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| I keep misidentifying Out There as Over There, that Gulf War show that starred Sticky Fingaz from Onyx. What I really need to do before writing is... cram! Duh duh duh, duh duh duh. Let the boys be boys! |
"Ultra Wankershim," the penultimate webisode of Bravest Warriors' first season and one of the series' strangest installments, marks the return of the enigmatic Emotion Lord (series showrunner Breehn Burns), a cross between a Jedi and a Time Lord. This older and nutty incarnation of Warriors leader Chris travels back to his past to witness the Dawning of Wankershim (also voiced by Burns), the moment in Martian history when Wankershim, the holographic elf from the Warriors' Holo-John who has evolved from hologram to actual lifeform, becomes so large and infinite in size that he absorbs all of humanity and the universe into his "Wankerbeing."
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I knew at some point in Archer's current fourth season that the show would revisit the titular spy's curiosity about the identity of his dad, whose absence from his son's life was one of many reasons why Archer's such a screwed-up man-child. I just never expected the arc to resurface in "Once Bitten," while Archer's poisoned from a snake bite in the middle of a mission in fictional Turkmenistan and hallucinating sketchy and rudimentary flashbacks to his boyhood, with James Mason's Mr. Jordan character from Heaven Can Wait (special guest star Peter Serafinowicz) as his spirit guide. (In a couple of other Heaven Can Wait shout-outs, Archer is clad in Warren Beatty's football sweats from the film, and he finds himself playing Beatty's sax, which Archer clobbers Buck Henry's officious angel character in the head with. You can tell how young some Archer recappers are by their inability to notice the Heaven Can Wait references.)
Several critics have found the plotting of "Once Bitten" to be flat and underwhelming (I'm not as underwhelmed by it), but even when the storyline may be sort of underwhelming, the dialogue on Archer is always golden:
* Malory: "Look, I don't want to sound racist, but..." Lana: "But you're gonna power through it."
* Archer to an injured Ray: "Are you shitting me? Bionic legs, and you lifted with your back?"
* Everyone's hatred of Lana, the agency's voice of reason, and her "self-righteous clomping" in "Once Bitten" seems to be building towards either a future office mutiny against Malory led by Lana, who questions Malory's actions in this episode, or the Truckasaurus-handed spy's departure from ISIS (and switch to ODIN?). Insane but sometimes lucid Cheryl/Carol's mini-monologue to Lana about the latter's self-loathing is so terrific (and is responsible for one of many excellently animated expressions from Lana this season) that I've included it word-for-word: "Please, if you really cared, you'd resign, but there's no way you ever will because you're just counting the days until, her face bloated and yellow from liver failure, she calls you to her deathbed and, in a croaky whisper, explains that Mr. Archer is totally incompetent and that you, the long-suffering Lana Kane, are the only one qualified to run ISIS, and you weep shameful tears because you know this terrible place is the only true love you will ever know... What? Oh my God, was I talking?"
* Cyril to the Turks, whom he thinks want revenge for the camel he accidentally ran over with Archer's Jeep (in, as usual on this show, extremely gory fashion): "No, I had the right-of-way!"
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In "The Great Escape," Chad and his new friend Chris bond over their frustrations with school bullies and their hatred of Holford, a Midwestern suburb that's so lifeless and bland that in "Quest for Fantasy," the hot dogs at Chad and Chris' regular hangout, the Gulp-N-Go convenience store, are Joanie's idea of adventurous and loungy cuisine ("As far as fixings go, I say stick with those high in vinegar content. The onions here, they even sort of tingle like champagne."). The Gulp-N-Go is also where Joanie first met Terry and fell in love with him when, according to her, he killed a scorpion that was crawling on her back and then vowed to protect her forever. Due to Terry's constant braggadocio and implied ease with being surrounded by drugs, I wouldn't be surprised if the scorpion was something Terry hallucinated while on acid or shrooms. Most of Out There's funniest moments involve these delusions everyone outside of the pragmatic Chad has about their lives, whether it's Joanie, Terry, Jay (Kate Micucci), Chad's daydreaming little brother who thinks he's an alien, or Chris. In "The Great Escape," Chris' elaborate plan to escape Holford involves hopping onto "a magical balloon to an exotic new land teeming with breastled women" (not "breast-led," but "breastled," which rhymes with "nestled").
Roiland's shrill Earl of Lemongrab voice from Adventure Time seeps through whenever Chris gets shouty or when Roiland's other character in "Quest for Fantasy," a compulsive liar named Grump, lisps about how he can sneak Chad and Chris into a rumored nudie mag photo shoot so that they can see their first live naked lady. The best moment of "Quest for Fantasy" is a tiny bit of character business where Paul (John DiMaggio), the Gulp-N-Go clerk who scolded Chad and Chris for attempting to steal a nudie mag from his store, cringes when he overhears Rose (Megan Mullally), Chad and Jay's mom, promising to Chad that she and her husband Wayne (also DiMaggio) will be as honest as possible when talking to him about the birds and the bees. I take it that Paul suspects that Wayne and Rose's talk will somehow either turn out not so smoothly or will end up degenerating into a screed against masturbation. So in the show's great little way of saying "fuck off" to the terminally annoying Parents Television Council, Paul changes his mind about the nudie mag and secretly slips it into a newspaper for Chad.
A far more original aspect of Out There is the offbeat character design. Instead of being regular-looking but stylized humans like on all the Fox "Animation Domination" shows and even South Park, everyone in Holford has claws and paws for hands and are dog-faced with button noses like the characters on Goof Troop, while the males in the Stevens family are fur-faced and resemble the Little Critter character from Mercer Mayer kids' books. (Quincy cites Charles Schulz, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Richard Scarry as his stylistic influences in interviews, but I also see a bit of a Mayer vibe in the Stevens males' character designs.) It's an interesting choice that perfectly suits Out There's theme of life as an outcast, and I especially like how there's no "some meteor arrived and mutated everybody"-style explanation for the characters' animalistic look during the show.
If only someone told Quincy to be equally minimal with older Chad's Wonder Years-style voiceover narration in the pilot and the third episode, "A Chris by Any Other Name," because like the worst kind of narration, it tends to state the obvious. However, Chad's off-screen narration is less distracting and exposition-y during "Quest for Fantasy," and hopefully, Quincy will minimize it even more in later episodes. (Instead of over-explaining what you see on screen, the best kind of narration is either mostly unreliable, like in Alexander Payne's Election, or only partially related to the action on-screen, like on Burn Notice, where icy, distant and secretive Michael never refers to himself, his friends or his mom and describes the action only through spy tips or lines about how the intelligence community operates, except for in the first season, back when Burn Notice creator Matt Nix hadn't quite figured out Michael's narrative voice yet. So during reruns of the Burn Notice pilot, when you hear Michael remark off-screen about how much his mom irritates him, it's as off-putting as hearing the anti-profanity Omar curse in an early episode of The Wire.)
Unnecessary bits of narration aside, Out There is an intriguing work-in-progress, much like Chad and Chris themselves, who bumble their way through adolescence like anyone else who's been a teen but perhaps didn't grow up with fur covering their faces.
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The announcer also provides silly "facts" about homosexuality, which he revealed was measured by modern science in "Lamberts" (as in Adam Lambert), and anime, this week's subject. I don't consider myself an anime fan, but I grew up on Star Blazers and Robotech and was enthralled with Cowboy Bebop when it first aired on Adult Swim in the early 2000s, so "Anime" is one of my favorite Do's & Don'ts installments because of its jabs at anime clichés ("Anime is notorious for dedicating full episodes to high-octane staring contests") and pervy anime fans.
The webisode manages to poke fun at anime without resorting to tired (and very '80s) "You ever notice how Asians do this and Asians do that?"-type racial humor like Drawn Together did in the episode where its Ling-Ling character tried to whitewash himself. (Drawn Together's attempt to speak out against racial self-hatred was really just a lame excuse to reinforce some more Asian stereotypes. Great racial humor challenges these stereotypes, but by remaining funny and never getting preachy. Examples include Blazing Saddles, ego trip's Big Book of Racism!, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell and the stand-up act of Totally Biased staff writer Hari Kondabolu. Bad racial humor does nothing to challenge stereotypes. Examples include that Drawn Together episode and any Asian stand-up whose entire act is either just a laundry--no pun intended--list of the differences between Asians and everyone else or just a rehash of Margaret Cho's impression of her mom).
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Adventure Time has been having an incredible two weeks of first-run episodes. The engaging "Bad Little Boy," the show's second episode about Finn and Jake's gender-flipped counterparts, the immensely popular Fionna and Cake, was a season highlight last week, and now "Vault of Bones" follows "Bad Little Boy" as another season highlight, functioning as both a great character piece about Flame Princess (Jessica DiCicco), Finn's current love interest, and a fun homage to tropes from both video games and D&D. (My older brother, who used to be a D&D fanatic, once tried to get me into role-playing games when I was younger. I didn't care for role-playing games back then, and I still kind of don't, although Key & Peele's D&D sketch--in which a thug is forced by his nerdy cousin to join him in playing it, and the initially reluctant thug, who chooses the moniker of "Kanye the Giant," ends up enjoying D&D his way--and now Adventure Time have made me understand why role-playing games appeal to so many.)
When Finn first encountered Flame Princess, she was volatile and unstable--a literal hot mess--and understandably so after the Flame King (Keith David), her intimidating father, imprisoned her for so long to keep her from hurting others with her flames, at the urging of Princess Bubblegum. Since then, the time FP has spent with Finn and Jake has mellowed her out and improved her social skills, although as we see in "Vault of Bones," when Finn takes his girlfriend along with him on a dungeon quest for treasure to help her clear her mind and keep her away from her omnipresent dad's evil influence, a bit of her naughty and mischievous streak remains. (By the way, Jake stays home during the episode and doesn't get to do much, but it's amusing to see his maternal side as he brews chamomile tea for Finn and FP and then chillaxes alone with a cup of it like a lady in a General Foods International Coffees ad.)
Like how the skeleton must have felt a long time ago, FP grows bored with dungeon-questing and its many rules, and in an interesting sign of maturity, Finn realizes he's been too domineering throughout their adventure together and agrees to let FP try things her way. FP's powers especially come in handy when Finn winds up in genuine danger during an attack by a legion of slimy creatures known as Goo Skulls. It becomes clear that when Finn and FP merge their methods together so that one doesn't dominate the other, they make quite a team (kind of like how, as Adventure Time regular Tom Kenny recently noted to the L.A. Times about the show's preference for recording Kenny's co-stars Jeremy Shada and John DiMaggio together in the same room, "there's really no substitute for having a bunch of people around a mic, and riffing with each other and playing off each other").
And when FP is given the opportunity to obliterate the Goo Skulls' big boss at the end of the quest, instead of reducing the biggest and baddest Goo Skull to ashes, she takes a cue from Finn and makes the leader do the splits--kind of like how on Justified, Raylan has been learning that there are other ways to take down criminals besides killing them. But FP is still a bit behind Raylan in terms of being civilized, as we hear when Finn realizes that "maybe next time, we should just go to like a farmer's market," and in the episode's funniest line, FP adds, "And burn it."
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