Too Many Cooks- looking at Internet phenomena, philosophy, and art.

I came across 'Too Many Cooks' on Facebook. It is a video produced by Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network and directed by Chris 'Casper' Kelly who probably best known for his writing on the show 'Aqua Team Hunger Force', however, honestly I am not an avid watcher of Cartoon Network. The 'Too Many Cooks' video (above) starts as a typical 1990s era sitcom would begin. The catchy tune, the yellow letters denoting the name of the show as well as the name of the actor, the explicit acknowledgement of the viewer by breaking the 'fourth wall.' It transitions almost seamlessly through several 90s sitcoms and dramas and even makes a foray into animated programs from that era as well. The whole time it builds a feeling of extreme nostalgia for the viewer, especially if they are like me and watched television in the 90s. The video is longer than most internet-based videos I have seen before. Those last a few minutes at the most, but 'Too Many Cooks' lasts a whopping 11:12 seconds! Yet somehow it went viral in the last week or so. Towards the end of this video, trying not to give too much away, the facade of these sitcom intros breaks down. We are lead behind the sets of the various intros we've just watched and there's a killer on the loose. This killer makes is way through a few tv show intros, killing many characters and ultimately chasing one of these characters into a closet. This breaks down even further when we learn at the end that the intros are really an affliction being suffered by a man dreaming and this affliction is treated like some kind of infectious disease and spreads to the doctor treating the dreaming man. 

This video dissects the 'Too Many Cooks' video and describing it through Camus' notion of the absurd. This commentary video by PBS Idea Channel also posits the notion that Contemporary life, much like 'Too Many Cooks' is a kind of Sisyphean task. Super interesting! 

I am trying to work within the framework of 90s sitcom intros for an arts based research paper. It has been interesting finding and manipulating videos from tv shows I used to watch. This task has also helped me work in and through the concept of 'Too Many Cooks' and 1990s sitcom intros as interfaces, both workable and unworkable)