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Aqua Teen Hunger Force #91: “Eggball” | February 22, 2010 - 12:00AM | S08E04

Shake is playing his Master Shake pinball table, which sorta resembles what a real-world Aqua Teen Hunger Force pinball machine might look like. Shake’s pinball table was custom made, and autobiographical, featuring many references from the cup’s eventful life.

Meatwad mistakenly cooks the eggs inside the machine; it is explained that the pinballs inside are not actually pinballs, but eggs from a rare flightless bird that live on a remote island. The Aqua Teens must go to retrieve more eggs/pinballs so Shake can continue having a fun time. Things don’t go well, with Shake getting zapped by a big gay baby (his words, not mine), and also put through a large stone torture chamber that resembles a pinball machine run by the birds. The episode ends with about 90 seconds of the birds arguing about their tourism website they’d set up for the island.

This one is pretty fun, but like most episodes of the show is strong at the outset and then sorta peters out (speaking of Peters, Shake’s rationale for having his own pinball machine is that “the Family Guy has one, so why not me?”). It fares as a pretty average episode of the show, which isn’t too bad of a thing. My only quibble is why Frylock and Meatwad would agree to go with Shake to the island just for his stupid quest, but that sorta hearkens back to the old episodes where Shake's leadership is not questioned.

The episode has laughs, and it has George Lowe, who not only plays himself as a pinball machine repair guy, but also one of the birds. He does a crazy voice for that guy, and I couldn’t put my finger on who it was at first, but once I heard it, I couldn’t unhear it. I think the other bird might b C. Martin Croker, but I’m only basing that on the fact that his name is in the credits. Eat a Peach reunion?

#adult swim #aqua teen hunger force #adultswim2021

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Soul Quest Overdrive #1: “Pilot” | ca. February 21, 2010 (online) | S00E01

Yet another failed pilot from our friends at Adult Swim (sponsored by Burger King). This one is the somewhat ballyhooed spin-off of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode “Bible Fruit”. Bert Banana, Tammy Tangerine, and Mortimer Mango are now just Bert, Tammy, and Mortimer. Instead of being fruit, they are now sports equipment, with Bert being a bowling pin, Tammy being a basketball, and Mortimer being a flesh light carrying-case. The animation is also totally different. But the voices are still the same; they even get to use their real names in the credits (on THIS?!).

The dynamic is roughly the same, too, with them being mostly horrible people, and Bert being mostly the worst. In this pilot episode, Bert runs the RV off a cliff and it lands on a guy, who suffers tremendously while they waffle on how to help. They throw away his car jack because it’s made of science and not god. Bert smokes PCP to lift the car but instead hallucinates that Jesus Christ (voiced by Paul Reubens), has rolled up in an American-flag patterned tank. Jesus seduces Bert but then transforms into a tiger. In the non-hallucinatory reality, Bert is just in a dumpster freaking out. The guy pinned under the car uses his car keys to saw off his top half to crawl away, but is picked up by a bird of prey. The end.

Another notable thing about the show is that it’s actually less than half as long as a typical 11-minute Adult Swim show; presumably they were going to air two installments in each 11 minute slot. When four episodes of this aired back-to-back-to-back-to-back it filled a 30 minute time slot with commercials. I vaguely recall conversations at this time about Adult Swim experimenting with making their programming even shorter, with things like this coming out of it. In general, a lot of people liked to make a lotta hay about how attention spans were getting shorter, so short-form entertainment needed to become even more short-form. I guess this sorta thing presaged their “Smalls” program of programs.

At the time this was too hard of a concept to comprehend, because back then TV was made out of a grid in your cable box with the schedule displayed in oblong boxes, and the idea of quarter-hour shows was already too weird for words. It just didn't look right in those oblong boxes. Like, too short to even display the title. How could one even dream of changing the scale of the traditional 90-minute-wide cable guide schedule matrix??

The most notable thing about this show is that it FUUUUUCKING SUUUUUUUUUUCKS. Honestly, this is some proto-Mr.-Pickles bullshit. I once watched season six of Saturday Night Live, because I wanted to see just how bad it was. It was bad, but more capable than I was expecting. But the thing that irked me about that version of SNL was that it just seemed like it was joylessly ticking off boxes to prove itself as being worthy to succeed the original cast SNL. See? We did a drug joke! See, we did a joke about evangelicals!

Soul Quest Overdrive does this but for Adult Swim's pre-existing programming. See? We had a character do PCP and get gay with jingoistic Jesus! See, we had a guy with his intestines hanging out and the main characters were mean to him! See! The animation is ugly-ass on purpose! See! There's rebellious-sounding thrash metal in there! The show is ostensibly satire, but it feels like a masquerade. The whole thing is so repugnant that it’s impossible to see what seems like the shallowest observations about religion being gay or whatever. I mean, not gay, but bad. Sorry, everyone for calling this show “gay” like that. I’m simply as god made me.

But worst of all, they forgot to be funny.

Written by Nick Ingkatanuwat and John Brestan and allegedly Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis; I wonder if they actually wrote this or not and if their credit has to do with coming up with the characters. That whole thing of the show being reskinned seems oddly suspicious to me, and not just a creative choice. It seems like it would’ve made all the sense in the world to just have the original bible fruit star in a show. Anybody know what up with that? Do you think they did the redesign as an attempt but failed, and it was just too late by then?

I’ve touched on the Burger King-sponsored pilot contest that this sprang out of. That contest had a penchant for switching up the actual pilots; substituting one version of the pilot for a new version without really announcing it. This is the first episode to drop on the website, and is different from “Meals on Wheels”, which seems to have meant to be the “pilot” they were officially “competing” with.

I assume what happened was they already made a small order of episodes of this, so it was never really truly competing anyway. Maybe they assumed it would win in the voting. I simply do not know. Anyway, the date I gave is the earliest date I could find where it sprung up on my piracy website by choice. I believe the uploaders there were passionate enough about Adult Swim that their uploads are pretty accurate or as close to an official air-date as you can find.

Soul Quest Overdrive would eventually air all the episodes on television at 4AM one night. This episode never did resurface until I think somebody connected with the production posted it on vimeo or something. My viewing copy of this was pretty decent-looking. I’m not sure it was in HD, but it still looked better than it deserved to.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #soul quest overdrive

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Duckworth: “Pilot” | February 18, 2010 (online) | Pilot Aired on television January 18, 2011 @ 4:15AM

Eli Duckworth is a Huell Howser type of investigative journalist. At the not-that-old age of 71, he’s gone completely demented, and forced out by the network. They chose Turk Cinnamon to be his replacement, played by Matt Berry. He has a Kosovan cameraman played by Jason Mantzoukas. Berry flees Kosovo and takes the cameraman with him (also Mantzoukas blackmails Berry with embarrassing footage of him stealing garbage can lids from orphans to protect himself during an air raid).

Meanwhile, the network throws a bogus retirement party for Duckworth, who is not voluntarily retiring. Duckworth and a newly-arrived Berry clash and have a heated exchange which ends with Duckworth pulling a switchblade. Duckworth is eventually subdued and officially ousted. The show ends with Eli Duckworth watching his own show, now being hosted by the brash Matt Berry, and screaming.

This one’s not so bad, and could easily pass as the “just okay” first episode for a show that’s “actually, pretty good”. There are some pretty decent jokes, and the characters show promise, but I’m not sure they’re written particularly well here. It’s more “adequate” than it is “good”.

This is maybe notable for the restraint it shows; Adult Swim wouldn’t be one to shy away from dark, violent humor. Here the incriminating tape we see COULD HAVE shown the displaced orphans of war being blown to bits, giving a weightier albatross to hang around Matt Berry’s neck. Here it’s not confirmed they perished, they were just further placed in harm’s way by a selfish dick. I sorta feel like they were trying to make something that could pass as a mainstream product.

Again, the NBC Thursday Night line-up of Community, Parks and Rec, The Office and 30 Rock really did have influence on Adult Swim. Those shows, to varying degrees, demonstrated an ability to be smarter-than-most, a tad biting, but still acceptable to a prime-time major-network viewing audience for still resembling user-friendly sitcom humor. It also showed in their importing the UK version of The Office. Adult Swim seemed to shoot for their own versions of this sensibility, just a notch darker and weirder, but not as wild as something like Superjail or Metalocalypse. I think Dave Willis and Matt Harrigan wanted their own Delocated.

Plenty of this falls a little flat, even though I admire the production value. I always remembered the gag where they show the pre-mortem memorial video they have prepared for Eli Duckworth, which is hastily edited to be a send-off for his retirement. A lot of it does feel a little bit like they’re spinning their wheels. I’m not sad this didn’t get picked up, but I could see this show working. I can also see it failing. I’m honestly not even sure where they’d take this in episode 2, to be honest.

More names: Jon Wurster contributed to the writing of this episode! Greg Hollimon, whom I know as Principal Blackman from Comedy Central’s Strangers With Candy, plays a (the?) network head. Dana Snyder plays Duckworth’s caretaker. Duckworth himself is character actor Bill Raymond, who I’m sure I’ve seen before but I’m not sure where. And for those of you who want to put faces to your favorite little guys from ATHF: We got Carey “Frylock” Means as the briefly-shown break-dancer and Mike “Emory” Schatz as the security guard who keeps being distracted by cake.

You can find this one on adultswim.com.

I forgot to keep doing this:

Snake ‘n’ Bacon > Duckworth > Southies > Cheyenne Cinnamon

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #duckworth

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adultswim2021 · 7 days

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Southies: “Mutiny” | February 18, 2010 (online) | Pilot

“Full” version released online February 25th.

“Final” version released online February 26th (or thereabouts)

Aired on television January 19, 2011 @ 4AM

Oh, Wowthies, it’s Southies. Part of the Burger King Big, Über, Network Sampling, an event in which people were invited to go online, watch some pilots for potential television programs (with two different ones going head-to-head each round), vote on your favorites, and reflect on the deliciousness of Burger King restaurant’s many available food products. Sorta like the Night of 1000 Pilots, but far less successful.

Southies was about a crass couple in South Philly Boston (note: I am so mad at myself that I wrote Philly that I'm leaving the evidence that I edited my post up. what the HELL). They have a daughter, who we don’t see until the last third of the episode. New neighbors move in, who are considerably less crass than them. In fact, they are so squeaky clean that they haven’t even had children. There’s no visible proof that they’ve even had sex with each other!! They clash slightly, personality-wise, though everyone is trying their best to make a good impression. When loutish ____ (I watched this literally two and a half times and can’t remember the main guy’s name, which instead of going back to find out I’m going to let stand as a testament to… something.) finds out the new neighbor is a doctor for the New England Patriots, he starts seeing him as a source for free tickets to football games. They throw a party, try to impress them, fail, and that’s the end.

While I firmly consider this to be a dud, it’s not horrible. But: I didn’t really laugh. The show has fleeting moments of extreme comedy; like when a man is seen in the beginning of the show driving recklessly while ranting on his phone to a sports radio guy (I think! AGAIN IT’S ALL SO HAZY I’M SORRY). This scene ends with him crashing into a pedestrian, with a splash of blood, which is barely noticed by the main characters of the show. The rest of the show is mostly just character-based comedy. The characters are pretty colorful and the design of the show is, while objectively ugly, pretty specific. By that I mean they are admirably defined. I really do think that the bare-minimum a cartoon should be is “specific”. You know? Also, the sound design is really great, and is maybe the best thing about the show.

One thing that’s notable about the show is that it’s beset with MULTIPLE VERSIONS, which can perhaps feel daunting to a prospective viewer looking for a definitive experience. I watched this two-and-a-half times, and had to tap out on my third watch. The version I’d recommend is the version that actually aired on television at 4AM in 2011. It’s in 16:9, has tell-tale signs of television broadcast (TV rating, onscreen bug, etc), and looks and sounds as good as it ought to. Here’s a rundown of the versions floating around:

Version one, which is basically just a short clip, actually. There’s a brief opening (an abbreviated version of the opening sequence), and a little “next time, on Southies” sting showing our main characters downing beers on their neighbors porch. The clip in question is an early scene, where the main guy talks to his neighbor outside while movers bring in their new neighbors boxes. It’s the scene where the guy pees on the van. When I clicked on the Burger King site to check out the shows, THIS is what was offered, initially.

Version two, which runs over 13 minutes and resembles the final version, except for the recurring abbreviated opening and a “next time, on Southies” clip occurring every couple minutes. This gives the impression that at one point they intended to chop up this pilot into shorter segments and turn them into webisodes. This seems like a bad plan, honestly, because all the scenes flow together pretty well. It feels like they tried to retrofit an 11 minute pilot into the webisode format and not the other way around. This is the “longest” version, but most of it is because of the repeated opening and closing sequences.

Version three, which is the “final” version and the one that aired on TV, and actually feels like an episode of a TV show. Easily the definitive version of the show.

Cosmetic differences between each version include a discrepancy in aspect ratios. I compared the aired version with the web’s “final” version and saw that the web version was cropped to roughly 4:3. Rougher versions look like there might be additional squishing going on, as well, but I was rapidly losing interest to truly confirm it. Could also be whoever ripped them putting weight on that scale.

There ARE some content differences between the “full” version and the “final” version. The scene where the guy runs someone down with his car does not end in a gory spectacle, for example, and the street shots showing local color are also less extreme (the final version shows a nude vagrant, and an uncouth woman breastfeeding a baby, the “full” version doesn’t even have jokes that I recall). Also the “full” version had more censorship, at least from the few minutes of it that I could stomach. A guy says “asshole” that goes unbleeped in the other version, but is bleeped in the “full” version. The full version is full of crap if you ask me.

SPECIAL THANK YOU TO KON FOR SENDING ME ALL OF THE VERSIONS!!! YOU KICK ASS DUDE

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #southies

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Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge: “Pilot” | February 16, 2010 (online) | Pilot Debuted on DVD on October 27, 2009 Aired on television March 29, 2010 @ 12:15AM

I’m not sure I’ve watched this since it aired on TV in 2010. There’s a reason for that.

Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge originally debuted on DVD as part of the Adult Swim Pilots DVD, which was originally part of the Adult Swim in a Box DVD set. It had it’s non-home-video debut online as part of the Burger King Big, Über, Network Sampling event, where people were invited to log on and vote between two shows that were ostensibly competing with one another for a shot at airing on television and then, MAYBE, becoming a series. The first match-up happened on February 16, and was between this and Snake ‘n Bacon, which previously aired on TV and was covered already.

Cheyenne Cinnamon is a vapid pop-star in a similar vein as, uh (tries to look up who was a current female pop star around in 2009), Britney Spears (sorry, it was too hard), projecting a wholesome image while having an unsavory dark side that involves drugs and promiscuity.

Cheyenne lives in her Sugar Town Candy Fudge which presumably exists as a sorta girl-version of Neverland Ranch. The difference between boy Neverland Ranch is that it exists to aid and abet the molestation of little boys. Girl Neverland Ranch exists presumably for similar reasons, except she is in a permanent state of arrested development due to her own sexual abuse. But that’s not really what this is about. It’s more about how whoreish pop stars are HYPOCRITES.

Emily is a young fan of Cinnamon’s, voiced by Kristen Schall. She’s an awkward girl who was impregnated by her softball coach. She lives in Detroit, which is depicted as a dystopian hellscape, basically Robocop stuff. Cheyenne Cinnamon’s magical land is just outside of Detroit, and Emily seeks her out for guidance. Cheyenne Cinnamon is of no help, and winds up doing more harm than good. There’s songs, which are okay. Cheyenne Cinnamon is voiced by Neko Case from FREAKING HIPSTER MUSIC, but her singing voice is actually Sofia Toufa, likely a contractual thing. They do make jokes about Cheyenne clearly lip-syncing; at one point she loses interest in her song and wanders away, lighting a cig.

The animation was CGI, and it looked roughly a little better than Lucy: Daughter of the Devil. But not as good as Xavier: Renegade Angel. Does that make any sense? Probably not. And yet it’s completely true.

This was created by Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro. There’s a lotta familiar voices in this thing, including one Chris Ward, aka MC Chris. I read, and vaguely remembered, that he was the one who rallied his fanbase to vote for this during the Burger King event. It subsequently won, subsequently aired, and subsequently sucked. I hated this!

Snake ‘n’ Bacon > Cheyenne Cinnamon

Burger King Big, Über, Network Sampling

The BKBUNS (hey, it was an acronym this whole time! Who knew?) was, as previously mentioned, an event where viewers were urged to vote on various pilots that went head-to-head in various match-ups. Then the winners from those match-ups went against each other until there was a clear victor. Spoiler alert, Cheyenne Cinnamon won.

I don’t fully recall how it worked, but I do remember it seemed a little bit like a mess. One pilot had multiple versions presented, and one show wound up having TWO pilot episodes, the second of which dropped after voting already started. I think. I don’t actually know that, honestly. I remember feeling discouraged from voting because it seemed like the stuff you were voting on kept morphing into different versions of itself, like if a presidential candidate suddenly sprouted a second head on election day.

Starting with this year, I’m making a push towards legitimizing online content in certain cases. Originally the idea was to just cover what aired on TV, but the line between online and TV had already begun blurring. Most shows primarily have their TV airdates available, but I’m not going to go out of my way to determine if they debuted online a few days before. I think I mentioned this elsewhere, but there was a time when they actually debuted new episodes online first, then they’d air on TV a few days later. Pinning down all those dates seems like a nightmare, though. But stuff like this just makes more sense.

The matchups will be mentioned as I cover each pilot. My original research for this told me that a UK version of this existed that used “Gumball” (The Amazing World of, I assume?) as one of the pilots? But that piece of information seems to have disappeared. Could it be bogus? I don’t think I care either way!

I am pretty sure that screenshot is from one of the promos. I couldn't find one to check (I didn't really try, honestly), but I think they literally were mostly text, and that bit of Robot-Chicken-style animation was like, 2 seconds long and just was of that guy smiling. A terrific gift. I hope I dream about this man tonight. Goodnight!

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge

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adultswim2021 · 10 days

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Aqua Teen Hunger Force #90: “Rubberman” | February 15, 2010 - 12:00AM | S08E03

I remembered this one being a little too gross. And you know what? IT IS! But you wanna know what else? It got me laughin’, so I’m not pissed off about it! I’m pissed off about other things.

There has been a spate of sketchy activity in the Aqua Teen area, as evidenced by the nasty leavings of drug-fueled sex-havers. There are condoms and needles and crack pipes all over the place. Frylock’s solution is to set up an information center, urging the drug-users and prostitutes to practice safe sex, and he builds a mascot duck out of the used condoms and needles and stuff. He calls him Clucky, the rubber litter ducky. He comes to life like Frosty, a snow man. He’s now Lance Potter, and he has his own theme song. He demands human appendages and has his ward, Meatwad, acquire them using TV-MA violence.

I’m struggling to account for why exactly I like this episode as much as I do. I feel like other shows would invoke nasty things like used condoms and needles for easy laughs, but this one juuuuuust reaches the absurdist sweet spot that complete loser idiots like me gallantly enjoy. This might not be your thing, “no matter what”, but it worked for me.

Well, it worked for roughly the first half. Then it started to peter out. But it was lively, and there was even a funny song in the Frosty the Snow Man style. I actually guffawed at the flashback Carl has where he talks about the killer whale that nipped his stones. And, guess what? Don “Tansut” Kennedy is the voice of Meatwad's new baby boy, and George Lowe shows up as a cop. Also, the DVD has a fun video showing the behind-the-scenes recording of the Rubberman song, which is why you ABSOLUTELY NEED TO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON PHYSICAL MEDI- oh, wait, it’s on Youtube.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

youtube

The First Brit Block (January 22, 2008)

This began a somewhat failed experiment where, on Friday nights, Adult Swim aired their British acquisitions back-to-back-to-back-to-back. We’re talking The Office, we’re talking Look Around You, we’re talking The Mighty Boosh, we’re talking Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. It lasted until April 2nd.

It brings to mind the time they did an “old school bumps” night on August 1, 2008. Fun fact: I think I failed to highlight “old school bumps” night on Ephemera Corner. At least, I can’t find any mention of it in my 2008 posts. Weird! Bad mistake! In fact, they tried to do a weekly-recurring old school night that lasted three weeks from August 22-September 5, 2008.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

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Aqua Teen Hunger Force #89: “Rabbot Redux” | February 8, 2010 - 12:00AM | S08E02

Happy Space Ghost day, everyone! 30 dang years with our great guy. Wow! Seems like as good a day as any to start this shit up again. To the small-yet-still-dwindling number of people who read my shit: Hi! Real life is having it’s way with me right now, so please know I’m instituting a hard-and-fast “will update when I feel like it” rule to this thing for the right-now. So, please don't expect this to be a nightly blog. It'll be more like a "nighty" blog, as in "nighty-night", because it will be angelically and perfectly asleep most of the time. Thank you.

It’s Rabbot Redux: a fairly unnecessary explanation for what happened directly after the events of the live-action episode. It turns out the Aqua Teens drove their moving van two doors down, to the other house next to Carl’s. Not a lot happens; Neil unpacks while Rick and Vivian fight over which room is theirs. Shake immediately claims the bathroom, not realizing it’s a bathroom. Meatwad gets a luxurious room with a salad bar and a harem.

Eventually Rabbot (from before) shows up with a housewarming gift. He then crushes the Aqua Teens’ house, forcing them to go back to the old house. Schooly D shows up and sings a new theme song (which is also used over the opening sequence). This one calls back a lot of stuff from Rabbot, like Carl working out of the home, and “dancing is forbidden”.

This one isn’t especially groundbreaking, and it’s a little puzzling that they felt the need to write themselves out of that "hole". Normally they’d just ignore stuff like that and relish the show's lack of continuity. Not only did they air an episode between the two episodes (a Christmas special), but they also put it on DVD with multiple episodes between this and the Live-Action episode; I’m guessing in some production order or something. It's striking how little these guys care, sometimes. It's weird to see them dutifully tie up a thread.

This one is fairly funny, though. There’s nothing egregiously bad in it. The biggest smile I did was the part when Shake started berating Frylock about sucking his stuff. Shake is a nasty guy who says rude stuff :)

EPHEMERA CORNER

youtube

FOX on Adult Swim bump (January 11, 2010)

Hey, here's something fun and--what luck! I am telling you about it: At this time, Adult Swim was airing episodes of Family Guy shortly after they premiered on Fox, and they had a significant viewership on both channels. In the episode "Big Man on Hippocampus", they aired a fake Adult Swim bumper (intended to mess with Fox watchers) as they went to commercial, making a joke about confusing their viewers into which network they were watching. When the episode aired on Adult Swim, they followed it up with a Fox-style promo instead of their normal bumper. Fun fact: I once spoke to somebody who was writing on an Adult Swim show and they entertained the idea of doing a fake Adult Swim bumper, and asked me if any other shows had done that. I told them "even Family Guy has" because I happened to catch this bit. Took the wind out of those sails.

MAIL BAG

oh wow she's straight-up married to the mindless self indulgence guy. woof

LOL

Hello Mister Swim! What if I called you Mister Swim all the time, like you were Mr. Moviefone? Would that be a treat?

Yeah, it would be a nice treat. Thank you for being so nice to me.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

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adultswim2021 · 27 days

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Space Ghost Weekend (part 2)

It's the second season of the dang GameTap episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and the second of two posts covering them on this dang blog. I have very special thoughts about these, so please! pour over every word. Read this out loud to a loved one if needed.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #98: "Richard" | September 11, 2007 | S09E01

In this episode: Moltar discusses Linda, solidifying her into the canon of Space Ghost. I will not rest until she gets her first onscreen appearance on HBOMax’s Jellystone. In the cold open they joke about Moltar being whipped. Space Ghost proclaims to be the Earl of Peppercorn, which is pretty wacky. Moltar is self-conscious about having a huge head. And other garbage.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #99: "Stephen" | October 31, 2007 | S09E02

Okay, so Yar is back in this one, and he doesn’t actually sound like the one guy I said from yesterday’s post, I fucked up. He also is clearly drawn in a pixel art style, which I didn’t realize because of the questionable provenance of the video files I’m watching. He’s sorta the Bubba Duck of this show (readers! Bubba Duck was introduced late into Ducktales’ run, and those episodes are largely considered [by whom?] to be inferior to the ones that came before them!).

There’s a non-verbal (like Val Kilmer aww) appearance from the Council of Doom. This one is abysmal. They really chopped up the interview to make it sound nonsensical, and I personally consider this to be cheating at making Space Ghost. Worse than having your main character follow an ant around for 11 minutes (Which I like!!!).

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #100: "David" | November 11, 2007 | S09E03

Seems like this show thrives on coming up with silly words like “Lava Chicken”. I sorta liked this one but it’s still pretty weak. Zorak takes over the show after bogusly claiming that Moltar went on “vacation”, tantamount to “escaping” Space Ghost's enslavement. Space Ghost goes on a wild goose chase looking for him. If this were a higher-budgeted episode they’d probably take it to funnier places, but Space Ghost talks to little Space Ghosts instead and it’s mildly amusing. Moltar was in the bathroom the whole time, nasty!

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #101: "Chantal" | December 2, 2007 | S09E04

Why do these all start with a weird click noise? I’m guessing that’s the website’s fault and people screen-recorded these? This one features Chantal Claret who seems like she’s a fan of Space Ghost. She’s also one of the biggest babes the show has ever had. It’s a shame she was wasted on a Gametap episode! I have not heard her music or googled her name + "Israel" so I’m not sure if I respect her or not yet. But she seems cool I like her.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #102: "Mark" (lost) | May 4, 2008 | S09E05 Space Ghost Coast to Coast #103: "Bruce" (lost) | May 16, 2008 | S09E06

Two losties in a row. No Idea who these schmoes are. I can’t even google these dildos. My pal London told me that the lost episode's titles/guests could very well be bogus; filled-in by some ne'er-do-well on a wiki, and that this information has self-replicated itself ever since. I am very interested to find out if that's true or not, but I believe it. I did do a cursory search on the library of congress website and was astonished to see some GameTap episodes listed, but it was missing episodes that definitely do exist so I can't really conclude anything from that.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #104: "Dee" | May 25, 2008 | S09E07

Dee Snider who I heard is MEAN IN REAL LIFE appears in Space Ghost’s monitor. The compositing effects look bad again. Maybe Dee had to self-tape and this is what we got? They bleeped the word bitch in this. The Ghost Planet building is shown to blow up and a title appears on screen saying TO BE CONTINUED. This turns out to be a FUCKING joke. Dee is sorta funny in this, he gets into the spirit of the show pretty well by egging Moltar and Zorak to rebel against Space Ghost.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #105: "Barenaked Ladies" | May 31, 2008 | S09E08

This is easily the best episode of the GameTap batch, because it made me laugh twice. I expect this gag might be polarizing, but the weird live-action nipple with the fly crawling on it made me laugh. It’s unlike anything the show has ever done, really, and it was probably the element of surprise that got me. I suspect that gag might’ve pissed some people off, though.

The other part that made me laugh was when Space Ghost urges the band members to do something “sinsational” and the smack his lips. No joke, I laughed so hard at this, and it was one of those rolling laughs that feel like they’ll never end. They deserved the Peabody award for that joke.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast: "Jonny Quest" | March 19, 1996 | Special

I wanted to throw this in there because I do sorta feel like this comes close to being a SORTA episode? It’s not really any better than the GameTap episodes, in my opinion. It’s mostly Space Ghost being excited about Jonny Quest’s VHS releases. Space Ghost never got an official retail VHS tape release, if I’m not mistaken, and couldn't you just imagine the world we’d be living in if there had been? 9/11 wouldn’t have happened! But Jan 6th still would have :(

That's that for Space Ghost Weekend. We'll begin doing 2010 pretty soon. Maybe not exactly tomorrow, but soon.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #space ghost coast to coast

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Space Ghost Weekend (part 1)

Or should it be “weakened”?

Hey gang, welcome to Space Ghost Weekend. In this special installment, I’m covering several episodes of the Space Ghost Coast to Coast “GameTap” episodes. I unfortunately am bound by the same limitations as most everyone else on the planet, so I will not be watching the lost episodes. I will touch on them by quickly googling the guest and saying something about them that’s a little too abrasive to be funny.

I’ve watched the first two, and the original plan was for me to cover two episodes per post. After watching these two episodes I was inspired to, instead, cover the first “season” of Gametap episodes in one post and the second in another.

Also: I meant to post this last night, so we'll just have two posts in a row.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #89: "Billy" | May 30, 2006 | S08E01

Space Ghost interviews noted wad Billy Mitchell, the jerkoff who pretends to be good at video games. He comes off like an arrogant prick and the whole thing feels like it’s being written by a Space Ghost fan-fiction writer. Who did write these, anyway? I’m vaguely aware that these were probably handled by a different team, but I can’t find credits for these anywhere. For some reason the line “Take it from me, Billy. It’s lonely at the top.” just sounds like placeholder dialogue for George Lowe to riff something funnier over, but doesn't. Space Ghost did have one line where he says “his parents must be brimming with pride” that comes within spitting distance of a George Lowe riff, but he was probably in a room with some interloper directing him, so nothing came out right. At least, that’s how it all feels.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #90: "Rand" | June 13, 2006 | S08E02

Space Ghost talks to Rand Miller, the creator of Myst, I assume. Could be I missed it, but at no point did I register Space Ghost saying “Rand Miller, the creator of Myst” or something like that. He just starts carrying on about visiting Myst island in a comical way that would suggest he’s speaking to the creator of it. I’m guessing the now defunct synopses of each episode did that particular heavy lifting for this one, making this feel less like an episode of a TV show and more like a video clip produced for Rand Miller, the creator of Myst’s birthday party.

Did the Myst guy work on the video effects for this show? That might explain why these guys look like they are inside one of the Myst books.

Line of the episode: “I gotta talk to this hump”. I’m glad these aren’t overly reverent of the guests. That’s one thing these got right.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #91: "Kenny" | July 4, 2006 | S08E03

This could be the worst one. Kenny Wayne Shepherd, a person with whom I am completely unfamiliar with, is interviewed by Space Ghost. Space Ghost uses embarrassing slang the entire time. It’s very written-sounding and the one joke doesn’t land at any point during the short running time. I feel like when you didn’t know the guest on Space Ghost they’d at least clue you in a little bit by saying who they are so you could look into it.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #92: "Al" | October 10, 2006 | S08E04

Okay, so something I never realized until now, which might be instructive to those looking to watch these: The first three episodes are HORRIBLE, but starting with this one they get significantly better. Nowhere near the old magic of the old show, but ALMOST PASSABLE. The video quality is better on these, for one. The guests actually look like they’re supposed to on the monitor. It still feels shoddy compared to even season one. The production values that are lacking are things like being able to use library music, and the audio doesn’t sound like it’s recorded on anything professional. The writing gets a little better, too. Again, still not as good as the real show.

Also: MOLTAR is in this! And Zorak has lines! Zorak was previously shown to get blown-up but doesn’t speak or even scream. This one has a cold open. The episode has the guy who invented Pong. Episodes so far have simply ended with “Interrupt Feed”, and this one’s no different.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #93: "Steve" | Januay 23, 2007 | S08E05

This one has Steve Wozniak. There’s actually a little bit of a plot in these episodes; Zorak is looking to buy a weapon and Moltar peruses a fake eBay site. They actually drew new assets for this. Zorak winds up with a brain canon which launches his brain out of his own head, pathetically. The last image of the episode is of Zorak, looking r-worded. This was the first legitimate laugh these episodes got from me. Most of it was fairly unmemorable, though.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #94: "Rob" | February 28, 2007 | S08E06

A cold open? In the commissary!? Space Ghost has a dead cat in a carrier, and is distraught. I Forget who the guy is in this. I think he’s the one I looked up and went “oh, this is the Night Trap guy”. I hope it was accurate of me to call him the “Night Trap guy”.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #95: "Howard" | March 17, 2007 | S08E07

Space Ghost thinks the guest is Willard Scott. There’s an unfunny bit with a big fly. He looks bad! He’s voiced by someone whose vaguely recognizable. Sorta sounds like Dr. Grumbles from the Brak Show episode Hippo. Note how weird it sounds when George says “the buuug zapper ray”. Not only is the delivery strange, but the sound recording just sounds poor, like they spent $50 at best buy for the sound equipment. I did like the “no whammies” bit, but I’m wondering if they already did that joke somewhere on the show.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #96: "Wayne" | April 21, 2007 | S08E08

The idiot from the Flaming Lips is interviewed. The little sitcom plot of this one is that Space Ghost has the commissary chef replaced with Moltar, and Moltar taunts Zorak with recipes for cooking up Mantis. The Space Ghost crew sing a version of that “do you realize” song at Wayne, which is almost funny. There were some fun drawings in this, and there was a part where Zorak looked really off-model. I think it was taken from a 60s episode. He looks just nuts. The only laugh of the episode.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #97: "Larry" (lost) | May 24, 2007 | S08E09

I am simply sorry to disappoint you, but this is the first missing episode of the GameTap era. Sorta weird that this should be a thing. Even though I’ve been less-than-kind to this era, I would love to see this recovered, obviously. They interview Larry Hunter. There’s almost zero chance I’ll figure out who this even is. I even tried to look at the GameTap website through archive.org and clicked around and maybe it’s because of missing flash assets or something, but how the fuck did people even watch these things? I couldn’t even begin to figure out where these were on the website.

Later we'll cover the rest of the episodes! How about that! And then after that we’ll continue with 2010, and I will strongly consider adopting a pithy one-paragraph format for the rest of the blog.

#space ghost coast to coast #adult swim #adultswim2021

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Christmas in December | December 15, 2009 - 4:30AM | Special

Well folks, 2009 has come to a close with this. The first Sunday of December featured a special night in which that evening’s programming featured interstitials of shop-at-home style segments advertising real Adult Swim products. I don’t think there was a phone number to dial (I literally watched this mere hours ago and don’t feel like checking), but there were numerous calls to action for people to go to the website and order these fine products (just in time for Christian Christmas)

The two hosts, Kurt and Sue, seem like shop-at-Home pros. They clearly aren’t very familiar with the stuff they are selling, but the real hosts on the real shop-at-home channels rarely are. The patter and banter they engage is fairly amusing at times; like anytime they identify William Murderface on a piece of merch they refer to him as “William the Murderer”. An early line, when Sue suggests taking your will out of the safety deposit box and putting a Carl nesting doll in there instead, seems like the kind of thing that may have been fed to her by a writer, but it’s mostly very genuine.

I don’t have a recording handy of the original evening’s worth of bumpers, so one thing I can’t comment on is if the 11-minute version of this completely encompasses all of the segments that originally aired. Sorry. But, that's this one. This was actually considered lost media by some who didn't happen to be on the secret website I got this from. But if you feel like watching it yourself: Merry Christmas!

Q: WHAT ARE WE FUCKING DOING (now that 2009 is done)? A: We are going to do THE FINAL SPACE GHOST WEEK, featuring the heretofore-unseen-by-me GameTap episodes. I’ve heard terrible things. But I might take a little time off before I get into that. You must simply be patient, my little man. My little son. You are my boy and you are not a girl.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

youtube

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #christmas in december #Youtube

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Metalocalypse #45: "Fatherklok" | December 14, 2009 - 12:30AM | S03E05

Skwisgaar does not know his father. He deals with this by fathering thousands of children himself; the mothers of whom are simply paid off so he doesn't have to accept any responsibility. Murderface, the boob of the group, decides he’s going to attempt to become a father figure to Skwisgaar. This not only rubs Skwisgaar the wrong way (because Murderface just wants to fuck his mother, established in the previous episode), but it also bumps up against Toki and Pickles’ own father issues in a way that only sorta pays off at the end of the episode.

Skwisgaar winds up moving back to Sweden after a fruitless hunt for his real father. This is because his mother claims to have found his father. It turns out that she’s just remarrying, and means that he’s officially his NEW (step) father. Skwisgaar is miffed, but decides to stay and become a regular jackoff who works a regular jackoff job and spends his evenings hanging out in a bar and being in a monogamous relationship. What a bore! It all comes crashing down when he walks in on his mother getting fucked by two dudes, which calls back a flashback earlier in the episode where we see a young Skwisgaar experience the same thing.

We also see flashback Skwisgaar run through the woods, avoid being eaten by wolves, and fall into a chasm. There he discovers the remains of a god-like creature, a guitar sticking out of the ground like Excalibur, and the remains of another human being who may have been unworthy. Skwisgaar takes the guitar as his own, heavily implying he’s some kind of rock god. So, I guess he’s a rock god. Simpsons memes are the domain of rapists and bad boyfriends, so I dare not use one here, but if I were to, it would be a Frinkiac of Marge saying “You know, Metalocaylpse turned into anime so gradually that I hardly even noticed”.

I remembered season three as feeling a little less potent than previous seasons, and I think I may have been right. The padding is palpable in some spots, but its’ not too flagrant or anything. It feels important because we’re seeing the origins of one of our guys, but the laughs are a little sparse. I think my favorite bit was the scene that shows Nathan being the only member of Dethklok to have a good relationship with his dad, via a montage of them hanging out and genuinely enjoying each other’s company. That'd be my favorite bit.

EPHEMERA CORNER

Venture Bros: Holiday Havoc (2009)

Sometime, around Christmas Time, Ken Plume's A Site Called Fred released this Christmas song via their annual Holiday Havoc event. This one has the Moppets singing! (Dana Snyder voice) Sooo, that happened. You can listen to it for yourself here, but, uh, maaaaybe you should listen to a cool song instead.

#metalocalypse #adult swim #adultswim2021

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The Venture Bros. #49: "Pinstripes & Poltergeists" | December 14, 2009 - 12:00AM | S04E08

The mid-season finale! The season four split of Venture Bros has been covered somewhat, but basically the boys burnt themselves out behind the scenes and needed a break, so they asked Adult Swim if they could cut season four into two halves, while also upping the episode order from 13 episodes to 16 episodes. The network went for it, and it took them nearly a whole ‘nother year to deliver the back half. So, this ends up sorta being a mini-finale.

This is another one of those episodes that’s more effective if you’re devoted to the story of Venture Bros. Meaning: it’s a little light on laughs. There are jokes in here, and they’re all fine, but there probably won’t be a big long list of all the times I laughed at this one or anything like that. It’s goal is mostly to get Brock back into the fold and to set up story elements that are going to come into play for the second half of season four. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I prefer when the show makes me laugh. But I don’t not care about the story, either.

In this one: The Monarch gets swindled by Monstroso (mentioned in a previous episode and now here in front of our eyes) into signing a bad deal thinking that he’s merely going to help the Monarch defeat Dr. Venture. Turns out he’s signed away his rights to arch Dr. Venture to Monstroso.

Monstroso’s methods are lawyerly by nature, attempting to financially ruin Dr. Venture by making him use a certain amount of square footage of his compound towards some public good. When scoping out an abandoned factory on his property he discovers that Brock and SPHINX, the super-secret organization dedicated to stopping villainy that falls outside the purview of the OSI by being non-costumed and non-Guild-of-Calamitous-Intent-affiliated, have been using the space secretly. In other words: Brock has been with the Ventures this entire time. Aww.

Also of note: 21 is shown speaking to 24’s ghost. We’d seen him chatting with 24’s skull throughout this season. He also confronts Brock, a callback to the scene in Tag-Sale, You’re It (apparently repeating the same dialogue) where 21 tries to take Brock on with a non-working light-saber. Brock’s dismissive “boo.” to get 21 to run away is now met with a punch to Brock’s face. Brock doesn’t kill 21, but his newfound respect for giving him a decent fight leads him to team up with him to go beat up Monstroso. The episode ends with Brock casually eating a bowl of cereal in the Venture’s kitchen and Hank, in a delayed reaction, being stunned to find him there.

SPHINX were previously portrayed as bad guys, but it’s explained that when they were conquered, it was decided to just take all their Egypt-themed crap and use it to start what’s essentially a new group. This explanation seems squarely aimed at the fans of the show who just wish it were an unironic action cartoon. But it's alright! I like it fine, okay! I'm not pissed off at all! At this, I mean.

EPHEMERA CORNER

The Family Guy Chicken Star Wars Double Feature (December 20, 2009)

Sometimes I’ll make note of something to cover for Ephemera Corner; like some kind of specially scheduling thing Adult Swim does that in theory is worth mentioning. But then it comes time to talk about it and it’s like damn, I do not care about this at all. Consider how now in 2024, it seems like they run marathons of certain shows all the time, just because that’s a proven-to-work model for cable television nowadays. So, I might get choosier with these EPHEMERA CORNER programming things.

But for those of you who care: Take note, Star Wars heads! Your favorite Seths went head to head and did a Star War double feature rivaling the Ewok TV Movies. The sci-fi epic about one man turning to the darkside and deciding to deprive his children of committing incest with each other by moving them to different planets will knock your socks off, because that’s what this is: It’s just the movie Star Wars but with cartoon guys in it. I don’t even think they changed the words or anything. Have fun imagining how it must’ve played with 2009-era commercial breaks.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #the venture bros.

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Aqua Teen Hunger Force #93: “A PE Christmas” | December 13, 2009 - 11:45PM | S08E01 regular series version aired March 15, 2010 @ 12:00AM

It’s the Aqua Teen Christmas episode, in which Shake and Meatwad steal Public Enemy’s identity and try to cut a rap record to sell on Christmas. It’s a pretty bad plan because they record it on Christmas eve and Shake sorta just believes the CD will appear in stores on Christmas day. The stores aren’t even open on Christmas day!! SHAKE COME ON!

Mostly this one just consists of two scenes: one where the Aqua Teens attend Christmas mass and Shake acts childish. There’s a nice crowd scene filled with people from previous episodes, and for some reason the monsters are all sitting on the opposite side of the room. You hate to see a segregated church on Christmas. Then there’s the scene in the recording studio, with Shake and Meatwad coming up with bad ideas and recording them. The gag at the end of this, where Shake takes a big shit and it winds up on Meatwad’s track for Silent Night, is pretty low-brow, but it’s maybe the funniest thing in the episode. I don’t want to like it, I’m not about that life.

This episode featured a bit of a twist where it turns out that Shake was filled with eels, hence his violent butthole outbursts. The original broadcast of this ended with Shake in jail, because he broke into a Better Buy store to see how his record was selling. He gets exploded to death after a bunch of eels burst out of him. When this episode aired as part of season seven, they added an ending that sorta explains that the Eels belonged to Chuck D (flagrantly misidentified as Flava Flav on the ATHF wiki).

This one’s pretty lame, TBH. There were things in it I liked, but the best thing being a poo poo joke really should sum it all up. It also mildly perturbed me that this one airs between the live-action episode and the official season premiere “Rabbot Redux” which includes some continuity, so I numbered it according to the in-season air order. It also airs in some fucked up order on DVD! I don’t know why! I don’t know why they do that!

Oh yeah I also liked the part where Shake rudely bangs on the glass in the recording studio. Pretty funny.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

youtube

15th Annual Holiday Content Marathon (December 18, 2009)

An evening of Christmas specials. Also scheduled was “Gary’s Posse”, a promo that aired for a show that didn’t actually exist; in fact, I forgot all about this. Gary’s Posse was put on the schedule for AM this evening, but it was just a repeat of King of the Hill. Swimpedia (where I got this and nearly all of my scheduling information from) uncovered the fact that this is actually just stock footage from Julien Tromeur called "Afraid of your sexual fantasies." The promo advertising Gary’s Posse was just a gag.

10:00/2:00 King of the Hill: Livin' on Reds, Vitamin C and Propane (Schedule Promo Falsely Announced Gary's Posse at 2:00 AM)

10:30/2:30 King of the Hill: 'Twas the Nut Before Christmas

11:00/3:00 Robot Chicken: Dear Consumer

11:15/3:15 The Venture Bros.: A Very Venture Christmas

11:30/3:30 American Dad!: The Best Christmas Story Never

12:00/4:00 Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future

12:15/4:15 Aqua Teen Hunger Force: T-Shirt of the Dead

12:30/4:30 Moral Orel: The Best Christmas Ever!

12:45/4:45 Moral Orel: Honor

1:00/5:00 Baby Blues: A Baby Blues Christmas Special

1:30 Tom Goes to the Mayor: Rats Off to Ya!

1:45 Sealab 2021: Feast of Alvis

5:30 Home Movies: The Adventures of Cho & Amy Lee

MAIL BAG

KON writes:

Worth noting about THE VENTURE BROS S04E07 "THE BETTER MAN"... it features the use of the Dana Snyder character completely unironically going "sooo... that happened." Granted this was right before that became the exclusive domain of MCU-type dialogue, but it still hit my ear about as harshly as any Bush-era slur. Nasty!

OH YEAH! I think I made note of that but for some reason it didn't make my write-up. i couldn't tell if that was bad writing or if that was an intentional character thing, but usually characters call each other out for saying stuff like that. So, that happened.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

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Metalocalypse #42: "Dethmas" | December 7, 2009 - 12:40AM | S03E04

Hey, it’s the Metalocalypse Christmas episode. I don’t have any memory of this episode, and I actually think I may have stopped watching the show at this point? Not deliberately; sometimes I just let a show pile up to a point and realize “huh, I guess I don’t watch that show anymore”; sort of a “one day your mother puts you down and never picks you up ever again” kinda thing, because you kept relying on the same jokes over and over again.

I try to strike a good balance between being positive and being critical but I also feel weird about withholding my true feelings. On one hand, this episode is “just okay”, and if I were to just be doing a simple passive Metalocalypse watch-through I’d probably shrug that this one was indeed “just okay”, and watch the next one with cautious optimism. The episode never really offended me with it’s lukewarm substandardness or rubbed me the wrong way in some uncharacteristic way. As I struggle to find something positive to say about this episode, I find myself realizing that I’m not just giving this student’s paper a C minus and moving on to the next. I’m now conducting an autopsy.

This episode feels sitcommy. That’s okay, as long as it’s very funny. It has a few subplots that all sorta intersect at the end, but it doesn’t result in a huge explosive spectacle. The stories are: 1) Dr. Rockso is out of prison and looking to reconnect with Toki, who understandably wants to keep his distance from him. 2) Toki wants to celebrate Christmas, but the rest of the band isn’t playing along 3) Murderface has a Christmas special in the works. 4) Dethklok’s mothers all come to Mordhaus (and Murderface wants to fuck Skwisgaar’s mom). The episode culminates with the Murderface special being very bad; the main conflict being that it’s sponsored by the church, and the band finds this out as the show is underway, live on television.

A fracas erupts when it’s revealed Dr. Rockso stole Toki’s presents for cocaine money. The presents were going to be used on camera as part of a live gift-swap segment. The rest of the band curses out Murderface for making them look like dorks. Dr. Rockso gets a handjob from Skwisgaar’s mom. Murderface’s grandmother is pinned under a big wooden cross.

It doesn't help that nearly every plot in this feels like a rehash of a different, more effective episode. And, as far as spectacles go, the one that ends the episode is pretty tepid. Usually we expect massive amounts of death and gore and whatnot from this show. The parallel of Murderface trying to play it safe to secure big money from the church and this episode, PERHAPS UNIRONICALLY playing it safe by not going too far or too blasphemous makes me wonder if it was either an attempt at satire or a watering down of what was intended? Did the crew unironically decide to take the sanctity of Christmas into account and make an episode that isn’t too rough? Could it be Turner’s standards and practices at work, which hamstrung other Adult Swim shows in the past? If this is an attempt at satire about that very thing, then that’d be a little better. But that doesn’t magically make this episode funny. I can’t take back my lack of laughter. This one's a dud.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Robot Chicken: The Complete Fourth Season DVD (December 15, 2009)

This was touched on earlier, but it's the only thing notable about this release in my opinion: season four of Robot Chicken included a somewhat subtle gag where each episode’s title was part of a larger whole message. Actually, it’s two messages, mimicking a letter and a response letter. The episodes were aired slightly out of order, but when presented in production order on DVD, they would present the message unscrambled, as if the episodes were named as a way to get a secret message out there.

Help Me. I'm Trapped In a DVD Factory They Took My Thumbs Two Weeks Without Food Tell My Mom I Love Her But Not In That Way Love, Maurice P.S. Yes, In That Way

Dear Consumer We Are a Humble Factory Maurice Was Caught Unionizing Our Labor President Hu Forbids It Due to Constraints of Time and Budget The Ramblings of Maurice Cannot Be Erased, So Sorry Please Do Not Notify Our Contractors Especially the Animal Keith Crofford!

Apparently, Warner DVDs from this era are under scrutiny for being susceptible to disc rot, so please know that the “DVD Factory” in question was in Pennsylvania cutting corners that deprived me of being able to sell my very rare Space Ghost DVD for 150 dollars on eBay.

How much should I charge for that DVD with only one working disc? Some one might want it, right?

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #metalocalypse

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The Venture Bros. #48: "The Better Man" | December 7, 2009 - 12:00AM | S04E07

I think I figured out a big reason why I love The Venture Bros, but unfortunately I can’t spend too much time expounding on this in a non-shallow way: it reminds me of Ducktales. Because sometimes they go on a big adventure to an exotic locale, and sometimes they have to spend an afternoon killing money-eating bugs in Uncle Scrooge’s money vault.

In this one, Orpheus and the triad are shown up by the Outrider, the man who “stole” Orpheus’s wife. But he ends up in hot water and requires Orpheus’s help after being trapped in hell. Billy Quizboy does illegal surgery again! And: also: we get the return or H. Jon Benjamin as the master, who reveals himself to Triana and scares her away from Dean and encourages her to go live with her mom and become a dang Harry Potter.

This one’s sorta important in that it helps drive home the fact that Triana and Dean do not belong together, and it writes her mostly out of the show. At least it writes her out of the compound (she comes back at least one other time I can think of). But mostly it’s just about the characters hanging out and stuff. Yeah, there’s a big scary monster from hell, but a lotta of the episode is just about Hank and Dean going to the mall and sexually harassing women. Dermott is there, too! He’s one of the rudest guys on the show, so cherish him.

I am struggling to come up with compelling highlights to illustrate the fact that I enjoyed this episode, which I actually did a great deal. I think I’m just happy that it doesn't’ have a plot I feel compelled to write-up extensively. So I’ll just list gags now I liked:

The Matthew Lesko reference. It is fucked up that that dude has a suit with question marks and not dollar signs. Could it be the Mandingo effect? Oh, in my reality we call it the Mandingo effect because–

A fairly neutral “transgender” joke! In 2009! They didn’t even gratuitously use the slur! Wait, I like a lack of slurs?? SINCE WHEN???

“I look like Rufio!”

The whole scene where the Master pretends to be future Dean is bleak as fuck. Hilariously Jackson and Doc said they based his look on Bernard Goetz. I mean, look at this and tell me he doesn’t belong in the Ventureverse:

A thing I didn't LIKE, per-se, but bears mentioning: maybe one of the worst production errors of the show has Dean wearing a suit to impress Triana, then suddenly not, then it's back again. I originally thought it was due to them shuffling the scenes in the edit but Jackson took responsibility and said he approved of the storyboards of a suitless Dean without thinking. God DAMN him!

EPHEMERA CORNER

Christmas in December Specials (December 13, 2009)

Even MORE Christmas in December to Tell in the Dark. This night featured a few other Christmas episodes but not that many more. I'd rather not post the schedule because of SPOILERS!!! Also, I thought maybe they did something else that was special, but if I am to read Swimpedia correctly the previous Sunday's "Christmas in December" was the one that featured the shop-at-home segments and not this one. I refuse to delete this paragraph. Sorry.

MAIL BAG

I just heard the good news: Adult Swim 2021 is coming to FunnyOrDie to cover Tim and Eric projects as bonus emphemera content. W00T!

The cat is "right out" of the bag: I will be doing this in some form. In fact, I sorta regret not attempting to include more non-Adult Swim Tim & Eric stuff in the ephemera section (like the Shrek 3 promos, for instance), but that's okay. But I do sorta think those are significant in that they are an important stepping stone towards Bedtime Stories. But I'm not gonna cover Eric's music videos or his future court case (speculation)

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #the venture bros.

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Robot Chicken #71: “Dear Consumer” (aka “Robot Chicken’s Full-Assed Christmas Special” | December 6, 2009 - 11:50PM | S04E20

Tonight’s episode of Robot Chicken is filled to the brim with spoofs and goofs about everyone’s favorite holiday: Christian Christmas. We got a salty Santa played by Seth MacFarlane, a thorny Thor played by Seth MacFarlane, and an antsy atheist mayor played by Seth MacFarlane. There are sketches where stuff gets unexpectedly violent, including not one but TWO sketches where the joke is there are bombs inside a present. There are not one but two sketches where people are marveling at an inanimate object that turns out to be anthropomorphic and in pain.

There’s a long-ass Thor sketch, which is worth noting that it came out before the Thor movie, which might be why it seems oddly unspecific. There's a sketch where it's a classic Christmas story but they add words like "bitch" to it. There are also multiple Santa sketches that don’t really explicitly refer to one another, but they share MacFarlane’s voice acting and animation maquette.

There’s a thing that Robot Chicken does where I have to give it points in that it’s fairly good at coming up with original jokes. Comet the reindeer’s legs being blown off after saving a child in a well, but he can fly so he floats at walking level? I’ve never seen that before! That’s an original idea, probably! But it’s not totally satisfying comedically, which is a missing part of the equation with this show.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Christmas in December Specials (December 6, 2009)

On December 6, 2009 (the first Sunday in December), Adult Swim started it’s “Christmas in December” promotion, where Christmas episodes (both new, old, and syndicated) ran in between shop-at-home style segments. These were eventually collected into their own 11-minute “special”, which aired a little later in the month. I’ll watch and write that up properly when the collected version airs.

Here’s the schedule for December 6th; offset times were because of the shop-at-home segments. I took this schedule from the wonderful swimpedia blog, which is the single most important resource this blog has:

10:00/1:50 King of the Hill: Livin' on Reds, Vitamin C and Propane

10:30/2:20 Family Guy: And the Wiener Is...

11:00/2:50 Family Guy: A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas

11:35/3:25 Robot Chicken: Robot Chicken's Half-Assed Christmas Special

11:50/3:40 Robot Chicken: Dear Consumer (this!)

12:10/4:00 The Venture Bros.: The Better Man (new!)

12:40/4:30 Metalocalypse: Dethmas (new!)

1:15/5:05 The Mighty Boosh: Eels

5:30 King of the Hill: Pretty, Pretty Dresses

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #robot chicken

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Metalocalypse #41: "Dethhealth" | November 23, 2009 - 12:30AM | S03E03

I watched season three when it was on television, but remember very little of it, and suspect that I haven’t actually rewatched any of these since they aired. Good thing I spent way too much money, probably, buying this brand new on blu-ray.

Dethklok have a brush with death when playing a concert meant to help a massive amount of pets get neutered. Fans bring their pets to get their balls cut off by a machine, which collects the nasty things in a big glass receptacle. Predictably, all hell breaks loose, and the Sphinx is destroyed, nearly flattening Dethklok. Suddenly, the band becomes very aware of their own mortality. This fear or “hamburger time” (the “making cotton candy” of this episode) causes the band to subject themselves to a variety of doctors visits. The doctors visits cause Murderface to doubt his sexuality, Nathan to befriend his clearly-suicidal dentist, and Toki to have a cat. Also: Pickles tests come back and it’s bad: he’s dying.

This one is pretty great, but it still demonstrates the show’s transition to the half-hour format not being exactly seamless. In fact, there’s a case to be made that it barely hangs together and is more-or-less a collection of B-plotish vignettes. There are scenes that you know would’ve been snipped out if this were an eleven minute episode. The scene where they all demand a decadent beach vacation before going to the doctor and leave a desiccated beach in their extravagant wake feels especially superfluous. The dream sequences are cool, but they feel like padding. But if you're going to pad for time on this show, it should be with something nightmarish, like Nathan having his jaw get Ebert'd off his face. The saving grace is that a lot of it is pretty funny, so who really cares? Honestly, this shit being more cohesive sorta comes second to that.

Pickles doesn’t wind up dead after all because it turns out his pee was switched with Toki’s cat’s, who dies, because anything Toki loves winds up dead. This one ends with a fairly delightful music video where Toki’s head appears on a cat’s body. It’s derivative of season one’s Dethkids, but again, it’s a fun cartoon with cussing in it. How could something with cussing in it be taken that seriously?

The post credits scene, where Nathan takes his dentist on a hunting trip in order to save him from suicide and he immediately says “check this out” and blows his own head off with his hunting rifle, is a memorable one. It’s the one part I remembered from this, hence me calling it "memorable".

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode 2.5 | November 23, 2009 - 11:30PM | Special

Okay, I am not going to watch this because fuuuuuuck that. This was an extended cut of the special, which I believe debuted on DVD. So, please enjoy the JPG of the DVD cover I put up there. I'm sure you are all loving that.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #metalocalypse

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