Item: Crossing Swords
Rating: 3
Author: Jesse Schedeen

Note: this is a spoiler-free review of Crossing Swords Season 1, which is now available to stream on Hulu.

Robot Chicken has long been a comforting staple of Adult Swim's programming block. 10 seasons in, the novelty of seeing iconic action figures placed in adult-oriented situations still hasn't worn off. Bearing that in mind, one would think Crossing Swords is a sure win for Hulu. This new animated sitcom is created by two of the minds behind Robot Chicken (John Harvatine IV and Tom Root), and it offers the opportunity to apply that "raunchy toy humor" formula on a much bigger scale with real, serialized storytelling. But instead, Crossing Swords proves that less is truly more where that formula is concerned.

Crossing Swords is notable mostly for the fact that it's animated in an intentionally crude, stop-motion style, with all the characters closely resembling Fisher-Price Little People figurines. The characters don't even have limbs, instead hopping from point to point and not so much holding items as levitating them in mid-air. The art style itself is actually pretty charming. It's certainly reminiscent of Robot Chicken, albeit with a much larger sense of scope and ambition. Clearly, Harvatine, Root, and their team have a lot more money to throw around here.

Sadly - and very frustratingly - the off-kilter animation style is literally the only way in which Crossing Swords manages to distinguish itself. There's certainly nothing memorable about the medieval fantasy universe in which the series is set. It's an aggressively generic kingdom ruled by a self-absorbed family of monarchs, populated mostly by serfs, aspiring knights, and the occasional fantasy creature. For all its flaws, at least Netflix's medieval-themed animated sitcom Disenchantment makes some effort to build a distinctive world around its characters.

Crossing Swords settles mostly for lowbrow gross-out humor. The series' title alone should probably clue you in to the juvenile brand of jokes being employed. The series seizes on the fact that you can basically include whatever form of debauchery you want when your show is driven by crudely animated peg people. Get ready for a constant barrage of full-frontal nudity, F-bombs, drug use, and poop jokes. For example, the series premiere involves the main character being demoted from his boss' S*** List to her "Shart List," and then later wandering in on the queen engaging in a graphic orgy with several of her subjects.

The vast majority of the gags rely heavily on the fact that these cutesy characters are saying and doing terribly inappropriate things. Which begs the question - if Crossing Swords were animated in a more traditional style, would any of this even qualify as humor in the first place? Ehh...

With a bland fantasy setting and a lowest common denominator approach to humor, the only thing that might salvage the season would be interesting characters engaged in a compelling, season-long narrative. This may come as a shock, but there's none of that to be found in Season 1. The series revolves mostly around a squire-in-training named Patrick (voiced by an unrecognizable Nicholas Hoult), as he attempts to rise through the ranks and prove his mettle to the King (Luke Evans) and Queen (Alanna Ubach). Patrick is a rare sensitive, thoughtful soul in a land populated only by hedonistic jerks. That includes his own siblings, the Robin Hood-like Ruben (Adam Ray), pirate queen Coral (Tara Strong), and literal clown Blarney (Tony Hale).

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The voice cast also includes Yvette Nicole Brown as the Shart List-loving drill sergeant, Maya Erskine as the spoiled Princess Blossom, Robot Chicken mainstay Seth Green as court magician Blinkerquartz, and Adam Pally as Patrick's ditzy friend Broth. In general, the cast does a respectable job of trying to breathe life into the stale humor and situations. The problem is that they're almost never given a chance to break out of their one-note molds. Erskine's Blossom is the same shrieking, entitled Millennial in every scene she appears. Patrick is among the very few characters to experience any sort of arc, and it's such a blandly formulaic hero's journey that it hardly warrants a mention.

You can't help but wish Crossing Swords would give the potty humor a rest and try taking itself the slightest bit seriously. Every once in a great while, the show will drunkenly stumble in that direction. There's a subplot late in the season that parodies a recent Oscar-winning drama. Aside from being one of the few cases where the foul humor actually hits the mark, it presents a real, genuine moment of human connection that's otherwise absent from the series. They may be Peg People, but that's no reason to treat them like toys.

Verdict

It could be argued that one of the biggest reasons Robot Chicken has remained fresh after all these years is its brevity. The series' various sketches run anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes before cycling onto the next. Crossing Swords doesn't have the benefit of that formula. It asks viewers to spend 10 22-minute episodes in its debauched fantasy universe with nothing more to offer than an endless parade of Peg People doing naughty things. Once the novelty of the animation style wears off (and it does so pretty quickly), there's very little to justify sticking around.