The Drinky Crow Show is about...a crow that likes to drink. And Uncle Gabby, his monkey-ish friend who likes to bed as many women as he can. The two go off on adventures on a ship with a captain and his daughter, with whom the monkey-ish thing likes to sleep. All the while they're looking for Drinky Crow's love of his life, a mermaid, and fighting French crocodiles. Occasionally, they get tied up in various schemes in an effort to either drink alcohol, bed women, or simply shirk from their French-killing military obligations (or any form of responsibility, really).
Based on the comic strip Maakies by Tony Millionare, this series debuted "unofficially" on April Fools' Day 2008 on [adult swim], and later "officially" the following fall. It became popular with fans for its far-out humor, but was cancelled
after only one season due to the high animation costs. Though at the least it was given a Grand Finale.
Some tropes used in this series are:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Uncle Gabby, whose only clothing is a hat.
- The Alcoholic: Drinky Crow, as is suggested by his name, absolutely loves to drink alcoholic beverages.
- Amusing Injuries/Bloody Hilarious: Not only do the main characters end up getting maimed on a regular basis, but they maintain a casual nature throughout the whole thing aside from the pain itself.
- Apocalypse How: A big, red button, which destroyed most life on Earth. Other than, well, Drinky, Uncle Gabby, and Phoebe with her "desperation goggles".
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: The French crocodiles' chief mode of assault. These exact words are even shouted during their boarding!
- The Casanova: Gabby, though he's kinda a deconstruction, since his promiscuity and womanizin' ways got him into predicaments (like, somehow, upsetting conjoined triplets) or with STDs (from one of said conjoined triplets).
- Drowning My Sorrows: Both show up quite often, particularly when Drinky really gets depressed. He ain't called "Drinky" for nothin'.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Drinky showed up in a brief animation in the 2002 documentary Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). Fitting, as They Might Be Giants sung the theme song.
- Before that, Saturday Night Live of all shows would air short cartoons based on Maakies strips in the late 90s, back when animation was used on the show as filler.
- Eats Babies: By accident in one episode, where Drinky Crow and Phoebe Bird are about to have babies. Drinky Crow cooks the eggs into an omelet at the baby shower and feeds them to Phoebe, much to her embarrassment.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Drinky Crow's name is...Drinky Crow. Captain Maak's daughter is called...The Captain's Daughter.
- For The Cel Of It: Which makes it look like a Subverted Kids' Show, particularly that of The '50s.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Gabby's new girlfriend is really only after him to commit murder and cannibalism before her wedding but is too chicken to perform them on an actual human being.
- Negative Continuity: Caused, of course, by Snap Back.
- Once per Episode: Gabby or Drinky will show a horribly infected wound and ask "Does this look bad to you?" and get a dismissive "Nah, you're fine" in return.
- Only Sane Man: Uncle Gabby and that's only when he wants to be, though, not by much. He tends to go along with the madness but will be a voice of reason that Drinky might need, like giving him dating advice in "Beer Goggles" (though not real good) or keeping him from going off on the deep end.
- Organ Autonomy: Drinky's brain dumps him off after a botched suicide attempt. It goes for a drink at a bar whose clientele is made entirely of self-aware body parts (complete with a uterus doing a fan dance on the stage).
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Drinky Crow is ADORABLE.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: The entire bar on shore is staffed with robot versions of the regular cast except for Captain Maaki... while the real ones are at sea with a Maaki robot. None of them suspect a thing until Drinky blasts his head open and notices he's made of metal parts.
- Sadist Show: Drinky tries to escape the rigors of reality and commit suicide regularly.
- Schizo Tech: Hoo-boy, the show seems to be set in a different era with each episode. Ostensibly the premise is Wooden Ships and Iron Men through the lens of utter madness, as suggested by the pilot. Except most people carry modern revolvers, New York already has a modern skylinenote , and 1950s and 60s automobiles are common enough that they're not treated as luxuries. This all plays into the show's trademark insanity.
- Sea Monster: The first episode involves whales, which is fitting since it's about a whaling ship. The whales are drawn in the style of those really old maps with "Here be dragons" written in the corners.
- Success Hallucinations: There are certain episodes where Drinky Crow gets drunk and thinks he's doing something well when in reality he's doing it horribly. In one episode, Drinky is trying to perform surgery on a physically deformed man. In his mind, Drinky made the patient normal-looking, when in reality he smashed the man to a bloody pulp.
- Those Two Guys: Well, those two aliens. Voiced by Bret and Jemaine.
- Time Dissonance: In one episode, Uncle Gabby meets another monkey who happens to look a lot like him. Upon becoming a god, he takes Gabby to a separate universe called Dirt Girlatonia, filled with clones of the Captain's Daughter doing Girls Gone Wild acts. He and Uncle Gabby watch this spectacle for 50 billion years (which is shown by a black cuecard saying just that), with them still watching and staying the same as if only seconds had gone by after the cuecard was shown. He ends up coming back to his own dimension and complains to Crow that how he had to stay for 80 billion years, which Crow interrupted by saying he was only gone for five minutes, but Gabby justifies it by saying that the monkey god took him out of the space-time continuum. This means Gabby is now more than 66.2 billion years older than the universe.
- Wingding Eyes: You know they're really drunk when X's replace irises.
