MORAL OREL

January 22 is Day of Reckoning for New Adult Swim Series Moral Orel
New Stop-Motion Series from Dino Stamatopoulos to Air Sundays at 12 Midnight (ET, PT)

In Moral Orel, a new Adult Swim series from Dino Stamatopoulous, Orel just wanted to do good. The new 15 minute stop-motion animated series makes its debut on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 12 midnight (ET,PT).

Orel is an 11-year-old boy who loves church. His unbridled enthusiam for piousness and his misinterpretations of religious morals often lead to disastrous results, including self-mutilation and crack addiction. No matter how much trouble he gets into, his reverence always keeps him cheery.

Stamatopoulos is a former writer for Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the acclaimed sketch comedy series Mr. Show with Bob and David. He also has contributed to the Adult Swim show Tom Goes to The Mayor, Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse and The Ben Stiller Show.

All episodes will air Sundays at 12 midnight (ET, PT) on Cartoon Network. In the premiere episode, "The Greatest Gift," Orel takes righteous action when he concludes that everyone buried in the town's cemetery is rejecting God's greatest gift, life.

CRITICAL MASS Review:

Moral Orel Is a Slice of Heaven

Though I was raised an agnostic Jew, one of my clearest childhood memories is tuning in every Sunday morning to watch Davey and Goliath, the Claymation adventures of an Evangelical Christian boy and his Evangelical Christian dog, who each week faced a new moral dilemma, and with the guidance of caring family and clergy, always learned a valuable life lesson. Somehow, despite their best efforts, I remained both agnostic and Jewish (an amazing feat in its own right), but if recollection serves, the show focused more on building character than saving souls. Paradoxically, though produced over forty years ago, Davey and Goliath pitched a more enlightened Christianity than today’s popular fundamentalist brand, which has shifted its focus from being virtuous to being right.

Well, who better to spotlight these shortcomings than a new generation of Claymation protagonists? Exit Davey; enter Moral Orel, a well-intentioned lad whose highest ambition is to be a good Christian. In the episode I saw, entitled God’s Greatest Gift, Orel takes Reverend Putty’s Sunday sermon a bit too much to heart. Life, the reverend explains, is God’s greatest gift, and to reject that gift under any circumstance is a sin. Orel ponders this point on his way home from Church, despite his best pal Joey’s admonition that “you’re not supposed to think when it comes to God and faith.” As they cut through the cemetery, Joey wonders if it owes its lush greenery to the fact that “dead people make such good fertilizer.”

“Maybe,” muses Orel, “but they sure make bad Christians.” The dead, you see, have rejected God’s gift of life and are spitting in His face just by being dead. Maybe God can suffer this insult, but Orel cannot. He heads straight for the school library, where our good Christian librarian, Miss Censoredall, is culling special books from the library’s collection for burning.

“Are they special because they teach us the most?” asks Joey.

“Yes,” she replies. “In fact, they teach us too much.”

Even the Bible is slated for incineration, though we are quickly reassured that it’s “only the Jewish parts.”

Among these condemned works, Orel finds Necronomicon, the book that will allow him to raise the dead and put a stop to their sinful rejection of life.

“That doesn’t sound very Protestant,” worries Joey, as Orel incants a satanic ritual over his just-dug-up grandfather.

Orel’s common-sense reply? “Well, at least it’s not Catholic.”

The biggest problem posed by the soon-to-be undead is their smell, which Orel and Joey try to solve by stripping them of their stinky clothes and reviving them au natural.
Long story short, the dead rise and soon roam the streets naked, eating the brains of the living: not quite what Orel intended. Dad catches wind of what Orel has done, and realizes that Orel’s misapprehensions can only be resolved in the forum of a father-son chat in his study. Dad explains to Orel that by undressing the dead and calling them back to life, he has violated the eleventh commandment, which prohibits nudity, and that he can only make things right by providing all the undead with suitable clothing so that they can be decent as they gorge themselves on brains.

“I just wanted to be good so you could love me more than you do now,” Orel tells his father.

“Oh, Orel,” Dad replies with a squeeze, “I could never love you more. People only have a certain amount of love in them. But remember, Son, I love you enough.”

Moral Orel is a clever commentary on the current trend toward intolerance masquerading as morality. Religion in America has been co-opted by fundamentalists who use faith to isolate, frighten and misinform. They reject science (unless, of course, they need it) and dismiss any fact contradicting doctrine as a lie planted to destroy faith. Home schooling is strongly recommended. Ignorance, after all, gets its best foothold in a vacuum. Reason itself is deemed sinful. Our friend Orel takes one stab at independent thought, and what is the outcome? Barenaked zombies.

Of course, the above would mean nothing, if not for Moral Orel’s single, most redeeming virtue. It is truly goddamn funny.

Moral Orel airs on the Cartoon Network Sundays at 12 midnight (ET, PT).

Reviewed by -
The Critical Masster
for
cartoonmogul.com