Friday, July 16, 2010

two hundred fifty eight.

IT'S OFFICIAL!

Beavis and Butt-head" -- the show that celebrated the slacker way of life and helped make MTV into a network that did more than just play music videos -- is coming back.

The move to resurrect the hugely popular 1990s animated anti-heroes has been rumored for several days. But yesterday, sources at MTV confirmed that a new batch of "Beavis and Butt-head" episodes are in the works.

The new series would keep Beavis and Butt-head in their perpetual high-school state, but it would be updated so that the pals -- who obsessively watch music videos on a battered TV set -- could lob their snarky comments at more current targets like Lady Gaga.

The show's minimalist animated style is also expected to remain intact.

The return of "Beavis and Butt-head" will be a backdoor means for MTV to return to showing music videos -- something the network was founded upon but abandoned in the last decade to make room for popular reality shows like "Laguna Beach," "The Hills" and "Jersey Shore."

"Beavis and Butt-head," which premiered in 1993, began as an animated short called "Frog Baseball," which aired on MTV's "Liquid Television."

The basic plotline revolved around two shorts-wearing, spectacularly immature teenage pals whose banter was delivered against the backbeat of their constant idiotic laughter.

Series creator Mike Judge, who's also creating the new episodes, voiced both characters.

The guys worked at a fast-food joint and were always out to "score" with "chicks" when they weren't sitting on a ratty couch watching music videos.

Beavis, the blond half, usually wore a Metallica T-shirt and would morph into his crazed, gibberish-spewing alter-ego, "Cornholio," when he ingested too much sugar.

Butt-head was the "cooler" of the two. He usually wore an AC/DC T-shirt and often picked on Beavis in much the same way Moe would slap around Curly, Larry and Shemp on "The Three Stooges."

The duo was so successful they were spun off into a 1996 big-screen movie, "Beavis and Butt-head Do America" and a marketing juggernaut of T-shirts and character trinkets.

A recurring character on the show, high-school classmate Daria (whom they called "Diarrhea"), eventually got her own MTV series.

After MTV canceled "Beavis and Butt-head" in 1997, Judge went on to create "King of the Hill" for Fox.

He also wrote the cult-classic movie comedy "Office Space" and last year's big-screen movie "Extract."

MTV officials had no comment yesterday.

Judge is "not commenting at this time," his publicist said.