The fate of the animated “Napoleon Dynamite” series remains up in the air. No word yet from Fox Network on whether the show will be brought back in the fall for second season. This may be a case of jumping the gun, but the Fox Network has a history of canceling good shows before their time-like “The Critic”-while inexplicably not only bringing “Family Guy” back but allowing it to go on and on despite never once producing a single laugh.
Television critics across the country deemed the animated version of “Napoleon Dynamite” unworthy of your attention. If ever you needed evidence that you should think twice before paying attention to most TV critics, there you go. Is the animated series as innovative, groundbreaking and just plain funny as the movie? No. Is it worth a concerted effort to save from the fate of Fox’s bizarre inconsistency when it comes to choosing which shows to cancel and which shows to allow to keep bringing back despite any lack of entertainment value? Absolutely.
The only way to save the animated “Napoleon Dynamite” from being shoved out of our consciousness to make room for yet another achingly unfunny series from Seth MacFarlane may be to start now. Right now. It would be one thing to try to save a show like “Allen Gregory” to keep Seth MacFarlane from stinking yet another precious half hour of prime time network TV. That would be worth it, I suppose. But keeping Seth MacFarlane from stinking up yet another half hour of prime time TV in order to make room for the cartoon adventures of Napoleon, Pedro and Uncle Rico is a no-brainer.
Right now “The Simpsons” is the only thing standing between intelligent cartoon humor on the Fox Network and the unfortunate slide into what passes for comedy that rides on the back of a narwhal spewing the lowest common denominator of humor as it drives its spiky horn into the very heart of intellectual engagement. In other words, if Fox Network decides to commit suicide by canceling its last remaining claim to sophisticated animated comedy and there is no “Napoleon Dynamite” to fall back on, those who love the profundity of “The Simpsons” will have to live in a world where “Family Guy” continues to be mistaken for an entity that produces humor.
So you can clearly see why it is imperative that all fans of the animated version of “Napoleon Dynamite” unite to insist that Fox not cancel this show. Homer and Uncle Rico are the only things standing between a Sunday evening not dominated by Seth MacFarlane’s version of animated comedy and a Sunday evening in which cartoons are not an insult to the intelligence of Mitt Romney George W. Bush.
