Clerks the Animated Series Deserves More Love

Television history is filled with plenty of infamous flops that barely made it to air before the networks gave them the chop: 2012 crossdressing series “Work It,” a 2007 musical drama “Viva Laughin” that the New York Times referred to as possibly “the worst show in the history of television,” and the 1990 British sitcom about Hitler “Heil Honey, I’m Home.” 25 years ago, an animated series adaptation of Kevin Smith‘s 1994 cult film “Clerks” joined that dubious club — and seemed cheerfully aware of its fate the entire time.

In the pilot episode of the ABC adult animated sitcom, which remarkably was not one of the two episodes that were broadcast before the show got canceled and burned off over at Comedy Central, the lead characters Dante and Randal (voiced by Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson) watch an episode of “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer” — “America’s #1 sitcom,” as they put it. A relatively deep cut reference even in the year 2000, most people now would assume the show, about the Black butler of Abraham Lincoln’s White House, is just a fake show invented as a gag. But it was very real: it premiered in 1998 on UPN, was the subject of boycotts and protests by the NAACP for its insensitive handling of slavery, and ultimately was canned after four episodes aired.

By invoking such a notorious flop, the “Clerks” animated series was practically daring the same fate upon itself — and in the end, it only lasted half as long as “Desmond Pfeiffer.” But that joke also exemplifies why the show, which premiered with its fourth episode on May 31, 2000, was such a weird, delightfully unpredictable hidden gem, and still the best thing Kevin Smith has ever attached his name to.

Developed for television by Smith, his frequent collaborator Scott Mosier, and David Mandel (best known for his work on “Seinfeld”), “Clerks: The Animated Series” took the original film — a black and white, dirtbag hangout comedy made on a minuscule budget — and turned it into a densely wacky animated series, complete with a megalomaniac billionaire named Leonardo Leonardo (Alec Baldwin) that bears more than a bit of a resemblance to Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.” That makes it easy to dismiss the show as just stupid, an attempted translation of a cult hit that misses the mark on what made it special. But the show, which renders the characters of the film in the appealingly thick-lined style of “Kim Possible” and “Danny Phantom” art director Stephen Silver, was subtly subversive and fresh, with a meta approach to its humor that feels a few years ahead of its time.

The prime example is the second episode, a parody of a classic TV clip show that came a solid decade before “Community” did a similar bit. In it, Dante and Randal get trapped in a freezer and reminisce about their crazy adventures — which mostly consist of the same clip from the pilot (which, again, hadn’t even actually aired because of the way ABC aired the show) repeated several times. The joke escalates from there: they start flashing back to earlier moments from the episode, they get trapped in a loop of flashbacks of the same moment, and eventually the show moves on to flashbacks of scenes we’ve never seen before.

That’s the funniest and cleverest episode of the show, but the other five have a lot to like about them as well. A bit meaner and rougher than Smith’s other work — which tends to be rather sentimental at heart — “Clerks: The Animated Series” isn’t particularly interested in making its characters and their dead-end lives relatable. Instead, the episodes veer into absurd, cheekily bizarre directions, breaking the fourth wall at every opportunity. Episode 3 begins with Randal and Dante opening fan mail and addressing the lack of diversity on the show by introducing the first Black character (who isn’t actually allowed to speak or do anything of note). The fourth episode, a parody of a courtroom drama in which Dante gets sued by Jay (Jason Mewes) after the slacker slips at the Quick Mart, leaves the case unresolved when a disclaimer that the episode’s ending was lost precedes a parody sequence purporting to be a new ending created by an outsourced Korean animation team. The final episode ends in a tribute to the iconic “Looney Tunes” short “Duck Amuck,” which doesn’t work as a way to close out the barebones plot at all, but tips its hat to the inspirations behind the show’s anarchic, non-sequitur humor.

Not everything about “Clerks: The Animated Series” holds up to time. It’s an extremely 2000 series in every respect: its general burnout vibe, its cultural references to pressing issues like disappointment over “The Phantom Menace,” and its tendency towards edgelordey shock humor and gay jokes — though the finale, at least, directly self-mocks how much the series overplays the bro-ey gay panic. But its faults are easy to forgive when the six episodes are so funny and clever, and make you wish there were more. You get the sense that the people behind the show were content for it to be a short-lived gem though: by the sixth episode, when Dante and Randal attend a panel to speak about making “Clerks” and get accosted by fans of the movie who hate the show, it’s pretty clear that the series was around for a good time, not a long time.

Every episode of “Clerks: The Animated Series” can be purchased on Apple TV+.