How About That Thing?

This is Martin Short as Ed Grimly: one of his most well-known characters from Saturday Night Live. My history with this character is… Interesting. At least, I’d like to think so, anyway.

Technically, I never saw any of the Ed Grimly sketches in real time. In fact, I’m pretty sure my parents were either in middle school, or high school when Ed Grimly was a thing. Either way, it wouldn’t be till about 2008 or so, when YouTube was in full swing, and was a lot more fun to make content for despite the eleven-minute time limit, when I’d actually see an Ed Grimly sketch. I don’t remember how the conversation got from A to B, but at the end of the day, my mom was pulling up videos of Ed Grimly sketches on YouTube and showing them to me. And it was there I had a seriously mixed reaction.

On one hand, I watched the sketches, and found myself wondering out loud: “What’s the joke?” Honestly, of the three or four sketches I saw, I remember finding Grimly to be more annoying than funny.

On the other hand, I was also getting this weird sense of deja vu. Like, somehow, I recognized this character, but from somewhere else. The orange sweater, the ridiculous hair, the annoying voice… I felt like I’d seen this all before. And for a while, I wasn’t sure where.

Then, the hyperfocus took over. One thing led to another, and in exchange for sleeping that night, I learned where I recognized this guy from.

Ed Grimly was not only a character from an SNL sketch, but he was also the star of a short-lived cartoon show at one point. The Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimly might have been a little before my time as well, but I distinctly remember Cartoon Network airing the reruns one summer in the mid-to-late 90s.

Stranger than that, I actually remember liking the cartoon. I still can’t decide why, or how I came to like the cartoon version better, but here I am. I guess puberty and time do weird things to your opinion.

But yeah, I used to watch The Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimly all the time at one point. And I used to like it. Go figure.

The cartoon took very simple premises, like Ed getting invited to play with The Philharmonic Orchestra, or finding a birthday present for the girl he likes, and turning them into absolute anarchy in the street.

By the way, this is what Grimly looks like as a cartoon character. I’m fairly certain they didn’t get Martin Short to voice the character, but if they did, I’m impressed. And if not, I suppose he’s a decent enough sound-alike.

This is Tina. Ed Grimly is absolutely in love with this French actress, and writes about her in his diary all the time. And I have a distinct feeling I don’t want to read Grimly’s diary , either. Like, I’m not going to go the cheap route and assume Ed Grimly is writing some psychotic serial killer manifesto like the guy in Se7en… But I AM going to assume he documented a couple of his fantasies about Tina in it in graphic detail once or twice. I have a feeling he’d probably be into the weird stuff, but the kind of weird stuff that was a lot weirder in the 90s that’s managed to become a bit vanilla now. Like licking the bottoms of her feet or something.

This is Windle: Tina’s little brother. He’s screechy, he can mimic people’s voices… He basically reminds me of me at his age. Right down to the dorky looking glasses that just scream “kick my ass.”

There are plenty of other characters in the show, but those right there are the important ones. Well, as far as the Ed Grimly misadventures PROPER are concerned.

These are The Gustoph Brothers. At a random point in any given Ed Grimly misadventure, they’ll interrupt everything, bring the show to a screeching halt, and force you to sit through a science lesson that has very little if anything to do with the predicament Grimly is facing. It literally feels like a different show entirely. I have no idea why it’s here, and I don’t care.

Once they’re done with their science lesson of the day, the misadventure resumes. Usually, Grimly avoids a gruesome fate in the process, and more wacky shenanigans ensue.

Right up until Grimly discovers that it’s 3:00. At which point, he tries to find the nearest TV, and tunes in to his favorite TV show.

This is the title card for Count Floyd’s Scary Stories.

And this is Count Floyd himself. He dresses like a vampire… But he howls like a werewolf. Even the kids in the studio audience don’t understand why.

Where as The Gustoph Brothers segments come out of nowhere and bring the show to a screeching halt, Count Floyd… Well, he also brings the show to a screeching halt, but at least there’s a setup. In fact, as I watch through these old episodes on YouTube, it’s becoming abundantly clear to me that I think I watched this show more for Count Floyd than I did for Ed Grimly. Seriously, this show within a show is a spectacle. It’s so bad. Like, if you ever wanted to see how to do anticomedy for kids, this is probably a good place to start.

The Count Floyd segment ends, the misadventure wraps up, and everybody goes home happy. I guess.

Looking back on this show, I’m not really sure why I ever liked it. The animation is fine, I guess, but I very rarely found anything funny about any of Grimly’s antics. If anything, I found Count Floyd to be more interesting than anything else going on in this show.

I don’t know, maybe I had bad taste in cartoons when I was younger. Maybe I was waiting for a different, much better show to come on, and the downside to cable was that you had to watch shows on THEIR schedule. Whatever the reason was, I definitely remember that this cartoon existed at some point, and I watched it a lot.

As for Ed Grimly himself… Well, my opinion really hasn’t changed since I saw those sketches all those years ago. I don’t know, maybe I’m more of a Jiminy Glick kind of guy. Whatever the case may be, Ed Grimly is really not for me.