By Damian Yerrick on 2022-05-27
Fairview characters look like roly-poly toys. The dialogue doesn't acknowledge this in the slightest.
The characters in Comedy Central's 2022 animated series Fairview are drawn with simplified round bodies that lack legs. Reviewers have compared this to the style of Weebles or Higglytown Heroes or Mr. Wobbly Man in Make Way for Noddy or the Terra-Firmians in the Uncle Scrooge story "Land Beneath the Ground!" (and its adaptations in both iterations of DuckTales). Real people with a similar body shape include skater Kanya Sesser, aerialist Jen Bricker-Bauer, athlete Kacey McCallister, and photographer Kevin Michael Connolly. In addition, Fairview characters' hands lack fingers. Instead, objects stick to them as if the hands were Versaball grippers.
Part of the way that more analytical viewers enjoy a work of fiction is through Brandon Sanderson's second law: limits on characters' abilites are more interesting than the abilities themselves. A character's mobility impairment may drive the plot, as Mr. Wobbly Man's impairment does in Make Way for Noddy episodes "Lie Down Mr. Wobbly Man" and "Toy Town's Winning Team". Likewise a Cyanide & Happiness strip where a character corrects his threat to "I'll uh... punch your ass!!" Gain or loss of function can also help the viewer understand characters' limits. The Powerpuff Girls episode "Criss Cross Crisis" shows how the Girls' fingerless hands work differently from human hands in-universe when Buttercup switches bodies with Professor Utonium and has trouble getting used to fingers:
BUTTERCUP
Professor! Your hand doesn't work!
In highly stylized works, you can't always trust the art to reflect a character's ability. Two animated series were produced to accompany the 2004 and 2016 generations of Hasbro's Weebles toy line, and the original characters looked like the toys. In contrast, Weebles crossover playsets with re-stylized characters from Peppa Pig and PAW Patrol have also been produced; these characters have legs in their home series.
It's easier to trust dialogue. A series with attention to detail may reflect its worldbuilding in "Hold Your Hippogriffs"-style adjustments of figures of speech. One example is Wally's line "Slow your wobble!" in Weebles episode "Meet the Weebles".
A friend recommended Fairview to me, knowing I'm a fan of Weebles, and I was intrigued. It was appearing around the 6-year cadence that Hasbro had been following between revivals of the Weebles toy line in the United States. While watching the 8 episodes of the first season in February and March of 2022, my overthinking instinct kicked in. I wondered whether the characters' body shape is tangible in-universe (like Mr. Wobbly Man) or just part of the stylization (like Weebles!Peppa), in order to determine what limits might drive the conflict in a later episode. So in late May, I rewatched the first season, paying attention to evidence supporting one of these 3 hypotheses:
I initially assumed B, the hypothesis most similar to the examples in Noddy and Weebles, which I imagined would lead to the most interesting worldbuilding. I paid attention to dialogue and took notes on lines that supported one hypothesis over another. (At times, I drew analogies to other series, which I set off in parentheses.)
Because its characterization is not as strong as that of the series that it aims to emulate, I felt a need to take notes on the dramatis personae in order to be able to describe in my notes who is speaking.
From left to right in the office:
From left to right in Todd's house:
Police officers: Sheriff and Connie
Some characters contract COVID-19. (In the real world, COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by a virus that infects mammals. It is believed to have jumped from bats to pangolins to humans with its first outbreak in a farmer's market in Wuhan during the fourth quarter of 2019.) This at least rules out the characters being living toys, as in Toy Story and Make Way for Noddy.
At various points in early episodes, Glen rolls around on his side, an act that I suspect would be easier without legs getting in the way.
At the end of the opening office scene, Kelly warns she'll be telling everyone that the party is off. Then we see the four plus gray-haired funeral home director Lonny bobbing up and down at 1.5 Hz over their shadows, which must represent walking.
Immediately afterward, a car fatally injures a woman crossing the street. The woman had looked both ways before leaning to the left and right slightly, bobbing about twice as fast as that, which must represent running. (This matches my headcanon that when Weebles fall down and stay down, they are seriously hurt.)
After the title card, we see five figures seated on living room furniture. The hemisphere that forms their bottom half has flattened somewhat into a pair of lobes that project forward a bit. Mom gesticulates while talking, bending the elbows at a more or less reasonable angles, and Todd wears a watch above his ball-shaped left hand; even in the "seated" position, the hands are still too short to reach the floor. Beef suddenly jumps out of the chair without needing his arms. When Mom discovers Beef's vaccination record card showing Moderna, Todd leaves the couch and is drawn lower than when he was on it.
When Kelly is discussing things in a room with two screen-lickers in Central Fairview University, a TV shows live-action footage of Dr. Anthony Fauci from the chest up. Might this contrast between stylization and lack thereof hint that Fairview people aren't fully human?
Beef and his immunocompromised nonbinary friend Mack at the COVID pit are lying down on a mound without aid. (Mr. Wobbly Man from Make Way for Noddy can't do this, whereas people like Bricker can. It's unclear whether characters in Weebles can, as "Birdie Lee's Colorful Day" and "Sleeping in Your Own Bed" show them under a blanket that may be weighted.) Beef's mom pulls up in a car. Unfortunately, we never get to see the inside of a car to tell whether throttle and brake are pedals or hand controls.
At the Omni fulfillment center, a character in green is pregnant, and the head of Omni (the Amazon analog) says "I get to eat the placenta." This confirms that the characters are mammals.
A character refuses a demonstration of scat play with the excuse "My T5 vertebra is pretty much dust." This is in the middle of the upper back and thus gives no clue as to the sacral area that might show body plan differences. (Compare late actress Rose Siggins of American Horror Story, who had sacral agenesis.)
Kelly in a parking lot: "I canceled a mammogram to be here." This implies that the characters are vulnerable to breast cancer. It shows not only typical human physiology but also that despite their diminutive stature, they don't have anything like Laron syndrome that offers cancer immunity. Elsewhere she mentions having "hooked up with that guy who was so dumb he tried to do a cartwheel and missed a year of school." Cartwheel is a thing; Family Guy-style cutaways unfortunately are not.
After the party, the four are in the office. Glen mentions having treated bronchitis by giving a sex act to a horse named Moon Shadow. The pictured horse has four legs and is photoreal.
Footbot, a robotic gridiron football player, visits Glen at the hospital to convince him to listen to doctors. He's much taller than the other four characters, and he has legs. The doctor treating Glen claims to have "told a guy with rebar through his throat to walk it off," whatever "walk" means.
After Glen's recovery, Kelly mentions to her partner "I kind of like how you ran all over me like a dog shaking off leg water." What do dogs look like in this world?
A TV behind Glen in the office shows a news broadcast. Both the anchor and "world-famous rock musician Sammy Sugar" are in Fairview style. Likewise a painting of a George Washington-type character in the far corner has the ball hands.
At the town hall meeting in the high school gym, numerous characters are shown in the 2-lobed sitting pose.
After the town hall, Lonny is bounce-hover-pacing back and forth in his home with his face shown at 45 degrees, not straight profile.
In the bar, a man with brown hair in a blue collared shirt and light brown sack rips off and tosses his own left arm out of disgust at a newly proposed town tune, and the wound doesn't bleed.
After closing a deal to host funerals after a bus accident, Lonny refers to "the snarling masses" as "not human" for attacking rich people, revealing he'd been studying stage magic.
At church, Pastor Marv's wife Mary "walked in" on Marv eating chocolate flavored cereal out of the exit of his GI tract. So we have "walk" and either an anatomy allowing this sort of contortion or an exaggeration.
At the next basketball game in Fairview's gym, the announcer describes someone with "permanent compression sock imprints on her calves." The players come out bouncing a ball, making me wonder what constitutes "traveling".
Todd the next day: "That game ruled! Did you see how the Bedford center cried like a baby when he tore his ACL?" The ACL is a ligament in the knee (called a stifle in quadrupeds). So "walking" must involve movement in at least a vestigial knee. Chelsea says "your [genital]'s hanging out" to a brunette woman in a light blue collared shirt and a gray sack, implying a possible failure mode of their apparel.
Lonny breaks up with his wife of 50 years Denise in favor of a younger woman named Lindsay wearing what appears to be a fishnet sack over her bottom.
They book a small show with Sammy Sugar, apparently that universe's Gary Glitter, still in Fairview style. In the auditorium, Sugar opens with a comedy routine gently mocking the town of Fairview: "Hello, move to Bedford! It doesn't smell like my sack, and my sack smells like [dung]!" The "sack" might refer to either his genital or the garment worn over the area below the navel.
Mack is held hostage in a room at the university, told a bomb implanted in their chest will explode if they fail to share a virtue-signaling post with their social media followers. They call the captors' bluff and storm out. One of the captors spits out some irony: "Some people are so narcissistic that they only care about how they look with all their body parts still connected."
In the opening office scene, Chelsea mentions that Omni "trained their drivers to pee in a tennis ball can at seventy miles per hour." (This reflects real-world drivers for many parcel couriers having to pee in bottles once quick-service restaurants closed their dining rooms starting in March 2020. Many viewers of news misunderstood this as fulfillment center team members having to pee in bottles.) Tennis? With that body?
Kelly tachi are at the local Omni fulfillment center investigating a note found in a parcel showing evidence of team member mistreatment. "I just wanted to make sure your fulfillment center doesn't cause a run on rifles that are easy to fire with your toes." Toes?
Pastor Marv has procured laptop computers for the congregation to use with OnlyFans, telling them "what's not ethical: letting your neighbors starve because of your Byzantine views on commodifying your feet. [...] Remember, when you see only two footprints, that's Jesus standing beside you holding the ring light." Footprints?
Todd at home to his wife: "I have noticed that when I take my pants off for the doctor, he calls in all the nurses." (For comparison, "pants" in Weebles episode "Rhyme Time" refers to the garment that covers the bottom quarters.)
Kelly to Chelsea outside town hall: "I'm sick of these big corporations kicking around the people of Fairview. We got to stand up for ourselves." Kicking?
Outside the high school gym at night, Kelly notices a possum and asks Glen and Chelsea if they have been vaccinated for rabies. The possum has neither front nor hind legs. (Compare Weebles, where the mouse in "Bumpus's New House", the mythical bird in "Tooey's Wobbly Weekend", the dog Buster in "Taking Care of Your Pet", and the frog in "Hops-B-Gone" have their front limbs.)
While Todd is performing on camera in his bedroom for his subscribers, he describes himself as "a human being with a family."
Fairview residents disillusioned with performing on camera confront Omni operations chief Wade Moonman in the parking lot. In his autistic tone of voice, Moonman confesses that he had dictated the distress note and describes the high school teasing that led to "the twin pillars of my success: hard work and knee-capping colleagues."
In the office, the TV behind Glen plays live-action news footage showing video of property crimes in far-off cities that lead people to believe their own town might be next.
Holly reminds Todd that they had shoplifted their couch: "we hid it under my dress, walked it out of Sears, and brought it to its new home."
The curfew sirens start, and the bartender warns all customers: "Oh god, please get home safe! Run in zig-zags! The missiles are heat-seeking, so if you soil yourself, ditching your pants buys you eight seconds."
"Critical race theory" is the study of how policy entrenches racism. (It has nothing to do with a cathode ray tube, the most common display technology in home televisions prior to 2007. This made the episode somewhat confusing for a vintage video game community member to watch, particularly with the common emulator-driven misconception that pixels in 1980s video games had sharp edges.)
The episode opens with an illustration of the western hemisphere of Earth from space. "For the past fifty thousand years, human beings have lived on planet Earth..."
Lonny shows up outside Kelly's home. "Mayor Kelly, you're gonna want to sit down."
Lonny and his wife Denise enter.
Kelly: "Have the kids said anything about CRT?"
Denise: "They could care less. They're filming TikTok dances."
Kelly's partner Jake walks out naked, carrying a stuffed bunny named Professor Hoppy also without legs: "Is everything all right?"
Lonny suggests that Denise quit her job in favor of "slicing up hogs at the butcher."
This is a lot to unpack. Sitting, children not caring about CRT, the shape of the bunny, what cuts of pork a hog would have... Not giving the audience time to unpack a joke is a complaint about Fairview that I've read in various places.
Connie to Holly: "Kids go to school to learn how to belly crawl from a masked gunman."
The only episode I actually liked. The "luck dragon" in this episode reminded me of Driggles, a dragon figure that shipped in the Weebles Weebalot Castle playset.
Open on Kelly's living room with a TV showing a live-action ad for a cryptocurrency exchange. Glen shouts "Everyone give me your shoes and socks! I'm selling them for crypto cash."
Outside the town hall, Sheriff and the four wave credit cards to summon the Luck Dragon from a puff of purple smoke. Its body is mostly off-white with a white stripe from the chin to the tail, turquoise mane, and turquoise spines on the tail. The Luck Dragon explains that in order to save a princess, "you must gather all your friends, united in purpose, to fork over your credit card numbers to buy this NFT!" The NFT is of a hamster stretching on its back on a pool table, with both front legs and back legs.
Later, the four summon the Luck Dragon inside the bar. After another pep talk, the Luck Dragon offers to rent them an expensive sports car. On the way out, he briefly stumbles on "spinny bars" and complains "Someone tripped me."
The next day, the four in their car pass by Connie and a man. Kelly explains that they could afford the car through cryptocurrency. The man: "Wait for us! Our legs can't move as fast as wheels." Suspicion meter hits a new high.
Others follow, forming a crowd behind the car. The car stops at town hall, and all wave credit cards to summon the Luck Dragon.
In bed, Kelly's boyfriend realizes that both of them had been scammed and storms out of the house naked, unable to afford clothes. "Now I gotta sprint everywhere so no one catches a glimpse of my dong. Why can't I have wheels?"
Glen summons the Luck Dragon one last time, and the other three run over him in the rented sports car. This knocks the Luck Dragon flat on his back, head to right, tail to left. "Aah, my [expletive] legs!" The four take a photo of the Luck Dragon's injuries and mint it as an NFT, recovering the residents' losses.
Four-limbed entity count so far: 3
In the bar, Lonny wants Kelly to stop the high schoolers' climate protest in "two days so you have time to get a pedicure or whatever."
The TV in Kelly's living room shows an award show beginning with a live-action segment with ambiguous leg, followed by animated Kelly giving an acceptance speech.
Kelly's musical number "Three cheers for me!" Outside the office, she swings around a lamppost by one hand and her butt. Back in the office, she spins around in a circle while crossing the center of the office. (It reminds me of characters getting spun around in early scenes of "Welcome to Weebleville!".)
The final episode of season 1 aired on 2022-03-30, and there was no evidence of the series' renewal eight weeks later (05-25).
Pastor Marv: "Mary, walk close! I ain't walking around heaven without a date like some loser."
Holly to Ashley: "You are sitting on the couch that I was conceived on!" What happened to shoplifting it in "Crime Spike"?
Kelly in the bar: "I suppose it would be nice to live in a town where you can sit on a park bench without having to burn that pair of pants."
Lonny: "Fairview can be a wondrous place with a facade of such innocence and inoffensive beauty that no one will even bother to ask why their shoes keep sticking to the floors."
On the church meeting after a dance that resulted in more sex and drug use than expected, Pastor Marv asked the congregation to "wave goodbye to the church. Go ahead, wave away. Give it the finger if you want. Because I'm burning this mother down tonight."
I've found no evidence in the dialogue to suggest that the writers of Fairview took any effort whatsoever to tailor the scripts for how the art style depicts the characters' body plan. This is most consistent with hypothesis A from the introduction. This was such a missed opportunity for worldbuilding. Thus we can add sloppy incongruity between dialogue and action to the pile of complaints against the series.
Copyright 2022 Damian Yerrick. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license. Posters, covers, and stills are copyrighted by their respective publishers and used pursuant to 17 USC 107.