ReView Askew: Clerks – The Animated Series (2000)

 It’s really strange to me how a Clerks cartoon ever came into being. After the initial success of the film, a pilot for a Clerks sitcom was produced by Disney/Touchstone, a woefully uninspired work that you can pretty much picture in your head: just take the character names and the setting of Clerks and mutate it into a putrid TV-PG 90s sitcom. Kevin Smith and his fellow cast and crew had no idea of its existence until it was already in production, and by the look of the finished product, they were probably pretty thankful of that fact. Perhaps inspired by this aborted pilot, Smith and Scott Mosier went on to pitch an animated Clerks project to any network that would speak with them, eventually getting series offers from UPN and ABC. They were convinced to choose ABC (considering Miramax, owned by Disney at the time, was producing the show), thinking the bigger network was the better choice, but sadly, that proved not to be the case. Clerks: The Animated Series (or Clerks: TAS, to be brief) is such a weird anomaly of a show. I can’t even say it was cut down in its prime, because it didn’t even get a chance to fully get there.

Animation on primetime network television outside of FOX basically came (and quickly went) in two waves. The first was in the early 90s following the massive success of The Simpsons, prompting other networks to swiftly green light their own animated shows to compete, but the likes of ABC’s Capital Critters and CBS’s Family Dog barely lasted a season. The second wave happened in the late 90s/early 2000s on the heels of South Park and King of the Hill, where we got brief glimpses of shows like Mission Hill and The Oblongs for the three weeks they were on the air before they were shot out back behind the studio. Around this time, before the days of Grey’s Anatomy and LOST, ABC didn’t really have many heavy-hitters on its hands, and when that’s the case as a network, you’re more likely to take a chance on more unconventional shows, like a cartoon based on that vulgar, indie black and white movie that barely anybody saw. But between the production of Clerks: TAS and it making it to air, a little show called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? premiered on ABC and became a gargantuan hit. I remember when that show took off, it was literally airing it five nights a week at one point, and they’d still get enormous ratings each night. People just couldn’t get enough of it. That being said, ABC was less inclined to give Clerks: TAS the time of day, dumping it not even during mid-season, but in the summer, premiering May 31, 2000. Despite six episodes having been produced, only two aired before the show was unceremoniously canceled, a mere blip in the history of network television.

So how the hell do you even make a cartoon out of Clerks, a movie primarily about endless conversations set in one location without much kinetic movement? And on top of that, how do you do it for network television where you can’t repeatedly say “fuck” and talk about giving 37 blowjobs or chicks with dicks? There’s so much that had to make Clerks: TAS different from the original film that they really are like two completely different animals. Dante and Randal are our protagonists, they work at the Quick Stop and RST and they hate their jobs. That’s the bedrock of similarity they both share. Personality-wise, they’re recognizable, Dante’s still a complaining wet blanket, Randal’s still the wise-cracking instigator, and their banter feels authentic from what their relationship was in the film. Jay and Silent Bob are still hanging out in front of the store, but rather than being drug dealers, now they’re basically wacky side characters, selling fireworks to kids in the pilot, and getting up to other PG-rated shenanigans over the course of the show’s short run.

While Clerks was incredibly grounded in miserable reality, its cartoon counterpart is practically the polar opposite. Its exaggerated reality is sort of comparable to classic Simpsons, where they’re still in a recognizable “real world” but you also get crazy gags throughout like Dante and Randal becoming surgeons for one scene, or people lighting on fire for no reason. There’s also a Family Guy-esque quality there too, with occasional cutaway gags as random detours from the episode. In terms of what the show’s actually about, that’s a bit hard to say. All the episodes have a relatively threadbare plot that’s only there to drape jokes over. There’s not much here in terms of character development, or any sort of emotional arcs, just some weird misadventure Dante and Randal (mostly Randal) gets them wrapped up with and how they ultimately get out. But that really doesn’t matter with a show like this, because it’s really all about the jokes. The episodes are packed full of gags, continuously keeping it punchy and weird, oscillating between really clever material to Randal acting like an imbecile in a gloriously dumb fashion. Serving as show runners, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier were joined by David Mandel, coming off of his run on Seinfeld, and after this, he would work on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep, so the comedy pedigree is definitely here, and very high.

Our characters also frequently find themselves in the middle of different movie or TV parodies, like being quarantined in the Quick Stop a la Outbreak, getting caught up in a dramatic legal court case, or the biggest example in episode five, where the storyline is a mash-up of The Bad News Bears, The Last Starfighter, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom all together. I guess you could say it makes sense to go this route with Clerks given Randal works at a video store, and he and Dante discuss pop culture frequently. It feels somewhat reminiscent of The Critic, where Jay Sherman often finds himself living in a world filled with movie parodies. This can often come off as lazy reference humor if handled incorrectly, but I think Clerks: TAS toes that line pretty well, either directly referencing what they’re doing in an interesting way (in the Outbreak episode, Randal openly worries about the plot from the movie happening, despite having no evidence it will, then proceeds to accelerate the situation to make sure the plot actually does happen), or just barrels forward with its references in excess, like the over-the-top mash-up in episode five.

It’s weird to think of, but the show was actually produced by Disney Television Animation, helmed by a lot of veteran company artists working in the same building as much lighter fare like Recess and The Weekenders. The look of the show is really wonderful, with the thickly-outlined characters, simplified background design, and an instantly recognizable visual style. For a TV budget, the animation is perfectly suitable, with lots of exaggerated takes and cartoony flourishes throughout. The caricatures of the main four Clerks characters are so damn good, excellently capturing their live-action likenesses, something that also carries over into other celebrity characters who appear on the show. The character designs are done by Stephen Silver, a tremendous artist who’s worked on lots of other great-looking animated shows. Silver, supervising directors Chris Bailey and Steve Loter, and presumably a lot of the crew, would go on to work on Disney’s Kim Possible immediately after Clerks: TAS;. It’s weird how such drastically different shows have so much shared creative DNA, but from the similar look of the two, Kim Possible could have wandered into the Quick Stop and she’d blend right in. Just slap a thick outline on her and she’s good to go.

The pilot, “Leonardo Leonardo Returns and Dante Has an Important Decision to Make” (the episode titles would get increasingly longer and more unwieldy, which I love), like any self-respecting first episode, is meant to set up the characters of the series and the world they inhabit. As a result, it ends up feeling like the most “normal” episode in terms of its set-up and story, but that’s not saying a whole lot for this show, since it gets pretty bonkers by the end of it. The first five minutes act as a functional introduction to the world of Clerks: Dante opens up the Quick Stop, Randal gets to work late, Jay and Bob are out front making mischief, all familiar territory. Then we meet our series “villain” Leonardo Leonardo (voiced by Alec Baldwin), a ruthless, egotistical billionaire who has returned to his home town with seemingly one goal in mind: to destroy the Quick Stop (“For too long, the corner store has been a haven for ludicrous price gouging and rude, poorly trained clerks!” “You think he’s talking about us?”) He unveils his brand-new mega store, the Quicker Stop (phase one of his secret evil plan), which quickly puts Dante and Randal out of jobs.

This episode hints at having an actual character-motivated story, where Leonardo offers Dante and Randal the opportunity to work for him, complete with paid college courses while they train, something incredibly appealing to Dante (a dilemma which is reflected in the title). But Randal immediately rejects his offer, highly offended Leonardo took a phone call in the middle of their meeting, so that hint at a deeper story is extinguished immediately. By the third act, it seems clear the writers didn’t really know how to wrap up the story. Dante and Randal break into Leonardo Tower to steal the big boss’s secret evil plans in a rushed fashion (they even comment on it, as over the establishing shot of the following scene, Randal says, in what really seems like last-minute ADR, “Good God, that last scene was quick,”) but it turns out Leonardo has openly pitched his scheme (“a pleasure resort town where the people of Leonardo will work underground as mindless slave drones and live off the crumbs of the rich”) to the masses at Town Hall, and they’re just fine with it (the crowd chants, “Crumbs! Crumbs! Crumbs!”) In the end, Dante and Randal turn to TV for help (a UPN show, no less, referencing their would-be home network), where they figure that an absurd ending of a ridiculous TV show might work for their own problem… and then we just cut to see that it actually did work and the episode’s over. Oh, and Jay blows up the Quicker Stop with fireworks (“How did you find out about the plan?” “What plan?”) It’s as cop-out of an ending you could right, but not in a way that feels offensive. Literally everything in this series is a goof, so why would this be any different? Leonardo Leonardo pops up in future episodes, but never again in such a “serious” antagonistic role, despite his vow at the end of this episode to get his revenge on those meddling clerks. The series will later mock itself by calling him a Mr. Burns knock-off, which is not untrue, but he’s still a fun character nonetheless, helped by a funny performance by Alec Baldwin.

The premise of episode two (“The Clip Show Wherein Dante and Randal are Locked in the Freezer and Remember Some of the Great Moments in Their Lives”) is easily the most clever thing the show ever did. Dante and Randal get locked in the Quick Stop freezer and start to reminisce about all the good times they’ve had over the years. It’s your typical set-up for a clip show, but since this is only the second episode, they keep reminiscing back to moments from the pilot. Once they get past that, the episode just becomes a series of ridiculous fake flashbacks: when Dante and Randal met as kids, Randal accidentally ordering a mail-order husband, or them working overseas at England’s “Ye Olde Quick Stoppe,” leading to hilarious confusion when a customer asks Randal for a pack of “fags” (cigarettes). The memories themselves also get built upon by characters adding in details, like Dante thinking back to the first time he had sex with Caitlin Bree in a car, then Randal remarking he was there, as we see the flashback again with him popping up behind the backseat with a video camera. Or characters will flash back to moments that literally just happened mere minutes ago. Or the memories are colored by the person remembering them, like Randal’s mental image of Dante with a dunce cap and a diaper (“I’m the biggest idiot ever!”).

Things get even more ridiculous after they actually get out of the freezer and walk over to RST Video. Randal snaps the key in the lock from the inside, then the AC gets stuck on high, turning the entire video store into a freezer, leaving Dante and Randal trapped with nothing to do but reminisce some more. There’s just so many fantastic moments: remembering all the famous celebrities who’ve stopped by New Jersey, much to Dante and Randal’s annoyance (“Get the hell out, Scorsese!” “Screw you, Ms. Hepburn!”), Dante and Randal’s traumatizing visit to the Burn Ward, unintentionally leaving through a door marked “Other Burn Ward,” and the very tasteful look at “Flintstone’s List,” starring Liam Neeson as Fred. This episode, as well as the first and third, ends with a bonus tag of “Safety Tips” with Jay and Silent Bob, featuring title cards of them playing with electrical appliances in the bathtub or trying to retrieve a kite from a power line in the rain. Our favorite non-stoner duo appear to some kids to teach them helpful tips, like how to properly store your food during a picnic at night as to not attract bears, or a magic trick whose explanation involves selling a girl’s soul to Satan. They also get constantly interrupted by NBA great Charles Barkley (who for some reason appears in five of the six episodes), much to Jay’s annoyance, so much so that in the third Safety Tip segment, Jay and Bob arrive on the scene to beat the living hell out of Barkley and speed off, much to the children’s delight. This is a very, very strange show.

Episode three (“Leonardo Is Caught in the Grip of an Outbreak of Randal’s Imagination and Patrick Swayze Either Does or Doesn’t Work in the New Pet Store”) features our first big movie parody, of 1995’s Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman. A new pet store opens up next to RST Video, and Randal is immediately suspicious of their monkey, believing it to have the deadly Motaba virus as seen in the movie. “Evidence” of this mounts when Leonardo Leonardo becomes violently sick, with Randal immediately blaming the monkey, rather than the rancid burritos he ate that were left out in the sun all day (by Randal). He calls the CDC, resulting in the Quick Stop being quarantined, and he and Dante being told they’re going to die from the virus that actually doesn’t exist. This is a common occurrence on the show where Randal accelerates a situation either out of spite or boredom, even if it’s something that’s his own fault, or will fuck over Dante (especially in the next episode). When the head of the CDC shows up in a hazmat suit, Dante is less than pleased (“There’s no outbreak here! You’re victims of an overactive imagination of a pop culture junkie loudmouth!” “Quentin Tarantino?”) Ultimately, the CDC has no real concrete plan how to deal with the virus (HEY THAT SOUNDS FAMILIAR), deciding it easier to just nuke the town and be done with it. Dante and Randal ultimately save the day by tracking down the “patient zero” monkey, now hanging out with Jay and Silent Bob. Also, Patrick Swayze works at the pet store, and he’s voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. Why not?

The episode opens with a fourth-wall-breaking segment of Dante and Randal reading (fake) viewer mail, with many asking why there are no women on the show, but when they read a letter asking why there’s no African Americans, they immediately address it, introducing the brand new character Lando (“Keep an eye out for Lando. He’ll be dispensing advice and guiding me and Dante through our decisions and adventures.”) In the episode, Lando appears a few times in purposefully fleeting, seconds-long moments, passing by Randal on the street, adjusting the mic for the Mayor, and later, offering to pilot the military helicopter, but Randal actually meant to ask the other Lando, the blonde white guy standing next to him. It’s a clever gag, and one directly in response to network notes they were getting about the lack of diversity or women on the show. That’s not necessarily a detrimental thing, but it does speak to the smallness of the show, and I feel if the series went beyond the initial six episodes, they probably would need to round out the cast a bit more. It’s limiting for a sitcom to have a main cast of just four people, two of which are joke characters, and one of which doesn’t even speak. As much as I love the Dante-Randal dynamic, you can only run with that for so long before you need some other semi-recurring characters for them to interact with. Episode five has Dante and Leonardo Leonardo drunkenly bonding (sort of) for a brief scene, and that felt novel, since it was a new relationship we hadn’t seen before. It’s only something we can speculate now, but the show would have had to open up if time did indeed go on.

Episode four (“A Dissertation on the American Justice System by People Who Have Never Been Inside a Courtroom, Let Alone Know Anything About the Law, but Have Seen Way Too Many Legal Thrillers”) was actually the first episode to air on ABC, and it’s such an insane episode to have as your first episode that I can’t imagine what people thought when they saw it (the second, and last, episode to air was episode two, the fake clip show, which shows many clips of the actual pilot, which never aired, ruining the whole joke. Thanks, ABC!) Jay slips and falls on some soda at the Quick Stop, and thanks to the well-timed appearance of a high-priced lawyer at the store, he proceeds to sue Dante for $10 million dollars in damages. At least after a lengthy sequence of Randal (and Dante) stalking the lawyer everywhere he goes for 24 hours, goading him into taking the case. This episode and the last one really does paint Randal in a darker light, actively working towards getting Dante into serious trouble for no discernible reason, but these episodes are basically huge jokes in and of themselves, so it doesn’t even matter. The trial is presided over by actor Judge Reinhold, and the jury is entirely comprised of NBA all-stars, so all sense of stakes are thrown out the window almost immediately. Randal assigns himself as Dante’s lawyer, using his position to call famous filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to the stand just so he can say their latest movie sucked and to get his money back. Like I said, everything is just a big goof.

Similarly to the pilot, this episode also feels like they had no idea how to end it, so first we get multiple endings that turn out to be dream sequences, from Randal getting $10 million for winning the case (with a return of Dante as “the biggest idiot ever”) to Judge Reinhold dreaming about teaming up with Eddie Murphy again for another Beverly Hills Cop. But then when the real verdict is actually about to be read, we’re treated to on-screen text reading that the “real” ending was lost, so we’ll be treated to a new ending made by the Korean animation team. What follows is an absolutely insane sequence mocking poorly dubbed anime, written by people who are only vaguely familiar with anime (with over-the-top narration done by David Mandel.) The artists working on this show were clearly more familiar with anime, so the sequence looks really great, with lots of funny visual flourishes and references. It’s just nuts: the quick action beats, Jay and Bob looking up a Sailor Moon-esque woman’s skirt, an amazing joke where a car with people inside turns into a Transformer, with blood gushing from the robot as they’re instantly killed, American film star Tom Cruise appearing at the end to save the day, and of course, “Oh my God bear is driving how can that be?!,” which became an incredibly early Internet meme. I’ll remind you again this was the very first episode to air. Even if you were familiar with Clerks, what could you possibly have thought seeing this episode as the “pilot”? Some shows start out more grounded and ease into being more off-the-wall and crazier (Community being a great example), but this six-episode run is really bananas. I love them from what they are, but once again I have to wonder how the show would have fared if it kept going. Entering a hypothetical season 2, I feel like they would have had to dive into the characters more and get a little bit serious. Eventually, the novelty of the endless wacky jokes and movie parodies would have worn off, and you’d need something of interest to replace them with.

Episode five (“Dante and Randal and Jay and Silent Bob and a Bunch of New Characters and Lando Take Part in a Whole Bunch of Movie Parodies Including But Not Exclusive to, The Bad News Bears, The Last Starfighter, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Plus a High School Reunion”) builds to a really great conceit of blending multiple film parodies together into a big ridiculous mash-up. Before we get to that point, we have a nice grounded opening of Dante and Randal going to their high school reunion. Leonardo Leonardo is also in attendance, as they combined three decades worth of events into one night (almost foreshadowing the trilogy of movie spoofs to come?) It’s the closest this series comes to fleshing out the city of Leonardo (this and the pilot, I guess), but it doesn’t take long for the episode to go off the deep end. Dante is discouraged that the old baseball team doesn’t remember him (and mercilessly bullies him), despite him being their old team manager, so Leonardo offers him to coach his Little League team. The kids are the worst of the worst, but Dante ends recruiting a ringer: Jay, who is eligible to play after discovering he never passed third grade. The unlikely underdogs are now sweeping through the ranks up to the Little League world series. Meanwhile, Randal becomes re-obsessed with the old arcade game “Pharaoh,” and upon beating his old high score, he’s abducted by a secret organization wishing to harness his expert skills, a la The Last Starfighter. But rather than fight aliens like in the film, Randal is forced into slave labor pushing giant stone blocks like in “Pharaoh” in an underground mine. Dante and the team’s world series opponents are being held in said mine as slaves, and they pull off a daring rescue, where the ending inexplicably becomes Temple of Doom.

Until we get to the ending, the Dante story line actually feels kind of normal (which makes sense, given of the three movie parodies, it’s the one with the most grounded source material). We even get the closest thing this series gets to a character story: Dante feels discouraged at the reunion, longing to be respected, he takes the Little League job, goes all the way to the world series and wins, but is cropped out of the celebration photo (mirroring him being cropped in his high school yearbook baseball photo). It all works well for what it is. We also get a great usage of Jay in the plot, and an interesting look at his re-characterization in the series. In the View Askew movies, he’s typically loud, obnoxious, swearing constantly, and usually saying something perverted, while in Clerks: TAS, he’s a lot more of a dim-witted innocent, like sucking helium from the quarantine bubbled Quick Stop, performing for the camera during several news broadcasts, and here, where he basically acts like just another of the kids on the team, almost adorably referring to Dante as “Coach Dante.” But much like the other characters’ softened edges, it still feels like Jay. Meanwhile, Randal’s story almost acts as karmic retribution for the last two episodes, with him suffering some kind of punishment for the shit he dragged Dante through. We also get a poorly aged running gag about Randal being such an atrocious lover, every woman he comes in contact with becomes a lesbian, specifically a gruff butch woman with facial hair and voiced by a man. I’ve certainly seen far worse jokes of this ilk, but it definitely stood out as a groaner, especially coming off of Chasing Amy.

Episode six (“The Last Episode Ever”) is definitely a strange one. It’s a direct response to audience reaction to the show, but it was produced well before anybody saw it, so this was either in regards to test screenings of the pilot, or what they assumed fan commentary would be about the series (probably a mix of both). We open at Comic-Con where Dante and Randal host a panel for the Clerks cartoon, only to find an almost empty auditorium, with the few people there complaining that the show isn’t anything like the movie and they hate it. In response to this, Dante vows to make Clerks: TAS more like Clerks. The episode proper starts, taking place late at night at Quick Stop with the shutters closed, as Dante and Randal are forced to work late because of a nearby carnival in town. Jay, Silent Bob, and a never-ending slew of bizarre characters wander in and out of the store, but Dante and Randal never end up going outside, eventually to the point of defiantly refusing to (“Let’s just stay in here and ignore what sounds like too much plot outside!”) We get familiar topics of discussion, like Star Wars discourse to Dante talking about his upcoming date with Caitlin Bree (and her promiscuous past), with the two clerks trying their best to keep things echoing the original movie while all this absolutely crazy shit is described to be happening outside, all of which sounding like very believable things that would happened in the cartoon series. It’s like the two versions of Clerks fighting each other over a half hour.

There have been many shows directly inspired from movies that have come out over the years, and a lot of them (smartly) set themselves up as their own things, completely divorced from the source material, just in case the audience never saw them. To its credit, Clerks: TAS did this for the most part, as the series is very, very different from the movie, but it being a View Askew production, with Smith knowing his rabid fan base would most likely be the ones who’d be watching this, this episode feels like an exception and a response to that, in that it doesn’t make much sense at all without seeing the original movie. I guess in a broad sense, the comedic premise is understandable (two characters actively avoiding getting involved in a crazy plot line), but here, it’s specifically about remaining locked to the OG Clerks format and failing. There’s a great joke where Leonardo Leonardo shows up and challenges the boys to a soccer match. When asked where they’ll find the space to play, we pan up to the roof… and then we see shelves being knocked over and Randal chainsawing through them to make open space in the store for the game. The joke could work in isolation, but it’s funniest if you know about the rooftop hockey game from Clerks. The episode ends when Dante and Randal finally go outside, only to be painted into various different backgrounds and set pieces by a vindictive artist, reminiscent of the Looney Tunes cartoon Duck Amuck, with them ultimately ending up on the set of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, an appropriate end to the series, referencing the game show that unintentionally brought upon their end.

Even in the best case scenario, ABC was not the right home for Clerks: TAS. Nearly half of the runtime on the DVD commentary for the series is Smith and company talking about how much the network hated the show and gave them an endless amount of notes. It feels similar to ABC’s constant scrutiny and quick cancellation of The Critic years prior, and that was despite having super-producer James L. Brooks in their corner, so Smith and his team were even more fucked. Each episode opens with a humorous (but long) disclaimer about how the show is all fictional and no celebrities endorsed the show in any way (similar to South Park), which was a direct order from ABC, who was terrified that celebrities would sue the show over a less-than-flattering portrayal. Hearing about the living nightmare of the avalanche of network notes this show got only makes it more shocking how many offensive jokes got left in (Randal’s porno magazine cracking in the freezer upon opening, presumably from frozen-over semen, the girl from the Safety Tips segments suggesting she and another boy make a movie on a rainy day, repeatedly asking him to take off his shirt, an incredibly dark joke about the Leonardo class of 1980 dying in a shuttle explosion, clearly referencing the 1986 Challenger incident). Even if the show had miraculously been successful, it probably would have been hell on Smith and the crew to continue working on for a network that clearly just didn’t get it.

Clerks: TAS might have died before it really began, but it soon found renewed life thanks to a DVD release in 2001. It also ran for a few years on Adult Swim, which honestly feels like the perfect place for it. It’s kind of ironic that the show could have run on UPN, which around the same time dropped Home Movies after a similarly short run, only for it to be picked up by Adult Swim and funded for three more seasons. For over twenty years at this point, fans have been wanting more Clerks: TAS, which definitely says a lot about its impact and staying power in a mere six episodes. The main issue with any sort of revival is the legal rights. Kevin Smith owns the Clerks characters, but Disney/ABC owns the show itself, which I assume also includes show-exclusive characters like Leonardo Leonardo. Smith had an idea way back when for a Clerks: TAS movie called “Clerks: Sell Out,” about Randal filming his own movie about life at the Quick Stop and RST, but beyond a piece of test animation that floated around online, nothing ever became of it (the premise was eventually recycled for Clerks III). For the longest time, it felt like an impossibility that anything would move forward regarding Clerks: TAS with Disney being the rights holder, but now with Disney absorbing 20th Century Fox, and being a majority owner of Hulu, it feels like a whole new ball game. Considering everything with even a whisper of a fanbase is getting a reboot nowadays, even the likes of the similarly quickly canned Clone High, a new Clerks cartoon on Hulu is technically possible, but I don’t know if Smith is really interested in such a project anymore.

Clerks: TAS is always such a strange viewing experience each time I go back and watch it. It rides that line of being reminiscent of that indie movie I loved when I was younger, to being so untethered to reality in its weird cartoon antics. I’ve certainly seen much weirder Adult Swim shows, and Family Guy and its imitators have made unrelated cutaway gags and random wacky one-off gags a staple of adult animation, but even after over twenty years, Clerks: TAS still feels incredibly unique. I still feel Clerks is Smith’s best movie, but Clerks: TAS is probably the funniest thing he’s got his name on. It’s just so bizarre and weird, but I love it just the same every time. I can’t imagine you’ve gotten this far into the article if you haven’t seen it, but if that’s the case, or if you haven’t seen it in a while, I highly recommend checking it out.