you can basically expect episodes of this caliber throughout the whole run, with each episode getting debatably more and more hectic with the insanely large amount of crazy shit the writers and animators manage to cram into each 11-minute long bloodbath. It may sound like the exact same kind of thing that I’m talking about earlier (because it basically is), but this season really manages to crank things up to a level that it has only probably hit once with the Time Police episodes back in Season 1. Amidst the steady build-up of ultraviolence, you still get a pretty strong idea of what the motivation is behind the story that is being told in each episode. Everything is very to-the-point which is great, and because of how visually fast-paced the show is, there are plenty of twists and turns that the episodes can pull on you without being able to see them coming at all the first time through.
This is also the first season that has episodes that probably won’t be very easy to understand unless you watch through the season in the order that it aired. I already mentioned that the season premiere picks up where Season 2 left off, but there are also a handful of episodes where certain plot points left unresolved actually come back during later episodes and form the basis of the episode’s set-up. While I don’t think it’s impossible for people to enjoy these episodes having not seen the prior episodes that led up to it, the small thread of continuity tying the episodes together will probably make the way they play out more enjoyable. And on top of that, the season ends on another cliffhanger, and based on where all of the characters have been left off, it seems as if these sprinkles of recurring developments will only continue as the series presses onward.
Granted, I also want to get the fact across that I’m not trying to pass off Superjail as this massive continuity-heavy show now. While there may be plenty of callbacks and a few ongoing developments recurring in the background, the show is still very good at making each episode unique on its own. The main reason why I highlight these recurring factors is because I find them interesting and I think it really helps the series feel more cohesive amidst all of the insanity. And luckily, the show has found a way to balance that well without sacrificing what made the show fun in the first place.
In Conclusion
All in all, Superjail is a definitive example of a style-over-substance show, so much so that I’d debate that the style IS the substance and provides a wonderful amount of material for the viewer to digest, often times prompting multiple viewings of a single episode in order to catch as many of the intricate gags in each episode as possible. Obviously though, like most shows that use their stylistic approach as a front, it isn’t something that can be shown to absolutely anyone. However, the good thing about Superjail is that it has a really good start and can basically be judged at face-value from the get-go, so it’s really easy to tell whether or not the show is right for you. It doesn’t take x amount of episodes for it to get “good”; it starts out as good as it has been and ever will be.
Season 4 will be premiering this Sunday, and the creators have mentioned that it’ll be continuing the good streak that they had with Season 3, which I’m all for. The only downside is that it’s only going to be six episodes long, which may be unfortunate, but I’d rather have them devote more time to animating fewer more solid episodes than having to churn out another ten episodes and potentially have some uninspired duds in the mix. It does beg the question whether or not the writers seem to be growing thin on ways to really spice things up in the jail, as they’ve gone on a number of times that one of the most important things about the process of making the show is that they don’t allow themselves to make a death happen in the same exact way more than once. That mindset definitely has a hand in keeping the show as fresh as it is for the time it has been running, but with the decreased episode count in Season 4, one may worry that they don’t have as many ideas left in the bank as they used to. However, at the moment, I’m having a hard time seeing that as the case, so unless Season 4 proves to me otherwise, I think this show definitely has the strength to live on for as long as it can.