So I don’t watch a lot of TV shows, which makes Episodyssey seem like a pointless waste of a review series. I thought I’d have more ideas by this point, y’know? But after the first few things I reviewed there just wasn’t anything that jumped out at me as worth talking about, and I haven’t watched more What If yet, so… yeah.
But then I had an idea. What if I talked about Ace Attorney? Each case is sort of like an episode in the wider story after all. And it’s my review show, goddamnit! I’ll do what I want! So let’s talk about the main cases of the Ace Attorney series, starting at the very start.
Since the first cases are usually pretty short (well, for the first couple games, anyway), I’ll sum up my feelings on the games as well. The first Ace Attorney is truly a classic, but much like every kickstarter of a great franchise (Crash, Spyro, Ratchet & Clank, Devil May Cry), it’s very rough around the edges. So much of what we will come to know and love the series for is here right at the start, from the quirky characters, punny names, and clever writing, but there’s only one truly amazing case in the entire game and the rest are just all over the place in terms of quality. I cut this game a lot of slack because it is the first one, and truth be told none of the cases are really bad, there was just definitely room to improve.
At any rate, they got the weakest case in the game out of the way first. “The First Turnabout” is our tutorial level, and our easing into the series. Here we are introduced to the basics of Phoenix Wright, and we get to meet series mainstays like Mia Fey, Larry Butz, Winston Payne, and the lovable old coot who presides over the trials. We’re given the world’s most simple mystery, and the absolute easiest killer in the entire series to catch. It’s simple, easy stuff that you can just slide right into.
...But it’s maybe too easy. The first game certainly has a nice difficulty slope, but the first case just feels like way too much of a softball. You can literally beat this one without pressing a single one of Frank Sahwit’s statements, he is that bad at lying. Again, though, this is the first case, the tutorial, the very first piece of Phoenix Wright material we see, so it’s hard to get really mad at this case. It’s just a really easy little trial to show you the ropes before the next two cases start to throw curveballs at you and make you put more effort into things. It’s definitely a fairly weak trial, but it’s hard to totally hate it.
And now, since every trial has a villain, it’s time for...
Psycho Analysis: Frank Sahwit
Frank here has the distinction of being one of the few killers who you actually see doing the deed in the little pre-trial cutscene, but it’s not like this is a big deal because he is one of the most blatant villains in the series. He’s honestly kind of pathetic, really.
Motivation/Goals: Frank’s just a petty criminal, really. He was out to make a quick buck, and accidentally killed Larry’s girlfriend in a panic. Not that this excuses him or makes him less pathetic, mind you, and apparently when he reappears in Ace Attorney Investigations 2 he’s an unrepentant dick so really Frank just does everything for self-serving, pathetic reasons.
Meltdown: As every villain has an epic courtroom meltdown, I’ll be detailing them here. Frank’s is rather simple: He rips off his toupee, throws it at Phoenix, froths at the mouth, and then collapses. If I were as bad at lying as Frank is, I’m pretty sure I’d react like this too.
Best Scene: His return in AAI2, where he is marginally more competent (but still a huge loser). It’s honestly amazing this dude came back at all.
Final Thoughts & Score: Look, Frank is basically just a starter villain, so I can’t judge him too hard. This is baby’s first trial,and baby needs an easy victory to feel good. That’s what Frank provides. Still… did he have to suck so hard? Did he have to take absolutely no effort? Later games would certainly rectify this, with Trials & Tribulations, Apollo Justice, and Spirit of Justice in particular featuring first cases with awesome and memorable killers who put up quite a fight and tested your knowledge. I get they were finding their footing here, but I don’t think it would have been too much to ask for a bit more of a challenge for Phoenix Wright’s first real case.
Frank’s definitely a 3/10, and I’m really being generous here. I dunno, he sucks, but in a way he’s kind of endearing with how shitty he is, you know? Just the way he moves and the way he tosses his toupee and his general faux affable demeanor, he’s kind of charming in a way. And whatever else, it’s not like he’s the worst first villain in the series.
Episodyssey: What If... Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?
[DISCLAIMER: Links provided may be unsuitable viewing for public places, if you catch my drift. Click at your own risk.]
Wow, bet you never thought you’d see this series again!
I don’t watch a lot of TV (I mostly watch movies) so this series fell by the wayside because I couldn’t really think of any episodes to talk about. I didn’t want to recount some Courage the Cowardly Dog episode I watched twenty years ago using nothing but my memories and wiki pages, because that would be boring, and I worried about my running gag of using cropped Rule 34 would cause problems, so I kind of just sat on the series. I also didn’t think I was particularly funny with the captions, so there’s that. The whole series was only just a mess.
But during my long hiatus from reviews, I came up with a lot of ideas, so this series is resurrecting! My big idea is, as you can see from the title, reviewing the episodes of the MCU’s animated anthology series, What If...? But I have even more ideas, which will come whenever the fuck I stop being lazy and write them! Episodes of Epic Rap Battles of History I didn’t cover, cases from the Ace Attorney games (which will cross over with Psycho Analysis),I finally figured out interesting things I can use Episodyssey for!
Oh, and I’m still keeping in the cropped Rule 34 joke, though I’m going to make sure to link the artist this time. So this is your warning kids, don’t click that link or you might see boobs. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Anyway, let’s get into talking about Marvel’s first foray into the multiverse! What If…? is based on the comic series of the same name, where fans would get to see alternate takes on moments in comic books, all while the omniscient narrator Uatu the Watcher sat back and, well, watched. These kind of stories could be almost anything, from showing what would happen if key moments in famous storylines played out slightly differently to gags like “What if the Fantastic Four were bananas?” It’s an interesting premise for sure, and has unlimited possibilities for storytelling, so it’s easy to see why as soon as they got the rights to Uatu back from Fox and had Loki and Girl Loki kill Kang #1 and then fuck the multiverse up they’d decide to dive in and show us what sort of crazy shenanigans would happen for want of a nail.
The first episode, What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger? is a far cry from crazy shenanigans, though. I’m going to be giving my own take on each episode’s title, and this one I would call What If The First Avenger… But Girl? Now don’t get me wrong here. I love Captain America: The First Avenger, and I feel like a lot of people sleep on that movie. I also love Peggy Carter, and in this episode she is just ungodly hot, with her muscles and her wholesale slaughter of Nazis. If I was Steve I’d go back in time for this woman too, goddamn.
It also helps that this whole concept came from one of my favorite games to play when I’m bored on the bus, Marvel Puzzle Quest. It’s your standard matching puzzle game with light RPG elements and all the character have powers you can use to help you out, and for the 75th anniversary of Captain America they introduced a version of Cap who was Peggy. This version was entirely their creation, and later made it into the comics, and then from there into this show.
So, on the basic conceptual, I should like this episode. But I think that’s the issue here, this episode isn’t really anything new or exciting. Yes, seeing Peggy as a buff woman who could break me over my knee is cool. Seeing skinny little bitchboy Steve become the fucking Iron Giant because they couldn’t get the rights to the Rocketeer is cool. But I don’t really think just being cool is enough to sustain a story in a series whose main conceit is showing us strange alternate takes on things we’ve seen before. Eveything here is just too samey to the movie it’s based on, with Peggy doing basically everything Steve did despite the differences that should crop up. Sure, there’s some cartoonish sexism tossed in but the episode’s length doesn’t let it get focused on too long, which is also a problem for Red Skull, who is barely in the episode and is then unceremoniously killed by a kraken he summons. Peggy even ultimately ends up in the same place Steve did in the main timeline. This episode most feels like it’s trying to ease us in to the concept, but I think it may have pulled its punches a bit too much.
As a showcase for the animation, it works very well, because the cel shaded 3D animation is mostly pretty cool. It’s also neat that they got a lot of the original actors back for their roles, with Hayley Atwell voicing Peggy, and actors like Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, and Dominic Cooper reprising their roles as well. Chris Evans didn’t come back, but his replacement voice is former Spider-Man Josh Keaton, who does an excellent job, so can’t complain there. What I can complain about is Sebastian Stan as Bucky, who gives one of the worst performances I have ever heard in my life and is now the poster child of everything that can go wrong when you hire celebrities who can’t voice act.
Ultimately, while this isn’t the absolute worst foot forward for a series, it’s not really the best foot either. It does set up a lot of the ideas and a lot of the things you can expect to see, but it wraps them up in the MCU’s leftovers. It’s a decent episode on its own, but as an alternate take on The First Avenger, it doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from that movie to really stand tall. Still, if you just can’t get enough Peggy Carter and want to see her beat the shit out of people with a buff Captain America bod, by god does this episode deliver.
Time does not heal all wounds. Sometimes someone cuts too deep, and it leaves an ugly scar or even kills you. Such is this case with Doug Walker’s Nostalgia Critic review of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which I previously reviewed shortly after its release.
Now, the Nostalgia Critic is no stranger to reviewing beloved movies. He’s reviewed Labyrinth, he’s taken a look at some of Schwarzenegger’s classic films, he’s done reviews on Jurassic Park and the Raimi Spider-Man films, but this time it was different. He was trying to not only comment on an incredibly politically charged cult classic, but he was also trying to parody it, spoofing all of the songs in ways that was supposed to affectionately parody the original. Except… none of that affection shone through at all. The whole thing came off as bitter, mean-spirited, stupid, and completely missing the whole damn point. Terribly acted, terribly performed, with barely any actual criticisms save for a couple sentences at the end, this was what finally killed what little respect for Walker I had left.
[And trust me, after constantly letting this man expose himself in his films, my respect for Walker was already low.]
But it’s one thing to simply be bad; this was beyond even that. This was just… sad. Pathetic, even. Like you watch the commercial break in the review, and Doug seems so happy and excited about this project, he seemed so passionate, so confident that this was great work he did, but this is just completely undermined by reality. Like the soundtrack of this is so bad Anthony Fantano named it his third worst album of the entire decade. 10 years worth of music and Doug Walker managed to drop one of the biggest pieces of shit in the twilight of the 2010s. It’s so bad that Rob Scallon, who helped produce the music, took the album off his Bandcamp after only a couple of days. It’s just… so goddamn awful, guys.
The issue with the music is twofold. The first issue is that the lyrics are just horrendously unsubtle and uninformed jabs at the original work. The whole thing is just so shallow and surface-level that it’s cringeworthy. I think the biggest examples, the ones everybody looks at, are the parodies of “Goodbye Blue Sky” and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).” With the former, Doug mocks it by calling it an Oscar-bait song, despite the fact the song was made for the album… which came out before the film. For the latter, he really misunderstands what the song and visuals are going for, decrying it as pandering to edgy rebellious teens who want to feel like victims, despite the fact that the whole thing is meant to be a portrayal of UK boarding schools of the time. I was able to find out these things with a Google search and skimming Wiki pages. What the fuck’s your excuse, Doug?
[Oh, right. You’re an idiot.]
And this really comes to the reason I decided to re-review this. Jim Gisriel took a look at Doug Walker’s reviews of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films and pointed out something extremely interesting that really got to the heart of why I started to lose any respect for Doug: despite ostensibly being a film critic, and being one for over ten years, he does not seem to understand context. In fact, he seems to actively ignore context for the sake of jokes a lot of the time. Jim pointed out how Doug doesn’t seem to really get that these films are being made to evoke the original Lee/Ditko run of Spider-Man and that the corniness is intentional and part of the style. And watching the review of The Wall, it’s even more apparent. Doug just completely does not understand the context of the film, what it was meant to represent, what the symbolism, visuals, and lyrics mean. This is not really a film you should go into without doing some research; sure, viewer interpretation of what you see is valid of course, but Doug just actively and critically fails to understand what Roger Waters was trying to convey with this art at every turn. It’s so frustrating! As a critic you need to inform yourself before you inform others! You can’t just churn out half-baked bullshit like this!
Now, the other issue here is that Doug’s vocals just aren’t made for these kind of songs. It’s one thing to sing a goofy Christmas song, it’s another thing to sing parodies of one of the most beloved prog rock albums of all time. The fact he sings most of the songs in this forty minute slog just makes it all the worse, though thankfully he has the good sense to let the Satellite City crew do all the singing in their extremely baffling but honestly decent cameo. The lyrical content may not be incredible and Lucy Lacemaker’s criticisms are a bit lacking, but at least the Kivouachians can sing. When a murderous sociopathic lesbian alien ferret thing can sing better than you, it’s honestly kind of sad. There’s also the fact Doug got Corey Taylor of Slipknot fame and his son to show up, but Mr. Taylor does no singing until the very end where he sings… the theme song from SpongeBob. It’s such a baffling non-ending that makes no sense and comes out of nowhere that in my original review of this, I angrily ended the review with the baby from Eraserhead so that I could give Doug’s work an equally baffling non-sequitur ending.
[To be entirely fair though, there are very few contexts in which the Eraserhead baby makes sense.]
I think it’s important to touch on Doug Walker’s out-of-touch attack on outrage culture as well. His montage of people chanting “HASHTAG” at computer screens is particularly embarrassing, but it’s really his unsubtle jabs at the #ChangeTheChannel controversy that makes this utterly unpalatable by any stretch of the imagination… well, unless you’re one of the brainless chumps still willing to defend the guy even after everything that has come out. Like, look at this image again.
[Look at it and suffer.]
Is this not the most hamfisted and tacky way you could possibly approach a controversy like that? Doug is clearly making himself out to be a target and a victim in this, which is even worse, cuz… people were sexually harassed, dude. People suffered for your shitty movies. What the actual fuck is wrong with you, man?
Ultimately, this is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad parody. There is nothing of value here for anyone looking for actual criticisms of The Wall, and there is nothing here for fans who like parody, since this is essentially a Seltzerberg film with no budget. Seriously, the special effects in this make the chipmunks in Disaster Movie look realistic. Literally the only part of this special that has any value is the parts Fennah did, and if this cloud has one silver lining it’s that it introduced me (and many others) to Satellite City.
[And boy am I ever thankful for that.]
Ultimately, this isn’t what got me to finally give up on Doug, but it certainly destroyed a lot of goodwill I had towards him. It really seemed like he was getting back on track for a while, but this... there’s no coming out clean from something this indefensibly bad. This is worse than just about all of his self-indulgent crossover films, and that’s really saying something.
Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends was one of the coolest and most creative shows on Cartoon Network in the 2000s, what with its unrelentingly cool style and its creative use of Flash and its memorable characters. But every rose has its thorn, and Foster’s had one hell of a painful thorn on it, and that was its baffling decision to engage in something known as “Kafka comedy.” “Kafka comedies” are stories in which, no matter how good our protagonist is, they will inevitably be shit on by the entire universe and nothing will ever go there way at all.
[Pictured: Non-stop hilarity!]
Foster’s seemed to REALLY like this trope, but the thing is, they never once did it well. “Foster’s Goes to Europe” is a particularly maddening example, as the entire episode has the main cast freaking out, trying to get to the airport for a trip to Europe… only to get there and find the tickets missing, stolen by Madame Foster. The entire episode ends up being a pointless, stressful waste of time with little value beyond inducing frustration or anxiety in the viewer. Worse than that, though, is the episode “Imposter’s Home For Um… Make Em Up Pals,” which is just Frankie torture porn with a twist that is so painfully obvious it will cause you physical pain. These episodes are held in low esteem, and with good reason.
[Guess this is a three-way review now].
But above (below?) them all, the crown ruler of shitty episodes of Foster’s is without a doubt “Everyone Knows It’s Bendy,” an episode that fans and creator alike are disgusted and ashamed by. This episode is one of the things Lauren Faust is most ashamed by alongside “Equal Fights,” but unlike that episode, which was at least well-meaning and has some good elements, this episode is unrelentingly unpleasant and spiteful.
See, it didn’t have to be this way; this was originally going to be a full-length episode, but it got condensed into a fifteen minute episode instead which lead to about half the plot being removed, including the ultimate comeuppance for Bendy. What we end up with is an episode in which every character we have come to love is punished for the actions of some prick that Frankie and Mr. Herriman decide is the most trustworthy motherfucker on the planet despite looking like he deals drugs to school children behind Denny’s.
But hey, let’s talk about Bendy! Let’s have a little Psycho Analysis crossover again! The setup for Bendy is, in all honesty, not bad; at the start of the episode, it’s made to seem like perhaps Bendy is an innocent victim, and his creator had blamed his own bad behavior on his imaginary friend to get out of trouble, which lead to Bendy being put up for adoption. It leads to an intriguing angle to the proceedings; was it actually Bendy who did the things that led to him being left at Foster’s, or was he driven to madness by his owner blaming things on him, leading to Bendy deciding to live the lie forced upon him? Of course, there’s not too much to go on since the episode is so short, but the opening does have a bit of intrigue.
This is all blown in every other scene because without warning or buildup, Bendy is just a dick. Like he immediately starts causing problems while wearing the most obviously evil smile known to man, and is somehow able to smooth talk Frankie and Herriman every time. Why they believe this rancid newcomer over the likes of Coco, Eduardo, and fucking Wilt of all people is astounding. Wilt, literally the nicest imaginary friend on the planet, is punished because the ostensible heads of the house decide to listen to this Hazbin Hotel reject.
The lack of any sort of buildup to the reveal of Bendy’s deception is really what sinks the character; after his introduction, where he is painted as a victim, the literal first thing he does is break something and get the blame placed on Bloo and the gang. There’s not really any suspense or mystery; while the idea that maybe he was driven to madness is there, nothing is really expanded on because this episode is only eleven minutes long and there’s no real time to build up to anything interesting with the character. What we see is what we get, and what we get isn’t pretty.
Ultimately, I’d say that Bendy gets a 1/10 in terms of Psycho Analysis, and that’s because his character commits the absolute worst crime a character could possibly commit.
[Ok, maybe second worse.]*
You see, Bendy is so bad that he made Lauren Faust hate him. He never appeared on the show again, he was never referenced again, it was as if he never even happened. And for a villain to be that absolutely atrocious where not only was his own creators ashamed of him but that he was ultimately scrubbed from the very existence of the universe he inhabited, only the lowest possible mark is acceptable. I honestly don’t think there are many villains so atrocious that their creators hate and are embarrassed by them to this extent. And honestly? It’s good that Bendy is a source of shame. Nothing as bad as him should ever be allowed to happen ever again, because lord was his episode an animated atrocity.
On the unexpected return of Episodyssey, I’m not just gonna talk about an episode of a cartoon; no, I’m going to talk about literally the only fucking thing a cartoon ever put out. This is the failed pilot for Mr. Warburton’s cartoon Kenny and the Chimp, and it failed because the execs saw there was a bunch of side characters who were good-for-nothing kids who caused a ruckus and fought adult tyranny, and they were like, “Dude, just make a fucking show about them.”
[And the rest is history.]
But is there any value in Kenny and the Chimp? Why didn’t it capture the hearts and minds of the Cartoon Network execs back in the day?
Well, aside from the fact that executives at animation studios don’t have hearts, I think the real issue with this pilot is that it didn’t really do much to set itself apart from other cartoons at the time. Like, ok, no, there was no other cartoon where a boy and his chimp helped out a mad scientist named Professor XXXL (pronounced Triple Extra Large, and it has to be bolded) who has a lobster claw for a hand, but it’s not like a boy and his chimp is the most original idea in the universe. It has been done in millions of cartoons and movies, and one time a chimp even starred alongside one of the most wicked men in American history.
[I was originally going to make a joke here about Reagan being the chimp, but chimps don’t deserve that sort of slander.]
But just because the concept is unoriginal doesn’t mean it can’t work. And yes, the concept is shallow, but it is just a pilot, and pilots tend to not be very good indicators of the final project. I’m going to talk about more pilots eventually, but off the top of my head shows like Foster’s Home and even Kids Next Door itself had pilots that were really awkward and didn’t really showcase the strengths of the main show. For all we know, Kenny and the Chimp could have ended up getting more story-driven as it went on like KND did, culminating in some sort of tragic fight where Kenny has to stop an evil Chimpy before he dooms the continent of Antarctica to a fiery death or some such late 90s/early 2000s cartoon nonsense. The point is, we’ll never really know, because again, this is just a pilot, and most pilots suck major ass. Good pilots are pretty rare.
[Pictured: A rarity.]
There are some things that do really stand out, with one of them being Professor XXXL, the mad scientists whose lab Kenny and Chimpy must watch. Much like fellow failed pilot villain Baron Vain, Professor XXXL is hilarious, hammy, and absolutely absurd, considering he has an entire collection of debilitating deadly diseases he doesn’t even know why he has as well as a giant lobster claw for an arm and a completely unexplained hatred for the PTA (though considering they apparently cut off and eat his lobster arm offscreen, perhaps his hatred of them is not unfounded). Unlike Baron Vain, Professor XXXL actually got to live again as a recurring “antagonist” on KND; antagonist is in quotations because he turns out to be one of the few adults who is actually not really evil at all, he just seems that way because… well, he’s Professor XXXL. What he’s really always up to is trying to create the perfect snowcone, which never works out for him because he’s an adult in a show where adults get the shit kicked out of them. Amusingly, every time he appears he has a different animal part. He’s definitely one of the more entertaining gimmick villains on the show.
The pilot also has some pretty amusing gags, a lot of which would probably go over a child’s head… or they would, if they weren’t painfully explained. The “Salmonella Fitzgerald” joke sadly gets a Seltzer & Friedbergian explanation, which kind of ruins things; this isn’t a problem for the Swine Flu cure joke, which has a parody of Emeril, but the Swine Flu joke has aged poorly for… other reasons. Aside from those, it does have some pretty standard gags that would have most likely led to it working better as a series of shorts, though if that were the case I’m not sure if this would be particularly memorable. Do you remember any of the shorts Cartoon Network did fondly? Don’t answer that.
As it stands, it’s become depressingly obscure, though again, I do get why. It just didn’t really do much to set itself apart, and it had far more interesting side characters in it that, when fleshed out, made a far better show. That’s kinda what happens sometimes. Still, I feel like there could be some value mined from this, and there’s certainly plenty of meme potential in the show, at least in terms of out of context images.
[Please explain what is going on in this picture.]
My pipe dream for the 2020s is to foster a semi-ironic Kenny and the Chimp fandom and somehow get Mr. Warbuton to do a revival. Obviously this isn’t going to happen, because maybe five people will read this review and even less people are going to come out appreciating the sheer genius of Kenny and the Chimp, but hey, can you fucking imagine? Galactic Kenny and the Chimp, people drawing chimpsonas, Kenny and the Chimp discourse as people argue whether or not Chimpy is old enough to be shipped with Professor XXXL…
Actually, you know what, I’m glad this didn’t happen. We got KND, Kenny and the Chimp remains an amusing little footnote in history, and I think things really worked out for the best with the Mr. Warburton show we ended up getting.
Let me be honest: I’ve got mixed feelings about Schneider’s Bakery shows. I mean, I always thought Zoey 101 was alright, and Drake & Josh is on like a whole different level than any other live action kid-com, but after that a lot of his shows got… really iffy. I cannot tell you how little of a fuck I gave about shows like Victorious or Sam & Cat, and the subject of this review, iCarly, tended to be really hit or miss. What I’m saying is, when Schneider popped things out of the oven you were way more likely to get a nasty, burned batch of cookies than a fresh, delicious cake.
[Friendly reminder that this was allowed to happen.]
But hey, iCarly had some really great moments, and even if it sometimes went down the drain, especially when it came to its awful love triangle shipping bullshit, it couldn’t ever be, like, outright offensive and demeaning, right?
RIGHT?
Well buckle the fuck in because I have wanted to rip into this episode for years. Fair warning here: below the cut is going to get into some really personal stuff, and if you don’t want to hear about that, that’s fine. I can just tell you right here that this episode is absolute fucking dogshit. But if you want to hear how an episode like this hurt me and affected me personally, well, go on and read ahead, because boy do I have a lot to say.
So. I have sensory issues, and have had them my whole life. It might have to do with… other issues I have, or it may just feed into them, but I am extremely sensitive when it comes to touch. Sometimes my own wife touches me and I flinch. I get startled easily when things bump into me. It’s not a fun or comfortable thing to live with, but I’ve managed to adapt to it.
But throughout it all, there is one thing that always helped me: Beanie Babies.
[HELL YEAH BABY!]
Stuffed animals in general have always been something that has really, really helped me. The soft textures, the ease of snuggling, the comforting nature of them… they definitely help with some of my more discomforting moments. And really, who hates stuffed animals anyway? They’re cute and fun and they liven any living space up!
Apparently, one of these haters is Carly herself. The main plot of this episode is that Carly, well, dates a bad boy; a guy she hated at first for stealing Spencer’s bike, but grew to love and started making out with because… I dunno, teenage hormones and rebellion? Trying to make sense of an iCarly plot is a fruitless endeavor. Eventually, though, comes the moment of truth: Carly is taken to this bad boy’s room and it’s revealed – gasp! - he collects Beanie Babies. Or, uh, Pee Wee Babies as the show calls them. Gotta dodge that copyright. Carly doesn’t like this, because it clashes with her shallow view of her new boyfriend as some punk ass rebellious bad boy, so she tries to break him out of his collecting habit, and when that fails, mocks him behind his back… Which he overhears. He confronts her, tells her off, and leaves, the relationship over. The show really wants you to sympathize with Carly and laugh at this guy for the crime of collecting stuffed animals, but, ah, I don’t really find that fucking funny at all. It’s pretty gross and cringeworthy, frankly.
I’ve always kind of resented these kinds of views in media, where a guy having a softer side that isn’t some macho meat-eating, dick-waving testosterone-fueled bullshit is meant to be a hi-LARIOUS joke; it bothers me on the same level as tasteless “man in a dress” punchlines, it’s just making fun of something that really shouldn’t be an issue. Manliness is not something that is actually able to be defined; manliness is literally just whatever you do as a man, that’s it. But media like this had to slap stupid qualifiers, and sent out messages like “If you are a guy and liked stuffed animals, you are a fucking joke and will never have a girlfriend and will be mocked.” And people like me, who are young, impressionable, suffering from mental illness and depression, and are already insecure are going tos ee shows like this and become ashamed of the stuff we like because it doesn’t conform to what society wants a man to be, which of course means we’ll never get to score with Miranda Cosgrove.
So the main plot is shit, but maybe… maybe the subplots are good? Nope! One of the subplots involves Sam and Freddie, and I’m just gonna cut it off right there because whenever a subplot involves those two it always leads to Schneider expecting us to laugh at female-on-male abuse and bullying and frankly… I DON’T FIND THAT FUCKING FUNNY. Especially since, again, that sort of thing happened to me in high school, where I was in a mutually toxic relationship where I was often bullied and abused. It’s not fun or funny. Didn’t laugh.
The other subplot involves Sam and Spencer, with Spencer trying to cure Sam of a phobia she has due to a dream where a monster eats her soup (again, trying to understand this show is a fruitless endeavor). Maybe I’d be more open to this if it wasn’t for the main plot, because really, Jerry Trainor is the glue that holds this show together and is easily the funniest guy in it. It’s just a testament to how utterly repugnant this episode is that not even he can save it.
So yeah, I hate this episode on a personal level. But even with that aside, this episode is just the most boring, idiotic schlock you could crap out. iCarly was absolutely never good at handling romance. Like, at all. This right here is proof of that; they managed to make the main character into a vapid, shallow slut who only likes guys for their looks and feels the need to try and forcibly change their personality and hobbies if they don’t conform to her vapid, toe-deep perception of how they should be. And when one of the leads is shallow, the other is an obnoxious Nice Guy, and the other is a violent psychopath who shows any sort of affection via violent abuse… yeah, I think it’s safe to say you should stop trying to do romantic plots, because you fucking suck at it.
[Leave the romance to the fanartists. They’re so much better at it.]
The Big Bang Theory is a show that is incredibly divisive on the internet, and frankly it’s for all the wrong reasons. So many have come at this show and called it “nerd blackface” or that it is a shallow and unrealistic portrayal of how nerds are… No. For starters, it’s not exactly claiming to be an accurate portrayal of nerds. Second, I have met people just like the doofuses in this show, who talk and act like that when it comes to pop culture. And third… “nerd blackface?” Are you fucking kidding me?
[Because making pop culture references is TOTALLY comparable to this!]
No, none of the nerd related stuff is why The Big Bang Theory is bad… it’s just how absolutely loathsome and toxic it portrays the relationships of the characters that makes it bad. There’s dysfunctional relationships, and then there’s shit like I witnessed in this episode, season 7’s “The Raiders Minimization.”
This episode is actually doubly unpleasant, because not only does it feature some of the worst relationship writing I’ve ever seen, it gives even the remotest amount of credence and attention to one of the stupidest film theories ever: the idea that Indiana Jones is ultimately irrelevant to the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. This little issue takes up half the episode, as after watching the film with Sheldon, Amy explains this theory to Sheldon and ‘ruins’ the movie for him. Sheldon’s entire scheme in this episode is basically to find something Amy loves and ruin it for her the way she ‘ruined’ Indiana Jones for him.
Now, for the record, Sheldon is probably the best part of the show usually. All jokes aside, Sheldon is at least obnoxious, insufferable, and egomaniacal on purpose as opposed to the other characters, who seem to come off this way accidentally half the time. I think a lot of this has to do with Jim Parsons being head and shoulders above the other cast members in terms of talent.
[Any man who can be on a show this dumb and still get to hang with the Muppets is a legend.]
The thing is, Sheldon works best when we’re laughing at him and his insensitiveness. Sheldon is the Eric Cartman of the show, the friend no one likes, the one we like to see fail. But here, they’re having Sheldon do his usual selfish bullshit, but it’s hard not to sympathize with him in this case. Like I just have to ask: what significant other outright states to their loved one some supposed gaping flaw in a movie they are enthusiastic about and enjoy? Who does that? And yes, she does apologize in the end, but it doesn’t change the fact the episode ends with all the guys moping over this plothole.
I’m just gonna say the whole “Indy is irrelevant theory” is incredibly dumb. Like, yes, The outcome is the same with or without him there. So? Was he supposed to know this? And even if he wasn’t there, and the Nazis all melted without his intervention, what exactly would have stopped Hitler from scooping it up before the Americans got it? The theory has massive holes in it, and then there’s the fact that you’re just nitpicking a pulpy adventure movie about a ruggedly handsome adventurer punching Nazis. It ain’t that deep, fam.
[Just sit back and enjoy Harrison Ford.]
But that’s not what really bugged me with this episode. Sure, it bugged me, and sure, it was annoying… but the Leonard and Penny stuff was a lot worse. You see, the entire crux of this part of the plot is that Leonard’s mother wrote a book about him called The Disappointing Child, which seems to do nothing but detail deeply personal and traumatizing events from his childhood, including his masturbation habits and a breast feeding crisis he went through. This is bad enough, and throughout the episode we see how bad this shit affected Leonard as he keeps detailing horrible stories to Penny. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is the ending.
Luring Leonard in with the promise of sex, she waits until he has his pants halfway off and then reveals she was on a video call with his mother, accuses him of making stuff up to emotionally manipulate her, and then denies him sex and forces him to converse with his mother. This whole thing… like it really speaks for itself. This is so absolutely nauseating and fucked up. How is it emotionally manipulating to tell your significant other about abuse you suffered as a child? Abuse which is detailed in a book written by the abuser? Like why is she going behind his back and talking to his mother? Why any of this? This is just so horrifyingly uncomfortable and disturbing that it amazes me they had the gall to play a laugh track over this.
So really, this show isn’t bad because of nerds being nerds or pop culture jokes or whatever the fuck. No, this show is bad because it has abusive, toxic relationships where everyone acts like the worst human beng possible and we’re all expected to sit back and laugh at all of this disgusting, uncomfortable garbage. Fuck that.
[This is how the episode should have ended, but that would require the writers to not actively despise their characters and their happiness.]
It’s been a while since I did one of these, and Shockingly the first time I’ve talked about The Powerpuff Girls. I think for a situation like this, we should all ease back into the series with a fun, lighthearted topic that I think we all can enjoy.
So let’s talk about feminism!
(I’m sure this is most of you reading this right now.)
“Equal Fights” is a rather infamous episode of the show, in which the girls try and accost a female robber named Femme Fatale who manages to turn the girls into man-hating straw feminists, much like she herself is. That is, of course, until positive female role models teach the girls what it really means to stand up for women and that people like Femme Fatale are merely paying the idea lip service so they can deflect blame and criticism from themselves. Pretty lighthearted and fun for a kid’s show, eh?
This is one of the most divisive episodes of the entire series these days, and honestly, I do kind of see why. Like, this is a superhero action cartoon aimed at kids, and it is dealing with a very serious topic, and since this show isn’t known for its deep moralizing or anything it’s obviously not going to be able to give this topic the 100% due that it deserves. And in a lot of ways it doesn’t; this is a pretty watered down look at a very big topic, even more constrained by the episode’s 11 minute runtime. It takes a brilliant mind to cram such serious topics into such a short timespan.
(Not all shows can be the same level of godly quality as Captain Planet)
But on the other hand, I do think there is value in introducing stuff like this to younger audiences, especially younger girls. I think stuff like this can give you a lot to think about, a lot to read up on, a lot of questions to ask, even if it isn’t necessarily perfect at portraying the issues at hand. And honestly, even if it is pretty simplified, the message of this episode most definitely has its heart in the right place. You should be willing to call out people who are trying to use feminism as a free pass to be an asshole, you should correct girls who think being empowered means they are superior, you should try and educate calmly and try and steer younger people who are being lead astray by false icons to the righteous path. Like, this isn’t a bad message to send to young people, these are all very good things.
I think a lot of the problem honestly lands squarely on how Femme Fatale is written. She’s just not a particularly interesting villain at all. The term “strawman” is used so utterly poorly in internet arguments these days it has basically just become a codeword for “thing you said I don’t like,” but if ever there was a strawman character, it is Femme Fatale. And again, it’s not like what she represents is good or right, but she’s seriously hamfisted and… uhhh… cartoonish to the point where it’s almost laughable that she could ever lead anyone astray. All that being said, I can’ say she serves her purpose poorly, she just could have used some better or more nuanced writing to her, as most of her positions are absurdly transparent, particularly the one in regards to superheroines where there are so many obvious answers that it’s painful.
(THIS position of hers is perfect, though)
And yeah, I get it, 11 minutes blah blah blah. But here’s the thing with PPG: the villains are all quirky, interesting, and fun, even if they have simple and cartoonish personalities. A lot of these villains can fit into a lot of different stories, and they don’t just have one role that theye always play. Mojo can pull of petty crimes and scientific schemes and it makes sense, Him can kick the dog and poke the poodle and you can buy it, Princess can be a snotty brat in one episode and literally trying to hijack Christmas in another and you can buy it because while these are simple characters they have the sort of personalities you can bend to fit a situation.
Femme Fatale does not have this. She is literally a straw figure meant to be struck down by FACTS and LOGIC and REASON. And while she serves that purpose well, she does not feel like a PPG antagonist at all. It’s no wonder she was never used as an antagonist again, because really, what the fuck other stories could she be in? Any story in which she was a major antagonist would feature her being an obnoxious man-hating straw feminist espousing the same ideology that was stripped apart and shown as garbage in her first outing. She just does not have the foundation for a good or interesting character, which is a real shame too because her costume, design, and voice acting (courtesy of Grey Griffin or Grey DeLisle as you may know her) are all perfectly fine. It’s just that all of that ends up being wasted on a character who only exists to be proven wrong.
(Her Psycho Analysis score is 2/10)
I guess this is really just a case where I can see where anyone’s opinion on this episode is coming from. On the one hand, it does have good messages and morals, and it does show that you shouldn’t allow people to use feminism as a smokescreen to hide their actions, as well as giving a sort of brief history lesson about Susan B. Anthony.
But on the other hand, it centers on a bland antagonist who exists solely to be the antithesis of the message and is extremely unsubtle and hamfisted in its moral, and given the restrictions of the show it doesn’t really give the topic the full examination it deserves. The episode is ultimately a mixed bag, one that I think has value but is most certainly flawed.
It’s kind of sad, though, that Lauren Faust views this episode as such a huge failure on her part. Like, yes, maybe she did try and tackle a topic that was far too big for a kid’s cartoon show about superpowered preteens who beat the shit out of a monkey with a giant brain who talks like a dictionary describing Lex Luthor stealing forty cakes, but this is not writing of hers that is devoid of quality or merit.
No, that’s an entirely different episode of a show she wrote.
