[7.2/10] I don’t think T.V. was ready for this in the year 2000. The first episode of *Clerks* the animated series technically has a plot. A local business magnate bursts in and threatens to upend Dante and Randal’s workaday lives with his big box convenience store. But that is less a plot and more an excuse for a dizzying array of absurd, fourth wall-cracking humor than it is something meant to contribute to a story. I still like it! Kevin Smith’s first crack at bringing his Askewniverse characters to the animated realm feels like it came a few years too soon. This is the kind of madcap, self-referential humor that could have thrived on Adult Swim. (And you can see reflections of this approach in similarly bonkers, pop culture-infused shows like *Robot Chicken*.) As with most of Smith’s early projects, “A Dissertation” feels of its time in many ways, between a “big corporate baddie squeezing out the little guy” setup and references to UPN shows that were obscure then and are even more obscure now. And you can feel the network suits tamping down on Smith’s style (see: Jay and Silent Bob selling fireworks instead of pot), and the creative team rebelling a bit (see: Randal griping about not being able to say the r-word or “queer”). Despite that, Smith and company’s comic sensibilities abide, and if anything are let off the leash in terms of imagination, if not in curse words, given the new medium. What’s interesting about this show is that, despite repurposing the characters from the *Clerks* film, the vibe of the piece is more like *Mallrats* (if not even more exaggerated), with a cartoony quality that departs from the comparatively more grounded version of the Quick Stop seen in 1994. If you can make your peace with that, and an approach that's a bit all over the place, this opening outing is still plenty fun! The gag about coffee shops in bookstores is dated, but amusing for those of us who lived it, followed by a charming homage to the Haunted Mansion theme park side, followed by a *Simpsons*-esque gag of someone running out in fear but not before checking out at the register and coming back for their change. That about sums up the goofiness of “A Dissertation”. It’s a mix of entertaining meta references as varied as *Batman ‘66* and *The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer*, a dada-ist romp, the smart mouthed dialogue smith is known for, and some loopy network T.V. comedy circa the late 1990s. The plot is almost beside the point. It’s amere vehicle to present all of that to the audience, albeit in semi-disconnected chunks. I can see why non die-hards didn’t necessarily want to stick around. This is a bit unfocused and, if not avant garde, then certainly unusual for an animated comedy of the time. The art style is blocky and stylized (shades of *Samurai Jack* of all things). And you have Alec Baldwin doing what sounds like a Christopher Lee impression as the bad guy and conversing with oddly primitive Canadians. That would be a lot for a casual viewer. But as an opening dose of laughs, albeit with an all over the place approach to storytelling and what I’ll generously call “worldbuilding”, this is still a treat for anyone on Smith’s wavelength.