Joan of Arc (voiced by Nicole Sullivan) from Clone High.

I can just see it now. The animator is in the office of an MTV executive (in the manner of Gord Brody in Freddy Got Fingered) pitching his idea. "It's about a high school where all the students were cloned from the DNA of prominent historical figures," he explains. "The mad scientist who cloned them must wait for them to grow up, so he sticks them all in the same high school. In the meantime, they must suffer through the same trials and tribulations that normal teens go through on a daily basis." The MTV exec, impressed by this presentation, greenlights the project and gives our intrepid animator ten million dollars. Thus was Clone High born, a show which premiered in November 2002 on Teletoon in Canada and is now being run on MTV in the United States.

This series is likely to elicit some laughter from all except the truly humorless. The main protagonists in the series are Abe Lincoln (voiced by Will Forte), a tall, lanky doofus who is friends with Joan of Arc (voiced by Nicole Sullivan). Joan has a crush on Abe, but he doesn't know about it. They are both friends with Gandhi (voiced by Mad TV's Michael McDonald), who is having difficulty coming to grips with the fact that the original Gandhi was a goody-two shoes and compensates for it by being a party animal. Their foils are John F. Kennedy (voice of Chris Miller), a popular student and consummate womanizer, and Cleopatra (voice of Christa Miller), who, like the real Cleopatra, is a manipulative seductress. In the first episode, Abe offers to furnish the beer for JFK's party in an effort to win over Cleopatra, but his plan backfires when he reveals that the beer is non-alcoholic. Gandhi consoles him by offering him the assurance that eventually, someone will make an even bigger "ass" of himself, and then they will forget Abe's transgression. [Sure enough, at the end of the episode, Van Gogh unveils a mural featuring Gandhi in the nude, payback for an earlier humiliation inflicted by Gandhi on the sensitive Van Gogh.]

I have only seen the first episode, so perhaps it is too soon to pass judgment on the series. But if the first episode is any indication, Clone High essentially proves that not all original ideas yield worthwhile TV shows. As much as I dislike TV execs who jump on bandwagons (the Anna Nicole Show, for example, owes its existence to the success of such reality shows as The Osbournes), shows based on (relatively) original ideas can miss the mark as well. MTV has enjoyed success in the past with truly irreverent comedy in the form of Beavis and Butthead (1993-97); evidently, MTV is trying to recapture this success, yet it is unlikely to succeed by appealing to the lowest common denominator, as it must compete with shows like South Park. Seriocomic cartoons, like Daria, have had limited success on the network. It is not surprising, then, that the network would latch onto anything that seems original.

The problem with Clone High is that apart from the underlying concept, it unfolds like a typical by-the-numbers sitcom. Sure, it's funny to see Abe Lincoln as a gawky teenager rather than a quasi-dictator who suspended civil liberties and deported political opponents, just as it is amusing to see Elanor Roosevelt as a dykish gym teacher rather than a dykish First Lady, but once the novelty wears off, there is not much to recommend this show. Perhaps the show would have worked as a five-minute sketch. It is not entirely unlike Robert Smigel's The X Presidents, a recurring SNL segment in which the living ex-Presidents are a group of superheros. Smigel eventually got his own show, the short-lived TV Funhouse on Comedy Central, which in spite of its obvious appeal, lasted only one season.

These musings are unlikely to have any impact on MTV, which is about as likely to nurture a new show as the average American is likely to grasp the fundamental principles of economics - very unlikely indeed. For this reason, in my estimation it is unlikely that Clone High will last much longer than TV Funhouse (eight episodes). But any prediction I make must be taken with a grain of salt. If you asked me four years ago what I thought about SpongeBob SquarePants (which is also definitely not the best show in the history of television), I probably would have offered the same grim prognosis.

Update (April 4, 2003): MTV has placed Clone High on hiatus, with the final episode airing on March 10. As of now, there is no word on whether the show will return to MTV's lineup. Perhaps if it does not, it might get picked up by another cable channel (such as Cartoon Network or Comedy Central).

• "Escape To Beer Mountain: A Rope Of Sand" - Abe Lincoln gets the beer for JFK's party. See review above. Original air date: November 2, 2002 on Teletoon (in Canada); January 20, 2003 on MTV (USA).
• "Episode Two: Election Blu-Galoo" - Abe Lincoln and JFK run for class president; Abe Lincoln agrees to endorse a new sports drink in order to counter his geeky image. Oh dear. With two ex-presidents at "Clone High," we knew an election episode was coming sooner or later. But with special guest star Marilyn Manson? What is surprising is how quickly they beat the "Cleopatra is a power-hungry bitch" recurring theme into the ground. The show now focuses on the five main characters: Abe Lincoln, Joan Of Arc, Gandhi, JFK and Cleopatra. And speaking of Joan Of Arc, are we going to be subjected to week after week of this insipid theme of her unrequited love for Abe Lincoln? Perhaps she can find another totalitarian stud. Another problem is that MTV aired the second episode on Monday at 10:30 PM, while the first episode aired Monday at 10:00 PM. You have a better chance of seeing God than seeing MTV airing the same show in the same time slot two weeks in a row (unless it's the odious Total Request Live). Perhaps their research has proven that they get higher ratings if they keep rejiggering the schedule, but to the average viewer it comes across as purely bush league. Pirate radio stations maintain schedules more consistantly than MTV. For a better parody of modern elections, see the "President Dad" episode of The Brak Show on The Cartoon Network, which was everything the Clone High parody could have been (and more) - and it was done in about half the running time. Original air date: November 3, 2002 on Teletoon (in Canada); January 27, 2003 on MTV (USA).