CNN's 'Too Many Cooks' election parody completely misses the point

There’s a reason we can’t have nice things…

In what can only be described as an ill-advised, sloppy, thirsty-ass grab for relevance with young voters, CNN has put out an abominable, unnecessary parody of a parody: “Election 2016: Too Many Cooks.”

For those who sleep under rocks, “Too Many Cooks” was the wildly popular pop culture parody masterpiece by Casper Kelly and Williams Street Productions that aired on Adult Swim last fall. What begins as a standard ’80s/’90s sitcom theme song and intro sequence slowly devolves over 11 minutes into every conceivable genre of TV show from that era, and finally, into a slasher film. Part of its brilliance is how audiences got the joke almost immediately, but were constantly surprised by the visuals accompanying the next refrain of “Too many cooks! Too many cooooooks!” It was at least three times as long as most viral hits yet worth the full watch-through.

Somehow the genius was lost on CNN.

CNN’s election take misses the mark because they chose to include pretty much anyone with any political clout whatsoever. It starts simply enough, with clips of 2016’s most likely GOP presidential nominee hopefuls, but then gets lazy and throws in everyone who’s ever worn a flag pin (and their momma). At timestamp 2:04, which features George and Laura Bush after their ice bucket challenge, I realized they’d never get the joke.

The tempo changes and musical style choices have zero effect on what kind of footage they chose for each scene. There’s never even a serial killer! Why on earth would anyone watch six minutes of this crap? I’d rather lose my WiFi connection for the full duration of the video than watch a bunch of old politicians do nothing under captions of their own names.

Hell, I’d rather watch that video from The Ring and die in seven days than sit through this garbage again.

I’m begging for a moratorium on appropriating treasured pop culture triumphs. You’re CNN. You don’t have to make viral comedy videos. No one asked for this! “Too Many Cooks” was stupid done smart. This CNN version is stupid done stupid.

Images via CNN on YouTube, NBC’s The Office

Akilah Hughes is a comedian, YouTuber, and staff writer and producer for Fusion’s culture section. You can almost always find her waxing poetic about memes and using too many emojis.