5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (05/08/2013): Apollo Gauntlet, Bob's Burgers, American Dad, Animation Domination High-Def and Dogsnack

"Maganda!," thought the Ewok. (Photo source: American Dad Wikia)

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

YouTube comments sections are often moronic forums where almost everyone either simply repeats dialogue from the video above without much regard for correct spelling or hurls racial slurs at each other or at some black or Asian person in the video. Only occasionally will some of these sections take a pause from the trolling or Chappelle's Show frat-boy-viewer-style parroting of catchphrases to raise a good point, like when several posters in the section below "Hey Guys, It's Me," the latest Apollo Gauntlet installment, noted that it feels like the show skipped an episode that would have explained how Apollo tracked down the fortress of Corporal Vile, the villain who most likely sent a robot to capture the Princess.

Despite the disjointed feel of "Hey Guys, It's Me," series creator/voice actor Myles Langlois gets in a couple of amusing moments here, like Apollo's comparison of the henchmen's movements to "tai chi for dummies" and Dr. Benign's awkward retraction of his understandable perception that Prince Belenus, who sees Apollo as his competition for the Princess' hand in marriage, and the Princess are brother and sister. If the Prince is indeed related to her and is totally Jaime Lannistering for her affections, then ewwww.

***

Bob's Burgers is usually the highlight of the Fox "Animation Domination" lineup, but this week, it's been bested by American Dad's special 150th episode. I initially found "Carpe Museum," which centers on Bob's first time to chaperone the kids' museum field trip, to be underwhelming (especially in comparison to "Boyz 4 Now"), despite the way that Linda's protest chants sound exactly like the Tom Tom Club's "Wordy Rappinghood" ("Boys are from Mars, girls are from Venus!/I've got a yum-yum, you've got a penis!") or the enjoyable interaction between Bob, Louise (who accidentally slips out that she wants to inherit the restaurant from Bob) and asthmatic Rudolph Steiblitz (Brian Huskey), a.k.a. Regular-Sized Rudy. On second viewing, I like "Carpe Museum" a little more and better appreciated how the episode, during its subplot of Tina's attempts to get everyone else to notice that her field trip partner Henry (Jim Gaffigan) is dorkier than her, nails the arrogance of nerdy school kids who think the graphic novel or fanfic they're going to write will change the world ("Maybe you just don't understand it?... There's 17 installments, and you really need to read them in order, which you haven't, so I doubt it.").

I also better appreciated how well "Carpe Museum" uses most of the secondary characters, from Teddy, whose clinginess to the restaurant never gets old, to inseparable twin brothers Andy (Laura Silverman) and Ollie (Sarah Silverman), who, at one point, both turn to a weirded-out Bob for help when they need to blow their noses (on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, H. Jon Benjamin was continually pining for an uninterested Laura Silverman, while on Bob's Burgers, he'd rather not be near her and reluctantly has to help her blow her nose). Ollie blows his nose on Bob's vest, which is a moment I'm all too familiar with because I've seen little kids blow their noses on other people's clothes, and when I was a kid, I was frequently attacked by a much younger kid who liked to leave his snot on other people's shirts. That kid grew up to become Owen Kline in the school locker scene in The Squid and the Whale.

Other memorable quotes:
* Bob: "So how did you survive eight years of being stuck with Mr. Frond?" Linda, TV's most entertaining functioning alcoholic who's not an Archer: "Wine Thermos."

* Louise to Pocket-Sized Rudy: "Jeez, Rudy, quit sneaking up on people. Wear a bell."

* Louise: "Hey, Mr. Frond! Why did the chicken cross the road?... So he would be in a different school district where there's a different guidance counselor!" Bob: "Louise... don't say that... here."

* The flirtatious, Margaret Dumont-voiced museum director (Brooke Dillman): "Your skin should be its own exhibit." The equally captivated Mr. Frond (David Herman): "Well, your hair should be sent to an Asian wig factory."

Jim Gaffigan, the whitest cat u'know

Throughout this year, I'm posting older material--like non-Blogspot stuff from a few years ago, unpublished writing I've kept buried in my computer and transcripts of interviews from A Fistful of Soundtracks' terrestrial radio years.

Here's another one from my archives, an alternate version of a 2006 plug for Jim Gaffigan, who's gotten me hooked on bacon again, and whose latest Comedy Central special, King Baby, premieres this Sunday night.

----------

The moment you hear the words "airline" and "peanuts," you know you're trapped in a room with a bad observational stand-up (or an ancient Evening at the Improv rerun full of 10 of them). On the other hand, a really good observational stand-up is someone like Indiana-born Jim Gaffigan.

Like other observational comics, Gaffigan fixates on food, but not on exhausted food-related topics like peanuts, Taco Bell or that other '80s classic, Grape Nuts ("What is the deal? It's neither a grape nor a nut!"). His favorite punching bag is Hot Pockets, which are like calzones if they were made by a crackhead and come complete with a jingle that makes "By Mennen!" sound like Kid A ("Hoooot Pocket!").

Gaffigan frequently beats up on his own appearance, like another self-deprecating paleface, Conan O'Brien. He's turned his whiteness into the key gag for a series of cheapo and very funny superhero cartoon spoofs created for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In Pale Force, a buffed-up Gaffigan and his cowardly sidekick Conan (both voiced by Gaffigan) strike fear into the hearts of evildoers with their pale skin and laser-firing nipples. The next episode of Pale Force ought to be a celebrity deathmatch between the melanin-challenged men of steel and those albino twins from The Matrix, with Powder as the referee.

In an avclub.com interview, Gaffigan said he doesn't curse anymore onstage. "Clean stand-up comedy" are three words that often scare people away, though not as badly as "Kevin Federline rapping." What's unique about Gaffigan is that he got funnier as he did away with the profanity, which is like Richard Pryor in reverse. At about the same time as the F-words vanished, he developed a falsetto "inner voice" character--an unamused, prissy female audience member commenting on Gaffigan's jokes. It's become an audience favorite. With his clever riffs on junk food, religion and Tom from MySpace-style yellow fever ("I only dated one Asian girl, but she was very Asian. She was a panda"), Gaffigan proves that curse-free observational humor doesn't have to suck like, well, a Hot Pocket.

My least favorite current screenwriting cliché is...

...contrived Hot Pocket sight gags--like when a character cooks it without the sleeve, just so we can be treated to a weak gag in which the character drops it 'cause it's hot. Who the hell nukes it without the sleeve? Oh yeah, that's right, only characters in TV shows and movies do.

Yo scriptwriters, if you can't even get that little detail right, leave the Hot Pocket humor to Jim Gaffigan, alright?

Recent offenders: The otherwise solid Lost season premiere and Leverage's otherwise good "Mile High Job" episode.

The five worst things in recent annoying commercials that don't involve Carlos Mencia or Salesgenie pandas

5. The fugly '70s swinger couple in the jacuzzi during Jack in the Box's "Jack Sandwich" ad

I love hamburgers. So why the hell do Carl's Jr. and Jack in the Box always come up with ads that make me lose my appetite? Besides E. coli, the last thing I want to think about when I'm biting into a Jack Sandwich is chest hair.

4. freecreditreport.com acoustic guitarist guy

One of the reasons why I worked hard to graduate from UC Santa Cruz was so that I don't have to hear downtown Santa Cruz street musicians sing anymore. Thanks, poor man's Andy Samberg, for reminding me of one of the many things I had to put up with during my university days.

3. The Collins College guys who yammer about game designing as if they're about to pants their cream

G4 is still running this dumb ad, even after X-Play ridiculed it? Mannered actor D-bag on our left looks like a really, really poor man's Pat Riley.

2. That horrible-sounding score cue during the Lean Pockets little-girl-atop-Dad's-shoulders ad that sounds like a Knight Rider version of Roger and the Gypsies' "Pass the Hatchet"

The cheesiest part of Knight Rider wasn't David Hasselhoff's overly leathery wardrobe. It was those godawful covers of '80s pop songs on the soundtrack (the Knight Rider producers couldn't afford to use the original versions, so they hired session musicians to re-record the tunes). That's what the music in that Lean Pockets ad sounds like--a Knight Rider-ified mangling of "Pass the Hatchet." I have to mute my TV every time that damn ad airs. Jim Gaffigan can't seem to decide what bugs him the most about Pockets: the taste, the concept of filling a Pop Tart with rancid meat or the ad music. For me, it's the crappy music.

1. Manorexic poor man's Jim Caviezel, who steps out of the shower and douchily nods his head to a Rhapsody playlist of Sara Bareilles songs. You want to yank his towel and rat-tail that smug look off his face.

I'll let some of the more coherent YouTube commenters have the floor:

"guy on commercial: big head, tiny arms, not sexy"

"i hate that guy so much and i dont really no why"

"its cuz he's ugly :] u dont have to thank me for clearing that up for you"