‘Beavis and Butt-head” — the show that celebrated the slacker way of life and helped make MTV into a network that did more than just play music videos — is coming back.

The move to resurrect the hugely popular 1990s animated anti-heroes has been rumored for several days. But yesterday, sources at MTV confirmed that a new batch of “Beavis and Butt-head” episodes are in the works.

– Michael Starr, N.Y. Post.

Chris M reminded me of this in the comments section earlier; I missed the news entirely when it came out but I heard something about it a few weeks back.

With this, as with all new iterations of once-great TV series, I worry about the quality of the new shows. Will they live up to the standards of the originals, or will they work so hard to recapture the magic of the first run of episodes that they create, essentially, a parody version of Beavis and Butt-head, an over-the-top and ridiculous new installment of a series that was patently over-the-top and ridiculous to begin with?

Mike Judge is on board, so there’s reason to hope not.

I would also be concerned, as well, that the new show would not resonate with me the way the original did because the first run coincided with the time in my life spent mostly watching MTV, blowing stuff up and desperately and unsuccessfully pursuing female attention.

But when my friends and I took up watching the original episodes after college, we found them every bit as funny as we did when we saw them in middle school — if not moreso — though perhaps for different reasons.

At the very least, like the Post article says, the new episodes will give MTV a forum through which to start showing music videos again. And I always felt there should be entire hours of that network dedicated to showing videos through Judge’s hilarious animated filter, like Mystery Science Theater 3000, only, you know, with Beavis and Butt-head.

Plus it’ll give me a reason to figure out what channel MTV is on DirecTV.