The pitch:
A quirky, reclusive scholar having recently arrived in the US from Germany, Theodor Adorno is set to take up a faculty position upon arriving at Columbia University in New York City. However, due to a bureaucratic paperwork error, Adorno is instead registered as a student, assigned to a dorm on campus, and paired up with zany freshman Ernest Belch.
Hilarity ensues.
Praise for That's Adorno!:
"In addition to a truly hackneyed concept, most of the humor of the show is totally lost as Adorno mumbles though his lines like some teutonic Henry Kissinger."
- The Village Voice
"[Adorno's] archetype is the handsome dinner-jacketed figure returning late to his bachelor flat, switching on the indirect lighting and mixing himself a whisky and soda: the carefully recorded hissing of the mineral water says what the arrogant mouth keeps to itself: that he despises anything that does not smell of smoke, leather and shaving cream, particularly women, which is why they, precisely, find him irresistible."
- Minima Moralia: The Christian Quarterly
"It’s a high-technology, Google-blogging, iMac-type of premise going on .... mixed with the classic underdog versus the establishment, perfect for savvy hip young people "
- Peter Sealey - professor of marketing @ UC Berkley
"That's Adorno? That's a Hit!" Forbes
"The way out of the predicament seems to be to turn to comedy which, at least, accepts in advance its failure to render ..... horror."
- Slavoj Žižek - "Laugh Yourself to Death!"
"Featuring a nightmarish journey into a bleak world of breakneck action, compellingly evocative family-oriented and complex character-centered domestic psychological drama with unexpected plot twists galore, the fresh, quirky television smash That's Adorno! brings to the airwaves an edgy, gritty, hard-edged yet upbeat, thought-provoking and sophisticated romp through life in the 21st century with a heart of gold and an inspirational message, providing just enough steamy sensuality to keep things sexually explicit without being tasteless and emphasizing the most meticulously accurate and realistic historical details ever to appear in any television show ever, which allows the passive viewer to slink into that timeless, mystical yet eerily familiar sense of numbness."
- The New Yorker
"Rife with [the] perverse ..... fantasies of violence ....... Each week the episodes seem less and less humorous, and more and more indicative of a nihilistic bitterness and an impotent rage against the world."
- TV Guide
"Heart-wrenching expressions of utopian longing, semiotic shenanigans, dialectical buffoonery, and a reassuring message of hope; That's Adorno! is the greatest show not on TV. That is .... Not-Yet."
- Ernst Bloch - Entertainment Weekly
"Humor itself has become ridiculous, foolish .... The jokes of the damaged people are themselves damaged. They no longer reach anybody."
- Theodor W. Adorno "Trying to Understand Endgame"
