Today on the 5: I am currently almost through another rewatch of one of the greatest shows that ever graced the television landscape, MTV's Liquid Television. While this series deserves a much better quality release than it officially has, at least there are ways for people to enjoy this series either online or via bootleg collections.
Ozone Nightmare
The Singular Magnificence Of Liquid Television
Welcome to daily five for Wednesday, June 26, 2024. We have never done any type of survey or even asked anybody who listens to the show what the age ranges are, how old people are, anything like that. We always just kind of assume, as I think most people do in life, that anybody who's listening to our stuff, anybody who runs a podcast that, I mean, on our level, I shouldn't say I'm the big, obviously, the giant podcasts have millions of people all over the place. But I always tend to assume that our audience is roughly in our age range, or maybe older. But for those who may be younger, and this is not any type of criticism, this is actually something I would suggest that people go seek out. But anybody who may have missed this, that maybe was our age, or is our age, or older, and perhaps was not a big MTV person, or didn't watch the channel, or isn't aware of this, I've talked about liquid television before. It was a series that ran on MTV back in the 90s. I think it was 90, I want to say 1990, but I could have the date wrong. But any event, it was a series of what you would call experimental animation, or experimental short films at times, because it isn't all animation. But it ran for three seasons. I don't remember how many episodes each season was. It wasn't like a full length television show, it wasn't 24 episodes per season, or anything like that. But these are roughly 30 minute blocks, if I remember correctly, I think they're, you know, obviously it's 22 or 23 or whatever with commercials. But these were, this was a very, very brief period of time, where MTV was doing highly experimental stuff, where you could find weird things like the max adapted animated cartoon, or the head, things like that. This was pre-Bivison Butthead. In fact, Bivison Butthead originated, at least before they got their own show, inside of liquid television. Aeon Flux was in here as a series of shorts before it got its own show. You can see all this early work by people who would then go on to make bigger and more well-known things. But it's also a really fascinating show to watch as simply a series of episodes, because there are segments of it that are episodic as part of a larger overall story arc. For example, Winter Steel, the specialists. There's one of the ones I'm forgetting. Aeon Flux was weird because it kind of killed her off every five seconds, or every other episode, or every episode in some cases. But it's, it's a beautiful, I wish there was a high definition version of all the episodes available. Unfortunately, there is not, from what I understand, it's due to music issues, which, you know, if homicide can resolve its issues so that you can actually watch that show again, which I cannot wait to delve back into, then certainly MTV could pull a little bit of money out and get these right. There's not even, I don't think all that much that would really need to be resolved. It's not like there was a ton of licensed music. This is not Miami Vice. Let's put it that way. They could do it if they wanted to. And honestly, this is a show that deserves preservation. Now there are bootlegs available. I've purchased one as a matter of fact that have VHS rips that people did. There is a two disc DVD compilation called Wet Shorts, The Best of Liquid Television, which does have some of the material in, in a better quality format. Aeon Flux is available as its own collected set. So there are pieces of what Liquid Television had around, but there's also huge gaps. And honestly, rewatching it. I am in the middle of, I'm just starting season three. So I've been rewatching it again. And it just reminded me that this is such a magnificent show that really should have a 4K release or at least a Blu-ray. Let's put it that way. Or at the very least, a DVD with everything preserved as it was aired. So it is on YouTube. I will link not only to the bootleg that I bought, but also there are multiple YouTube channels that have them. So I'll link to episode one so you can see it there. If you've never watched this show, and even if you don't even like animation that much, there's also non-animated stuff in here. You're going to have to see some animation, but it's, it's just a unique specimen of a very short period of time where this type of thing was airing at that point. Only, I don't know that anybody else was really doing anything like this. I mean, not Cartoon Network and all that stuff would come later in Adult Swim, obviously, but I think when this came out, there were very few avenues to see this type of material unless you went to animation festivals, that type of thing. So it's, it's a magnificent time capsule that is also timeless because so much of this stuff, if they just remastered and updated it, it would be worth watching today. So again, Liquid Television, I'm going to link to several ways to watch it. If you've never seen this, make the time and start watching it. If you have even the least interested animation or experimental short film, it is so great. It's so worth watching. And at some point, I really hope we get a complete version of all the episodes. But until then, watch what you can later.