I remember when That’s My Bush! premiered on Comedy Central in 2001. I was apolitical back then since I was only in middle school, so I didn’t have much of an opinion about George W. Bush at the time. The show was created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker from South Park. They weren’t trying to mock Bush specifically as much as they were trying to make a sitcom that parodied other sitcoms, using the presidency and the White House as the backdrop. Ironically, they originally thought Al Gore would win the election and had planned the show around him.

George W. Bush is played by Timothy Bottoms, who does a pretty solid job imitating the then-current president. He doesn’t go so far that it becomes ridiculous. If only we could go back to a time when Bush was considered the dumbest president we ever had.

The show also did a good job making the set look like the White House as most Americans pictured it. I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons the show ended up with a higher budget than people might expect.

A lot of the characters were clearly based on people in the Bush family and his Republican circle. Karl Rove definitely could have been mocked more.

My favorite character was the neighbor Larry, who is a parody of the typical sitcom next-door neighbor. I still think it’s funny that the show ran with the idea that someone lived right next to the White House and that everyone acted like it was perfectly normal.

But the show was supposedly too expensive for Comedy Central to keep producing. To their credit, they put together a decent makeshift finale once they realized it was ending. The series was officially canceled in August 2001, though it kept airing reruns for a while. Matt Stone and Trey Parker later said the show probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway because of the September 11 attacks. Even though it feels silly and cheesy now, I’m still a little annoyed that this clever sitcom was cut short so quickly, lasting only eight short episodes.