Set in South L.A. somewhere in the not too near future, “Oh My God … Yes!” — subtitled not without reason “A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances” — is the devilish Afro-futurist surrealist animated action series you didn’t know you were waiting for. It premieres with two episodes Sunday on Adult Swim, home of the odd and sometimes, but not always, offensive.
Created by Adele “Supreme” Williams (“My Dad the Bounty Hunter”), it takes the “girlfriends in the city” premise and adds humanoid robots, anthropomorphic animals and gayliens (that’s “gay aliens,” their preferred term) to the cast, and spices up the action with apocalyptic violence, satanists, a teeth-pulling game show host and robots that on the basis of a glitchy video are determined to fulfill a prophecy from “the late, great rapper, turned martyr, who for some reason we revere as a god, Tupic [sic],” who they believe has instructed them to eat the rich. (The sonorous Keith David plays their leader.)
Sunny (Williams), Tulip (DomiNque Perry) and Ladi (Xosha Roquemore, Tamra from “The Mindy Project”) are our ordinary heroines, built on superhero frames (with a touch of Don Bluth, to my eye). Without much effort, one might find them vaguely analogous to the Powerpuff Girls: Tulip, the Bubbles, sweet, childlike, given to fits; pistol-packing Ladi, the Buttercup, more than ready for a fight; and Sunny (a “noted influencer”), the Blossom, if Blossom were less competent and more interested in money, and if they were not out to save the world, but only themselves — though in doing the latter, they might do the former. (And if they drank.)
Each episode runs 11 minutes, the classic length of the old Popeye and Bugs Bunny and Road Runner theatrical shorts — brief enough to not wear out an idea, long enough to express one, but timed to keep the gags coming fast. And like those shorts, in which characters were continually being pummeled, flattened, shot, blown up, run over and the like, “Oh My God” dives into “cartoon violence,” if more graphic and disturbing in the execution. Sex isn’t new to animation either if you know your gartered Betty Boop or the tongue-flapping Tex Avery Wolf; that sort of thing, too, is more explicitly expressed everywhere in the pop culture nowadays, as it is here. You’ll know your tolerance for either, and no shame if it is low.
The series is very much in the Adult Swim house style, where the extraordinary is stirred in with the extraordinarily banal, going back to “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law,” forward to “Metalocalypse” and “The Venture Bros.” and “Lazor Wulf” (a sort of slacker cousin to “Oh My God”). A line like, “The people of South Central will never embrace your Antichrist,” perfectly captures that aesthetic — you might even call it a philosophy. Certainly it is inspiring in its way.
For beyond such concepts as a President Vending Machine (feels timely), a badly rapping “Fervid Idealist Eating Hornswoggle” spider (Is that an acronymic reference to the Swedish neo-soul band Fieh? It seems unlikely, but not impossible.), a push broom boyfriend, a removable uterus, a “closure cookie” that instead of delivering closure only makes you want closure more and turns you into a monster in the bargain, the series is grounded in relationships and (somewhat extreme) feelings. Friendship, family, love, grief, self-acceptance — these concerns make it real, not just really strange.
