Reception of The Filthy Frank Show

The Filthy Frank Show is an American comedy television series created by Gordon Hartford and Joji Miller and starring Miller as title character Filthy Frank, an insane, alcoholic man in his twenties who gets himself and the people around him into various bizarre situations. It was broadcast on Comedy Central from 2007 to 2011 for four seasons.

The show received mixed reception from critics but positive reception from general audiences, and it sparked controversy due to its mature content—which included sexual references, staged graphic violence, strong language, images of fake vomit and urine, and depictions of alcoholics—as well as its dark, offensive humor. Despite the controversy, many netizens considered the show to be "unique", and it resulted in the show gaining a cult following.

Premiere and initial reactions
Prior to The Filthy Frank Show's premiere, Hartford, Miller, and Comedy Central intentionally did very little to promote their "secret project". The first season's only promotion was a video titled "Filthy Frank" uploaded by Comedy Central on November 26, 2006, which shows clips of the show flashing without context, followed by an end card reading "FEB. 1 '07" with a few credits and print logos for Comedy Central and Gordiestudio.

When "The Rise of Frank", the series' pilot, aired on February 1, 2007 at 10:00 PM EST, many viewers quickly took to social media and Internet forums, expressing confusion about what was being broadcast; some netizens were even asking if it was a joke due to its low budget and intentional shoddy editing. Viewership rapidly increased during the broadcast, and it peaked at 1.81 million viewers, making it one of Comedy Central's most successful premieres.

Hartford also says in his book about the show, Crafting Filthy Frank, that "not a whole lot of people were able to put two and two together and figured out what they were watching". As Michael Winston of  wrote, "For anyone who saw the YouTube video, this definitely made a lot more sense."

In 2016, the original broadcast of "The Rise of Frank" was ranked no. 1 on Dimension's "Top 10 Most Unexpected TV Show Premieres", the article stating in part, "When all you do to advertise your show is upload a three-minute YouTube video of context-free clips, it becomes apparent that they wanted you to know as little as possible about what would happen on February 1, 2007."

Season 1 (2007)
In a May 2007 article, Morgan Freetown of Dimension described the show as "effective as hell in achieving its goal of being dark and offensive", praising its "unique, almost South Park-like brand of humor". However, Mick Robbins of Daynight pointed out how the series contrasts with South Park: "While South Park is just 'Look, a random popular topic we can milk!', Filthy Frank is closer to 'Hey, who wants to watch society crumble?'." 's Kennedy Hayes-Jackson negatively reviewed The Filthy Frank Show, calling it "a snooze fest whose humor originates from generic dark jokes and political incorrectness".

Season 2 (2008–2009)
During the second season's run, Benjamin Forrester of Watch Now praised it for "packing a lot more punch—a lot more yuks—than season one ever could", later noting the perceived improvement in production quality. Writing for Media360, M.K. Turner criticized The Filthy Frank Show for its "cast of obviously amateur actors and comedians", while also negatively describing its half-hour runtime for "not allowing enough time for plots to develop or jokes to really get going".

Season 3 (2009–2010)
Not long after season three premiered, on his web series The Humor Geek, host Jake Harley said in part "There's all sorts of things wrong with The Filthy Frank Shows. It's offensive, it's crude, it's got gross-out jokes... it has everything I love about Hartford's brand of humor and more." Writing for i.net, Michael Checker wrote, "With its introduction of Frank's new, not-so-human housemates, this season is starting off wonderful and strong", and called the season's premiere "well-planned content".

Season 4 (2011)
Shortly before the premiere of season four, Wrong Opinion's Ashton Francis called Joji Miller's performance as Frank "hilarious" and "comically on-point", but criticized Maxwell Stanley and Ian Washburn for "lacking the emotion required to make Max and Ian interesting characters". Melissa Johnson with Quickie praised the show's cast but criticized it for using "edgy jokes only a five-year-old would laugh at". After the series finale aired, also writing for Quickie, Morgan MacDonald described it as "hilarious in the beginning but beginning to decline in quality midway through season 2". i.net's Parker Minter called the series finale "an underwhelming culmination of everything that happened in the world of Filthy Frank" and criticized its runtime as "too short to give Frank and company a proper sendoff".

Vulgarities and offensive language
The Filthy Frank Show faced criticism from media watchdog organizations due to its persistent profanity and "offensive" language, including frequent uncensored uses of "fuck" and "shit". Some episodes have even included up to one hundred combined uses of the aforementioned words. It has also been criticized for its use of "sexist language", specifically words such as "bitch", "whore", and "slut".

The season 4 episode "Frank's Hair Cake" was particularly seen as problematic. In the beginning, Frank quickly kisses Max on the cheek; this was followed by Ian asking, "What are you, fuckin' gay?" Later on, Max kisses Ian's cheek, and Ian asks, "What are you, a fuckin' ?" The incident resulted in hundreds of emails being sent to Comedy Central over its allegedly homophobic content and use of homophobic language. When Comedy Central began rerunning the show in early 2012, the offending word was bleeped out. However, the uncensored version still appears on The Filthy Frank Show's home video releases (specifically The Filthy Frank Show: The Whole Fourth Season and The Filthy Frank Show: Greatest Hits).