tek's rating:

Moral Orel (claymation), on Cartoon Network
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streaming sites: Max

Okay, this 11 year old kid named Orel Puppington lives in a small town called Moralton, and he loves church and everything. He always drastically misinterprets things people like his father, Clay, or Reverend Putty say. Very twisted things happen in this show, absolutely ludicrous things, I can't even begin to describe it to you. But I will say that I wasn't that into season one, but season two was a lot better, and the show continued to grow on me in season three, which was the final season. Episodes in season 3 were set throughout the series' timeframe, but I think alot of it was sort of reckoned in relation to the 2-part second season finale, which itself serves as the climax of the series.

Anyway, a lot of people have the impression that the series is sort of a parody of "Davey and Goliath," which I don't think I've ever really seen, though I'm aware of it. But this is actually... well, I guess it's sort of a parody of any number of things, such as "Leave It To Beaver." But it's more than that. Throughout the first season, I kind of saw it as just this twisted parody of "wholesome" sitcoms or whatever, from like the 1950s. Orel's always just trying to understand the world in which he lives, with a sort of hyper-Christian perspective that doesn't fit his reality at all, even if everyone around him sort of pretends that it does. It's as if he's the only one who doesn't get that it's all a sham. (Not that Christianity is a sham, I'm not sure if the writers were trying to give that impression at all; but rather, that no one else truly seems to hold the values that they claim to espouse, the way Orel does.) Anyway, after watching the later seasons, I realized I'd been unfairly limited in my take on the show. In a lot of ways, it's obviously not quite like real life, but in other ways, it's more realistic than it seems at first glance. Everyone in Moralton seems to struggle with some pretty serious issues. There's a lot going on here, psychologically. So, in the end... the series turns out to be a rather cogent, dramatic, even poignant sort of coming of age story for Orel, as well as portraying all kinds of self-realization for the adult characters. The show often got very deep and very dark... but it did it so while also being weird and funny and twisted and... all the surface things I saw in season 1.


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