Sandbox

A disembodied squid tentacle turns the knob on an old AM radio. A song comes on.

“Somehow I got spinal meningitis/Injecting all that hairspray in my spine/It’s a super cheap way to party/If you aim to kill some brain cells and some time.”

The squid throws in a dip, loads his shotgun, buckles his seat belt and puts the car into gear. The car begins to bump down a road. But wait: It’s on blocks, and being pushed up and down by another squid.

This the typical beginning of Squidbillies (the song does change occasionally), a show that breaks every rule of taste and decency that television still holds and just might be one of the best satires of Southern culture today. It’s sort of like what “King of the Hill” would be if Hank Hill were a liquor store thief, barely literate and a squid.

I say that Squidbillies is great satire not because it accurately holds a candle to the problems of the South today. It doesn’t. Problems in the South, I really, really hope, do not stem from people like Earlie Cuyler, the show’s alcoholic main character who solves all his problems with a shotgun and Ren & Stimpy-level violence.

No, it’s great satire because of its little details that illustrate Southern life: The hats that Earlie Cuyler wears, for example, say things like “Emergency? Dial .357!!!!” or “I support the Flat Tax because I’m FLAT BROKE” (which I swear I once saw at a truck stop in South Carolina); the Christian-singles dance that plays a rap song with the chorus, “Monogamy, yeah, I got to be pious”; the secondary characters that blow up on IMDB boards with subjects like “My uncle could be in this show.”

But really, I don’t care about the deeper intelligence of the show. I just watch for the fart jokes.