# Too Many Cooks Too Many Cooks is an 11-minute Adult Swim short by Casper Kelly that opens as a cheesy 1980s family sitcom credit sequence before mutating into cop show, space opera and slasher horror while its earworm theme song keeps playing. First aired as a 4 a.m. Infomercial on October 28th, 2014, the clip exploded online a week later and became one of the defining viral videos of the year. ## Origin Too Many Cooks was written and directed by Casper Kelly, an Adult Swim producer best known for 'Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell' and prior work on 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force,' 'Squidbillies' and 'Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law'[2]. Kelly pitched the idea to Squidbillies writer-producer Jim Fortier, who passed it up to Adult Swim executive Mike Lazzo; the original footage was shot over 72 hours in late October 2013 with a cast of Atlanta-area extras, and Kelly spent the following year editing[3]. The final cut premiered at 4 a.m. EST on October 28th, 2014, as part of Adult Swim's 'Infomercials' slot, the same late-night strand that houses Ben's internet-wormhole shorts and other experimental one-offs[4]. A week later, on November 7th, Adult Swim uploaded the clip to its official YouTube channel, where it picked up more than 320,000 views in the first 24 hours[5]. - **Platform:** Adult Swim (TV broadcast) / YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** Casper Kelly - **Date:** 2014 ## Overview The short opens like any lost 1980s family sitcom, with a bouncy theme song insisting that 'too many cooks will spoil the broth' while cast members freeze-frame into yellow name cards. As the credits refuse to end, the format bleeds through genres: a cop show, a Dallas-style primetime soap, a lo-fi space opera, and finally a slasher movie in which a machete-wielding killer hunts the actors through the sets while the theme keeps playing[1]. Core recurring characters, the goofy dad, stylish mom, nerd kid, promiscuous teen, cuter-than-cute baby, the peeping-tom neighbor and a puppet cat named Smarf, keep getting re-introduced long after the joke should be over, which is the joke[2]. The CNET writeup noted that the gag works because viewers who grew up on 'Too Close for Comfort,' 'ALF,' 'Family Ties' and 'Growing Pains' instantly recognize the exact beats being parodied before the piece turns sinister[2]. Critics pointed to the clash between its 11-minute runtime, deadpan commitment to pastiche, and the slow slide into horror as what made it unlike other Adult Swim bumpers[3]. ## How It Spread Within hours of the YouTube upload, 'Too Many Cooks' was trending on Twitter, Google, Tumblr and Facebook, with filmmakers and actors boosting it to their followings[1]. Edgar Wright tweeted 'I highly, highly recommend you watch this before bed,' and Simon Pegg joked that the piece was 'so deftly engineered to unnerve stoned people in their mid 30s, it might actually have been created by the US government'[2]. Rolling Stone got Kelly on the phone the same week for an interview in which he described himself as 'shellshocked' by the attention[5]. Mainstream coverage followed quickly. The Washington Post ran a 'what you're in for' explainer, The New Yorker's 'Looking for Meaning in Too Many Cooks' tried to read the short as cultural commentary, The Guardian published a game of spot-the-sitcom-reference, and Vanity Fair ran a flow-chart feature by artist John Hogan diagramming his own viewing experience[1]. Fan remixes started landing within days: on November 11th, YouTuber Rush Coil posted an 8-bit NES chiptune cover of the theme song[6], and on November 12th YouTube troupe Tough Pigs uploaded a Cookie Monster parody[7], followed the same day by a kitten version from The Pet Collective[8]. In March 2015 CNN produced its own parody poking at the oversized 2016 Republican primary field[9]. The Adult Swim upload grew into one of the channel's biggest hits, with KYM reporting more than 8 million views and placement as the second most-watched video on the channel's YouTube account[1]. ## How to Use The video itself is the meme: people share it with no setup to blindside friends who assume they are watching a real sitcom intro, and the title 'Too Many Cooks' is often used as shorthand for anything that keeps going well past its logical endpoint. The puppet cat Smarf and the slasher reveal are the most-GIFed beats, and the theme song is quoted as an earworm by name[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Too Many Cooks? It is an 11-minute Adult Swim short that spoofs 1980s family-sitcom opening credits and gradually turns into a slasher film while an earworm theme song keeps playing[2]. ### Where did Too Many Cooks come from? Writer-director Casper Kelly made it for Adult Swim's 'Infomercials' late-night block, and it first aired at 4 a.m. EST on October 28th, 2014[5]. ### What does Too Many Cooks mean? The title plays on the proverb 'too many cooks spoil the broth' and the joke is the credit sequence refusing to end, with critics reading it as a parody of sitcom tropes that slides into horror[1]. ### How do you use Too Many Cooks? People share the YouTube link cold to prank friends into thinking they are watching a real sitcom intro, and quote the theme song or the puppet cat Smarf as reaction material[4]. ### Is Too Many Cooks still popular? It is treated as a classic viral video from 2014, with the Adult Swim upload reported at over 8 million views and ranked as the second most-watched clip on the channel's YouTube account[1]. ## References 1. [https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/too-many-cooks-casper-kelly-20141107]() 2. [https://www.cnet.com/news/too-many-cooks-parodies-80s-tv-with-a-sinister-twist/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/too-many-cooks]() 4. [https://www.adultswim.com/videos/infomercials/]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8]() 6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsWDwRmIHbc]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC1qjHL4NRQ]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TanLnph74Ww]() 9. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6AlQiWatD4]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/too-many-cooks Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library