Swimming Against The Tide

Lazzo now faces a critical challenge with Adult Swim: how to continue to enlarge his franchise within Time Warner without losing its soul. Executives at Cartoon Network and Time Warner keep expanding Adult Swim, from two nights a week when it began in 2001 to six nights now. But with Cartoon Network fully distributed in 87 million U.S. households, future growth depends on new shows. The Williams Street operation is small scale and Adult Swim has big-league aspirations. "We need to branch out if we're going to be a 24-hour network, which is the goal," says Nick Weidenfeld, Adult Swim's manager of program development.

So the rules that created Adult Swim's creative hothouse have to be bent -- if not broken outright. "In some ways, we need to react against our own philosophies," Lazzo says. His search for new content has forced him to embrace the big-league strategies of Cartoon Network proper -- at least a little bit -- by looking beyond his own walls. The Venture Bros. is produced in New York. Tom Goes to the Mayor, which debuted last November, is made in L.A. In the process, Lazzo has given up some of that mingling of ideas and people that he feels is essential to success. He reads the scripts and sends his notes, but his creators aren't down the hall. It makes him a little nervous. "Yes, it is not as relaxing as when you can walk down the hall and see editing," he says. "Anytime you go outside your system, you have trepidation."

Perhaps it's no surprise then that Adult Swim's newest series play it a little safer. Both Stroker & Hoop and The Venture Bros. are edgy, but they seem unwilling to make their audiences too uncomfortable when making them just a little uncomfortable might do. "These are more standard comedies, more easily accessible," admits Weidenfeld. Lazzo, in his defense, says he's still doing crazy stuff, namely in the form of Tom Goes to the Mayor. "It's like anti- animation, almost like looking at a picture book. It's really going to test the audience."

Perhaps the biggest impediment to maintaining that rebel spirit is that there's only one Mike Lazzo. Adult Swim's success -- and all those additional hours of original programming -- are stretching its one-man mentor-muse-critic thin. Already some creators are showing symptoms of Lazzo withdrawal. "Sometimes I feel like a stepchild," says The Venture Bros.' Publick. "You're busting your ass on this thing 16 hours a day. Sometimes you want a hug, someone to say, 'Great script.' I don't hear anything." Lazzo seems to have gotten the message. "He's been getting better lately," says Publick.

If this were an Adult Swim show, now is when everything would blow up in Lazzo's face. So far, it's been just the opposite, as ratings and buzz continue to rise. Whether Lazzo can keep it going, however, remains to be seen. He'll be the first to tell you that in television, autonomy can be as fleeting as a Jason Alexander sitcom. "We're left alone only because it works," he says. "Or they would be over here in three seconds." By hedging his own maverick culture with some of that stodgy big-network culture he has long loathed, Lazzo's betting that he can keep the suits at bay a little longer. Adult Swim shows may be cooler than Hollywood TV -- but a Hollywood ending still beats all.

Alan Cohen is a writer living in New York. This is his first article for Fast Company.