That's My Bush! (2001)

USA, TV series (Comedy Central)
Creators: Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Carrie Quinn Dolin, Kurt Fuller, Marcia Wallace, Kristen Miller, John D'Aquino

Some things you should know if you're going to take my word that this is worth tracking down. First, while I have some appreciation for animated sitcoms—I love "The Simpsons," for example (as who doesn't?)—my preference is for real people and blocking and the three-camera setup and all that, which this basically is. I even appreciate the sound of laughter, canned or otherwise. Second, I have never developed a taste for "South Park," whose creators are behind this (and I'm afraid my excuse is that "the voices are too scratchy," but I do understand that's lame and fully intend one day to give it the fair chance I keep hearing it deserves). As for "That's My Bush!"—there are only eight episodes total to this brilliant Comedy Central sitcom parody. Each and every one is pure gold, spot-on and very funny, ripping off the likes of Jackie Gleason, "Father Knows Best," "Andy Griffith," "Dennis the Menace," "Mr. Ed," "Bewitched," and many more, all at once and repeatedly and in any number of refreshing, surprising ways. (There are even more or less animated characters showing up too, such as an antiabortion leader, with and without scratchy voices.) The thing to remember, this far out from those early days of the Bush administration, is that this is and always was intended more as a hopelessly loving parody of the classic sitcom form itself than derision aimed at the Bush administration, for the sake of which it was discontinued without looking back approximately one minute following Bush's public reading of My Pet Goat to a classroom of children in Sarasota, Florida. In that way it is also a fascinating document of the brief sliver of time when the ineptitude and unwarranted arrogance of Bush, Cheney & crew were still things that could be coped with by laughing (if one could overlook or momentarily forget December 12, 2000).

(For those following along, this concludes my list of my favorite movies of 2009, some of which were not movies and most of which were not released in 2009, though seen by me for the first time then. We now return to something that I'd like to think of as normal programming, with a stepped-up schedule of music along with "the usual" book club Sundays and "the new" "movie" Fridays, according to the limits of my stamina.)