It's difficult to explain the appeal of a show like Tom Goes To The Mayor. The premise is exceedingly simple, but there's so much subversion and twisted happenings in each and every episode that it almost defies description. The show is set in the small town of Jefferton where Tom Peters, the newest resident, approaches the mayor with his odd ideas, most of which are of the entrepreneurial kind. The mayor will inevitably give Tom the go ahead after tweaking things to meet his criteria, and disaster will strike.

There's much more to the show than that, however. Running gags, recurring supporting characters and bit part players and the odd personality conflicts that occur between the mayor and Tom all play a big part in the show's surreal vibe. Whether it's the mayor's homoerotic obsession with a one man marching band, Tom's love-hate relationship with a dwarf named Gibbons (Brian Posehn of Mr. Show fame) or his completely slave like devotion to his obese hag of a wife, Joy, and her three kids from her first marriage, there's a few different layers on which the show works. We get the surface gags, the interaction between Tom and the mayor, but we also get the more subtle jabs at society and small town America as a whole.

Created by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (who play the Married News Team in the live action segments), the series started off as an internet cartoon where it captured the attention of Bob Odenkirk of Mr. Show. He was impressed enough with the material that he got the show a deal on Adult Swim and was able to bring in a bunch of guest stars like Posehn, Sarah Silverman, Jack Black, David Cross, Gary Busey, Geoff Goldblum and Ian Michael Black in addition to appearing in many of the episodes himself. In short, Tim and Eric handled the creative duties while Odenkirk acted as producer and brought some name recognition to the cartoon. The results are a wonderfully twisted series that almost immediately alienated a good portion of its audience by walking a thin line that borders on disturbing as often as it does humorous. Then again, that's a good portion of the show's appeal, the fact that anything can happen and you never know where it's going to take you. It's fearless in a sense, in that it's not uncommon to see cartoon kids mauled by bear traps or to see the mayor bend Ian Michael Black over and faux-hump him while singing 'Rimmmm rimmmm.' The show can deal with the trials and tribulations of selling giant cups and their accompanying accessories just as easily as it can deal with Tom's marital life or lack thereof. One episode finds Tom trying to play matchmaker to the town's dogs, and another one finds him piloting an artificial mechanical Loch Ness Monster that falls out of his control and kills a group of tourists. The show is so all over the place that there are jokes in each episode that you probably won't catch until a second or even third viewing.

The episodes that make up Tom Goes To The Mayor – The Complete Series are presented on the three DVDs that make up this collection in the following order:

Bear Traps
WW Laserz
Pioneer Island
Toodle Day
Rat's Off To Ya
Porcelain Birds
Vehicular Manslaughter
Boy Meets Mayor
Calcucorn
Gibbons
Pipe Camp
Rebirth
Vice Mayor
My Big Cups
Bass Fest
Jeffy The Sea Serpent
White Collarless
Wrestling
Saxman
Spray A Carpet Or Rug
Surprise Carpet
C.N.E.
Friendship Alliance
Zoo Trouble
The Layover
Couple's Therapy
Glass Eyes
Undercover
Puddins
Joy's Ex

While the series really only revolves around Tom and the mayor and is therefore a little limited by its very nature, the thirty episodes in this set really maximize the opportunities that the simple premise provides. By the time the last episode has run its course, the mayor has been involved in all manner of Tom's business ideas as well as his personal life (at one point he films Tom and his wife Joy in the bedroom!). The mayor has helped him, he's destroyed him, he's rebuilt him and he's befriended him while at the same time managing to become the worst person that Tom could possibly have latched on to. The mayor is selfish and egotistical and is usually more concerned about what he can milk out of Tom than how he can help him succeed but every once in a while he'll surprise us and actually try to give the guy a hand. It's an interesting dichotomy that the writers fully exploit. With the animation in the series looking as primitive and base as it does here, the strengths of the series lie in this bizarre characterizations and in the writing and it's on this level that the series is at times quite brilliant. Tom Goes To The Mayor isn't ever going to reach 'mainstream hit' status the way other Adult Swim shows have (Space Ghost – Coast To Coast being the best example) but it's certainly ripe for a cult following.

Video:

Tom Goes To The Mayor looks about as good as it's supposed to look. The animation is very primitive but not without its charm, the characters looking like they were run off on a seventies ditto machine in that they're all blue and white and not flesh colored as you'd expect. Each and every episode is presented fullframe, which is as it should be, and there are no problems with mpeg compression artifacts, edge enhancement or heavy shimmering. There isn't a whole lot of fine detail present in the picture to begin with but the transfers on this DVD set certainly do justice to the material and those who know and appreciate the series' look will have no problem with how the show is represented visually on this set.