Mike Judge’s “Beavis and Butthead” returns to television a decade after its last appearance. The memorable morons come to leave a vast impression on this generation as they did on the prior generations that grew up watching. Although bold and confident, the two find themselves in an alien world to them: 2022.     

For those unfamiliar with the show, Beavis and Butthead follow two inept, socially incompetent, low-brow, barely literate, pathetic 9th graders, with an immature sense of humor. The brunette, Butthead, acts as the leader with his brash and dominant personality. Although Butthead declares statements as a fact, his intelligence does not overshadow Beavis’. The dumb blonde, Beavis, acts reckless and oblivious to Butthead’s decisions but generally behaves as an overall kinder and empathetic person. Butthead abuses Beavis physically and mentally, but Beavis tends to stand up for himself.

Beavis and Butthead first appeared in Spike and Mike’s Festival of animation in the short film Frog Baseball, where the two played stereotypical heavy metal-obsessed delinquents. In the short, they blow up a grasshopper before breaking into a vocalization of “Iron Man”. They catch a frog and brutalize it by using it to play baseball. At the time, the short seemed not much of anything, but it soon grew into one of the most recognizable shows on Music Television (MTV).  

“I watched the old episodes and just thought about how eternal the idea was. Fifteen-year-old males really haven’t changed that much in hundreds of years. There are some things that don’t have anything to do with what time period you’re in” creator, voice actor and executive producer of “Beavis and Butthead” Mike Judge said.

Two months before the show graced streaming services, Paramount Plus commissioned the “dumbest sci-fi movie ever”. The film explained the two-decade gap between their last and latest appearances with a time-traveling black hole. In the movie, titled “Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe”, the idiots embark on a space adventure that places them in the year 2022. After avoiding the government, the two find themselves in the exact same situation since 1993, but a decade in the future.

MTV, the show’s previous network, brought back the show for an eighth season in 2011. The season did well with ratings but MTV decided not to commission another season.

The episodes of the older show featured videos that Beavis and Butthead would commentate on. In contrast, the new show stays with these bits but now features Tiktok, Youtube and other modern music videos. The show does not follow a singular plot, but each episode features two stories about the two that usually never relate. Although their shenanigans repeat, their stupidity never grows old.

“I’m shocked at the quality of the new series being pretty much on par with the original. The modern shake-ups to use internet videos sounds like a bad idea but is actually very funny and the show really does feel like it never left since the 90s,” senior Shawn Benton said

Episodes release every Thursday on Paramount Plus with no confirmed episode count. Beavis and Butthead’s return brings its charm and hilariously dumb humor back to TV. The show currently stands tall with overwhelmingly positive reviews by audiences and critics.

“I’d hope to explore the relationship between Beavis and Butthead a bit more. On the surface, they are very funny characters, but they are completely alone and abandoned by both of their fathers. They really are the only people that either of them has, and I think that’s interesting,” Benton said.