Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (season 1, 2001) = Finished

I'm writing this at 1 AM and I have to be in class in like 4 hours but I don't CARE because I have been ENLIGHTENED

HARVEY
FREAKING
BIRDMAN

IT HOLDS UP 

He's a character from the traditionally-animated past, when the best original superhero they could come up with was an off-brand bird-headed dude. Now a lawyer, he takes on absurd cases, sleeps with class warfare terrorist Boo Boo Bear, and resolves to murder a transforming dog.

He also helps cartoon characters who are innocently accused or whatever but you aren't HERE for the UNEXPECTED NUANCE. You're here for the BIRD-HEADED man of HUBRIS. The man INCAPABLE of using a BLACKBERRY.
Every episode is about ten minutes long, and filled with more dubious uses of copyright than you could shake a cookie on a dowel at.

Shaggy resists arrest.
Black Vulcan talks race dynamics inside the Superfriends.
Boo Boo Bear is a lying, promiscuous, anarcho-communist psychopath.
Fred Flintstone is a mob boss one Yabba-Dabba-Don't away from slaughtering his rivals in the stone business.
Everyone is bi, or bi-curious.

Everyone.

These aren't reboots - these are the actual, iconic characters, as they existed, with their decades of history upheld as canon. Then the people who made Harvey Birdman just...do their own thing. A premise that would typically get a so-so Robot Chicken sketch out of it lands hard. It lasted four seasons. It got a movie last year!

Really, Harvey Birdman is the perfect example of how to get audience buy-in from an absurdist or heightened starting point. You lure them in with the Johnny Quest child custody shenanigans, and you keep them around by treating the people INSIDE of the world with consistency, and emotional honesty.

So, when Harvey gets a butt print analysis, or breaks down due to crippling anxiety, both ring true.

They're just two sides of the same weird coin.
Or butt.

I'm mixing my metaphors and starting the next season and YOU CAN'T STOP ME