A sort of Muppet Babies animated satire crossed with That’s My Bush!, the short-lived, live-action White House spoof from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Comedy Central’s Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States is a razor-sharp skewering of the rascally, tunnel-visioned foibles of George W. Bush (and other political figures), all in miniaturized, adolescent form. Created by Donick Cary (a former scribe on The Simpsons), the series details the blinkered antics of Lil’ George and his Lil’ White House posse — including Lil’ Condi, Lil’ Rummy and the unintelligible, foul-mouthed Lil’ Cheney — as they tackle all the major playground issues of the day, from illegal immigration and abortion to evolution and the war on terror.

The first series to make the transition from mobisode to full-fledged television show, Lil’ Bush premiered in mid-June of last year, as the most watched Comedy Central original series bow since 2004. Unfolding in a sort of alternate, suspended imaginary state (present day, inclusive of all the complications in Iraq, but with a doddering George H. W. Bush as president, allowing Lil’ George run of the White House grounds), the series’ inaugural season naturally gets a lot of painfully comedic run out of its subjects’ war-mongering ways. Lil’ George makes a statement with his Aquaman underpants while facing off against Lil’ Kim Jong Il, and the gang also goes on a panty raid against an Al Qaeda training camp before eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. Lil’ George also becomes fascinated with Lil’ Tony Blair (beguiled by his accent, he asks if he’s from Narnia), and the pair become cheerleaders together.

Some of the most jaw-droppingly hilarious episodes, though, take other topical issues as their leaping-off points — an ill-reasoned attempt by Lil’ George to speed up global warming, and a protest at an abortion clinic which ends with Lil’ Cheney, umm, stuck inside Barbara Bush’s uterus. The musical predilections of Cary and fellow show runner Opus Moreschi
are also revealed via the show’s voice cameos, which include Iggy Pop, Henry
Rollins, Frank Black, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, Dave Grohl and Red Hot Chili Peppers
members Anthony Kiedis and Michael “Flea” Balzary. In fact, since Lil’ George and his pals are in a band together, and he’s always talking about wanting to rock, a portion of many episodes is devoted to music video-style send-ups, which are amusing at first, but eventually reach a point of somewhat diminished return, except in an episode like “Walter Reed,” in which, wincingly, Lil’ George enthusiastically opines, “These troops’ll be blown away all over again — but this time by rock ‘n’ roll!”

For what it’s worth, there is an honest attempt here made at fair play, with bipartisan skewerings of various Democratic candidates and left-wing figures like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and filmmaker Michael Moore. But these bits (they too, are classmates of Lil’ George) are not as tightly scripted or effective, and mostly just play off a single character trait (e.g., Kerry’s ponderousness, or Bill Clinton’s lasciviousness). Thankfully, the cracked, tangential observations of Lil’ George — humorously embodied with petulant confidence by Chris Parson — are sharp, and high-yield enough to keep things moving at a great pace. (Sample line, about the Oval Office: “Oval is a shape they don’t tell you about in school — it’s like a circle, but for rich people.”) And the show’s humor also reaches back in time a bit; Bush Sr. is reminded that he’s “allergic to Asian people,” a reference to his vomitous state dinner trip to the Far East.

The show’s uncensored first season DVD set (allowing for an unbleeped airing of Lil’ Cheney’s occasional favorite exhortation of “Go fuck yourself!”) is presented on a single disc, and housed in a regular Amray case. It comes with a quite-nice roster of bonus material. An animated, one-and-a-half-minute White House tour sets up the show’s concept nicely, and allows for a few zingers. There are also six minutes of cast and crew interviews, with Cary, Moreschi and voice talent Parson, who it turns out was found and booked for the series via Craigslist, amazingly enough. A six-minute table read for the episode “Hot Dog Day” (in which Lil’ George bristles at the un-American notion of scaling back his school’s lunch line offerings), meanwhile, offers a glimpse at the pre-production process.

Its most intriguing bonus feature, though, might be its collection of
audio commentaries. Cast and crew sit for a number of them, during which we learn that the animation for the series takes anywhere from four to six months, but that the brief “cold open” to each episode is scripted about a week prior to airing. Even more interestingly, creator
Cary is also joined on a trio of commentaries, improbably enough, by Jerry
Springer, Tucker Carlson and Ralph Nader. While each figure’s familiarity with the show varies, their participation certainly makes for some off-the-beaten-path exchanges; Nader’s in particular is strange, as he mercilessly harangues the real-life Bush by pointed comparison to the show’s animation, noting that arched brows are “a signal of belligerency in chimpanzee land.” Seriously.

Finally, there’s also the inclusion of the aforementioned, but never-before-seen bonus episode “Walter Reed,” which substituted for another episode that finds Lil’ Cheney dying of a heart attack after getting stuck in a vending machine, going to hell, and loving every minute of it, crying, “Home, home!” As Cary and Moreschi explain in a brief introduction, they had to work up something to swap in for public airing and sensitivity’s sake on the off chance that the real-life Cheney passed away. Wow — if only that sense of preparation was applied to, say, post-war planning for Iraq. To purchase Lil’ Bush on DVD, click here. A- (Show) A- (Disc)