Adult Swim’s Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell Returns with Some Surprising Guest Stars
Image courtesy of Adult Swim
I always thought I would eventually grow out of finding dismemberment funny, but somehow that hasn’t quite happened yet. Adult Swim’s grotesque sitcom Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell—think The Office in Hell, as directed by Dario Argento—gets a ton of mileage out of playing body horror for laughs, with suitably grisly horror movie special effects from the Atlanta-based Silver Scream FX Lab. Over the course of season four’s first two episodes, a character idly plays with a detached testicle, another gradually collapses into a pestilent sack of blood and pus, and a third is excited to wake up to a surprise human caterpillar situation. It’s gross, bloody, deeply immature, and almost always good for a laugh or three.
This isn’t a show you’re necessarily proud to watch, but it’s one you’ll probably dig, regardless. It has the absurd edge Adult Swim is known for, mashed up with the horror elements of the network’s Too Many Cooks viral smash. That equation makes perfect sense, as the show is created and written by Dave Willis, the co-creator of Aqua Teen Hunger Force who basically defined the network’s voice, and Chris “Casper” Kelly, who’s responsible for both Too Many Cooks and the brilliant (and disgusting) “Cheddar Goblin” sequence in Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy. Together they’ve delivered three seasons of hilariously disgusting nonsense on Your Pretty Face, with crucial help from actors like Henry Zebrowski, Craig Rowin, Eddie Pepitone and The Sopranos’ Matt Servitto, who plays a cocksure executive Satan trying to maximize Hell’s productivity.
Season four starts strong, with Delocated’s Jon Glaser making a guest appearance as a consultant trying to teach Zebrowski and his fellow demons how to inflict ironic punishments upon those desperate to sell their souls. Glaser’s character work could almost be classified as low-key, or at least as low-key as this show gets. Due to the infamously litigious Chubby Checker, his “twist” system of teaching ironic punishments has been hastily renamed to “the flip,” complete with a very familiar song by “rock ‘n’ roll legend Beefy Backgammon.” Glaser’s put-upon consultant is the highlight of this first episode, as he struggles to reconnect with his college-aged daughter while teaching Zebrowski’s almost braindead Gary how to do his job properly.