The Key to Loving Beavis and Butt-Head Is Embracing the Stupid
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The post The Key to Loving Beavis and Butt-Head Is Embracing the Stupid appeared first on Consequence.
It only took a couple of decades, but I think I finally understand Beavis & Butt-Head.
The question, when it came to the first season of Paramount+’s revived Beavis and Butt-Head last year, was simple: Would the antics of two teenage nitwits translate from the 1990s to today? And to creator/star Mike Judge‘s credit, they actually did: The boys might be watching Lil Nas X and viral videos these days instead of Milli Vanilli and Red Hot Chili Peppers, but their idiocy endures. When it launched last year, though, I was watching the revival with fresh, adult eyes — since I never engaged with Beavis and Butt-Head in their heyday.
I was aware of their existence in the ’90s, of course, but largely because I was a fervent fan of Daria, the MTV spinoff featuring the quiet, brainy, bitter girl who had nothing positive to say about her weirdo classmates — or anything at all, really. While the character of Daria originated on Beavis & Butt-Head, with the show’s pilot revolving around her family leaving the boys’ hometown of Highland, Texas for a new city — when Daria’s mom mentions to Daria that she might try not to judge people until she gets to know them, because “you don’t want it to be Highland all over again,” Daria replies with “Not much chance of that happening… unless there’s uranium in the drinking water here, too.”
Daria was a formative show for me in a lot of respects, as there weren’t a lot of other characters on TV at that time that captured the experience of being a teenage girl who doesn’t fit in. And I knew that Daria didn’t think much of her former classmates, which did directly impact my own opinions — plus, it didn’t help that the initial Beavis & Butt-Head appearances, such as their infamous first short “Frog Baseball” have… not aged well.
As the show has evolved from those early days, though, what stands out now is how Judge and his writers have learned to calibrate these characters so that they remain as ridiculous and profane as before, but without needing to lean on animal cruelty and blatant sexism.
Instead, Beavis and Butt-Head have arrived in the 21st century (time travel was involved, as explained by the Paramount+ original film Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe) and are continuing to muddle their way through a world that won’t let them drink or score. It’s the consistency there that I’ve come to admire, and the ways in which their inability to fully engage with the world as adults can create seemingly endless opportunities for comedy.
The moment Beavis & Butt-Head actually clicked into place for me, as a show, came when I spoke to Judge at the Do the Universe premiere in June 2022. “It’s harder than it looks to write Beavis and Butt-Head because they’re so dumb. They can’t figure stuff out. Things sort of have to happen to them,” he said then. “It’s harder to write than you’d think.”
Television has a bewildering relationship with change sometimes — there are shows where the power of watching them over the years comes in seeing characters learn and grow, transformed by the experiences the viewer has followed along the way. But that’s a relatively new innovation outside the world of soap operas; meanwhile, there are shows like The Simpsons and crime procedurals and family sitcoms where their longevity is due in part to a reliable sense of consistency. You turn on an episode of Friends, and you know Joey and Chandler will be hanging out at Central Perk. You turn on an episode of Law and Order: SVU, and you know Mariska Hargitay is going to be solving a sex crime.
And you turn on an episode of Beavis & Butt-Head, and you know Beavis and Butt-Head are going to misunderstand a situation, and get into some sort of trouble, and how it all resolves will be deliciously clever in its dumbness. It’s strange to say the show has matured, but having watched the full first season and the first two episodes of Season 2, there’s truth to it; simply in how clear-eyed the show is about its characters and its intentions.
The new episodes feature the boys discovering transcendental meditation and attempting to go to a strip club; in the commentary segments, there’s an impressive (and hilarious) running beatdown of Jack Harlow, as well as some inventive breaking of the fourth wall.
It’s not necessarily comedy that makes you feel enlightened, but it’s sure as hell entertaining, with the humor typically punching up at those who can take it (like Jack Harlow, or Beavis and Butt-Head themselves). This isn’t universal; the commentary on one viral video of trick shots leans hard into (barely paraphrasing here) “the only reason this kid is so good at this is because he doesn’t have any friends and his parents don’t love him.” It’s no worse than anything typically left in the comments of a YouTube video, but harsh slams like that, when talking about amateurs, go down a little differently than mocking a professional singer for looking bored during her own music video.
As always, the quest to score drives both boys when left to their own devices, and as always, they’re unsuccessful. But there’s a sort of beauty to be found in their quest, especially in moments like the Season 2 storyline where Butt-Head spraypaints Beavis’s head so he looks like an old man — a plan originally forged to buy beer, but one that leads Beavis right to a randy retirement home community, and another near miss for his virginity.
The balance is far more towards the animated sketches than it is the commentaries, but it works. Because at the end of the day Beavis and Butt-Head remain the star attractions, and there’s a purity to their crassness that gives the show just enough of a soul to let it endure.
So I’ve learned to relax and enjoy the ride, after all these years. Hell, even Daria got her kicks while watching trash TV like Sick Sad World, having developed a deep appreciation for the absurd. She might not have enjoyed being classmates with Beavis & Butt-Head. But there’s every chance she would have enjoyed watching them on TV.
Beavis & Butt-Head Season 2 premieres Thursday, April 20th (of course) on Paramount+.
The Key to Loving Beavis and Butt-Head Is Embracing the Stupid
Liz Shannon Miller
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