Beavis and Butt-head score with ‘Do the Universe’ 

I wasn’t the biggest fan of “Beavis and Butt-head” during its 1993-97 run. Not because of the lowbrow humor – the brow level was comfortably in my range – but because of the low budget, which caused the pacing to drag. To fill an episode’s runtime, B&B riff on bad music videos, killing the story momentum. 

Consistent laughs 

But even 1996’s “Beavis and Butt-head Do America” dragged a little. That issue has been solved in “Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe” (Paramount Plus), written by series creator Mike Judge and “Futurama” veteran Lewis Morton. 

“Do the Universe” is an 87-minute jaunt with consistent laughs, oddly tripping up only with an extended jail-block callback to “The Great Cornholio.” Judge and Morton somehow keep the boys extremely dumb within a sweeping, plausible-for-a-cartoon scenario where they end up on the Space Shuttle and are assigned to dock it with Mir. 

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In 2011’s Season 8, B&B get transplanted to 2011 without explanation. I liked those episodes, but something about them didn’t ring true. The sliding timeline (wherein time moves forward but characters stay the same age) felt weird since the boys are such obvious products of the 1990s.  

Latchkey kids since the ’80s (although we do get hints about their parents in this film), B&B subsist on nachos, music videos and an obsession with “scoring.” But most notably, they don’t care about the broader world. They absorb some of it – Butt-head often speaks in an inflection where he mimics cultural talking points (but then laughs) — and aren’t quite as dumb as one would assume. But they are focused on themselves. 

They are who they are 

(SPOILERS FOLLOW.) 

In “Do the Universe,” it’s clear “B&B” has more in common with “Seinfeld” (a show about nothing) and “Dumb and Dumber” (the ultimate smart-dumb comedy) than I realized. Also, Morton’s “Futurama” background rubs off, and it no doubt helps the story’s time-jump play smoothly.  

Morton also is perhaps responsible for two great side characters: the multiverse’s Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-head (like the core duo, voiced by Judge). They have the same shallow sense of humor but they say “How droll” and “Yes, quite whimsical” rather than “Huh-huh-huh” and “Heh-heh-heh.” 

After B&B (of course) botch the spacecraft docking maneuver, they get sucked into a wormhole (which Butt-head thinks is a butthole) and wash ashore in Galveston in 2022. 

Only once does “Do the Universe” comment on the new zeitgeist. B&B wander into a college gender studies class and receive a brief lecture about how they have “white privilege.” Their takeaway: They need to start taking advantage of this heretofore unrealized power. (They end up in jail.) 

It’ll be interesting to see what Judge does in the upcoming Season 9 on Paramount Plus. The opportunities to have these teens from the “No one cares” Nineties rub up against the “You must care” modern era have to be tempting as hell. 

Funniest at its dumbest 

While the “white privilege” segment is thoughtful, “Do the Universe” is at its funniest when it’s brainless. Judge and Morton deliver a “Dumb and Dumber” plot wherein the boys are oblivious they are being pursued by a corrupt politician – Serena (voiced by Andrea Savage), one of the astronauts in the 1998 introduction – and FBI agents who rather understandably assume they are aliens. 

The plot is not original, but it provides a perfect foundation for the contrast of serious and dumb. As the suits discuss what to do with their captives, who are handcuffed nearby, they say “jurisdiction” and “dictates” — to the boys’ unending amusement (“He said ‘dick.’ Huh-huh-huh”). 

While “Do the Universe” doesn’t comment much on 2022 culture, it does use modern tech to funny and plot-advancing effect. The duo pays for everything (mainly nachos) with a smartphone app, and Beavis falls in love with Siri, who he thinks is Serena. 

Judge hasn’t lost touch with his creations (huh-huh, I said “touch”). Beavis gets philosophical with Siri about how he doesn’t understand Butt-head, and you know, sometimes he doesn’t even understand himself. When confessing this, he makes sure to shut himself away from Butt-head, who he knows will make fun of him. And Beavis’ dream about a relationship with Serena is actually kind of sweet.

This might be deeper than a typical 1990s episode, but it fits. These two are oblivious to the world, but not to their own desires, as base as those may be. Since B&B are extreme stereotypes of 1990s male teenagers, their main concern is scoring. You can see for yourself if they achieve that, but I’ll reveal one thing: “Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe” scores high on the laugh meter.