The Freak Brothers does capture the essence of the comic. It is ambling, rudderless, unself-conscious and unconcerned with bags it might be stuffed into. Underground Comix didn’t give a shit about the restrictions of the Comics Code. But, in the series, the don’t-give-a-shit attitude extends to the jokes and, sadly, that’s no laughing matter. There is a comic code beyond the print industry’s censorship edicts, and it is to get as many laughs out of the material as you can. There are a few, extremely well-placed rejoinders which will push the smoke through your nose, but if you’re not actually high, they might go under your head. If this were the consistently the case, The Freak Brothers would be exactly what the Swami ordered. But out of the first two episodes, real and unexpected laughs occur less than half a dozen times. It would be better if all the jokes went over the heads of the audience than have them lobbed so tamely.
Not that the presentation is tame. It’s got beyond-risqué language, anti-authoritarian toilet habits, sex, innuendoes, and outright tasteless gags, one of which may actually make you gag. But without more full-throttle laughs, the series only provides a vague memory of the audacious comic that cared even less.
The bulk of the premise of “Pilot” actually goes back to the comic. In one drawn arc, Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas, and Fat Freddy took off for Colombia to score cheap dope, but got scattered to the four corners of the earth and encountered everything, from nuclear terrorists to religious freaks, but none of Bogotá’s greenest. Over the course of the comic’s run, they dodged the draft, narcs, and jobs. In the series, that’s all behind them. The Brothers are looking for the ultimate high, which is being peddled at Woodstock, but they go to the wrong Woodstock, in Georgia, and get their asses filled with buckshot. Barely making it to the festival, they dodge Jimi Hendrix’s greatest solo in order to capture Swami Bhajans’ magic elixir. The genetically mutated strain of marijuana knocks the Freaks out for 50 years.
When they wake up, their place has been torn down several times over, except the basement, and they are now in a much different San Francisco. Cops get high to make themselves feel better about beating people up, Stephen Hawking-clone-robots fit down garbage disposals, everyone is politically correct, feminists own refurbished hippie digs, gentrification owns the Haight, and they brothers believe cell phones are rotting people’s minds, which may be the most intelligent conclusion they come to.
When the episode opens, we hear voices singing “peace and love, got to get together.” 1969 San Francisco is all about free love, communal living and political protest, most of it right outside the Freak Brothers’ apartment. The animation blends the voice actors’ faces recognizably into The Freak Brothers comic characters.
As Freewheelin’ Franklin Freek, Harrelson infects each line with a laid-back, seductive invitation. John Goodman brings his inner child to Fat Freddy Freekowtski. Pete Davidson brings the chemical makeup of anti-establishment paranoia to Phineas T. Phreakers. None of them bring anything resembling short-term memory but do have a knack for laughing at the most appropriately inappropriate moments. Tiffany Haddish’s Kitty tends to purloin the best insults, noting Adam Devine and Blake Anderson’s Chuck and Charlie, are probably the only people in San Francisco dumber than the Freak Brothers.
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