Why Sam & Max IS the Best
Seing a vid by B- Mask on The Devil’s Playhouse and honestly, it made me think a lot about how Sam & Max essentially got everything it wanted as a franchise. For a long time, after playing the third and final Telltale season, I’ve been craving for a season 4; at least one more season after a long time to just give the dog & rabbit an easy string of adventures like old times. But after seeing that video and remembering the beautiful story that was Sam & Max’s third season, it made me realize how much the duo was able to offer over the decades and how Telltale’s third season was a definitive send-off. Call this a big brained take, expanding on that video, but to me Sam & Max is what would’ve happened if Calvin & Hobbes was marketed outside its comic strip.
If you know the latter’s history, you’ll know that Bill Watterson had a strict rule against Calvin & Hobbes being merchandising beyond its comics or continuing in any way after the final comic in ‘95. “This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of ten years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say. […] I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.” I’ve always admired Bill’s stance on this, especially after seeing my declining interest in stuff like The Simpsons where I’ve realized that sometimes a good thing doesn’t need to exist all the time, less it becomes a zombie of its former self. With that in mind, it’s amazing that Sam & Max managed to not adhere to Bill’s philosophy yet be able to have the most simple yet cleanest franchises I’ve seen in history.
It was in 1987 when the comics started, a pulp detective comedy centered around the duo basically doing whatever they want to both stop the bad guy in question and get a laugh from the audience. They’re vigilantes at best, antagonists at worst where while they aren’t total monsters, they’ll gladly treat anyone and anything they see as a part of their playground. From the beginning, Sam & Max are kinda the Rick Sanchezes of the late 80s if Rick was more casual and optimistic about not giving a shit. The comic as a whole is actually not big in content, but engagingly dense in what it offers. With lots of cockroaches cuz I guess a bug really had an impact on Purcell. It was clever, happily mean-spirited, sometimes dark, and after 6 years of making the comic, we soon got the biggest hit that is…
Hit the Road honestly was the key to Sam & Max’s popularity. During the era of Point ‘n Click Adventures, it was the most fitting game genre in existence for the characters. Exploration was always Sam & Max’s forte, their special sauce of the comics outside the duo’s chemistry and bizarre encounters, so to center a game around a cross country road trip where the two fuck around in order solve a case is sheer brilliance. It of course captures the style of the comics, only in bright colors but the most memorable voice acting. This was where they had more of a voice. The game’s popularity would lead to them getting a cartoon which I say works well differently…
While Hit the Road was about the duo interacting with the world around them, the cartoon more adapted the comics where it was about the two getting in different situations; a day in the life if you will. For only 24 episodes, they certainly made the most of adapting the easy going yet absurd aspect of the comics for a younger audience. I mentioned before in a review long ago that it’s Freakazoid’s Pulp Fiction and it still holds up as such, where with this and Hit the Road, it’s credulous to believe that Sam & Max always worked better animated. To get the verbal and lively reaction of our duo is as equally compelling if not more than the subtler yet static page of a comic. And while it’s still a shame that while both the animated series and LucasArts got shut down, the new Telltale Games would pick up the slack and give us the next round of content.
Season 1 and 2 of the Telltale series go hand in hand where they shrink the scale of Hit the Road in favor of having one off adventures all tied to one big final boss at the end. Many have called them repetitive but I say they work well for they are, with the dialogue and special moments picking up for what could be considered formulaic by design. It’s still Sam & Max, only made a little easier to enjoy the story more. While I wish I could say this for Bone, it was these games that put Telltale on the map; what they were known for in the early era. As such, it’s sad to say that when the third season rolled out, looking back now, Sam & Max was truly reaching its end.
The Devil’s Playhouse is the biggest S&M adventure, one the developers were plotting to make the whole time. While each episode has a different style and scenario, everything plays to one continuous story where for the first time in this series’ history, our duo are actually challenged. Max isn’t just the sidekick, he’s both a playable character in the game and a huge target thanks to his newfound importance. This makes Sam show more concern than usual where the idea of losing his best friend can leave him feel irrelevant to devastated. While the two still fire off jokes at each other and others as usual, there’s the looming threat of them being forced apart; the real antagonist is the story’s increasing rift between Sam and Max. The Devil’s Playhouse essentially dissects the franchise’s heart, finally putting the two’s friendship through the wringer to a point of no return. It all somehow makes sense, both Max’s reality warping ability and Sam as a character on his own especially with the 4th episode. Not everything about the duo is revealed, but enough was where I unfortunately have to repeat that Sam & Max was “at its end”.
Before, our duo literally went to hell and back, fought a variety of monsters and villains, and have bent reality to their will countless times. The two could go on many absurd adventures as possible afterward, but where can you go when you finally rattle the core of the franchise? Devil’s Playhouse ties up not only loose threads for fans of the previous seasons, but flips the script on what the series has built overall. There were a couple times beforehand where the comical shtick was dropped and things got serious for the duo, but they weren’t as climactic and revealing as the third season. As good as it sounds to reboot the series, since the season ends on an optimistic note, to return back to Watterson’s words. “I said pretty much everything I had come there to say.” We got two games with Sam and Max making irreverent cameos and later merch, but The Devil’s Playhouse is otherwise the last we truly see of the two. No official talks of a comeback and for what it’s worth, that’s enough.
I brought up the Calvin and Hobbes comparison because Sam & Max is where I say if Bill decided to market the comic, this is what the best outcome would be. From the comics to the games, not only have they got a sense of clean finality but every step of the way, Steve Purcell was there to handle it. Beyond the cartoon getting toned down for obvious reasons, it never felt like Sam & Max was warped to please execs or turn into something unfamiliar. Steve’s vision got to exist through and through with The Devil’s Playhouse being the best finale. Purcell’s moved on and with Telltale’s sour shutdown, I’m not sure how S&M could come back. It’s impossible to think of how this could’ve ended like The Simpsons, Garfield, Spongebob, etc, but it feels like bonafide luck that we got Sam & Max as is. It’s not the biggest comic or video game franchise around, but I can never argue that it’s a franchise that stayed true to itself all the way. I’ll never know what the future holds for Sam & Max, if there truly is one anymore, but I at least have some belief that it’ll be there for our boys.
Cuz after all, isn’t that the beauty of this whole series?
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