I Sense A Disturbance In The Farce

Whilst checking out news bits on Yahoo's movie section, I stumbled across an item in the gossip section that George Lucas was teaming up with Seth Green and Matt Senreich (creators of Robot Chicken) to do a Star Wars comedy series.  The suspicion was that it would likely end up on Cartoon Network, very likely during their "Adult Swim" block of programming.

Like any geek who was young and impressionable, I ate up Star Wars as a kid.  Like any geek who is currently older, wiser, and stuffed full of pop culture, I dig on Robot Chicken.  Even when a sketch doesn't make a pop culture reference, it's still a damn sight funnier than that moronic clot of wasted tape known as Tim & Eric Awesome Show! Great Job! or the even more painful predecessor Tom Goes To The Mayor.  Robot Chicken has elevated Star Wars spoofs almost to an art form.  Probably the only guy who's in the same league is Seth McFarlane with the various Family Guy spoofs, and he's a semi-regular voice actor on Robot Chicken.  So why does the idea of an entire series of Star Wars comedy make me feel like a plate of Mutandan porf* just went bad right in front of me?

I can't really argue with Green's point that the Star Wars universe is so expansive that there has to be plenty of opportunity for comedy.  "What do these characters do when they're not overthrowing empires?" he asked.  To answer semi-rhetorically, they're not doing anything that's meaty enough to make a whole series out of, Seth.  There have always been moments of comedy to be found even in Star Wars but the nature of spoofs is to take the familiar and stretch it wildly out of proportion.  The spoofs work because they're something that deliberately warps the established knowledge of existing characters.  A more conventional situational comedy based off the Star Wars universe is a tough concept, but possibly doable if it doesn't involve existing characters.  A show based off the idea of the most incompetent stormtrooper legion in the galaxy might be good for a laugh, though it also might make for a short show, given the established nature of Emperor Palpatine to pretty much send Darth Vader to clean up problem spots.  Somehow, I can't quite see a Friends-style show where characters hang around a cantina all day listening to synth-jazz, complain about how badly their job with the Empire or the Rebel Alliance sucks, and have screwed up personal lives where the Rodian pilot breaks up with the Twi'lek dancer which causes her to go over to the Dark Side.

For all the fondness I have for both Star Wars and Robot Chicken, I gotta say, I've got a very bad feeling about this.

(*bonus geek points for anybody that knows the really obscure reference)