I had the second season of Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil sitting on my to watch shelf for 3 or 4 months before I slotted it in to watch. It's been nearly 2 years since I watched the first season. It was on cable and just after they started the second season they stopped airing it. I had picked up the first season dvd but hadn't watched it. When the second season dropped to below 10 bucks on Amazon I popped in an order. It arrived and sat there waiting for me to get around to it. Since a good bit of time had past since the last look see I watched the 1st season again and then worked through the second in a big orgy of good fighting evil. It sure was funny.
The Canadian show first aired on September 29 2010 and ran for 13 episodes. There were the same number of episodes in the second season which aired a year later, starting on October 30. They didn't make any more. It's a show that was filmed in my old home town Winnipeg at a large vocational school. It's not your typical high school sitcom. it's filled with gore, rude humor and a book that fucks you up good. The regular cast includes 4 students, their principal and Jimmy the janitor.
The four students are in the picture above are Jenny, Curtis, Alex and Hannah. They are all really great in their roles. The guy in back is their principal. Alex House plays Todd Smith. He gets the book in the first show of the first season but his musical career doesn't go too well. The gang is formed when the other three bind together to save Todd. Billy Turnbull plays Curtis Weaver, Todd's best friend. Todd accidentally cut off Curtis's arm in shop class. It wasn't Todd's fault, he was high. Maggie Castle is Jenny Kolinsky. Todd has a crush on her but she's not interested, she wants to find her dad. Melanie Leishman is Hannah B. Williams. She's the brainy one, later her and Curtis get something going romantically. Chris Leavins is Atticus Murphy, Jr and Jason Mewes is Jimmy the Janitor. Both of them are great, Chris especially.
The kids go to Crowley High School where the Book of Pure Evil flies through the school's halls and drops into the hands of some unsuspecting student who's tired of high school abuse or angry over some slight. Their desires turn the book on and all hell breaks loose when the book delivers. Crowley High School is in a town built by Satanists. There aren't many of them left and Atticus is the son of the man who founded the cult. They're getting really old and Atticus doesn't appear to be much of a replacement for his dad. Todd and the other three students are after the book for various reasons. They help the kids fight off the influence of the book, not always successfully, there's a huge body count. Jimmy offers help, of sorts, in each episode. Sometimes he's busy banging the teachers. Jimmy is a popular mop handler. The guest cast of students, teachers and minions is usually fairly good. People put a lot of effort in to their work and it shows on the screen. There are some fair to good CGi effects on the show. About average for your typical tv supernatural or sf show.
The writing is good, plenty of great dialog, a pretty nice story arc. There's a little bit of character development, not much, there needs to be plenty of time for mayhem, yelling and running in the halls with scissors. You know, to stab the monster with. There are a variety of monsters. This one time, a guy with a little weiner got the book. He wished and damn if his weiner didn't get huge. It also turned people to stone when they looked at it. He whipped it out a lot. It was huge. Todd had to fight it, to the death. Poor Curtis got turned to stone. As you can see there's plenty of laughs but only the one giant penis. Not that you need many of those. There's plenty of swearing too. I approve. They even did a musical. It was A-OK. Atticus sings a song called Wolf Rape and that explains a lot about his behavior. By the time the musical arrives in the second season I'm pretty much sold on these kids, their world and all the whacky shit that's going on. It's sad there are only the two seasons but I'm happy to re-watch the ones I have.
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