Noticed Doug Berman was listed as writer. Remember the writer's strike. Professionals like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert needed professional writers! So does this show!

I think Stewart and Colbert were better without their writers. We got to see them be genuinely funny on their own...just like Tom and Ray on the radio. Tom and Ray don't need writers to be funny either. They just need to be themselves.

Been a fan of 'Car Talk' for over twenty years and was eagerly anticipating 'As The Wrench Turns'.
As most viewers I was expecting an animated version of 'Car Talk'.
I am baffled as how to classify "As The Wrench Turns' other than pretty darn awful !!!!!!!!!!!
It reminded me of those 1930s movies where some wide eyed bumpkin visits a Hollywood studio and observes a few major stars [ie Laurel and Hardy] doing shortened versions of their signature bits, while the main plot of the movie is about the bumkins' romantic misadventures in Hollywood.
Of course all the publicity emphasizes the major stars !!!!!!!!!!!!
That what "As The Wrench Turns' was, Click and Clack doing maybe five minutes of classic Click and Clack bits and 20 minutes of being supporting characters in I don't know what !!!!!!!!!!!!
Tom and Ray should do one more episode in the style of the late great Jackie Gleason where they spend the entire episode apologizing for the previous episodes and then pull the plug on the whole benighted mess !!!!!!!!!!!!!

No offense, but you might want to hire some real writers. It sounded like it was written by people who have seen a lot of sitcoms but have little or no experience actually writing scripts.

One of the things that makes your radio show so much fun is that you guys are having so much fun. Your laughter and attitude are infectious. I didn't get a lot of that sense of fun from the TV show -- which makes sense, given that they are completely different enterprises.

OMG - I love you guys to death - I've listened to you two for years - sometimes 4 times a weekend - and was waiting with big anticipation for your PBS debut - after watching one episode and half of another one - I only have this to day - FORGET ABOUT IT!! The writing is ridiculous and you guys are worth so much more than this. Move on, try again, but KILL THIS NOW!!!

Tom & Ray
I have been a loyal listener to the radio show for years and I love it. The Cartoon however is a totaly different animal, ie.(pig, turkey or whatever your particular predilection for ugly animals is)
This show was sooo baaad that it redefines badness. Bad writing, Bad Timing, Bad Directing, does anyone do quality control around there? To call it horrible is an insult to the many other horrible shows that are out there. Now after storing two shows in my Tivo I had to have it sent to the shrink, ( it kept showing me the last scene of Apoclypse Now... The Horror, The Horror..) Give Berman a month at funny farm and then get back to the stellar radio work you do best.

I was eagerly awaiting your show, counting down the days. However, after sticking it out through the first two half-hours, I will be very surprised if PBS follows through with running all the episodes. After the message that this was presented with support from viewers like me, the word that instantly came to mind was "malfeasance."

It was a magnitude worse than the worst "Scooby Doo" episode.
Unfunny
Lame
What a shame. I was looking forward to it. What happened to the witiness of the radio show?
After the first one I told my wife, "There's a half hour of my life I'll never get back."
I recorded the second one and watched snippets of it later. I tried it without the sound on. I tried listening to it without watching. I finally tried watching The Weather Channel instead. It was funnier.

i think it's great you guys are doing a show. with all that's going on in the world like fuel prices, the war, the election, numerous natural disasters and of course the increased price of grahamm crackers making smores almost unatainable. it will be great to look forward to an hour a week that can only by association make the worlds troubles seem mundane.

OK, guys. You must have something up your sleeve here. Surely you weren't thinking that these episodes, with characters I've never seen, situations that don't make any sense to me (yes, I know it IS a cartoon), dialog that sounds like background noise at Starbucks, are a reflection of your incredible media and technical talent. In my view, these episodes committed the cardinal sin of comedy - they just weren't funny. Call me crazy, but I gauge a comedy by how much it makes me laugh. I laugh out loud at the gym when I listen to your radio show on my ipod. But the room was eerily absent of laughter as we watched the TV show. I think you should take this show back to the dealer, invoke the Lemon Law, and get your money back. And keep us laughing, as you always do, on the radio show. And it's interesting that you're broadcasting a repeat radio show this week. Are you afraid to show your faces?

I was very curious as to what response Tom and Ray would have to all the adverse response to 'As The Wrench Turns'. Maybe Tom and Ray actually previewed the episodes that aired and decided to just lay low for a month, or two. in the hope that 'As The Wrench Turns' would get quickly and quietly taken off the air and forgotten.

As a long time fan of Click and Clack, I was really looking forward to "As the Wrench Turns". As it turned out, the animation is really amateur, the characters are totally creapy looking, the story line is totally boring, and Click and Clack just don't come through as anything more than cameo characters. I turned it off after watching it for 10 minutes.
Whoever produced this atrocity should be sentenced to driving a Yugo the rest of their life.

Sorry guys, the whole thing is absolutely horrible.

Dear Tom, Ray, and Crew---

As for all of the negative so-called critiques of your new TV program, "As the Wrench Turns," all I have to say is: BO-oh-Oh-OHHHH-GUSS!

Do these Bozos think that just because they are fans of your "Lousy Radio Show" that gives them the right to stomp on every tender branch of your creative exploration, if it doesn't immediately seem to meet THEIR standards? Just who do they think they are. Water, that branch, I say. Let it flourish and grow...into a humongous thorny bush!

Based on the first two debut episodes, "Wrench" is already my favorite cartoon series since Rocky and Bullwinkle started in show business, which I am old enough to remember. In fact, I intend to write a doctoral dissertation on the correspondence of characterization between the two shows. So far I have found resemblances to Moose, Squirrel, Boris, Natasha, and Dudley Doright. I'm waiting for Mr. Peabody and Sherman to help tie it all together.

The new show is sharp, quirky, twisted, inane, tedious, funny, irritating, and surprisingly political! I like how each episode carved off a different aspect of the workplace dynamic, and I look forward to many new storylines! Especially if the hundreds of Cartalk staff members aren't all on vacation in some of them.

As for those who think that by watching "As the Wrench Turns" they wasted another hour of their so-called lives, THAT'S the idea! Jee-eece! Or as Pat Paulsen used to say, "Picky, picky, picky!"

Apparently PBS broadcast a totally different show in the Midwest. The only parts of your review that pertain to what was broadcast by Prairie Public are 'tedious' and 'irritating' !!!!!!!!!!

Your comparison to 'Rocky and Bullwinle' is interesting, but not really valid. 'Rocky and Bullwinkle' was a totally original show, not an animated version of a long running popular radio show.

No wonder you are confused. You think the cartoon series is "an animated version of a long running popular radio show." Wrong on two counts.

First, it is not an animated version of a radio show; it is an animated story about characters who might take part in the production of a radio show. As such, it is in no way limited to confining itself to the on-air narrative of the radio show at all.

Second, it is not about a popular radio show; it is about Click and Clack's show. It is so bad it's good, from my point of view, but that doesn't make it popular. (You certainly don't hear the kind of music they play on any popular programming anywhere.)

I would worry that responses like yours would sink the cartoon program before it even hits its stride, except that it is obvious that Tom and Ray didn't let complaints like this discourage them in the first years of the radio show. They kept doing the show anyway! And that is just what I want to see this time too.

Well, we agree on one point. 'As The Wrench Turns' is not an animated version of 'Car Talk'.

I think that many 'Car Talk' fans tuned in to 'As The Wrench Turns' expecting to see just that, an animated version of 'Car Talk' and were very disappointed by what they saw.

'As The Wrench Turns' is not a ground breaking program ala 'Rocky and Bullwinkle', it is not cutting edge commentary about the USA, it is not state of the art, or avante garde, animation.

Exactly what it is is hard to describe.

Other popular radio personalities [ie Howard Stern, Don Immus] have had sucessful TV shows basically just televising their radio shows . Unfortunately Tom and Ray decided to do something different.

IRC, the complainants about the early early days of 'Car Talk' came not from listeners, but critics and some very jealous NPR types who thought that a show like 'Car Talk' had no business on NPR or any Public Radio Station..

Even now there are NPR personalities who decry the fact that 'Car Talk' is so much more popular than their NPR shows.

The local rag here didn't even bother reviewing 'As The Wrench Turn'.

Well, good grief - this is grown-up entertainment that we're criticizing here, not a child's drawing. Seems to me that the guys are victims of their own standards. If their radio show hadn't been so good all these years, maybe we'd expect less.

Dear PlymouthSavoy

Were you involved in the production ?

It seems that you are trying very hard to convince yourself that it really isn't that bad.

The best part about the show is that there are only four of the six episodes left.

Dear Radiofan,

I was not involved in the production. I don't need to be convinced that the TV show isn't bad. I find it very interesting as an experiment. Experiments aren't worth doing in the first place if they don't get some sustained attention over time.

A lot of people seem to want to end this experiment prematurely because it isn't weighing in a fashion that makes them tingle with excitement in quite the way that the radio program apparently does. Keep in mind that the radio show they are talking about has over the years included advice like: "Buy a Yugo and then blow your brains out!" as a reply to how a person could get an inexpensive car that would last the rest of his life. That was an experimental show. I meet a lot of people who say that they have never heard of Click and Clack if I mention them in a conversation about cars. The radio show is still an experiment, and is only popular in certain circles, yet today.

I want to see where the tv program goes. It had enough going for it in the first two episodes, that I am happy to wait to see where they take it from that beginning. I know I have quirky tastes. Some Click and Clack radio fans seem not to know if they do. They seem very impatient; do I detect speeders?

Dear Plymothsavoy

People have been sucessfully going from radio to TV since of Burns and Allen and Amos and Andy in the 1950s.

Ira Glass recently took his NPR 'This American Life' to pay cable with good results, probably because it is a visual version of the radio show.

Perhaps if 'As The Wrench Turns' was the very first ever attempt to take a radio based show to TV it might be excused as an experiment.

But it is not !!!!!!!!

It is just a very poorly done ego trip by the writers/producers trying to cash in on Tom and Ray's NPR popularity.

Considering the garbage that makes it to network and cable TV, the fact that 'As The Wrench Turns' was rejected by so many, over several years, says an awful lot about its overall quality.

Nice try at insuating that 'Car Talk' itself is unimportant, with a very limited audience. I guess that expalins why it is one of the most widely carried [one story said 600 stations] and popular NPR shows. Both Minnesota and North Dakota Public Radio both bemoan the fact that while 'Car Talk' is their most popular show [for a show to beat out St Paul based 'A Prairie Home Companion' in Minnesota is quite a feat], it is also the most expensive to obtain.

But this is still the USA where you have the right to voice your views, just don't be surprised when very few folks here agree with you :-)