Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head
Our Review
What Happens
Highland, Texas never moved on, and neither did they. Beavis and Butt-Head still sit on the same sagging couch watching the same terrible television, except the television is now TikTok, crypto bros, true-crime podcasts and whatever the algorithm decides these two can ruin. The revival’s whole joke is that the duo are immune to progress: twenty-five years of cultural change rolls over them like weather, and they just say ‘heh heh’ and ‘cool’ at whatever is on.
Mike Judge voicing both of himself remains the engine. Van Driessen still tries, Mr. Anderson still fumes, Bushwockie still gets his tire stolen, and Cornholio still deploys whenever Beavis loses his chonies or finds a coffee. The new seasons take the original’s format (two 11-minute shorts per half hour, music-video reaction DNA) and point it at 2020s targets: influencer culture, pandemic lockdown, AI, rebranding, cancel culture, Texas politics.
Our take: the first season is the strongest argument for the revival, Butt-Head trying to understand a phone is funnier than anyone had a right to expect, and the show keeps its 1993 timing intact. Best single element: the stillness. Nothing about the characters was updated, which turns out to be the perfect satirical instrument: hold the idiots constant, change the world, watch the world look stupid.
Verdict: 7/10. Not quite the original, but funnier than any revival had a right to be. Watch it if you want the classic tone with 2020s targets hung on it.
Where to watch
Season 1 premiered on Comedy Central in June 2022; the series and every new season stream on Paramount+, alongside the fully remastered original library.
