Lazzo Retirement

[katt_goddess]

Mike Lazzo will be retiring from the [ as ] / WS community shortly. This has actually been in the works for a bit now but the time is rapidly coming to an end. 

I'll likely come back to fill out general thoughts and memories concerning ~18 years of stupid hair jokes but for now, let's start this thread up and see if there are any voters and people willing to post their thoughts about this. 

 

[bnmjy]

second worst thing about as, after jason demarco

[PurgatoryGirl]

It's a little hard to rejoice over Lazzo's retirement because we don't know if Adult Swim will get any better or WORSE without him.

Hopefully now that Mike Lazzo is retiring, maybe Metalocalypse can get its final 5th season? If Anime can return to weeknights, that would be even better.

Edited November 16, 2019 by PurgatoryGirl

[Jman]

Lazzo is both the best and worst President AS has ever made by virtue of being the only president it’s ever had.  We have no idea what any successor will want to do, or how their policies will be affected by the mergers.  
 

Taking a wait and see approach.

Edited November 16, 2019 by Jman

[The1gairon]

A lot of decisions made for Adult Swim and Toonami were because of Lazzo. I wonder who will fill the role and how it will affect the progress of the company.

[GuyBeardmane]

Not a fan.  Glad to see him go.  He made a lot of decisions that almost seemed to be only to spite the fans.

[Doom Metal Alchemist]

I hope Robot Chicken makes another episode where Lazzo goes, "You guys are canceled!" but then Seth Green and Matt Senreich go, "No, Lazzo, YOU'RE canceled!"

[Distinct Lunatic]

I'm out of the loop, why don't people like him or Demarco?

[Doom Metal Alchemist]

11 minutes ago, Dread Pirate Roberts said:

I'm out of the loop, why don't people like him or Demarco?

Lazzo turned AS into shit with the parade of crappy live action shows and the endless Fox reruns. 

I'm not particularly fond of Toonami but I don't know if that's Demarco's fault or if anime of the last several years in general has just gone way down than the days of, say, Fullmetal Alchemist and prior.

[PurgatoryGirl]

2 hours ago, Dread Pirate Roberts said:

I'm out of the loop, why don't people like him or Demarco?

They're both snide pieces of shit, that want to disguise their insults as jokes. That's when they're not being self-righteous and divisive about something or someone.

When I'm not watching other networks for different shows, I only watch Adult Swim for Anime now.

[PokeNirvash]

5 hours ago, Dread Pirate Roberts said:

I'm out of the loop, why don't people like him or Demarco?

They both schedule [as] to cater to their tastes, unaware that their target audience is always up for something different. Sucks that they're both the only ones that are into anime, otherwise we wouldn't be here talking right now.

[katt_goddess]

18 hours ago, Jman said:

Lazzo is both the best and worst President AS has ever made by virtue of being the only president it’s ever had.  We have no idea what any successor will want to do, or how their policies will be affected by the mergers.  
 

Taking a wait and see approach.

Keith Crofford is taking over the Lazzo spot, DeMarco is staying on as the head of the Toonami-side of [ as ] . 

[rpgamer]

Was Lazzo largely responsible for the whole block feeling kinda very Tim and Eric'd for a while? Not even just those two in particular, but, seemingly everything had that similar tainted air about it, catering to the same taste in humor.

If yes, we certainly can't do much worse than that.

[The1gairon]

1 hour ago, rpgamer said:

Was Lazzo largely responsible for the whole block feeling kinda very Tim and Eric'd for a while? Not even just those two in particular, but, seemingly everything had that similar tainted air about it, catering to the same taste in humor.

If yes, we certainly can't do much worse than that.

Lazzo was responsible for the third season of Rick and Morty showing on repeat all day, steamrolling over the first few hours of toonami and delaying an episode of Samurai Jack Season 5.

[Blatch]

While I don't have a positive nor negative opinion of Lazzo for reasons others have stated, I don't like that the network has become more insular under his watch. It feels like the new shows are always from the same couple of groups of creators, with the more unique creations relegated to pilots and shorts. You'd think that with more and more parties getting into the game on different TV networks and streaming services, maybe [as] would try to diversify and seek fresh blood. But instead, most of the pickings have been, say, a new show from the people who made Robot Chicken, then a new thing related to Superjail!, and then another new series from the creatives behind The Eric Andre Show. It's making them look pretty complacent. We did see them mix it up a little bit after the whole "Adult Swim doesn't have any shows made by women" controversy, but all that's resulted in is two Soft Focus specials and something called Three Busy Debras where I have no idea when it's going to premiere.

On the other hand, Lazzo's legacy in making [as] the source of alternative humor that most sources drew from during its first decade can't be denied, so he'll go out a hero for that. Additionally, I think the one-two punch of bringing back Toonami and greenlighting Rick and Morty has vindicated him for whatever he's done wrong, much like how Stuart Snyder was forgiven for bringing Adventure Time and Regular Show to CN.

[PurgatoryGirl]

It wasn't until 2008, that both Cartoon Network and Adult Swim went down the shitter. Stuart Snyder has mostly been to blame, but I feel Mike Lazzo was another contributor to it, regarding Adult Swim.

[GuyBeardmane]

Lazzo killed the online community and he passed on Archer for reruns of American Dad and The Cleveland Show.

[Doom Metal Alchemist]

7 hours ago, rpgamer said:

Was Lazzo largely responsible for the whole block feeling kinda very Tim and Eric'd for a while? Not even just those two in particular, but, seemingly everything had that similar tainted air about it, catering to the same taste in humor.

If yes, we certainly can't do much worse than that.

Now that I think about it, I've seen interviews with an (I think now ex-) AS executive named Nick something that was largely responsible for all the Tim and Eric shit. He said he knew the fans hated them but he was sticking to his guns because he loved them.

Whether or not that Nick guy was responsible for Tim and Eric-like content not made by Tim and Eric themselves, I don't know.

[Rumb0]

Good riddance. Lazzo was, in Sam Hyde's words, a "spastic coke-head faggot". He flips out over the smallest inconvenience/controversy. This is part of the reason why the programming was all over the place in the latter part of the mid 2000's.

The next exec is going to make or break the network. Now that [as] can't rely on Fox reruns, they have to bring their A game to the table with original programming and Toonami.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Rumb0

[Poof]

He was nice to me

[viperxmns]

Is anyone send retirement spinach 

[mochi]

on one hand: he kinda sucked
 

on the other hand: they'll probably re-cancel toonami since he's out

[The1gairon]

4 hours ago, mochi said:

on one hand: he kinda sucked
 

on the other hand: they'll probably re-cancel toonami since he's out

... aren't those on the same hand?

[katt_goddess]

18 hours ago, viperxmns said:

Is anyone send retirement spinach 

He probably still HAS cans of spinach rolling around the office.  

[PokeNirvash]

What was the whole spinach thing about again?

[katt_goddess]

41 minutes ago, PokeNirvash said:

What was the whole spinach thing about again?

Lazzo's favorite cartoon [ other than Astroboy ] is Popeye. And Popeye's big thing is he eats his spinach. 

So a board campaign sort of sprung up from that little tidbit of knowledge and people started sending Lazzo cans of spinach. Some of us got a little creative with things and made new labels for the cans. duzi sent Mooninite brand spinach [ which she found out later was actually not spinach but spaghetti-o's because the labels had fallen off both cans in her kitchen and she just grabbed one ] . I sent Kraken Bits with a sea monster making a Mr. Yuck face on it. Those are the two I remember the most but there were plenty of other creative ones. And, Lazzo actually decided to play along with the whole thing. This was all at the start of their seeing if a web cam feed would function on the site so Lazzo took the web cam, set it up in the hallway [ I want to say the employee waiting area just behind the reception area wall ] , and started displaying all the various cans of spinach he was getting. Even moved them around a little and traded things in and out on different days to showcase everything at least once. 

Unless they ended up donating them to a food panty that was willing to take a chance on mystery labeled canned spinach, there are probably still a few cans floating around WS.