Harry Shearer’s ‘What’s With Honey Poo Poo?’ set for My Damn Channel
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It was only a matter of time before TLC’s cult hit reality series “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” met its match in a parallel universe of satire. And so it was with great relish that one of modern pop culture’s greatest satirists, Harry Shearer, dove into the little beauty pageant participants’ redneck world and came up with a juicy riff titled “What’s With Honey Poo Poo?”
Joining him on this journey of raunchy joke discovery is his wife, singer-songwriter Judith Owen, who in addition to co-creating the series also stars as Honey Poo Poo’s mother, Teria. (So named because she was born in her mother’s favorite cafeteria.)
Like revenge, satire is a dish best served cold, and Shearer and Owen go about lampooning the outlandish ridiculousness of the “Honey Boo Boo” series with the deadpan wit that can only be born of savvy farce.
“Judith is my early warning system for new and remarkable crap on television,” said Shearer of his introduction to “Honey Boo Boo.” “She said you gotta watch this, and we looked at each other and said ‘How could this possibly be worse?’ And after 32 seconds we knew how it could be worse.”
As the show’s title implies, it could be worse if the poo poo in question were literal. Honey Poo Poo’s fatal flaw is that she can’t control her bowels. Turns out the little dear soils sheets and shirts alike during her quest to be America’s sweetheart via a series of auditions in beauty pageants with names like “Little Miss Glitz.”
It’s grotesque enough to induce surprised laughter and also stands as a parable of Shearer and Owen’s actual feelings about “Honey Boo Boo.”
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“We said, ‘This is the end of Western civilization, so what comes after that?’ Well, this.” Shearer said. “We make a unique guarantee in the history of television that each episode ends with a good old-fashioned hosing down.”
Called a “Redneck Laundromat,” the hosing down in question occurs when Teria is doused with hose water by her alcoholic husband Panda Daddy (Kim Collins).
“Honey Poo Poo gonna do a nasty on you,” says Honey Poo Poo, played by Rayanna Boasso during the series’ intro.
The first episode of “Honey Poo Poo” airs on My Damn Channel, Thursday, with an additional four episodes to complete the first and only season being rolled out each Thursday after that (“With five episodes we feel we have, as they say in Hollywood, ‘told the whole arc,’” jokes Shearer). Shearer is also doing a Reddit AMA Thursday at noon Eastern.
“If it can’t go viral, we at least hope it goes bacterial,” said Shearer of his latest jest.
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