To be a Debra is to be an American, proud and pompous, standing on a shiny hill of wealth. To be a Debra is to wear all-white, as pure and clean as a cloud. To be a Debra is to be a disgusting freak of a woman. I'm so sorry if you're reading this and your name happens to be Debra but I am talking about the show Three Busy Debras on Adult Swim.
I've tried and failed to describe Three Busy Debras in a way that accurately sums up what its creators have made (Mitra Jouhari, Sandy Honig, Alyssa Stonoha). It's an unhinged universe that makes I Think You Should Leave look like an NBC sitcom. Each episode is only 11 minutes long, and yet they pack in so many jokes, so many costumes, so much shrieking, that it feels longer. If the Lonely Island guys can make a full-length feature then surely so can these broads!
Loosely speaking, Three Busy Debras centers on three very busy women, all named Debra. They live in the town of Lemoncurd, Connecticut which has pristine green lawns and mansions and, occasionally, a naturally occurring ATM that erupts like a volcano in the park by spitting out money. It's a town where the residents use milk to not only drink but to wash their bodies with. It's a town where the police will send a "tube-tier" to tie a woman's tubes if she makes a mess in public.
Debras is now in its second season and I feel like not enough people are watching (available on HBO Max!) which is why I'm writing this, so maybe you can watch it too. There are so few actually original and funny things on TV (so sorry to my bf who claims Barry is the funniest thing on TV even though my sister claims it's more violent than The Sopranos).
"Let's go take what we want, which is everything we deserve and more," says Debra to the other Debras after they see a news clip announcing a town-wide milk drought, which results in rationing milk. The Debras then engage in a heist to steal all the milk from the milk tower, leaving the rest of the town absolutely parched and begging for milk. The Debras look down on the rest of the town as the 1% they are, until the townspeople decide to live radically. They can drink water, they realize. Bathe their babies in water instead of milk. Wash their cars with water instead of milk. They don't even need milk anymore! Now the Debras are stuck hoarding spoiled milk and eating it til they vomit. It could be a metaphor for something in real life but seems doubtful!
My favorite segment from this season so far is when the Debras head to the mall to cure Debra's depression (the episode is called ”The Great Debpression"). Two of the Debras are having a blast, carrying huge shopping bags and having a makeover montage, while the other Debra looks like a walking corpse. They do a musical number to a song called "Je m'appelle the mall." It's like the Mary-Kate and Ashley number "Meet you at the mall" fell into a bucket of radioactive slime (or maybe just that it was done by adult comedians instead of twin children).
In a recent interview about season two, Jouhari, Honig, and Stonoha cite among their influences SpongeBob, The Real Housewives, and the movie Clue. The show is an unhinged, absurdist version of suburbia. It's full of pratfalls and visual puns (the mall food court features a hamburger on trial, as in a court about food) and elaborate costumes, as well as blood and guts and pubes and vomit. It's a show about friendship between women who hate each other, women who bury dead bodies without flinching, women who exist above the law and outside of time and space.
Watching Debras rise to success has been like watching a small indie band you like go from house shows to big venues. I first heard of Debras years ago when it was a stage show, because I followed Sandy Honig on Tumblr, because she was a photographer for Rookie Mag, which I read religiously in high school. I never saw it as a play but now it's on my TV and I think that's neat!
Other things I've been watching that I like:
Great Pottery Throwdown: I always try to convince people to watch this show by saying it's like Great British Bakeoff but with pottery, and maybe even more enjoyable. At least the two lead judges are, including an absolute unit of a man named Keith who cries nearly every episode when he's proud of the potteries.
Wattstax: This is a 1973 documentary about the 1972 concert of the same name, which was a massive benefit concert for the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles on the anniversary of the 1965 Watts Riots. There are performances by the Staples Singers, Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, and a bunch of others from the Stax label. The documentary is worth watching for the music, which is great, but also the fashion featured, which is just as incredible.