'Cowch Potatoes' launches today: The next 'Beavis and Butthead'?

The new series, Cowch Potatoes, premieres today (promo above), offering itself up as the Beavis & Butthead of the late aughts.  It features the minimally animated duo of Franklin & Tyrell, two slackers sittin’ on the couch and takin’ in whatever’s on their flatscreen.

Created by Michael Helman under his Brooklyn Films banner, the promos for the series have already attracted the attention of MTV, who licensed out two of them for their web and TV outlets. For now, the series will launch on the website (www.cowchpotatoes.com) with new episodes every few weeks.  Eventually there’s hope for televised placement and a series, but what else is new for a premiering web series? “The series began life as a couple thirty second promos that were released on the internet and drew thousands of views on sites like FunnyorDie.com and YouTube,” said Michael Helman, series creator.

It’s essentially an oddball pairing (one’s fat, one’s skinny, one’s white, one’s black, one has a deep voice,  etc…) with space carved out to plug whatever’s on the TV they’re watching.  If series writers Helman and Uri Rosen can pull off the critical masking-our-genius-in-idiocy that happened with Beavis & Butthead, they’ll be gold.  If they get a hold of really unique footage to lampoon, like B&B did with MTV archival videos, they’ll be gold.  If it’s simply a bad Chris Tucker impression sitting on a couch with a fat kid who talks slow, it’s over.

But, and I mean, BUT, like most series, all we have so far are the low/no budget promos.  So watch and decide for yourself.  Based on the promos so far, I’d probably say skip it, but then how many critics were wrong about Mike Judge?