Camp Lazlo

The main characters of "Camp Lazlo". Note their status as "cute li'l forest animals".

Camp Lazlo is a mediocre children's show on Cartoon Network. It is, ironically, not a camp.

Camp Kidney is the name of the camp that Lazlo attends. The camp is also ridiculously named, seeing as there isn't one kidney there, except the animated (but unseen) organs of cartoon animals camped there. Hey, I didn't name the damn show! (Poor Man's SpongeBob?)

History

In 1972 a young Joe Murray was sent to the "wackiest" camp he'd ever seen. This camp was, apparently, run and attended by cute little forest animals, because when he created a TV show about it 35 years later. The name of the show is actually a clever acronym devised by the writers. L.A.Z.L.O. actually stands for Love And ... well, nothing starts with Z, but what the acronym is isn't really important. What's important is that there is, in fact, an acronym.

The show airs on Cartoon Network, because they'd gone way downhill and were hoping that maybe, if they accepted enough shows, they'd get lucky and one or two might be good. Unfortunately this was not the case, and the network's "target demographic" has since dropped to include six- to eight-year-olds.

Characters

• Lazlo is a monkey who has a banana for a mouth. This ironically contradicts his status as a monkey, which should dictate that he consume said banana. Alas, he cannot eat his own mouth, and this anguish adds a touch of realism to the show.

Spoiler warning: Lazlo dies in the final episode when he visits a favela (PT) in São Paulo, Brazil, his city of birth, thinking that it would be filled with cute forest animals, and therefore as cozy and joyful as a camp he had once attended. Armed teenagers quickly put an end to this.

• Raj is an elephant who speaks with a thick Indian accent. Raj moved to the United States because he is a dalit (untouchable) in India and will never hook up with any hot girls over there. He works at the camp's convenience store, a clear example of the writers' originality and racial tolerance.
• Clam, a half-clam half-rhinoceros, lacks the brain matter to speak very much. The show's creators didn't want the character to have any brain matter at all, but the script called for bees to sting him and he couldn't ask for an epipen. Thus Clam was re-cast as "reserved".

Critical acclaim

Uh huh.