Star Trek: The Next Generation cosplay!

Degrassi"Purple Dragon/naked Emma" episode cosplay!

Galactica cosplay!

Sydney Bristow whenever she woke up in a hospital on Alias cosplay!

Beetlejuice cosplay!

Spaceballs henchman cosplay from the waist down!

Eartha Kitt cosplay!

Ennio Morricone cosplay!

Justin Bieber cosplay!

"Hall H," a 10-hour block of original music from shows and movies that are popular at comic or anime cons and are frequently cosplayed at those cons, airs Saturdays and Sundays at 7am Pacific on AFOS.

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Based on an ongoing manga by Tomonori Inoue that's been in print since 2008, the new anime show Coppelion is a promising-looking sci-fi actioner set in a not-so-promising-looking future, where a horrible nuclear meltdown in Tokyo--reflective of Japan's pre-Fukushima anxieties about nuclear power--caused most of the city's populace to evacuate. However, post-apocalyptic Tokyo looks far from hellish: 20 years have passed since the meltdown, so vegetation regrew over the cityscape, and feral animals wander the abandoned, forest-like metropolis. The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force sends three highly trained agents into Tokyo to look for remaining survivors. But because this is a seinen manga we're talking about here (a seinen is a manga targeted to a young male audience), the three agents are teenage schoolgirls, something that's never been seen in an anime before.

Ibara (Haruka Tomatsu), the leader of the force's special Coppelion unit, and her two fellow "dolls," bespectacled Taeko (Satomi Akesaka) and easily excitable, constantly-refers-to-herself-in-the-third-person Aoi (Kana Hanazawa), are all genetically engineered and resistant to radiation, so they're able to walk around contaminated Tokyo without hazmat suits covering their school uniforms. "Puppet,"Coppelion's October 2 premiere episode, took a nifty approach to establishing the show's haunting--and thanks to its skilled background artists, oddly picturesque--setting. Instead of diving into a pile of clunky-sounding exposition right from minute one like most animated sci-fi shows do, the premiere took its sweet time introducing the Coppelions and doling out expository details.

We didn't find out why the girls are called Coppelions until the second episode, the overly melodramatic "Future," when Aoi explains to a survivor that they were named after the French ballet Coppélia, a tale of a mechanical doll who thinks she's human. We still don't even know what exactly Aoi's superpowers are yet, other than the power to annoy when she either cries during a tense situation or gets all Chris Hardwick-y about things that are great (dessert after a hot shower, for example). Aoi is reminiscent of Molly Hayes, the youngest, most immature and most pugnacious heroine in Marvel's Runaways, and I suspect her powers will be similar to Molly's.

I like how Coppelion is slowly world-building post-apocalyptic Tokyo, and "Hope," the best of the episodes that have aired so far, continues that gradual approach. It introduces the show's first genuine villains, a mysterious group of B-2 bomber pilots who are flying into Tokyo to make life difficult for the hazmat-suited survivors and are most likely responsible for spreading even more radiation to the already irradiated city (my money's that they're Americans).

The raised levels of contamination that they've perpetrated have disrupted the charity work of an anonymous figure known only as the Delivery Man, who's been bringing food and supplies to the survivors. The JGSDF discovers that the Delivery Man is actually Denjiro Shiba, the same scientist who built the power plant that caused the meltdown in Tokyo. He harbors enormous guilt for his connection to the meltdown, so to atone for creating the disaster, he's been doing all sorts of good deeds, whether it's delivering goods to the people or attempting to rescue an elderly woman who's been kidnapped by the bomber pilots. Shiba turns to Ibara for help in rescuing the kidnapped nursing home resident, and Ibara gets to demonstrate that she has "10 times the athletic ability of normal humans" in a sweet rescue scene that finally delivers--no pun intended--on the agile and combative action that's been briefly glimpsed in the show's opening credits.

Both Coppelion and the batshit crazy Kill la Kill are the first anime shows I've been watching while they air first-run in Japan, instead of several years after they first aired (Coppelion episodes are being posted on Hulu and Viz Anime the same day they drop in Japan). Like during the first few minutes of the cautiously paced "Puppet"--we knew these three callow schoolgirls on some sort of strange field trip were going to be the show's heroines, but we didn't understand what their skills were until about halfway through the premiere--I have no idea where exactly Coppelion is headed, but I'm looking forward to where it'll go, as long as it's not a boring-ass farm that the show inexplicably stays trapped in for almost its entire 13-episode run.

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

I hate breaking down TV shows or movies as "it's this plus this (minus that)." But sometimes it's the only way to explain shit. In the first couple of episodes that Crunchyroll.com allowed non-subscribers to stream in their entirety, the animated Japanese showbiz satire Samurai Flamenco, the charming and enjoyably understated creation of writer Hideyuki Kurata and director Takahiro Omori, is basically the Captain Freedom wanna-be superhero arc from Hill Street Blues plus Kick-Ass (minus the fascism, racism and shock value of the Kick-Ass comics).

But I have a feeling that in the next few weeks, Samurai Flamenco will develop into something more nuanced and complicated than that equation. That feeling is due to how surprisingly grounded and subdued Samurai Flamenco's sense of humor has been--and how observant and dead-on the show has been about Japanese showbiz--as it revolves around Masayoshi Hazama (Toshiki Masuda), an idealistic 19-year-old male fashion model who suits up as the titular costumed avenger. He wants to become a superhero just like Harakiri Sunshine or the Money Rangers, the colorful heroes of the live-action Japanese superhero shows he's adored since he was a kid. But how's that possible in a complicated world where superpowers are impossible to acquire and injustice is everywhere, except it's not on such a melodramatic level--it's more on the level of quieter and more mundane mishaps like misplacing an umbrella or unfairly losing a job--and costumed supervillains who cackle loudly about their misdeeds exist only in manga or on TV?

Our surrogate into Hazama's slightly warped but well-meaning fantasy world is Hidenori Goto (Tomokazu Sugita), a 24-year-old--and already burnt-out--uniformed police officer whose law enforcement experiences have been closer to Barney Miller than the Lethal Weapon/Bad Boys/Hot Fuzz vision of law enforcement: in other words, lots of sitting around in between responding to reports of minor offenses like jaywalking. One night while off-duty, Goto first encounters Hazama in an alleyway, hiding behind trash cans without any clothes on after his Samurai Flamenco costume was torn during a skirmish with some schlub Hazama tried to apprehend for smoking in a non-smoking area. Hazama thinks that if he first focuses his crusade on pursuing smokers who ignore non-smoking signs and jaywalkers, he'll be able to move onto bigger fish. The problem is that Hazama isn't exactly good at this costumed vigilante thing. He gets beat up by a bunch of middle-schoolers in the premiere episode "Debut of Samurai Flamenco!" That's how terrible Hazama is at crimefighting.

Although Goto is aware that his bumbling new friend--and drinking buddy who, of course, refuses to drink--isn't right in the head and he isn't quite on board with Hazama's worldview that you shouldn't settle for curry udon when what you really want is curry rice, the cynical cop decides to help Hazama out on his crusade. Hazama is going to need more of Goto's help now that Samurai Flamenco has become a social media phenomenon. Video footage of him trying to retrieve Goto's inadvertently stolen umbrella goes viral in the same way that the world first learned about Kick-Ass, except in an amusing touch that separates this grounded show from the smug power fantasies of Kick-Ass, Samurai Flamenco barely does anything superheroic or physical in the video.

Everyone, including Mari Maya (Haruka Tomatsu), a member of a J-pop girl group, and Sumi Ishihara (Chie Nakamura), Hazama's easily exasperated manager from his modeling agency, is attempting to figure out Samurai Flamenco's secret identity--unlike Lois Lane, Sumi isn't blind and has a feeling that he could really be Hazama, but she's hoping it's not true--and now in "Flamenco vs. Fake Flamenco," Joji Kaname (Jurota Kosugi), the muscle-bound star of one of Hazama's favorite superhero shows, Red Axe the Armored God, sees the Samurai Flamenco craze as an opportunity to resuscitate his buzzless-of-late showbiz career. The producers of a Japanese panel show round up Hazama, who's afraid of being unmasked, and a bunch of other celebrities who have also been suspected of being Samurai Flamenco for a special broadcast in which they intend to both reveal which of their panel guests is secretly Samurai Flamenco and give him a reward of one million yen, but then in swoops Kaname, who takes down a bunch of masked stuntmen in front of the studio audience. He unmasks himself to the audience while clad in a better-looking version of the Samurai Flamenco costume that was created for Hazama by a fashion designer he knows. Hazama is stunned and unsure how to handle the fact that he's become a victim of identity theft by one of his action show idols, while Goto, who's no stranger to dealing with liars due to his job as a cop, doesn't care for this self-serving imposter who comes up with lies about creating Samurai Flamenco just to further his career.

If this were 30 Rock or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, both live-action comedies that are actually more cartoonish than Samurai Flamenco, Kaname would be a total asshole and a one-note antagonist (adversarial guest characters were never the strong point of those two shows, McPoyle siblings aside). But we get a tip-off that Kaname is actually an all-around good guy--and isn't going to antagonize Hazama for too long--when we see him leafing through his dwindling fan mail in front of his manager, who, instead of being a sleazy showbiz piranha, is an unassuming lady who's much older than either Sumi or Kaname and whom Kaname has clearly been loyal to for a couple of decades. A much jerkier TV star would have dumped her ass a long time ago. Before I watched "Flamenco vs. Fake Flamenco," I didn't pay much attention to the Samurai Flamenco key art and opening credits, which both feature Kaname, so I was surprised by how well the episode integrates Kaname into the cast and establishes that he's going to wind up instead as a mentor of sorts for Hazama, who could use much more of the fighting skills Kaname displayed each week on Red Axe. "Flamenco vs. Fake Flamenco" also comes up with a clever way to shut down Sumi's attempt to find out if Samurai Flamenco is really her own client without making me throw up my hands in frustration.

The artwork and animation on Samurai Flamenco are well-done--I especially like the attention to detail in the footage of superheroes and rubber-suited villains from Harakiri Sunshine, Money Rangers and Red Axe--but an even more impressive aspect of Samurai Flamenco is the lack of fan service, that fixture of anime where a panty shot (Kill la Kill was all about that this week), a little sideboob, some jiggle action or a shower scene is thrown in to appease fanboys even though it has shit to do with the story. Hazama's attractive manager is actually fully dressed on this show. Samurai Flamenco is clearly written for grown-ups who have matured past watching anime mostly for fan service and are hungry for something even more substantial than curry rice.

I'm not a regular viewer of the NBC cult favorite Grimm, but it's a pretty decent supernatural procedural whenever I get the chance to watch it (Sleepy Hollow and Lost Girl are more my jam). La-La Land Records has released an album full of highlights of Richard Marvin's score music from Grimm's first two seasons, so to add much more recent material to AFOS'"Buckets of Score" block at 5pm Pacific on Halloween tomorrow, I'm throwing in selections from the Grimm score album. Two of those selections are from the gladiatorial Grimm episode "Last Grimm Standing," an episode I've never seen (it looks an awful lot like that gladiatorial episode of Angel, Grimm producer David Greenwalt's old show).



CBS's current niches are lowest-common-denominator sitcoms and interchangeable-as-fuck police procedurals that only Republican dads seem to love, while ABC continues to score with female viewers. I feel like the beleaguered and increasingly irrelevant NBC, which doesn't give a shit about genuinely funny comedy anymore (way to front on John Mulaney and his sitcom, NBC, although maybe Mulaney's better off hooking up with Fox now), should try becoming the Horror Network because of the successes of both Grimm and the Dracula premiere and the critical acclaim of its Hannibal reboot. Fear Itself, NBC's last attempt at a new horror anthology show, failed to attract eyeballs a few years ago. I'd like to see NBC try again with a horror anthology because maybe it will catch on this time, now that American Horror Story revived the anthology format over on FX. And maybe a terrific score album that I could add to "Buckets of Score" rotation will come out of that NBC anthology show.

Speaking of enjoyable score albums that have come out of TV shows, the 42-track Arrested Development album, which composer David Schwartz has been talking about compiling since Netflix debuted the show's fourth season, will finally be available from Varèse Sarabande on November 19, and AFOS already has the soundtrack in rotation. I've added Lucy Schwartz's "Boomerang," the catchy song that sounds as if it could blend in with her dad's Arrested Development score music and is featured in the end credits of the fourth season's final episode, as well as the show's "Eye of the Tiger" parody "Balls in the Air." It's such a dead-on "Eye of the Tiger" parody that you could easily picture it turning up in some crappy '80s Cannon Films production that wanted so desperately to create another "Eye of the Tiger" but failed to understand whatever it was that made "Eye of the Tiger" a huge hit.

Most TV heads love Bradley Whitford because of his heroic Josh Lyman character from The West Wing, but to me, Whitford gets a lifetime pass for a much lesser-known bit of post-West Wing TV work: Burn Notice creator Matt Nix's The Good Guys, where Whitford killed it each week in his comedic role of a gung-ho Dallas police detective who still thinks he's living in the '80s. The Good Guys came and went so quickly that when I revised the following blog post about fake bad acting in May 2012, I totally forgot about The Good Guys, which had gone off the air only a couple of years before. Whitford's return to TV this fall in ABC's surprisingly funny single-camera comedy Trophy Wife has brought back memories of The Good Guys, a show I miss a lot (The Good Guys can be revisited on Amazon streaming, but it will never hit DVD or Blu-ray because it would be impossible to clear all the '70s and '80s rock songs that were featured on the show).



The funniest episode during The Good Guys' single-season run involved the Whitford cop character transforming himself into a fake Mafioso. I'm adding it to a list of my favorite instances in which a decent or excellent actor portrays a less talented version of himself or herself (the other day, I Hulu'd a Good Wife episode where Alicia and Cary hire a hilariously overwrought Chicago actress to play a mock trial witness, and if the actress who played the crappy thespian weren't so unknown, I'd add her to the post too). The Good Guys episode precedes 11 other moments of great fake bad acting I previously discussed in January 2008 and May 2012.

Bradley Whitford, The Good Guys ("Silvio's Way")
I can't believe I nearly forgot this episode, where Whitford's Dan Stark brings out of mothballs an old undercover persona of his when he attempts to bust a group of mobsters he failed to catch seven years ago because he fell asleep during his own sting operation. The best part of Detective Stark's fake Italian character Silvio is his inconsistent accent, which Whitford kept changing during "Silvio's Way" to show how terrible Stark is at acting (one moment, he's channeling Walken, and then the next, his mobster voice turns into a completely different-sounding Brando type of thing). Whitford once told an interviewer that "Silvio's Way" was his favorite Good Guys episode to shoot, even though it called for him to strip down to a green Speedo when Stark gets strip-searched and stays undressed for a ridiculously prolonged amount of time that was longer than Whitford (or any male viewer like myself who never man-crushed on Josh Lyman and paid more attention to Mary-Louise Parker) was comfortable with. But like those creepy MADtv"Parents Walking Around in Their Underwear" sketches with Michael McDonald in just a pair of Walter White tightie-whities and dress shoes ("Boy, it's hot!") and Mo Collins in a pair of granny panties, the Speedo scenes make for great comedy. "I was instructed to gain weight and this is a tip for any actor--when you're doing a television show, when the head of the network says, 'It would be great if you gained some weight, because this is kind of a dilapidated character,' the next thing coming is a script where you're in a Speedo," said Whitford to Assignment X in 2010. "So don’t do it."

Sigourney Weaver, Galaxy Quest
Weaver's Gwen DeMarco character is a biting spoof of the uselessness of the secondary actors on certain shows that carry titles that rhyme with "car wreck." DeMarco had two functions on her old show: to serve as eye candy and to repeat whatever the spaceship's computer said. In Galaxy Quest, DeMarco amusingly undoes everything that Weaver worked to accomplish in the Alien films as the iconic Ellen Ripley, one of the fiercest female characters to ever spearhead a sci-fi franchise. Well, almost everything. The little-seen Galaxy Quest 20th Anniversary Special mockumentary--an uproarious Sci-Fi Channel tie-in that was stupidly left off the Galaxy Quest DVD and Blu-ray but can be seen here, here and here--suggests that DeMarco's limited Lieutenant Tawny Madison role had some merits. The mockumentary discloses that Tawny's trademark karate kick (a nod to the fighting moves of both Emma Peel from The Avengers and Erin Gray's Colonel Wilma Deering from the disco-era Buck Rogers) inspired a whole generation of blond-wigged female "Questarians" to imitate Tawny's fighting moves, and that maybe Tawny was a better role for DeMarco than the one she turned down, "a small part in a Woody Allen movie" (a sly reference to Weaver's appearance in Annie Hall). Speaking of secondary actors on fake sci-fi shows...

Derek Jacobi, Frasier ("The Show Must Go Off")
The esteemed British thespian deservedly won an Emmy in 2001 for his hilarious guest shot as Jackson Hedley, a mash-up of William Shatner and future Frasier guest star Patrick Stewart. The episode involves the Crane brothers' reunion with Hedley, a stage acting mentor who introduced them to Shakespeare when they were kids. Because Frasier and Niles are elitist snobs, they're more familiar with Hedley's Shakespeare work than with his signature role, as the android sidekick on Space Patrol. The brothers are appalled to discover their acting idol has been reduced to a Galaxy Quest-like, post-show career of "hawking T-shirts and sci-fi gewgaws," so in another one of their misguided business ventures, they attempt to rescue Hedley from the sci-fi con circuit by bankrolling his stage comeback. But Frasier and Niles become even more horrified when they watch Hedley rehearse and realize maybe he isn't as great a thesp as they thought he was. To give you a good idea of Hedley's atrocious delivery, think Dr. Orpheus from The Venture Bros. suffering from diarrhea--and if he had taken elocution lessons from Jon Lovitz's Master Thespian from SNL.

Alec Baldwin, SNL"Soap Opera Digest" sketch
In a 1993 sketch that's funnier than his most popular SNL bit, the balls-deep-in-double-entendres "Schwetty Balls," Baldwin delves into his soap opera acting past (The Doctors, Knots Landing) to play Trent Derricks, the star of Doctors, Nurses and Patients. Actually, Derricks isn't that bad of an actor. That is if you overlook his tendency to give interesting pronunciations to medical terms ("We believe it might be a pole-yip. It might be the Big C: canker! It might be benig. It might be malig-nant.") and names of Ivy League universities ("There's no class at Yeah-leh Medical School that can prepare you for this!"). (The sketch can be found on the SNL: The Best of Alec Baldwin DVD but is nowhere to be found in Yahoo's "complete"SNL archive.)

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock ("Jack-Tor")
I know it's Baldwin again, but the guy just excels at pretending to be a subpar performer, whether it's inebriated '60s variety show host Joey Montero, the Dean Martin analog in the recent live episode "Live from Studio 6H,"30 Rock's delightful homage to live TV, or Jack Donaghy, a network exec with no clue about how to say a simple line or two in front of a camera. Lorne Michaels, whose company produces 30 Rock, must really be good-humored about himself because the "Jack's outtakes" montage in this episode is clearly star/showrunner Tina Fey's jab at Michaels' stilted cameos on SNL.

Any of the actors who played Jack Horner's porn stars in Boogie Nights
Almost everyone has a favorite moment from Boogie Nights. Heather Graham stripping to nothing but her roller skates. The shout-out to I Am Cuba. Mark Wahlberg mangling that cheesy theme song from The Transformers: The Movie. The drug deal-gone-bad sequence. The end credits--for those of you with a weak bladder. For me, it's Graham stripping to nothing but her roller skates. Coming in a close second is any of the footage from Jack Horner's movies-within-the-movie, in which we glimpse the genesis of John C. Reilly's dimwitted comedic personas ("Let's get some of that Saturday night beaver..."). Amber Waves' stilted delivery right before her first sex scene with Dirk Diggler always amuses me. Julianne Moore is a whiz at portraying vacant-eyed starlets like Amber. The character has never quite left Moore: a little bit of Amber seeped into a surprisingly funny SNL Ladies Man sketch where Moore stole the show because of her performance as a ditzy spokesmodel, as well as into her Cookie's Fortune character, an amateur actress who participates in a cheesy production of Salome at the local church.

(Photo source:It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Wiki)

Charlie Day, Danny DeVito, Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ("Dee Reynolds: Reshaping America's Youth")
Failed actress-turned-high school drama teacher Dee Reynolds (Kaitlin Olson) is having trouble connecting with her bored students, so she hopes to win them over by taking them on a field trip to New York. Because this is It's Always Sunny, the trip to take in all the sights and sounds of Broadway gets massively downsized to a trip to a movie screening of Othello at Paddy's Pub, the always underpopulated Philly bar run by Dee, her brother Dennis (Howerton), their ex-dad Frank (DeVito), Charlie (Day) and Mac (McElhenney).

And because this is long-suffering Dee, Dennis and Mac trick her and sabotage her video projector so that they can debut their racially offensive, ultra-low-budget fourth sequel to Lethal Weapon, a movie that first-time directors Dennis and Mac finally manage to get finished after what I assume are hours and hours of arguing over whether blackface is offensive and totally missing the point of why so many African Americans find it offensive (the best moment is Mac's use of Lord of the Rings to defend blackface: "Ian McKellen plays a wizard. Do you think he goes home at night and shoots lasers into his boyfriend’s asshole?").

Most sitcom episodes with an "our gang makes a movie" plot usually bug me because of the implausibly high quality of some of the footage that was shot by characters who are supposed to be amateur filmmakers. For instance, we're supposed to chuckle over how The Brady Bunch's home movie about the first Thanksgiving was directed and edited by a kid who's a first-time director, but why does Greg Brady's slo-mo footage of the Pilgrims in peril look like it was shot by Sam Peckinpah? (And where does a kid in 1970 get the editing technology to artsy-fartsily slow down a home movie and then flip it to Keystone Kops speed? And why do I keep looking for logic in a sitcom where the dad is an architect who built a house for a family of eight and gave it only two bathrooms?) Fortunately, It's Always Sunny doesn't make the same mistakes and instead fills Lethal Weapon 5 with nothing but mistakes (jump cuts that are unintentional instead of artsy; Charlie mangling his lines; Dennis and Mac inexplicably switching roles halfway through the movie; Dennis playing Murtaugh with just a fake mustache while Mac plays Murtaugh in full Kirk Lazarus from Tropic Thunder-style blackface).

I particularly like how Lethal Weapon 5 is overlit like a softcore porno. Speaking of porn, how about that hysterical MacGruber-style sex scene between Frank as Riggs and Murtaugh's Indian casino owner adversary and a bored prostitute as a bored prostitute? DeVito is just so fearless during intentionally bad love scenes like Lethal Weapon 5's candle-lit and hilariously overlong bedroom scene, which reminds me of both the fake gay porno DeVito appeared in with Dana Carvey during a late '80s SNL sketch that had Gene Siskel (Kevin Nealon) and Roger Ebert (Phil Hartman) reviewing gay porn and DeVito's later SNL performance as Joey Buttafuoco in a spoof of all those trashy '90s TV-movies about Amy Fisher.

So Dee does end up making her students happy, but not in the way she intended, as we see the guffawing teens have a ball over the incompetence of Dennis and Mac's cinematic train wreck as if it's Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

Donald Glover and Gillian Jacobs, Community ("Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples")
The cult favorite has thrown its characters into so many situations where they've proven to be terrible actors, whether it's a Greendale Community College TV commercial, children's theater or extremely awkward PDAs. But the "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" episode's brief glimpse at the religious movie directed by Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) and starring Troy (Glover) and Britta (Jacobs) stands out because of Troy's pronunciation of "Beatitudes" and Britta's silly dance moves.



Fran Kranz, The TV Set
The breakout performance in the wildly funny 2007 indie movie The TV Set belonged not to David Duchovny (although in The TV Set, he's pitch-perfect as a frustrated Hollywood screenwriter) but to the then-unknown Fran Kranz, who, since The TV Set, has become a favorite actor of Joss Whedon's (who's no stranger to poking fun at sucky acting) and appeared in Whedon productions like the two-season curio Dollhouse and the long-delayed Cabin in the Woods.

Loosely based on writer/director Jake Kasdan's own experiences in the TV industry, the Judd Apatow-produced TV Set mocks everything that's wrong with the business today, from network interference--which Kasdan and Apatow had to deal with while working on one of my all-time favorite cult shows, Freaks and Geeks--to the rise of so-called reality TV to the power trips of self-absorbed and needy actors from scripted shows. Kranz played one such self-absorbed and needy actor, the fictional Zach Harper, the scenery-devouring star of The Wexler Chronicles, yet another legal drama about a young lawyer in love with the one that got away (a network exec is overheard describing The Wexler Chronicles as "a little Northern Exposure, a little Ed," but the show looks more like Ed meets October Road meets Ally McBeal, except without the lame peeks into Ally's brain).

Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman), Leverage's resident grifter and expert on playing pretend

In one of The TV Set's funniest moments, Duchovny--whose writer character is The Wexler Chronicles' showrunner--watches in horror on the show's set as the inexperienced Harper overplays the anger during a subdued dramatic scene in which the show's hero has to mourn the death of a loved one. Kranz's humorous turn as an overemotive ham in The TV Set was the first place where I took notice of Kranz's talents, which Whedon put to great use in Dollhouse, where Kranz, who played an insane techie genius who programs "Actives" like Eliza Dushku's Echo, deftly shifted back and forth between comic relief and tragic figure.

Gina Bellman, Leverage
A comedic standout as ditzy bisexual Jane on the Steven Moffat-created Britcom Coupling, Bellman is also one of the few British actresses who can pull off an American accent, as she proved time and time again on Leverage as Sophie Devereaux, a British grifter who moonlights as a theater actress when she's not busy grifting. In the Rashomon-style episode "The Rashomon Job," Bellman's skills with many accents besides American ones fueled a terrific running gag in which each flashback retold by Sophie's Leverage teammates offered a different take on her British accent.

The chameleonic Sophie is amazing when she pretends to be someone else (whether it's as an American federal agent or as a half-Indian businesswoman) during the Leverage team's cons. But as the Leverage pilot points out in a flashback to Sophie in Macbeth and as her teammates later note amongst themselves after they're forced to endure one of her local plays, a misguided restaging of Death of a Salesman, Sophie's terrible when she has to act onstage.

Speaking of lousy versions of Death of a Salesman...

Kevin Kline, Soapdish
In this wonderfully scored (Alan Silvestri in Perez Prado mode!) and frequently quotable 1991 farce about the behind-the-scenes turmoil and ego-tripping at the fictional daytime soap The Sun Also Sets, the funniest moment of Kline's role as washed-up former Sun Also Sets star Jeffrey Anderson takes place not during the Sun Also Sets scenes. It takes place before the unhappy Jeffrey rejoins the soap (Kline's knack for farcical rage in A Fish Called Wanda won him an Oscar, and that knack is also on display in Soapdish).

Seduced by current Sun Also Sets cast member Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty) into getting her rival Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) off the show, producer David Barnes (Robert Downey Jr.) decides to rehire Celeste's old on-screen (and off-screen) romantic partner Jeffrey, whom Celeste despises. Jeffrey has been out of the network TV radar for quite some time, so when David tracks down Jeffrey in Florida, he's floundering in a dinner-theater production of Death of a Salesman.



In an A.V. Club"Random Roles" interview, Kline, who actually appeared early in his career on a daytime soap (Search for Tomorrow), said that he identified with Jeffrey's experience in dinner-theater hell.

"That's the scene that got me when I read it. I just laughed out loud; that whole idea is so funny," recalled Kline. "'Don't call me Mr. Loman!' It was a good experience. 'This is not what I do! I'm a classical actor! I'm a serious actor!'"

The absurdity of delivering dramatic Arthur Miller dialogue while waiting tables reminds me of an unintentionally funny Revolutionary War/Civil War school play I saw when I was a kid. Because the junior high school's theater department couldn't afford mic packs, the students had to hold a mic in front of them as they spoke, so this resulted in long and awkward pauses between the dialogue as they handed the mic back and forth to each other. The shit was funnier than The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.

Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
I don't think I've seen a more entertaining statement about how stupid and offensive blackface, brownface and yellowface are (especiallyataroundHalloween) than Downey as bad Method actor Kirk Lazarus as Sergeant Lincoln Osiris in the 2008 showbiz satire Tropic Thunder. The Ben Stiller-directed film establishes that Downey's Aussie thespian is a five-time Oscar-winner who's so dedicated to his craft he'll have plastic surgeons darken his skin color for a role like Osiris the African American Vietnam War soldier, but when you see Lazarus-as-Osiris speak in a voice that sounds like it was crafted from an hour of watching clips of Danny Glover on YouTube and listening to '70s black sitcom theme songs, you think, "Really? This is Oscar-caliber acting in Lazarus' universe?" Rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a co-star in the film-within-the-film who's actually black, must think the same thing too because he's frequently offended by the Aussie's attempts at emulating black people.



Downey buried himself so well into the part of a Method actor who buries himself too well into his latest part and has trouble getting out of character that he earned an Oscar nomination in what has to be the first example of an actor receiving an Oscar nod for fake bad acting (personally, I thought Downey's even more hilarious in-character DVD commentary was more deserving of a nomination, but whatever). His transformation into the cliché-spouting black soldier, an even more clichéd Vietnamese farmer and the dude playing both dudes proves how pale--no pun intended--Tom Cruise's equally praised comedic turn as Flo Rida-loving sleazebag studio exec Les Grossman is in comparison. When you watch Lazarus-as-Osiris or Lazarus-as-himself, you barely notice any traces of Downey's normal voice or mannerisms, whereas despite being hidden under an equally huge amount of prosthetic makeup (reportedly developed by Cruise himself), Cruise didn't bother to change his voice, so you're all too aware it's Cruise. Now that's genuinely bad acting.

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Ever since Samurai Flamenco introduced Mari (Haruka Tomatsu), Mizuki (M • A • O, and yes, that's her actual, interpunct-y name) and Moe (Erii Yamazaki), the three members of the J-pop girl group Mineral Miracle Muse, I've been wondering why Mari has been behaving strangely and has gotten the most screen time outside of Hazama, Goto and Sumi, Hazama's manager. This week's Samurai Flamenco episode, "Idol Devastation," clears up the mystery that is Mari, who's been watching Samurai Flamenco's rise to fame like a hawk and correctly deduced last week that Goto's temporary stint in the Samurai Flamenco suit (which Goto seemed to be enjoying) was a ruse to throw off anyone's suspicions about Hazama's double life. Like Hazama, Mari believes she's found her true calling as a superhero, and when a trio of kidnappers abducts Samurai Flamenco and attempts to unmask him to nab a million-yen reward for uncovering his identity, she seizes the opportunity to make her debut as Flamenco Girl and rescue Samurai Flamenco.

That great little commercial shoot scene in "My Umbrella Is Missing"--Mari messes up her cue when she notices Hazama's singing to himself the theme song from Kaname's superhero show Red Axe to calm his nerves--makes a whole lot of sense now. Mari's a superhero genre fan just like Hazama, except, as we see from her shrine of superhero show memorabilia, she's more into the magical girl subgenre (you know, Sailor Moon), the basis of Flamenco Girl's costume and persona. As a superhero, Mari turns out to be much smarter and more physically aggressive than Hazama, who still gets overpowered by the kidnappers despite picking up a few moves from his new martial arts mentor Kaname off-screen. She correctly figured out that this inept male fashion model is Samurai Flamenco, and she easily defeats muggers and would-be kidnappers with swift and non-stop kicks to their crotches. The silly noises Flamenco Girl makes as she delivers those nut shots are the comedic high point of "Idol Devastation," which should be retitled "Jewel Devastation."

Mari's one big mistake is lousy timing. Had she not flunked the written portion of her driver's license test seven times, she would have beaten Samurai Flamenco to the punch as Japan's first real-life superhero. So she blackmails Hazama into an arrangement where she'll keep his identity a secret if he agrees to team up with her and let her be the rescuer or victor while he would act as bait for muggers. It all works out well for Flamenco Girl and boosts her online popularity, while Samurai Flamenco has to put up with playing the damsel-in-distress and serving as coffee boy to his new boss Flamenco Girl in order to keep his secret identity safe. Last week, Kaname lied to the public about coming up with the idea for Samurai Flamenco, and Hazama managed to stand up to him and stop him from continuing with his lies (well, almost: the whole kidnapping mess is caused by Kaname's decision to fly off to Hollywood to chase after an acting role instead of keeping his promise to Hazama to give him fighting tips during a night of patrolling Numasaki, one of Japan's most crime-ridden sections). This week, Hazama isn't as assertive when dealing with Mari, due to his fear of being outed as Samurai Flamenco. Maybe it's also because he saw what Mari is capable of with her heels and decided, "Okay, I'll just back off this one."

Instead of expressing gratitude to Flamenco Girl and Samurai Flamenco for helping prevent crime and making the streets safer for women at night, Goto's police department superiors circulate a memo to all officers, including Goto, to keep an eye on the duo's crimefighting activities in case any instances of excessive force from the duo take place. This, of course, is bound to put a damper on Hazama and Goto's friendship at some point in the future, but for now, Goto gently warns Hazama and Mari to not attract so much attention and to do their crimefighting when his colleagues aren't watching. Speaking of Goto, I'm starting to wonder about this girlfriend of his whose texts to Goto we frequently glimpse but has remained unseen. If this person's catfishing Goto, is it part of some sort of plot to bring down Samurai Flamenco?

Watching Hazama experience humiliation after humiliation could have gotten repetitive by this point, but it remains fun to watch, partly because those moments of humiliation are balanced with Hazama making some progress as a superhero, like when he's able to thwart the mugger at the start of "Idol Devastation." Both the very first scene in the series premiere, which showed Hazama hiding his nakedness in an alley instead of showing him triumphantly cleaning up the streets, and the series premiere climax, which had Hazama delivering a speech to a bunch of middle-schoolers but failing to win them over, were endearing signs that this show was going to turn upside down the flawlessness of the TV heroes Hazama admires and instead be about a hero who's in over his head and may not be as cut out for a life of crimefighting as he'd like to be (I wouldn't be surprised if Hazama goes through some sort of Nick Andopolis-like heartbreak over his dreams being crushed by reality). If Samurai Flamenco keeps up the level of comedic quality it's shown in the first four episodes, writer Hideyuki Kurata and director Takahiro Omori's take on non-powered superheroes in the age of social media just might be the year's best new anime show.

Stray observations:
* The '60s Batman-style score cue that accompanies Flamenco Girl's rescue of Samurai Flamenco is mad glorious.

* I'm not much into J-pop, but "Date TIME," the show's bouncy ED (a.k.a. end credits theme) performed by Mineral Miracle Muse, is the perfect musical bridge between the ending and the scene that usually follows the end credits. I kind of wish there was a post-credits tag this week (this episode lacked one). Last week's tag was a good one introducing Kaname's new role as Hazama's physical trainer.

* I don't care for nut shot gags. However, Samurai Flamenco may be the first show (not counting King of the Hill's "That's my purse!" episode) where nut shot humor actually made me laugh.

* Mari realizes she has a crush on Goto: "I didn't think he'd look so good in a uniform!"

* Bustin' makes her feel good.

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

I almost named Bob's Burgers this week's best first-run animated show. Its first new episode after the Fox "Animation Domination" lineup's pre-emption by baseball coverage featured both a funny vocal guest shot by Will Forte as a skirt-chasing pilot with an eye on Linda (in this Bob's Burgers guest shot and 2010's MacGruber, Forte has been giving Will Ferrell a run for his money as the funniest at male crying scenes) and a couple of those great rapid-fire exchanges that Bob's Burgers excels at on the regular: the camera ping-pongs back and forth between the absurd things the three Belcher siblings say and the reactions of either a quietly frustrated Bob or some other adult. But the Belchers were outshined this week by Samurai Flamenco, which has been killing it in the last couple of weeks and does so again, with an episode that dials down the comedy a bit when Hazama, who's becoming disenchanted with both his forced partnership with Flamenco Girl and a surprisingly dull acting job on the set of a superhero show he likes, receives in the mail an important 20th birthday present from his deceased grandfather.

The present contains a new helmet with horns--a slight upgrade from the chintzy bike helmet Hazama's been rocking--and a letter from Hazama's grandfather, whom we learn had raised Hazama after his parents' deaths. Hazama's grandfather came up with the concept for Samurai Flamenco ("Born from the strength of a samurai and the passion of flamenco") and inspired Hazama to become the real-life superhero he envisioned in detailed "Samurai Flamenco Project" notes he also left in the parcel.

"Samurai Flamenco is the manifestation of universal and absolute justice. When faced with danger, he will never give up. When the going gets tough, he will never run and hide," says Hazama's granddad in the letter. His encouraging words pull Hazama out of his funk and give him the courage to tell Mari, whose bossiness and extremist approach to busting criminals have made him less enthusiastic about crimefighting, that he wants out of the partnership.

The affecting sequence in which we hear the letter being read by the granddad's voice is a bit reminiscent of Bruce Wayne's flashback to watching the superhero show The Gray Ghost when his father was alive in Batman: The Animated Series' classic "Beware the Gray Ghost" episode. Hazama and his granddad bonded over the superhero genre in the same way that Bruce and Dr. Thomas Wayne bonded over the show that later gave Bruce a few ideas for his crimefighting persona. The black-and-white images of the granddad's vision of Samurai Flamenco are even drawn in the same smoky and noirish style that made the black-and-white footage of the Gray Ghost show stand out in the Batman episode. The letter sequence has an edge over the flashback to little Bruce: it never shows either Hazama's granddad or Hazama as a kid, and it's slightly more powerful that way.

Hazama's reading of the letter is one of the most impressive sequences Samurai Flamenco has pulled off so far, not just because of its dramatic value, but also because of the skillful way it intercuts with Goto overcoming a similar existential crisis about his mundane duties when he types up a proposal to the Tokyo police department's newly formed Vigilante Counseling Unit about allying with Samurai Flamenco instead of treating him as an antagonist. Goto's superiors give the proposal their approval and reward Goto with a transfer to the new unit, which assigns him with tasks that make him feel more useful as a cop and are a step up from the petty complaints about injuries from falling ramen bowls that he dreaded responding to and were assigned to the uniformed officers strictly to create good PR for the department.

The new job also allows Goto to keep a better eye on both his friend and Flamenco Girl, whose adversaries have gotten nastier and more brutal, like the female stick-up artist who fakes being mugged by her two male accomplices in order to trap either of the Flamencos and snare a million-yen reward for unmasking either of them (actually, it's an extra mil for Flamenco Girl). The increasing brutality is starting to physically take its toll on Mari, who's forced to handle the streets on her own when Hazama becomes too busy to suit up due to the hectic shooting schedule of his TV show guest shot.



Without Hazama by her side, Mari is forced to also spend less time on composing songs for her band Mineral Miracle Muse, which worries both Mizuki, the Mineral Miracle Muse frontwoman, and Moe, the shy bandmate who's nursing a crush on Mari ("That kiss was longer than usual," noted Moe right after an overjoyed-from-crimefighting Mari planted a kiss on her last week). But after the letter restores Hazama's faith in his own cause, he surprises Mari by arriving just in time to help her triumph over the scummy trio of reward-seekers when she encounters them again and they bring with them extra henchmen, and for the first--and what ends up being last--time in their partnership, Samurai Flamenco and Flamenco Girl really gel into a formidable fighting force. What isn't as clear is the fate of Hazama's acting job, which isn't as fun or exciting as he thought it would be (the veteran TV director's lack of enthusiasm for the superhero material especially bums out Hazama, who's been fanboying big-time about the superhero shows he's directed). Did Hazama walk out on the role to help Mari (Sumi, who got him the bit part and hates playing babysitter to her inept client, is sure to be thrilled if he did indeed quit)? "The Meaning of Justice" glosses over that superhero show subplot too quickly.

When Samurai Flamenco tells Flamenco Girl he wants to be solo again, she neither reacts psychotically nor exposes his identity like she originally threatened to do (although I have a feeling that she's going to threaten to spill it again at a later point in the series). Mari admits that they might grow to become enemies if they continue working together ("It sucks that I'm losing a slave," she says), so she agrees to let him go and as we see in the show's most enjoyable post-credits tag so far, she forms with Moe and a reluctant (and amusingly clumsy) Mizuki a new trio of crimefighting magical girls called the Flamenco Girls. So that now makes it four wanna-be superheroes Goto has to keep an eye on, with one of them--Mari, not Hazama, whom a certain sector of the show's female fans would rather see snuggling with Goto--nursing a nasty crush on the uniformed cop.

This show just keeps getting better, doesn't it? And could the new helmet be the first of many costume upgrades that will lead to the snazzy armored suit Hazama wears in his dream during the show's opening credits?

Stray observations:
* Speaking of the new headgear, in the post-credits tag, there's a helmet blooper. During the first sighting of the Flamenco Girls, Hazama's wearing the old bike helmet again instead of the birthday gift from his grandfather.


* I love how drab the surroundings are when the Flamenco Girls make their splashy debut.

* Kaname's inability to keep his promises to help out Hazama when he patrols the streets is becoming a great running gag, as is his self-absorbedness (like when he didn't seem to be able to remember Hazama's name last week or when he's too wrapped up in watching episodes of his own show on TV to pay attention to Hazama). This week, "a film festival in France" is Kaname's excuse for skipping out on Hazama.

* Goateed news site editor Akira Konno (Satoshi Mikami) tries and fails once again to score a date with Sumi, who continues to deny Akira's insinuations that Samurai Flamenco is Hazama. Somebody on an anime blog said that they couldn't buy Sumi's unwillingness to cash in on Hazama's fame and hype him up as the world's first fashion model/superhero celebrity. I have a feeling that Sumi does know that he's Hazama and doesn't want it to be true because of the PR headaches she'd have to deal with if his crimefighting identity were revealed to the world. Hazama's immaturity is enough of a hassle for her.

* Unless I'm mistaken, there's one more regular character from the opening credits who has yet to appear on the show: Jun Harazuka (Toru Okawa), who, according to the manglobe animation studio's press notes, is "an older man who works in the development department of Monsters Stationary [sic]." Could he be an old friend of Hazama's grandfather's who ends up helping upgrade the Samurai Flamenco suit? We still don't know what the granddad's job was. Judging from the stacks of blueprints in the parcel, I'm going with "stationery artist."

* We still haven't seen Goto's girlfriend, who's becoming increasingly testy in her texts to Goto. Maybe she's actually Jun, who's catfishing Goto for some reason.

* Somebody was temp-tracking Samurai Flamenco with both the '70s Gatchaman theme and the Pink Panther theme big-time this week.



* The Brass Rangers, the brass band-themed superheroes from the show Hazama has a bit part in, and their Wolverine-clawed nemesis Chalkboard Screechy Screech are an amusing pack of fake superhero genre characters, even though the Brass Rangers' poses bring back horrible memories of the 1978 movie version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Finally, a team of superheroes that band geeks everywhere can cream their marching band pants about.

Pootie Tang, a Chris Rock Show spinoff movie featuring Lance Crouther's mostly unintelligible character from the late '90s HBO show, first played to empty theaters and negative reviews in 2001, but it turned out to be a lot funnier than expected and it gets referenced by rappers on the regular (Kanye West quoted Pootie during The College Dropout). Back in February, Prince Paul, the legendary producer of so many hip-hop albums I like, including De La Soul Is Dead and A Prince Among Thieves, posted on his SoundCloud an original song from Pootie TangI had no idea he produced, the "Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" duet between Pootie and Missy Elliott.

At least once every month, I try to update an AFOS playlist like "The Whitest Block Ever" with new tracks, and I wish I could add "Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" to "The Whitest Block Ever." But no physical copies of "Tipi Ti on My Cappi Town" exist (outside of I assume Prince Paul's studio). It's not even included on the out-of-print Pootie Tang soundtrack from Hollywood Records. Pootie Tang was written and directed by--and this still surprises people who aren't comedy nerds--Louis C.K., who wrote for The Chris Rock Show. The star/writer/showrunner/director/caterer of FX's Louie doesn't think much of Pootie Tang's final cut because Paramount wrested the movie away from him during post-production (and you can tell which parts of the movie were meddled with by the studio), but it's still a funny flick, thanks to moments like Prince Paul's dead-on parody of the slow jam genre.



"The Whitest Block Ever," a block of original themes or score cues from films written or directed by filmmakers of color, airs every weekday at 10am-noon on AFOS. Here's a sampler of "The Whitest Block Ever."




"The Whitest Block Ever" sampler tracklist
OPENING TITLES
1. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power" (from Do the Right Thing)
2. The Roots featuring Jaguar, "What You Want" (from The Best Man)
3. Eric B. & Rakim, "Juice (Know the Ledge)" (from Juice)
4. Adrian Younge featuring LaVan Davis, "Black Dynamite Theme"
5. Curtis Mayfield, "Freddie's Dead (instrumental version)" (from Superfly)
6. 2 Chainz and Wiz Khalifa, "We Own It (Fast & Furious)" (from Furious 6)

Car Wash (Photo source: Rated X - Blaxploitation & Black Cinema)

7. Stanley Clarke, "Passenger 57 Main Title"
8. Robert Rodriguez's Chingon featuring Tito & Tarantula, "Machete Theme"
9. The Gap Band, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka"
10. The Staple Singers, "Let's Do It Again"
11. Mychael Danna, "Baraat" (from Monsoon Wedding)
12. Mychael Danna featuring Bombay Jayashri, "Pi's Lullaby" (from Life of Pi)
ACT 1
13. Brian Tyler, "Ready or Not" (from Finishing the Game)
14. E.U., "Da Butt" (from School Daze)
15. Curtis Mayfield, "Give Me Your Love (Love Song)" (from Superfly)
16. Rose Royce, "I Wanna Get Next to You" (from Car Wash)
17. Adrian Younge featuring Dionne Gipson, "Shine" (from Black Dynamite)
ACT 2
18. Guy, "New Jack City"
19. Brian Tyler, "Fists of Führer" (from Finishing the Game)

Better Luck Tomorrow (Photo source: RECO CHARGES)

20. Semiautomatic, "Eat with Your Eyes" (from Better Luck Tomorrow)
21. George Shaw, "Date Chase" (from Agents of Secret Stuff)
22. Mychael Danna, "Set Your House in Order" (from Life of Pi)
23. Branford Marsalis Quartet, "Mo' Better Blues"
ACT 3
24. Ramin Djawadi, "Canceling the Apocalypse" (from Pacific Rim)
25. Bill Lee, "Wake Up Finale" (from Do the Right Thing)
26. Bill Lee, "Malcolm and Martin" (from Do the Right Thing)
END TITLES
27. Sukhwinder Singh, "Aaj Mera Jee Kardaa (Today my heart desires)" (from Monsoon Wedding)
28. Mader, "Rhumba (End Credits)" (from The Wedding Banquet)
29. Curtis Mayfield, "Superfly"
30. Blake Perlman featuring RZA, "Drift" (from Pacific Rim)
31. The Crooklyn Dodgers featuring Special Ed, Buckshot and Masta Ace, "Crooklyn"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Harazuka (Toru Okawa), the R&D guy from a stationery company who presents Samurai Flamenco with his first gadgets in "Capture Samumenco!,"Samurai Flamenco's latest episode, is significant for being the first person--outside of Hazama's dead grandfather--to tell the wanna-be superhero he genuinely believes in him and his mission to do some good. Kaname, the self-absorbed action star who's trained Hazama in the ways of fighting, says similar things to his student ("Superheroes will never die!"), but they ring hollow, and he does it to stroke his ego. Mari doesn't care about Hazama's mission; she's in the superhero game to indulge her kinks for dominating men (and being dominated herself, by a man in uniform), as we see in "Capture Samumenco!" when she blurts out, "Time to blow off steam!," in front of the other Flamenco Girls and quickly corrects herself by saying, "Time for the Flamenco Girls to save the day!"

You'd think Goto, the closest thing a friendless only child like Hazama has to a best friend and protective older brother, would have told Hazama by now that he believes in him, but he genuinely doesn't (although some of Hazama's flair for the dramatic is starting to rub off on him, like when he realized he enjoyed dressing up in the Samurai Flamenco costume at the end of "Flamenco vs. Fake Flamenco"). Goto still considers Hazama crazy for choosing to enforce the law as if he's the hero of a tokusatsu show, rather than opting for saner avenues of law enforcement, like becoming a prosecutor or a cop like him.

During the first meeting between Samurai Flamenco and Harazuka, the handsome-looking coloring, which brings to mind Wally Pfister's sepia-toned cinematography in Batman Begins, underscores that something monumental is happening. Harazuka is clearly being established as the Lucius Fox or Q to Samurai Flamenco, a technical genius who disguises weapons as mundane office supplies in the episode's best joke, even though it's a bit Blankman-ish (the tape measure that turns into an effective grappling hook pistol is sure to be a hit with Samurai Flamenco cosplayers). He's snappier than the calm and unassuming Lucius (I like his shouty response to Hazama's insistence that the fighting moves he learned from Kaname are sufficient enough to protect him in a tough spot: "Your passion is not enough!") but not snarky or irritable like Q. He even gives his gadgets to Samurai Flamenco free of charge, which is fucking insane in a stagnant economy like Japan's. That's probably the least realistic moment in an animated show that's been surprisingly realistic and grounded about so many things, whether it's the drudgery of filming a TV show on location (like in "The Meaning of Justice" last week) or how the world reacts to people in superhero costumes who aren't San Francisco'sBatkid.

In "Capture Samumenco!," the world reacts in different ways. You have otaku who dig seeing superhero genre tropes being brought to real life or become believers in heroes again after Samurai Flamenco saves them. You have cynics like Goto who find it all to be crazy ("Why do weirdos keep flocking to me?"). And then you have those who, when presented with an opportunity for mad guap like the High Rollers Hi news site's 10 million yen reward for capturing Samurai Flamenco, will see him not as a hero but as yen signs in their eyes. The hordes of greedy bounty chasers become so out of control that Samurai Flamenco has to be saved from them instead of him saving them, and that's where Harazuka's gadgets come in handy for Samurai Flamenco.

Akira Konno (Satoshi Mikami), the High Rollers Hi editor who started the reward, is the closest Samurai Flamenco has gotten to a supervillain (and judging from a lower-level Yakuza thug's line of dialogue about Samurai Flamenco's off-screen interference in a drug ring, I take it the Yakuza is going to be taking on that adversarial role real soon), but in keeping with the show's subdued nature, Akira doesn't twirl his facial hair or cackle loudly. He didn't start the reward because of hatred for Samurai Flamenco. Like Mari during the events of "Idol Devastation" and Kaname (and anybody in reality TV), he's in it mainly for the publicity. On a show where the hero is confronted not with supervillains but with everyday assholes like the blond-haired douchebag with the knife at the start of "Capture Samumenco!," the craving for publicity is the ultimate supervillain.

"Capture Samumenco!" is another satisfying episode of an animated show that's quickly become one of my favorites. Like that Weekend Update nightlife correspondent Stefon once said, this place has everything. Smart showbiz satire. Social commentary that hasn't taken a turn for the didactic so far. The subversion of superhero genre tropes. Characters who are smarter than what I usually expect from the superhero genre (I like how everyone's correctly guessing that Samurai Flamenco is Hazama). Tokusatsu parodies. Japanese panel show parodies. J-pop parodies. Humor in an anime that doesn't make me say, "There once was a time when I would have laughed at this shit. It was called '12 years old.'" A lesbian idol singer who's pining for a bandmate who, in turn, is pining for a male cop because she has a fetish for dudes in uniforms (Samurai Flamenco clearly--and fortunately--isn't a kids' show even though the titular character is an overgrown kid). And now, gadgets.


Stray observations:
* "Capture Samumenco!" writer Takahiro drops clues that Goto (whom Mari now thinks is having a gay relationship with Hazama after she fails to seduce him) is being catfished by peppering the texts from Goto's "girlfriend" with the words "cat,""sushi" and "hirame" (a.k.a. halibut).

* Samurai Flamenco's reaction to everyone chasing him is, of course, the following: "Something isn't right. This is just like what happened in Harakiri Sunshine, episode 8, 'Brainwashed! A City Full of Enemies!'"

* Nameless Yakuza thug #1: "Then we should bring in the ultimate weapon Gouriki-san..." Nameless Yakuza thug #2: "I hear he killed a bear during image training!"

* Like those quick shots in Stir Crazy of a bully's dick being crushed by a pair of pliers, the shot of the Flamenco Girls' heels flattening Gouriki-san's crotch will make every male viewer's balls implode.

* So I take it Hazama prefers the bike helmet over the helmet his grandfather made for him. I wonder why Hazama reverted to the bike helmet instead of continuing to rock the horned helmet. Maybe he doesn't want to look like Magneto had a three-way with El Chapulín Colorado and the Great Gazoo.

* The end credits footage of Kamen Rider Black, an '80s tokusatsu show I'm not familiar with but was mentioned in dialogue between Goto and another cop in the series premiere, was what the animators were paying tribute to during last week's poignant sequence where Hazama read his grandfather's letter about carrying on his dream of creating a real-life superhero.

(Photo source: Jeff Baron)

Most people visit YouTube for cat videos, while I go there for either hip-hop music videos, instrumental versions of hip-hop tracks, music I can't find on Spotify (or don't want to go to Spotify for because it always crashes), blooper footage or old TV show opening title sequences. The other night, I was zipping through some YouTuber's compilation of network TV opening titles from my childhood (peep Bryan Cranston in an uproarious mullet at 4:25!), and one particular title sequence--from a show I've never seen before--stood out amongst the rancid-sounding, sub-smooth-jazz pack.

Okay, maybe that original Todd Rundgren theme for TV 101 isn't so rancid (Stacey Dash drinks the blood of young Republican virgins to keep looking like she does in the TV 101 opening credits [6:41]). But from 2:01 to 3:01, Almost Grown, a drama that starred Tim Daly (at a point in his career between his breakout role in Diner and the era of Wings, the Timmverse Superman and my personal favorite animated Daly character, Bizarro), blows away all the other '80s shows with a Pablo Ferro-esque font and a swaggering James Brown banger that fortunately isn't the overplayed "I Feel Good," a Brown tune I grew to despise (thanks a lot, movie trailers, wedding DJs and Republicans!).



I know this groove best as Das EFX's "Mic Checka" ("I miggity-make the Wonder Twins deactivate!"), but heads who didn't grow up in the '90s might know it as "Think '73."




It's funny how "Think" was used to open the whitest show on network TV. Almost Grown was part of an annoying late '80s network TV trend of white and affluent baby-boomer showrunners subjecting viewers to their nostalgia for '60s music (even though a lot of that music was top-notch Motown). However, this really white show is an interesting-sounding one I'm dying to watch for the first time on disc (I don't think it'll ever make it to disc because I doubt Universal Studios Home Entertainment would want to go through the trouble of clearing all those existing songs on Almost Grown's soundtrack), mainly because Almost Grown was made by a pre-Sopranos David Chase. Judging from the descriptions of how Chase ambitiously structured the time frame of Almost Grown's episodes, this was a show ahead of its time. Chase made a precursor to the flashback-heavy structure of Lost, Person of Interest and Arrow.

Almost Grown was chock-full of subjects Chase would later revisit in both the equally existing-song-heavy Sopranos ("The family and the annoying mother. Almost Grown was the lab for The Sopranos," said Chase in a 2007 WGA chat where another TV writing genius, Tom Fontana, complimented him on his work on Almost Grown) and Chase's final collabo with the late James Gandolfini, the unsurprisingly existing-song-heavy Not Fade Away. Chase's 2012 movie revolves around a struggling '60s rock band, while Almost Grown's late '60s flashbacks involved the Daly character's phase as a college radio DJ caught up in the counterculture of the period.

"Music has always been part of my creative process. I put on headphones, listen to music and try to get ideas or moods for stories," said Chase to the Chicago Tribune during the brief run of Almost Grown, which had Chase taking a vintage pop tune that a character would hear ($5,000 per tune!--according to Chase in the 1988 ChiTrib piece) and using it as "a mnemonic device to send you back to that period in their life and you'd play out a story back there and then come back to the present."

Oh, so it's like Cold Case without the heavy-handedness.

(Photo source: Co.Create)

Yesterday, Pharrell Williams marked the arrival of Despicable Me 2 in digital download form--and capped off a crazy year of hit tracks like Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" and Robin Thicke's divisive "Blurred Lines"--by debuting the world's first 24-hour music video, "24 Hours of Happy." It consists of countless variations of either Pharrell or some unknown but totally game dancer getting their groove on in a different L.A. spot while lip-synching "Happy," the theme Pharrell wrote and performed as part of his original score to Despicable Me 2. You're batshit crazy if you actually watched the entire thing--and you're mad disgusting too because you didn't stop to wash your ass.

As for the rest of us saner cats who have chosen to click on specific dots on the "24 Hours of Happy" clock and watch bits and pieces of "24 Hours of Happy" rather than the whole video uninterrupted, it's actually a pretty captivating snapshot of different parts of L.A. At one point, "24 Hours of Happy" brings its roving Steadicam to the L.A. River, the shooting location made famous by Grease, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Drive and countless other films, shows and music videos. It helps that the "24 Hours of Happy" site comes with a mute button because hearing "Happy" after six or seven consecutive times can get tiresome, so I later replaced the audio with music from an episode of Sunday Night Sound Session off my iTunes music library.


I was enthralled by this beast for nearly an hour. The 24-hour interactive piece, which took 11 (non-consecutive) days to shoot, was directed by the French music video directing duo We Are from L.A. It looks like it was shot by the cinematography genius who came up with the memorable look of Punch-Drunk Love (that would be Robert Elswit, who took non-descript, industrial-looking parts of SoCal and the insides of supermarkets and made them look sumptuous and otherworldly in Punch-Drunk Love, with the help of some pre-J.J. Abrams lens flares, but Elswit wasn't involved with this Pharrell video). I wish the resolution of We Are from L.A.'s footage was in HD rather than crappy-res because then "24 Hours of Happy" would look even more incredible.

"Happy" can be heard in rotation during the "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" and "New Cue Revue" blocks on AFOS, but that doesn't compare to the "24 Hours of Happy" experience of watching regular people (and occasional celebrities like Despicable Me 2 lead voice actor Steve Carell and Tyler, the Creator and even the yellow Despicable Me Minions themselves) losing themselves to "Happy" and eliciting various reactions from L.A. bystanders (some of them join in, especially little kids). My favorite segments involve the pair of Asian lady dancers, the puppeteer lady, the chick with the neon hula hoop and Pharrell's semi-choreographed bit inside a bowling alley (the rest of the video was pretty much improvised on the spot). It's like that 24-hour remake of Denzel Washington's Fallen I always wanted to see, but with the Despicable Me 2 theme and improvised dancing instead of "Time Is on My Side" and people being killed.

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Consistently funny South Park episodes are a rarity these days, and "A Song of Ass and Fire," the second in a three-parter that reimagines the upcoming holiday season's Xbox One/PlayStation 4 console wars as Game of Thrones, helps break the show's slump with a sturdy storyline (which began in "Black Friday" last week) and jokes that stick the landing and are even stronger than the jokes in "Black Friday" by being occasionally surprising. I didn't see the punchline to the news anchor sex scene coming and couldn't stop laughing for a minute and a half afterward. Plus any moment where South Park parodies anime is worthwhile because Trey Parker nails the sounds of J-pop so well, like he does here with Princess Kenny's anime theme song.

I don't care for how South Park depicts Asian characters, but getting an actual Japanese voice actor to provide all-Japanese dialogue for the Sony CEO character is a welcome departure from bringing in Parker again to speak in pidgin English. The only running joke that's lazily written in "A Song of Ass and Fire" is Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin's obsession with wieners, which doesn't really go anywhere (Martin's choir inside his phallically decorated mansion and their performance of an all-"wieners" cover version of the Game of Thrones main title theme are filler and just an excuse to pad this three-parter out). Otherwise, it's nice when South Park isn't comedically asleep at the wheel, whether it's an Xbox One racing wheel or a PS4 racing wheel.

Over on Samurai Flamenco, the show just took a turn for the crazy--or hasn't. "Change the World" finds Masayoshi Hazama in distress after a note from his deceased grandfather Daisuke Hazama reveals that Masayoshi's parents were murdered, and he's worried about his inability to feel enraged by the way in which they died. The episode also pits Masayoshi and Goto against the show's first real supervillain: a crazed drug chemist who transforms into Guillotine Gorilla, a giant gorilla with a guillotine for a stomach and a minion of a villain boss who identifies himself to Samurai Flamenco as "King Torture." The show's tonal shift from largely grounded slice-of-life territory (the show's universe has been established in the last few episodes as a universe without superpowers and supervillains) to typical tokusatsu material is extremely jarring and out-of-nowhere.

Some bloggers think Guillotine Gorilla and King Torture are hallucinations Samurai Flamenco, Goto and the other cops are experiencing due to the drugs they found during the drug bust that Samurai Flamenco joins in on (the police department honors him for bringing the crime rate down and makes him "police chief for a day," while Akira is disappointed about his site's crime news headlines becoming so dull because of the positive effects of the Flamencos' heroic acts; could Akira have planted those hallucinogens to create headlines and stir shit up again?). The fact that the Guillotine Gorilla/King Torture cliffhanger ending is animated in the same gauzy filter that shrouds Masayoshi's fantasy sequences about Daisuke is a hint that this is all playing inside Masayoshi's head. Guillotine Gorilla could just be a perp on PCP, reimagined by an increasingly delusional Masayoshi as a talking gorilla.

But if it turns out next week that humans are capable of transforming into giant monsters, I'm going to be slightly disappointed. Nothing we've seen on this show has built up towards drugs that alter people's DNA like what Arrow is carefully doing this season with the particle accelerator to establish Barry Allen and his (now-to-take-place-outside-of-Arrow) transformation into the Flash, and that's just sloppy writing if superpowers were indeed always part of this show's plan. My disappointment would also stem from how much the absence of superpowers and supervillains on Samurai Flamenco has helped make the show a unique and different take on the superhero genre in animation (the show is as grounded as Christopher Nolan's live-action Batman movies but not as somber). With the addition of Guillotine Gorilla and King Torture, Samurai Flamenco becomes just another animated superhero show, although with some better-than-average writing.


While a huge question mark hovers over the show's tonal direction like King Torture hovering ominously over Samurai Flamenco and Goto, everything that precedes the wild cliffhanger is Samurai Flamenco at its slice-of-lifey best. Kaname and Harazuka, who's as much of a fan of Kaname's old Red Axe show as Masayoshi is, meet each other for the first time and get drunk together off-screen, as implied by one of the most amusing abrupt cuts this show has done. Meanwhile, Mari goes insane over the lack of male criminals to pulverize; Moe (Erii Yamazaki voices Moe's bashfulness really well) continues to be in love with Mari (and continues to show how she's the only one out of the three idols who's fluent in English when she happily describes Mari's insane behavior as "Decadence!"); and in a nicely scripted moment of lengthier-than-usual Goto dialogue, Goto finally gives Masayoshi a vote of confidence, but in a typically world-weary (and guarded) Goto way that illustrates how well-realized many of Samurai Flamenco's characters are ("My basic point is that you're a freak, not a hero... But as a fellow human, I trust freaks more than humans.").

But that tonal shift is a bit of a concern for me because, as the Japanese band SPYAIR says about their old selves in the unsubtitled "Just One Life" theme song lyrics that I recently discovered the English meanings of, Samurai Flamenco's old--and more interesting--self seems to have died yesterday.


Samurai Flamenco - Opening - Just One Life from sam on Vimeo.

The uncensored cut of "A Song of Ass and Fire" can be streamed in its entirety at South Park Studios. Samurai Flamenco's episodes are posted on Crunchyroll the same day they premiere in Japan, but for Crunchyroll subscribers only.

I named the AFOS weekend block "Hall H" after the huge-ass hall in the San Diego Convention Center, the home of San Diego Comic-Con, partly because at a total of 10 hours from 7am to 5pm Pacific on Saturday (and again on Sunday), the block is equally huge. "Hall H" is full of selections from scores to shows and films that are popular with the comic or anime con crowd, so it's all the fun and excitement of a comic or anime con, but without the horrifying smells.

So some British show celebrated the 50th anniversary of its premiere over the weekend. Inspector Spacetime didn't just prove that it hasn't shown any signs of aging even though it's a show that's so old Larry King discovered his first liver spot on the day it premiered. It also proved that even when the budget is at its lowest, the zippers on the Ocean Demon monster suits are at their most visible and the corridors that the Inspector and Constable Reggie are often seen running through are at their creakiest, it can still entertain, as long as there's plenty of charisma from whoever's portraying the Inspector and his associate and the storytelling is as impeccable as the Inspector's taste in bowler hats.

These days, Inspector Spacetime, or as it's known to people outside the Community universe, Doctor Who, looks much more spiffy and baller than it used to, and the interior of the time machine our favorite anti-authoritarian time traveler rides around in no longer looks like it's going to tip over if someone sneezed at the roundel-covered wall. The premise remains the same: an eccentric alien hops around space and time to protect the universe and a little planet he's come to love called Earth, and thanks to his bizarre alien physiology (he has two hearts instead of one), he regenerates into a completely different person whenever he dies. But now there's more of a focus on the humans he's befriended and how he's affected their lives, as well as a focus on the angst that makes him tick: guilt over the toughest decision he's ever made. That would be causing the destruction of his own native planet Gallifrey--he's responsible for killing off his own people, the Time Lords--to put an end to the off-screen Time War between them and the Daleks, one of the Doctor's biggest adversaries.

The PTSD from the Time War was added to the character by former showrunner Russell T. Davies, who revived Doctor Who 16 years after its cancellation by the BBC and modernized the show in ways that enhanced and improved it (the less said about Davies' love for farty alien jokes, the better), and not just in visual terms. Towards the end of Sylvester McCoy's late '80s run as the seventh Doctor, the show started to hint that the Doctor was less than saintly and could be as devious and shady as his enemies. Sure, in the past, he's been a cantankerous old man (the first Doctor) and an arrogant asshole (the sixth Doctor). But unless I'm mistaken because I haven't watched all the pre-Davies episodes, the show rarely raised questions about some of the Doctor's actions (I haven't seen all of them because--and longtime Doctor Who heads might disagree with me--I've found some of them to be too slow-paced for my tastes, even when I first caught some of the immensely popular Tom Baker episodes on PBS, and since all of them were shot on videotape, except one of my favorite old-school Doctor Who episodes, the shot-entirely-on-film "Spearhead from Space," they look like moldy '70s and '80s episodes of General Hospital).

Doctor Who was cancelled before it could further explore the dark side of McCoy's Doctor, but when Davies brought the show back and introduced the backstory of the Time War (which took place off-camera during the interval between the 1996 Doctor Who TV-movie starring Paul McGann and the show's 2005 return), he picked up on that dark side. He and several other writers, including current showrunner Steven Moffat, made the character of the Doctor more relatable, imperfect and human, even when the Davies seasons reimagined him as a cross between a thinking person's superhero, a god with a mischievous streak and a rock star who's charming to both women and gay guys (Billie Piper's lovestruck Rose Tyler was clearly a surrogate--some haters will say she was a Mary Sue--for the openly gay Davies; some probably consider John Barrowman's Captain Jack Harkness to be more of a surrogate, but Captain Jack is the dashing gay action hero Davies wishes he could be but isn't).

"The Day of the Doctor," last Saturday night's satisfying 50th anniversary episode, revisits the previously unseen tough decision that's haunted the Doctor since the first season of the Davies/Moffat era and finally gives us glimpses of that much-discussed Time War. To the show's fans, Moffat has been as polarizing a showrunner as Davies was in the last few episodes of his reign--Moffat haters think Moffat's writing on Doctor Who is overly convoluted, repetitive, misogynist and possibly racist and they're not so fond of his rather dickish response to their opinion that the Doctor doesn't have to always regenerate into a white guy--but Moffat has excelled at making us feel the giddiness the Doctor experiences whenever he achieves the impossible, whether it's during the climax of "The Doctor Dances" or during Matt Smith's current run as the 11th Doctor (which will come to a close in next month's Christmas episode, in which the 11th Doctor dies and regenerates into a profanity-free Peter Capaldi).

The quintessential moment of Moffat's take on the Doctor as "the mad man with a box" is that funny and clever scene in "A Christmas Carol" where the Doctor demonstrates to Michael Gambon's skeptical, Scrooge-like miser character that he's going to change his past and make himself appear on screen in the childhood home movie Gambon's watching, right after he leaves the room--and a few seconds later, thanks to the magic of the TARDIS, there he is, up on screen with Gambon's younger self. The Doctor is always rewriting history, and in "The Day of the Doctor," with the help of his current sidekick Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), his most recent self (David Tennant), the War Doctor (John Hurt), the "forgotten" past incarnation who obliterated both his own race and the Daleks, and a mysterious figure only the War Doctor can see and who looks an awful lot like Rose (the three Doctors wind up meeting each other for reasons too convoluted to explain here), the Doctor figures out how to rewrite history to fix his biggest mistake, and it's a moment as exhilarating as that home movie scene in "A Christmas Carol." It exemplifies why Doctor Who remains appealing to viewers all over the world (and why the BBC, which is now remorseful about the 1989 cancellation, has gone all-out for the franchise's 50th anniversary by bringing "The Day of the Doctor" to theaters in 3-D and producing An Adventure in Space and Time, a TV-movie that flashes back to Doctor Who's unusual and humble beginnings as TV that originally wasn't designed to scare or thrill kids but to educate them): the three Doctors' solution is--to borrow the words of longtime fan Craig Ferguson when he sang about why he loves the show--the ultimate triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.

Selections from Murray Gold's epic score music for the fifth and sixth seasons of modern Doctor Who are featured during "Hall H," and they kick off the following sampler of tracks from "Hall H" that are found on Spotify. The complete sampler tracklist is at the very bottom of this post.

(Photo source: Greendale A.V. Club)

The fictional Inspector Spacetime, the Doctor Who counterpart we've seen bits and pieces of on Community (some of Ludwig Göransson's Community score cues are in rotation during "Hall H" but aren't part of the above sampler), is so popular with Community fans that's it's been made into a web series. It's even been cosplayed at cons.

(Photo source: The Casual Costumer)

(Photo source: The Casual Costumer)

(Photo source: !Blog)

(Photo source: Community Things)

The "Darkest Timeline" versions of the Inspector and Constable Reggie

And now, the real Doctor Who, as recreated by various cosplayers.

Clara Oswald (Photo source: Mika)

(Photo source: Mika)

(Photo source: LadyLawliet-LL)

Clara and a Weeping Angel (Photo source: LadyLawliet-LL)

(Photo source: Reddit)

Alex Kingston with Madame Vastra (far left) and Jenny Flint (far right) (Photo source: TheTARDISparty)

The Weeping Angels, the 11th Doctor, the 10th Doctor, the 11th Doctor when he experimented with wearing a Stetson, a girl in a TARDIS dress, Amy Pond and a Dalek (Photo source: Pixcelation Entertainment)

Amy from "The Girl Who Waited" (Photo source: LisaMarieCosplay)

Karen Gillan and "Girl Who Waited" Amy (Photo source: LisaMarieCosplay)

Idris, the temporary host of the soul of the TARDIS, from "The Doctor's Wife" (Photo source: Starry-EyedAndStormy)

Idris (Photo source: My New Dream!)

(Photo source: chocobojockey)

The 11th Doctor and Amy from "The Eleventh Hour" (Photo source: LisaMarieCosplay)

The 10th Doctor, Martha Jones, "Eleventh Hour" Amy and a girl in a Dalek dress (Photo source: Random420)

Matt Smith and the 11th Doctor (Photo source: MBaca42)

The 11th Doctor (Photo source: LisaMarieCosplay)

The 11th and 10th Doctors (Photo source: alternatecoppa)

(Photo source: alternatecoppa)

David Tennant and the 10th Doctor (Photo source: MBaca42)

Freema Agyeman and Martha (Photo source: She Geek)

(Photo source: She Geek)

Noel Clarke and a Clockwork Droid from "The Girl in the Fireplace" (Photo source: The Casual Costumer)

Rose Tyler and the 10th Doctor (Photo source: Doctor Who Cosplay)

(Photo source: Doctor Who Cosplay)

Billie Piper and David Tennant with the 10th Doctor (Photo source: Cherazor)

Captain Jack (Photo source: io9)

Clockwise: The 11th Doctor, Amy, Martha, the 10th Doctor and the ninth Doctor (Photo source: BBC)

The seventh Doctor and Sylvester McCoy (Photo source: MBaca42)

Romana I and Romana II (Photo source: She Geek)

(Photo source: She Geek)

The fourth Doctor and K9 (Photo source: mnmk)

Leela and the fourth Doctor (Photo source: She Geek)

(Photo source: Let's Get Thrifty)

(Photo source: Let's Get Thrifty)

(Photo source: Hallopino)

(Photo source: Hallopino)

(Photo source: Hallopino)

(Photo source: Hallopino)

"Hall H" sampler tracklist
DOCTOR WHO
1. Murray Gold, "I Am the Doctor"
2. Murray Gold, "The Mad Man with a Box"
3. Murray Gold, "Amy in the TARDIS"
4. Murray Gold, "The Sad Man with a Box"
5. Murray Gold, "Day of the Moon"
OPENING TITLES
6. Sex Bob-Omb, "We Are Sex Bob-Omb" (from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)
7. Ramin Djawadi, "Main Title" (from Game of Thrones)
8. Douglas Pipes, "Main Titles" (from Trick 'r Treat)
THE VENTURE BROS.
9. JG Thirlwell, "Node Wrestling"
10. JG Thirlwell, "Assclamp!"
11. JG Thirlwell, "Fumblestealth"
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
12. Henry Jackman, "First Class"
13. Henry Jackman, "Frankenstein's Monster"
14. Henry Jackman, "X-Men"
15. Henry Jackman, "Magneto"
MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE
16. Alan Silvestri, "Howling Commando's Montage" (from Captain America: The First Avenger)
17. Alan Silvestri, "Motorcycle Mayhem" (from Captain America: The First Avenger)
18. Alan Silvestri, "Captain America March" (from Captain America: The First Avenger)
19. Patrick Doyle, "The Compound" (from Thor)
20. Patrick Doyle, "Thor Kills the Destroyer" (from Thor)
21. Patrick Doyle, "Earth to Asgard" (from Thor)
22. Alan Silvestri, "Helicarrier" (from The Avengers)
23. Alan Silvestri, "Assemble" (from The Avengers)
24. Alan Silvestri, "I Got a Ride" (from The Avengers)
25. Alan Silvestri, "A Promise" (from The Avengers)
26. Alan Silvestri, "The Avengers" (from The Avengers)
27. Brian Tyler, "Iron Man 3" (from Iron Man Three)
28. Brian Tyler, "Attack on 10880 Malibu Point" (from Iron Man Three)
29. Brian Tyler, "The Mechanic" (from Iron Man Three)
30. Brian Tyler, "Can You Dig It (Iron Man 3 Main Titles)" (from Iron Man Three)
MULAN
31. Jerry Goldsmith, "Mulan's Decision"
32. Jerry Goldsmith, "The Huns Attack"
EDGAR WRIGHT/BIG TALK PICTURES
33. Nigel Godrich, "Fight!" (from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)
34. Nigel Godrich, "Boss Battle" (from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)
35. Nigel Godrich, "Blowing Up Right Now" (from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)
36. Steven Price, "The Cross Hands" (from The World's End)
37. Steven Price, "The Two Headed Dog" (from The World's End)
38. Steven Price, "Put the Pint Down" (from The World's End)
39. Steven Price, Felix Buxton & Simon Ratcliffe, "The Block" (from Attack the Block)
40. Steven Price, Felix Buxton & Simon Ratcliffe, "Round Two Bruv" (from Attack the Block)
41. Steven Price, Felix Buxton & Simon Ratcliffe, "Rooftops" (from Attack the Block)
42. Steven Price, Felix Buxton & Simon Ratcliffe, "Moses vs. the Monsters" (from Attack the Block)
43. Basement Jaxx, "The Ends" (from Attack the Block)
STAR TREK
44. Gerald Fried, "The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah" (from "Amok Time")
45. James Horner, "Battle in the Mutara Nebula" (from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
46. James Horner, "Genesis Countdown" (from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
STAR WARS
47. John Williams, "The Battle of Hoth (Ion Cannon/Imperial Walkers/Beneath the AT-AT/Escape in the Millennium Falcon)" (from The Empire Strikes Back)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
48. Christophe Beck, "Suite from 'Hush': Silent Night/First Kiss/Enter the Gentlemen/Schism" (from "Once More, With Feeling")
PACIFIC RIM
49. Ramin Djawadi, "The Shatterdome"
50. Ramin Djawadi featuring Priscilla Ahn, "Mako"
51. Ramin Djawadi, "Canceling the Apocalypse"
BATTLE ROYALE
52. Masamichi Amano, "Requiem--Prologue"
53. Masamichi Amano, "L'attaque de Kiriyama"
THE PHANTOM
54. David Newman, "The Phantom"
BATMAN (1989)
55. Danny Elfman, "The Batman Theme"
56. Prince, "Electric Chair"
THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY
57. Hans Zimmer, "Molossus" (from Batman Begins)
58. Hans Zimmer, "Why So Serious?" (from The Dark Knight)
59. Hans Zimmer, "Like a Dog Chasing Cars" (from The Dark Knight)
60. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, "A Watchful Guardian" (from The Dark Knight)
61. Hans Zimmer, "Mind If I Cut In?" (from The Dark Knight Rises)
62. Hans Zimmer, "Gotham's Reckoning" (from The Dark Knight Rises)
63. Hans Zimmer, "Imagine the Fire" (from The Dark Knight Rises)
64. Hans Zimmer, "The Fire Rises" (from The Dark Knight Rises)
65. Hans Zimmer, "Rise" (from The Dark Knight Rises)
JOSEPH TRAPANESE
66. Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapanese, "Tech 49" (from Oblivion)
67. Joseph Trapanese, "Beck's Theme - Lightbike Battle" (from Tron: Uprising)
68. Joseph Trapanese, "Paige's Past" (from Tron: Uprising)
69. Joseph Trapanese, "Dyson Drops In" (from Tron: Uprising)
70. Joseph Trapanese, "Compressed Space" (from Tron: Uprising)
71. Daft Punk, "The Game Has Changed" (from Tron: Legacy)
72. Daft Punk, "Rinzler" (from Tron: Legacy)
73. Daft Punk, "Outlands" (from Tron: Legacy)
74. Daft Punk, "End of Line" (from Tron: Legacy)
75. Daft Punk, "Derezzed" (from Tron: Legacy)
76. Daft Punk, "C.L.U." (from Tron: Legacy)
77. Daft Punk, "TRON Legacy (End Titles)" (from Tron: Legacy)
78. Daft Punk, "Solar Sailer" (from Tron: Legacy)
79. M83 featuring Susanne Sundfør, "Oblivion" (from Oblivion)
END TITLES
80. John Williams, "The Rebel Fleet/End Title" (from The Empire Strikes Back)
81. Kevin Kliesch, "Rebuilding the City/End Titles" (from Superman Unbound)
82. Hans Zimmer, "What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving the World?" (from Man of Steel)
83. Ramin Djawadi featuring Tom Morello, "Pacific Rim" (from Pacific Rim)
84. Blake Perlman featuring RZA, "Drift" (from Pacific Rim)
85. Michael Giacchino, "The Incredits" (from The Incredibles)
86. JG Thirlwell, "Tuff" (from The Venture Bros.)

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Rick and Morty doesn't debut on Adult Swim until December 2, but the network has already posted the premiere episode on YouTube, and it's one of the strongest first episodes of an animated show for adults I've seen in a while. Most adult animated shows I've grown to love--whether it's The Venture Bros., The Boondocks or Bob's Burgers--don't even start off as confidently as Rick and Morty does right out of the gate. That's mainly because Rick and Morty is the first animated show from Community mastermind Dan Harmon. It's the show Harmon worked on during the interval between his controversial ouster from his own creation by Sony Pictures Television and his return to Community a year later, and that distinctive comedic voice of Harmon's that was sorely missing from Community's creatively bumpy fourth season is all over Rick and Morty (Harmon's knack for sharp and spontaneous-sounding dialogue is also all over this new show). Harmon's offbeat sensibilities--the same sensibilities that irritated Sony executives (who wanted a more traditional sitcom about community college life than the one Harmon was crafting for them), as well as some Community staffers who found Harmon difficult to work with--are born for animation.

If Doctor Who were both a wacky suburban grandpa and a drunken sociopath, he'd be Rick, a scientific genius who's moved in with his grown-up daughter Beth (Sarah Chalke), an animal heart surgeon, and her family. Beth's strait-laced husband Jerry (Chris Parnell) despises Rick and wants him out of the house; teenage daughter Summer (Spencer Grammer) despises her family and cares only about looking for her next boyfriend; and Morty is grappling with learning disabilities and is lacking in self-confidence. Rick hates all forms of bureaucracy, including high school, and is continually yanking Morty out of school and taking the kid along with him on his dangerous experiments and excursions into other dimensions to build up both Morty's smarts and his self-confidence. He thinks high school is to blame for Morty's low intelligence, and in one of the pilot episode's best jokes, it turns out he's right when we see that Morty and his classmates are still being taught in math class that 2 + 2 = 4 and 5 + 5 = 10.



Like much of Harmon's work on Community, Rick and Morty is high-concept. It originated as a crudely animated series of Channel 101 shorts from Rick and Morty co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland (a.k.a. the Earl of Lemongrab on Adventure Time), The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, which took Doc Brown from Back to the Future and turned him into an inebriated pedophile. Rick and Morty retains neither the Back to the Future spoofery nor the creepiness of those gross shorts. Rick is now grandpa to the kid, and his abusive treatment of Morty is toned way down, but he's still a puke-stained drunk (Roiland also returns to voice both characters). You can tell where Harmon's input came in as he and Roiland reworked Doc and Mharti for Adult Swim. Harmon's made Rick more likable, or rather, as likable as a sociopathic grandpa who cares a small bit about his grandson can be. Instead of urging Morty to lick his balls to save the universe, Rick is seen attempting to help the weak-willed kid get closer to his dream girl Jessica (Kari Wahlgren) by procuring a neutrino bomb that he'll detonate to replace the current world with a new one where Morty and Jessica would be the sole survivors and would live like Adam and Eve.

The animation is also a million times more impressive on Rick and Morty than in the Channel 101 shorts. The premiere's best moments of animation take place during an epic chase through an extraterrestrial customs facility on one of the other dimensions Rick takes Morty along with him to. The alien character designs in this sequence are even weirder than the ones that were found on Futurama, and there's a brilliant and batshit crazy sight gag where Morty collides with an alien stoner who's smoking a hookah with an alien fetus floating inside the water jar, and the kid ingests some of the vapor and coughs out a loogie, which comes to life and rapidly ages from a baby to a dead old man in four seconds.

Only occasionally does the premiere suffer from pilot episode-itis. Chalke is saddled with all of the pilot's most exposition-y lines ("I'm my father's daughter. I'm smart. Why do you think I'm a heart surgeon?"). According to the Harmontown podcast episode where Harmon riffed on-stage with Roiland and Chalke at the Largo in L.A., Harmon and Roiland hired the former Scrubs star after they were impressed by her ability to burp on cue. Here's hoping Chalke gets more to do comedically in future episodes. (In that Harmontown episode, Chalke, who's fluent in French and German, busts out incredible-sounding impressions of her French Canadian and German schoolteachers.) In the next few weeks, we'll see if Rick and Morty can maintain the premiere's consistently funny vibe and impressive look, but for now, it's off to a good start--unlike the convulsive Morty in the midst of side effects from his intelligence boost at the end of the premiere.

Memorable quotes:
* Summer: "OmigodmyparentsaresoloudIwannadie." Rick: "There is no God, Summer. You gotta rip that Band-Aid off now. You'll thank me later."

* "You're young, you've got your whole life ahead of you and your anal cavity is still taut yet malleable! You gotta do it for Grandpa, Morty! You gotta put these seeds inside your butt!"

* "We had a little incident and a student was frozen to death. AND THERE'S NO EVIDENCE THAT A LATINO STUDENT DID IT! Everyone wants to take this to a racial place. I won't let them."

* "They're just robots, Morty! It's okay to shoot them! They're robots!""They're not robots, Rick!""It's a figure of speech, Morty! They're bureaucrats! I don't respect them! Just keep shooting, Morty!"

* Rick: "I'm a genius! I build robots for fun." Jerry: "Well, now you can build baskets and watch Paul Newman movies on VHS and mentally scar the Boy Scouts every Christmas." Beth: "What does that mean?" Jerry: "It's personal."

* "Oh, for crying out... he's got some kind of disability or something! Is that what you want us to say?""I do?""Well, da-doy, son." Harmon sure loves his da-doys (Britta is fond of saying "Da-doy" on Community).

* "Rick and Morty forever a hundred times! Over and over! rickandmortyadventures.com! www.atrickandmorty.com, wwwrickandmortyadventures, a hundred years! Every minute, rickandmorty.com! wwwahundredtimesrickandmorty.com!"

At their house, my parents want me to get rid of stuff I've left behind there and don't use anymore, like stacks of manila folders I stored inside their house's overhead cabinets. The folders contain press kits for albums like DJ Kool's Let Me Clear My Throat CD and movies like The Big Lebowski; old scripts of segment intros I typed up for the terrestrial radio version of AFOS; and newspaper/magazine article cutouts I enjoyed reading and had saved so that I could read them again someday (whatup, early 2000s Mercury News interview with De La Soul about the Art Official Intelligence"trilogy") or use one of them as the basis for some script for either TV, a film or a comic. For example, there was a folder from the early 2000s that I labeled "Jigsaw." It consisted of articles about crime in San Francisco I collected and saved as research for a San Francisco crime show idea I wanted to call Jigsaw (for a while, I wanted to create the Sucka Free equivalent of Homicide: Life on the Street and populate the cast with a few Asian American detectives).

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I was only able to empty one cabinet by throwing away a whole bunch of cutouts I don't need to save anymore--like the Jigsaw clippings (yeah, I don't think that show's ever going to get made). But there are some items from the folders in that cabinet that I don't want to dunk into the basura, so I've taken them along with me. They include a few issues of Scud: The Disposable Assassin I've held onto since college--one of those issues was written by a pre-Channel 101/CommunityDan Harmon!--and a comic strip I snipped from a 1994 issue of Pulse! magazine.

Pulse! was a music review magazine the now-defunct Tower Records published and handed out for free in its stores. The final page of each Pulse! issue always featured a music-related comic strip. My favorite of those Pulse! strips is "The Big Score" by cartoonist Richard Sala, whose serialized 1991 "Invisible Hands" mystery shorts during Liquid Television were a favorite of many fans of the MTV animation anthology show. (Sala's horror comics are full of old-fashioned movie monsters and hot heroines. Cartoon Network is too dunderheaded to allow it, but I'd rather see the network's Adult Swim/Williams Street department produce a new Scooby-Doo animated series with character designs by either Sala or someone equally offbeat and not-so-kid-friendly instead of CN and Warner Bros. Animation rehashing the same old Scoob for kids.) "The Big Score" takes place in a noirish nightclub and cleverly replaces all the dialogue with names of classic crime movie scores that Sala thinks would be appropriate for each moment.

"At the time I was listening to a lot of movie soundtracks, particularly the cool, atmospheric soundtracks of thrillers and spy movies, which I found to be inspiring background music to play while I wrote," said Sala in a 2010 blog post about "The Big Score." I don't have a Mac-compatible scanner with me to digitally preserve "The Big Score," so good thing Sala--whose latest work is the digital-only Fantagraphics graphic novel Violenzia--scanned his own 1994 strip and posted it on his blog.

(Photo source: Richard Sala)

Thanks to YouTube and Spotify, I can now take that 1994 strip and post it alongside the exact same audio Sala envisioned when he drew it. Vertigo and Our Man Flint are the only film titles from "The Big Score" that contain themes that are currently in rotation on AFOS. I've streamed cues from Touch of Evil, The Ipcress File, Experiment in Terror, Arabesque and Psycho on AFOS before, and after first catching Kiss Me Deadly on TCM, it's hard to forget that batshit crazy Robert Aldrich flick, but I'm not familiar with the other movies Sala references in "The Big Score." I actually still haven't seen The Third Man. There are a couple of Ida Lupino flicks mentioned in there that I need to check out after hearing Greg Proops devote an entire segment to her work during The Smartest Man in the World. And after watching the How to Murder Your Wife clip of Virna Lisi's sexy dance to Neal Hefti source music I've posted below, I don't understand why Jack Lemmon would rather get rid of that than continue to tap that.

Panel 1:Touch of Evil


Panel 2:The Ipcress File; The Third Man; Experiment in Terror; On Dangerous Ground









Panel 3:The Night Walker; The List of Adrian Messenger; Private Hell 36; Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte; How to Murder Your Wife










Panel 4:Vertigo


Panel 5:Kiss Me Deadly



Panel 6:Psycho


Panel 7:Our Man Flint; Arabesque; Mr. Lucky

(Photo source: Bravest Warriors Wiki)

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

"Hamster Priest," the latest webisode of Cartoon Hangover's sci-fi comedy Bravest Warriors, finds Beth Tezuka (Liliana Mumy) experiencing both headaches and strange visions of her friends that turn out to be different alternate realities she's being shifted through. Yep, she's going through the same predicament Worf experienced in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Parallels," which "Hamster Priest" pays tribute to.



Except instead of the dimension bouncing being caused by one of The Next Generation's countless "temporal anomalies," it's the cause of a sinister-looking experiment conducted by her recently resurfaced dad (former Lost in Space star Bill Mumy, Liliana's dad), and the reality shifts are at an accelerated pace like the changes in the time continuum caused by Alec Baldwin's Timecrowave on SNL. Mr. Tezuka's up to no good after Beth rescued him from being trapped for two years in the See-Through Zone, where he started worshiping a powerful entity known as the Worm and was renamed Reverend Ralph Waldo Pickle Chips. The results of Ralph's experiment--which take place when he activates a mysterious purple energy device and feeds one of his hamsters a droplet of the same purple virus that attacked the Warriors in last season's "Catbug"--amount to one of Bravest Warriors' funniest and most inventive installments.

One moment, the Invisible Hideout, the Warriors homebase that's also a flying robot, suddenly looks like the bridge of the Enterprise-D, Chris Kirkman (Alex Walsh) is bald like Captain Picard and everyone's dressed in those 24th century Starfleet uniforms that look more like figure skating costumes than genuine military uniforms. And then the next, the Hideout interior has increased in size, Beth's alien best friend Plum (Tara Strong) has switched genders from female to male and Catbug (six-year-old Sam Lavagnino), the Warriors' little animal sidekick, is now captain, but he's a dictatorial asshole who barks that "this bridge is no place for a woman!," an amusing nod to the misogyny of '60s Trek episodes like "Turnabout Intruder."

(Photo source: Bravest Warriors Wiki)

I'm torn between Beth's changing subservient roles in the realities where Catbug is dictator (from "Kitchen Wench Tezuka" to "Pleasure Clone Tezuka") and the '80s TV character-like appearances of the alternate counterparts of Danny Vasquez (John Omohundro) and Wallow (Ian Jones-Quartey) as my favorite gag during "Hamster Priest." Danny's counterparts resemble Magnum, P.I. and Worf, while Wallow's counterpart resembles B.A. Baracus. The kiss one of Danny's counterparts plants on Beth is a scene that was foreshadowed for a split second as one of Chris' visions of future events in "Ultra Wankershim," and the fact that Chris was able to see a future kiss that took place in an alternate reality where he died hints at the omnipotence he'll attain later on as an Emotion Lord.

Chris might need to find a way to access his currently latent Emotion Lord powers in order to defeat the Worm because this episode seems to be setting up the Worm as the second season's big bad. "Never doubt the Worm" doesn't have quite the same ominous ring as, for example, "God is now here nowhere" did during the short-lived 2003 paranormal show Miracles, but it's the first step in a mythology that will hopefully be as juicy as the mythology over on Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors creator Pendleton Ward's signature show. Ward isn't involved with the writing on Bravest Warriors--Breehn Burns is the showrunner here--but inventive installments like this week's "Hamster Priest" prove that Bravest Warriors is in equally good hands.

(Photo source: South Park Archives)

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Of all the memeable and hashtaggable things Kanye West has said or done since the release of his latest album Yeezus--from "You don't got the answers, Sway!" to "Do I look like a motherfucking comedian? Don't fucking heckle me. I'm Kanye motherfucking West!"--the South Park 17th-season finale has chosen to zero in on Yeezy's bizarre remolding of Kim Kardashian into Beyoncé, something I never really noticed until South Park pointed it out. Kim's currently dyed blond hair makes a whole lot of sense now. (By the way, I like how Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn't give a shit about updating Yeezy's look, so 'Ye still looks the same as he did when he transformed into a gay fish at the end of South Park's 2009 "Fishsticks" episode: barefoot and rocking that 808s & Heartbreak-era mullet that made him look like Theo Huxtable, circa 1985.)

Parker brilliantly ties Yeezy's Vertigo-ing of Kim into recent headlines about women relying on Photoshop to remove imperfections in their selfies for an episode that's South Park at its most vicious in the celebrity parody department. Other than correctly predicting Time magazine's pick of Pope Francis as its Person of the Year and the gut-punch of an ending I'll get into in a moment, the most remarkable thing about "The Hobbit" is that outside of a few pinups of Kim on Butters' locker when Wendy Testaburger points out to Butters the cold, hard facts about his favorite pinup girl, Kim is never seen at all, not even during the show's descriptions of her as a short, fat and hairy Hobbit. Yeezy's bungled attempts to discredit his future wife's Hobbitness were amusing the first couple of times but got tiresome about halfway through the episode, even during the "Bound 2" video parody, which I actually like a little more than James Franco and Seth Rogen's overlong "Bound 3" parody. Then like a lot of Sideshow Bob rake scene-ish running gags, they somehow regained their funniness when the episode cycled through them for the final time.

(Photo source: South Park Archives)

(Photo source: South Park Archives)

But what elevates "The Hobbit" from "B" territory to "A" territory aren't the jabs at Kanye and Kim (or Britney Spears'"Work Bitch" video or news anchors' strained attempts to look hip) but Wendy's arc--she attempts to take her anti-Photoshop crusade to the local news and the state Senate--and its downbeat conclusion. South Park rarely strives for genuine pathos. Some of those attempts at pathos have fallen flat, but then there are other times where the seriousness works, and the wordless final scene of "The Hobbit" is one of those times. Parker usually throws in one last comedic punchline before the end credits, but he opts instead for a dramatic punchline, and it's mad devastating.

Wendy, who inadvertently created a monster when her Photoshop skills led the other girls at school to Photoshop themselves, succumbs to pressure. With tears in her eyes, she doctors her own photo and e-mails it to everyone (compare this self-inflicted Photoshop makeover to the makeover Ally Sheedy's misfit character receives from Molly Ringwald's character at the end of The Breakfast Club, and the "Hobbit" conclusion drives home how much I hate that Breakfast Club scene where the Sheedy character loses everything that made her unique and likable--it's one of Reaganite filmmaker John Hughes' most Reagan-ish, pro-conformity moments). A typical South Park episode--particularly during the show's earlier years--would climax with an out-of-control situation being brought to an end by a speech from Stan or Kyle about the idiocy of the situation and what they've learned. That doesn't happen here. Instead, Stan and Kyle fall for the out-of-control bullshit in "The Hobbit," and--like what has often happened in real life with girls who struggle with their self-image--so does an anguished Wendy.

(Photo source: South Park Archives)

(Photo source: South Park Archives)

Memorable quotes:
* Wendy: "Are you just an asshole? Is that it?" Butters: "Am I just an asshole?" Wendy: "Yeah!" Butters: "Well, no. I've got arms and legs. I have everything."

* "Kim is not even in that movie. That movie is just loosely based on her television show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which is a show about short, loud little people living in a fantasy world--hold up!"

* "And even though she still couldn't sing like Beyoncé or dance like Beyoncé or act like Beyoncé or be a decent human being like Beyoncé, the little Hobbit was looked up to and loved, just like Beyoncé. [sniffles]"

The uncensored cut of "The Hobbit" can be streamed in its entirety at South Park Studios.

(Photo source: Art of the Title)

Delia Derbyshire, "Doctor Who (Original Theme)"(now playing during "Hall H")

In England, hiding behind the couch became a tradition for kids who grew up watching monsters chase after the Doctor and his companions on telly on Saturday night. But in America, those of us who grew up watching The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact back-to-back at 5pm on the local PBS station weren't exposed to Doctor Who on only one night of the week. Thanks to PBS, we were exposed to it every weeknight, right after the Bloodhound Gang would try to bust a cocaine ring or something. The Doctor Who opening titles meant that 3-2-1 Contact was over and it was time to change the channel as soon as possible because for a four-year-old like me, the Doctor Who title sequence--with its intense-looking, psychedelic slit-scan vortex FX, its photo of a somber-looking Tom Baker and that otherworldly piece of early electronica written by Ron Grainer and performed by BBC Radiophonic Workshop musician Delia Derbyshire--was scary as shit.



But unlike you Brits who yelped and cowered from the sight of giant pepper shakers with toilet plunger arms hollering "Exterminate!" at'cha boy, I didn't hide behind the couch whenever the Doctor Who titles came on. My brain merely shivered a little and then I switched to a different channel. That's how I rolled, and to me, the Doctor Who titles were scarier than any of the rubber monsters I would see a few years later, which was when I finally had the guts to get past those spooky and unsettling titles and watch the rest of the show.

"I remember as a child I was terrified by [the theme]. It just strikes fear into your very soul," noted British comedian Bill Bailey at the start of his "Docteur Qui" number during Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, in which he amusingly broke it down on the piano and pointed out how Grainer's melody is basically Belgian jazz.

Delia Derbyshire (top); Sarah Winter as Derbyshire in An Adventure in Space and Time (bottom)

In An Adventure in Space and Time, the BBC's recent made-for-TV biopic about William Hartnell's resurgence as a TV star during Doctor Who's first few years, we get to briefly see Derbyshire (played by Sarah Winter) fiddle around with analog tape reels and perform the theme on keyboard (she's also seen explaining the origin of the TARDIS dematerialization sound FX: house keys scraped against a piano wire). Today, her arrangement of the theme--which, except for a few tweaks in the sound FX and the musical transition from episode credits to opening scene, remained unchanged in the opening titles from 1963 to 1979--isn't scary-sounding at all because since childhood, we've been subjected to much scarier things, like Dana Perino trying to rap or Alison Gold singing about Chinese food. But it hasn't lost its power as a trippy and effective musical encapsulation of exploring the unknown, which is why when I received Silva Screen's Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection and the Derbyshire version turned up as Track 1, I immediately added it to the "Hall H" playlist.

(Photo source: SMOSH)

Murray Gold, "All the Strange, Strange Creatures"(from series 3 of Doctor Who; now playing during "AFOS Prime,""New Cue Revue" and "Hall H")

One thing I've noticed about modern Doctor Who is that Murray Gold, who's been the show's composer since 2005, hasn't really referenced the Grainer theme, outside of the opening and closing titles and the "Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords" drumbeat motif that represents a certain old nemesis of the Doctor's. It's understandable because the Grainer theme doesn't really represent the Doctor as a heroic character--the theme's alien nature signifies that it's more of a theme about traveling through space and time and, like I said before, encountering the unknown--so Gold has written all-new themes to represent the heroism of the Doctor and his homies and emphasize the adventure side of this modernized and much less lethargically paced Doctor Who. These themes are more heroic-sounding than the Grainer piece, and because the BBC has given modern Doctor Who a bigger budget to work with, they're more cinematic and epic in tone and orchestration. (They also make for slightly more appealing listening than the mostly synthy and atonal score cues that were written for the show from the early '70s to the late '80s. Hardcore Doctor Who fans might enjoy that '70s-to-'80s section of the 50th Anniversary Collection album more than most listeners for nostalgic reasons, while others who are only familiar with Doctor Who in its present form might find that part of the compilation to be kind of grueling as music.)

The rousing "I Am the Doctor" motif Gold introduced in Matt Smith's first year as the Doctor is a good example of modern Doctor Who's cinematic sound, as is Gold's "All the Strange, Strange Creatures" motif from a couple of years before. "All the Strange, Strange Creatures," which reappears on the 50th Anniversary Collection album, is referred to as "The Trailer Music" because it was used in series 3 trailers, while I remember it best in an alternate form as the cue during the pivotal moment when an amnesiac professor played by special guest star Derek Jacobi regains his memory, and it turns out he's the long-unseen Master, the Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock.

Outside the context of the show, "All the Strange, Strange Creatures" brings back all those memories of the 10th Doctor and Martha Jones running around and continuing the show's tradition of chase scenes inside corridors. White sneakers--or as the 11th Doctor and the War Doctor prefer to call them in "The Day of the Doctor," sand shoes--just look wrong when paired with a suit and tie, but now that I think about it, the 10th Doctor's preference for sneaks makes some sense because of all that running he did.


Elmer Bernstein, "Theme from Devil in a Blue Dress"(now playing during "The Whitest Block Ever")

Before his breakout role in One False Move director Carl Franklin's 1995 Walter Mosley adaptation Devil in a Blue Dress as Mouse the trigger-happy thug ("If you ain't want him killed, why'd you leave him with me?"), Don Cheadle was known only as the uptight, by-the-book D.A. on Picket Fences--or for that one time he showed up as Will's best friend from the Philly streets really early on in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's run. Devil in a Blue Dress was meant to be a Denzel Washington vehicle, but the unassuming-looking, average-sized Cheadle straight-up stole the flick, like how the equally unassuming-looking, modest-of-height Kendrick Lamar steals damn near every posse cut or collabo he guests on these days: with attitude, energy, calm and wit.

(Photo source: The Blue Vial)

The future Hotel Rwanda and House of Lies star's performance as Mouse also outshined the presence of Jennifer Beals, who, of course, looked like a million bucks in that '40s L.A. steez as the titular femme fatale, but she otherwise didn't make much of an impression in the role. Instead of that film, the place where Beals really got to shine in a crime genre setting was the short-lived 2011 Shawn Ryan cop show The Chicago Code, where she starred as an ambitious Windy City police superintendent--the first female superintendent in department history--who attempts to build a case against a corrupt and powerful alderman played by Delroy Lindo. Unfortunately, the amount of people who saw her show was even smaller than the minuscule audience that went to see the underperforming Devil in a Blue Dress in 1995.

The Devil in a Blue Dress theme that's in rotation during "The Whitest Block Ever" is one of only three score tracks on Columbia Records'Devil in a Blue Dress soundtrack album. While I wish the track contained a motif that reps Mouse, it's got the late Elmer Bernstein at his noirish best during his low-key and gorgeous-sounding motifs for Beals' Daphne Monet (is that an ondes Martenot I hear during her motif?) and Washington's Easy Rawlins.

Easy's a character who really deserves another film built around him. I doubt Washington will ever reprise the role, but I'd like to see him and Cheadle play an older Easy and Mouse in an adaptation of Mosley's 2005 Easy novel Cinnamon Kiss or this year's Little Green. There are so many movies with African American stars in the roles of supercops. Hollywood, if you really want to impress the hip-hop generation, make more black private eye movies like Devil in a Blue Dress and the 1971 Shaft. We tend to identify more with gumshoes, especially ones of color like Easy or current Justified staff writer Leonard Chang's Allen Choice. Unless it's Yemana, Meldrick, Luther, the Major Case folks on The Wire, the diverse pack of detectives on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a Shawn Ryan creation like the aforementioned Chicago Code or maybe Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park on Hawaii Five-0, we don't give a shit about the police.

Joseph Vitarelli, "Main Title"(from The Last Seduction; now playing during "AFOS Prime")

Continuing on the femme fatale tip is the jazzy main theme Joseph Vitarelli wrote for Bridget Gregory, Linda Fiorentino's fast-thinking schemer in The Last Seduction, director John Dahl's 1994 neo-noir/fish-out-of-water comedy. Vitarelli's theme is one of my favorite elements of The Last Seduction because of its drum brush strokes and those piano and clarinet riffs that scream out New York, in as similar a fashion as Bridget's new but not-so-different small-town identity as Wendy Kroy does (the name's an anagram of New York). Actually, I added Vitarelli's theme to AFOS rotation back in November, but nobody listens to AFOS or reads this blog these days, so who gives a shit?

The portion of the main title theme that's featured during the rough cut of the Last Seduction trailer that's below isn't the Bridget half of the theme. Instead, it's a motif author David Butler refers to as "Foiling Men" in his 2002 book Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction, which is, sadly, the only place of lengthy discussion I've seen anywhere about this underrated score.

"Its main use in the film is at those points when a male character is being duped or has just realized that they have been fooled, usually by Bridget," wrote Butler in Jazz Noir. "The 'Foiling Men' theme consists of fast runs up and down a scale, suggesting a process that is too fast and dizzying for the men who are not fully aware of what is going on until it is too late."



"Foiling Men" is actually quite effective during the trailer because many of the clips show Bridget doing exactly that to the likes of her husband Clay (Bill Pullman) and her boytoy Mike (Peter Berg). But that Bridget half of the theme is just golden, as it perfectly encapsulates a couple of the things that make The Last Seduction as compelling a noir as Double Indemnity or Miller's Crossing: Bridget's intellect and her skills as a master manipulator.

"In The Last Seduction, Bridget's victory is achieved through her mental prowess. Moving away from the traditions of noir jazz, cool jazz is used in the film to underscore the intellectual qualities of Bridget and the lack of such qualities demonstrated by Mike and Clay," wrote Butler. "The film's use of jazz as something other than anguished and sexual underscore is original, however, particularly for film noir. Dahl and Vitarelli seem to have been aware of the themes that jazz has traditionally signified and recast them."

Flying Lotus and Thundercat, "Aqua teen 24" and "Aqua teen inst 24"(both from Aqua TV Show Show; now playing during "AFOS Prime,""New Cue Revue,""Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" and "Hall H")

As the Red Bull Music Academy Twitter feed once said, your TV show wins if you get instrumental hip-hop artist FlyLo and his labelmate and frequent collaborator, the bassist known as Thundercat, to do the theme song. For the opening titles of the latest incarnation of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which featured a theme by Schoolly D for its first seven seasons (damn, Aqua has been on for longer than that already?), the creators turned to a couple of other names from the hip-hop world: FlyLo, who's composed bumper music for Aqua's home network Adult Swim, and Thundercat. The duo's smooth-sounding theme, which FlyLo included as part of the free Ideas+drafts+loops compilation he dropped last week, is kind of an odd fit for such an anarchic and silly show, but it's a groove that's sicker than the blood in Carl Brutananadilewski's stool.

(Photo source: David OReilly)

Flying Lotus, "About That Time"(from Adventure Time's "A Glitch Is a Glitch" episode; now playing during "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" and "Hall H")

Any piece of animation that concludes with dope end title music by FlyLo is a keeper in my book, like the recent all-3-D-animated Adventure Time episode "A Glitch Is a Glitch.""About That Time" is another track FlyLo threw onto his free Ideas+drafts+loops download last week, and both that "Glitch Is a Glitch" end title theme and his Aqua TV Show Show theme are making me really interested in watching director Trevor Nance's partially animated indie movie An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which features a score written by FlyLo. Like I once said in one of my posts for Word Is Bond, I love it when the worlds of film or TV score music and hip-hop collide. FlyLo, whose Adult Swim bumper music is full of 8-bit bloops, came up with the perfect glitchy 8-bit closing theme for "A Glitch Is a Glitch," which has guest director David OReilly, the Irish animator behind 2010's "The External World," pitting Finn and Jake against Ice King and a computer virus the old man's using to delete everyone from Ooo so that he has the whole land to just himself and Princess Bubblegum, the teenage Candy Kingdom ruler he's continually--and creepily--spitting game at.

"The External World" was an inspired work of absurdist and very adult 3-D animation, and some of that short's random, TV-MA-rated strangeness seeped into "A Glitch Is a Glitch," particularly when PB wards off Ice King's advances by making out with her hand, one of several masturbation jokes the Frederator animators have somehow slipped past Cartoon Network's Standards and Practices department. I think someone at Frederator has a photo of a Cartoon Network censor guy with a sheep.

Samurai Flamenco, "Capture Samumenco!"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," which was formerly called "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. It's time to look back at the biggest standouts of the episodes I discussed in 2013 (in chronological order). "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS. "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week" returns on January 10.

Bob's Burgers, "Mother Daughter Laser Razor" (from January 9, 2013)

It took me about a few episodes of Bob's Burgers to get used to the weirdness of female characters being voiced by male comedians (kind of like how a viewer who's never seen The Venture Bros. before catches TVB for the first time and keeps wondering, "Why does that brunette chick sound like a dude?"), but now that I'm no longer distracted by that casting quirk, I consider Bob's Burgers to be the current crown jewel of the Fox "Animation Domination" block. Bob's Burgers creator Loren Bouchard has taken the best elements of his Squigglevision cartoons Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and Home Movies--overlapping dialogue, great comedic voice acting by performers who weren't previously associated with animation, nicely written kid characters--and put them into a show with top-shelf animation (no off-putting squiggling during this one).

Add to those elements a recurring and interesting art-vs.-commerce conflict between Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) and his business rivals that Bouchard has said was inspired by the 1996 Italian restaurant movie Big Night--plus timeless storylines that deal with the unspoken affection the family members have for each other without getting too goopy--and you have a cartoon that's outlasted the Allen Gregorys and Napoleon Dynamites of the world and, due to its timeless writing, has the potential to age better in reruns than Family Guy's random pop-culture reference gags and the equally reference-heavy and spotty later seasons of The Simpsons. "Mother Daughter Laser Razor" is a great example of the Bouchard show's exploration of the bonds between the Belchers without resorting to those sitcom hugging scenes that made '80s studio audiences go "Awww" and made me want to go shoot myself.

Written by Nora Smith, "Mother Daughter Laser Razor" pairs off two characters who don't share a lot of scenes together--nine-year-old sociopath Louise (Kristen Schaal) and the parent she doesn't favor, the overly perky Linda (John Roberts, one of two male cast members on this show who voices females)--while continuing to explore how Louise's older sister Tina (Dan Mintz, the other actor playing female) seems to have inherited everything from Bob. Those attributes include a lonely and largely friendless childhood similar to the one we saw young Bob experience in "Bob Fires the Kids," Bob's calm demeanor and now, his hairiness.

At Dad's restaurant, Tina overhears a couple of popular classmates gossiping about another girl's hairy legs and realizes her own legs are equally hairy and susceptible to ridicule, so she asks Bob to take her to get her legs waxed after a couple of failed attempts to have them sheared. Lin was supposed to shave Tina's legs, but Lin, who's been fuming over Louise's frequent hostility towards her, is too distracted and angry to be entrusted with a razor, and as resident weirdo sibling Gene (Eugene Mirman) notes in one of the few observations of his that make any sense, "I don't think you should shave angry."

Lin's misguided solution to getting Louise to like her better is to trick her into taking part in a mother-daughter bonding seminar run by Lin's current favorite mommy blogger, "the Phenomimom," who turns out to be a creepy man named Dakota (Tim Heidecker from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) who holds his seminars next door to a laser-tag fun zone that's more to Louise's liking. Dakota's "Modo Time" methods of getting disgruntled kids to bond with their moms are, of course, pointless and ineffective. They range from lame role-reversal improv games to forcing the kids to re-experience their days as fetuses while trapped inside "vagi-sacks," a.k.a. sleeping bags.

Because Bob's Burgers is a very good cartoon as opposed to a sloppy one like The Simpsons' fake Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show that sets up the presence of a fireworks factory and then fails to utilize it as a gag, "Mother Daughter Laser Razor" makes it to the fireworks factory when Louise frees herself and the other kids from their hellish seminar experience and leads them to escape to the laser-tag fun zone, where Louise and Lin finally end up bonding over laser guns aimed at an enraged Dakota. If this were The Young Ones, the anarchic Louise's love of destruction and criminal activity would make her Vyvyan. Between the attraction to laser-tag and her enjoyment of Bob's favorite spaghetti westerns in "Spaghetti Western and Meatballs," I wouldn't be surprised if this mini-Vyv grows up to become an action movie director, just like how Gene is bound to become either a hacky morning zoo DJ or a hacky stand-up and Tina is headed towards becoming either a chef like her dad or an essayist penning Paul Feig-esque best-sellers about her awkward adolescent experiences.

The kid characters are the best part of Bob's Burgers. That's mainly because they--particularly the nutty and over-enthusiastic Gene--talk and behave more like real kids who don't really know much about the world outside the restaurant and the playground and less like precocious Huey Freeman-style stand-ins or Mary Sues for their adult creators (although Aaron McGruder's use of Huey as the voice for his politics on the Boondocks cartoon works quite well for that show).

My favorite example in this episode of the Belcher kids being such kids--other than Gene's desire to get a scrotal wax despite not fully grasping how painful it likely is--is a quick gag that's easy to miss, and a lot of them can be easily missed due to the overlapping dialogue that's distinguished Bob's Burgers from The Simpsons and the Seth MacFarlane cartoons. When Louise tries to back out of mother-daughter time, she communicates to Lin her reluctance to spend time with her by using break-up lines she's overheard from either dozens of break-up conversations between couples at the restaurant or break-up scenes in rom-coms: "Look, I think we should spend some time apart. I'm just not really looking for something serious right now. You understand--I mean, yeah, it's gonna be a little awkward, you've got some of your stuff at my place, we live together...""I think we should spend some time apart" are words I hope I'll never have to say to Bob's Burgers.


Archer, "Fugue and Riffs" (from January 23, 2013)

Episodes like "Fugue and Riffs,"Archer's wildly funny and violent fourth-season premiere, are exactly why I wanted to expand "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner" to include adult cartoons at the end of last year. "When the new year approaches," I asked myself, "do you want another year of sitting through Ben 10 reboots that cause your attention to wander or awfully written Ultimate Spider-Man episodes, or do you want to put that part of your time to better use, like covering adult cartoons that are more up your alley and are worthier of discussion and analysis?"

"Fugue and Riffs" is the kind of adult cartoon episode I should have been focusing on in the first place. It's another sharply written story involving ISIS agent Sterling Archer's ongoing conflict with his mother/boss Malory (Jessica Walter), and it contains a brilliant crossover with lead voice actor H. Jon Benjamin's other current cartoon, more semi-nudity from Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) and esoteric references that are funny simply because they're so damn esoteric (British spy hero Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon! Manning Coles, the duo that created Hambledon! The star of Shazam!Émile Zola!). You won't see Spidey cracking a joke that's a nod to Zola's "J'accuse" letter during Ultimate Spider-Man, that's for damn sure.

(Photo source: Brain Explosion)

The season premiere opens with Archer tending the grill at the exact same titular restaurant from Bob's Burgers, Benjamin's other show, while surrounded by the Belcher kids and Linda (John Roberts, the only Bob's Burgers voice actor reprising his role), who gets to berate Archer with one of the various insulting nicknames that have become one of the Adam Reed cartoon's trademarks ("Well, excuse me, Ike Turner!"). Instead of appearing in their more familiar character designs from Bob's Burgers, Tina, Gene, Louise and Linda are awesomely redesigned to blend in with Archer's '60s comic book aesthetic.

I like how the cold open strings us along into thinking Archer is undercover as a burger joint owner as part of some ISIS op, until it becomes clear that it's no op and he has no memory of his life as an ISIS agent, although a few pieces of that life remain. They include fighting skills, which Archer puts to use during a badass and extremely gory restaurant confrontation with KGB assassins straight out of A History of Violence, his literary tastes (he dubs the restaurant's newest burger "a Thomas Elphinstone Hambledurger with Manning Coleslaw") and his metrosexual side ("What I am gonna do is find out who this Archer jerk is... I'm also probably gonna do a spa weekend").

It turns out that two months ago, Archer developed amnesia due to a moment of extreme stress and ran away to a new life as a seaside fry cook named Bob. He married Linda and apparently became her second husband, which makes me wonder what happened to the original Bob in this universe (Alex, I'm gonna go with "What is dead?," and because much of this show's humor thrives on kinky or freaky behavior, I wouldn't be surprised if Linda has been remolding Archer Vertigo-style to look more like Bob). Both ISIS and the KGB are after Archer for different reasons: Malory assigns Lana, Cyril (Chris Parnell) and Ray (Reed) to stage a fake run-in with the KGB in front of Archer to try to jog his memory and get him back to the agency, while bionic villain Barry Dylan (Dave Willis) sends more KGB assassins to eliminate Archer.

Part of the fun of "Fugue and Riffs" is trying to figure out the stressful moment that triggered Archer's amnesia. We're given a clue early on when Malory complains that her son hates seeing her be happy, and when the catalyst is revealed at the end to be neither a bomb explosion nor a Bourne Identity-style, ISIS-sanctioned attempt on his life, but something far less action-y--Malory's wedding to Ron Cadillac, the most successful Cadillac dealer in the Tri-State Area--it makes perfect sense within the neurotic, wracked-by-mommy-issues world of Archer. In a great bit of stunt-casting, the show has recruited Ron Leibman from The Hot Rock and Friends, as well as Walter's real-life husband, to voice Malory's new hubby, who's won over everyone at ISIS during Archer's two-month absence and whose presence this season is bound to reignite an old thread from a couple of seasons ago: Archer's search for his biological father. (Archer reportedly begins to form a bond with Ron in the new season's fourth episode. I can't wait to see if Reed, who's obsessed with the movies of one-time Archer guest star Burt Reynolds, will toss into that episode a reference to The Hot Rock or Leibman's other '70s crime-genre cult favorite, The Super Cops.)

The rest of the fun of "Fugue and Riffs" involves being reacquainted with the elements that make Archer such an entertaining adult cartoon, from the batshit crazy behavior of Dr. Krieger (Lucky Yates) and office subordinates Pam (Amber Nash) and Cheryl/Carol (Judy Greer) to the self-satisfaction Archer gets from anything he does or says, particularly his esoteric jokes, as if he's a boy who just discovered cursing. Archer may be a competent, book-smart, sharply dressed and jet-setting spy with a sex life many of us Archer viewers would kill for, but deep down, he's really just a kid who never grew up and knows only how to be a narcissistic asshole, thanks to screwed-up parenting from an asshole of a parent. "Fugue and Riffs" reinforces Archer's childishness when he woo-hoos like a kid over the Molotov cocktails he and Lana lob at the assassins, or when one of Lana's attempts to get him to remember ISIS tanks and causes him to go off on a tangent about his love for Shazam!, which sometimes crossed over with the superheroine show The Secrets of Isis in the '70s--a nod to how this episode crosses over with Bob's Burgers.

No wonder Archer identifies so much with Shazam, née Captain Marvel, even in his fugue state. Shazam is a boy in a grown man's body, just like Archer.


Regular Show, "That's My Television" (from March 6, 2013)

Regular Show writers/storyboarders Madeline Queripel and Andres Salaff were responsible for one of the show's most unengaging shorts, this season's Fourth of July-related "Firework Run," a borderline racist episode that felt like a right-winger's worst nightmare about the Mexican gangster villains from Robert Rodriguez's Mariachi trilogy, even though Salaff himself is Latino (at the end of "Firework Run," the main heavy was revealed to have been a robot, perhaps a "Kim Jong Il is really an alien cockroach, so that's why we made his Engrish accent so cartoonishly thick"-style attempt to make the episode come off as less racist.) Queripel and Salaff also happen to be behind one of the show's best shorts, "That's My Television," an imaginative and wildly funny installment where Mordecai and Rigby come to the rescue of one of their favorite childhood TV stars, a talking TV set named RGB2 (Sam Marin), who's grown tired of showbiz and wants to flee to a much quieter life in a destination known as "Pine Mountain."

RGB2 starred as himself on the crappy '80s sitcom That's My Television, and a nameless TV network has brought back into production the still-popular show, which brings to mind every corny '80s housekeeper sitcom you've seen, whether it's Gimme a Break, Mr. Belvedere or TBS'ultra-cheesyDown to Earth (RGB2's signature catchphrase is "I hope you saved room for dessert!"). But RGB2--who needs to ingest cans of "'80s Air"a la Perri-Air from Spaceballs in order to survive--isn't enjoying a single minute of the revival, especially because the network is run by an intimidating exec who looks like Cartoon Network founder/owner Ted Turner (but doesn't sound like him at all and is voiced here by Jeff Bennett) and sends armed thugs in suits to threaten his stars if they don't do what he says.

At RGB2's Comic-Con-style meet-and-greet with his fans, Mordecai and Rigby win a drawing to receive That's My Television DVDs signed on the spot by RGB2 himself, and the star secretly pleads with the duo to help him escape to Pine Mountain. Mordecai and Rigby agree to help out their sitcom idol--it's not surprising that these slacker park workers identify with a domestic worker who frequently gets into comedic misunderstandings with the head of the household ("RGB2, room for dessert doesn't actually mean a whole room full of dessert!")--and their kind gesture sends Faux-Ted and his network thugs chasing after them in the most entertaining animated car chase I've seen in a while. Either Queripel or Salaff is enamored with both Casino Royale's badass airport tarmac stunt in which the jet wash of an incoming plane sends a police car flying through the air and the Guinness World Record-breakingAston Martin cannon roll stunt from the same film because during the chase sequence, a couple of the network minions' Humvees are seen tumbling through the air in similar fashion.

RGB2 is clearly a riff on ALF, R2D2 and the dwarf actors who played them: Michu Meszaros sweated his balls off inside ALF's costume whenever a scene on ALF didn't call for the ALF puppet to be used, while R2 was operated by Kenny Baker, whose autograph adorns the liner notes of my CD copy of the expanded 1977 Star Wars soundtrack. The parallels to Meszaros and Baker are made plainly clear in the episode's nutty, disturbing and oddly affecting twist ending, when Mordecai and Rigby discover that RGB2 isn't a sentient TV set and has actually been a naked old actor inside the TV the whole time, which explains the need for '80s Air to help the poor guy breathe inside that damn TV. The dying man's destination turns out not to be a mountain but a billboard in the middle of nowhere for Pine Mountain Gas (presumably the gas station he either left behind to pursue stardom or was discovered at when the network was on the lookout for someone to operate RGB2).

Just like how this naked guy stayed hidden inside what was basically a mobile prison for over three decades, hidden within the '80s gags, the hilariously over-the-top car chase, the gunplay and the jabs at both focus group-driven TV and network exec jargon are serious questions about fandom, the pressures the public puts on TV stars and viewers' relationships with those stars and the TV industry--hence the double meaning of the title "That's My Television," which refers to both RGB2's show and people's attachment to the idiot box. The episode asks us to decide which kind of TV fan do we want to be by presenting two types of fans. Do we want to become so attached to TV that we degenerate into the mean and deranged middle-aged fangirl from RGB2's meet-and-greet who doesn't care for the well-being of a star like RGB2 and demands that he continue to entertain her even if the entertainer isn't happy or right in his mind or is endangering his own life by playing this character? Or do we want to be more like Mordecai and Rigby, who aren't as out-of-control in their fandom, are more understanding about RGB2's misery and are treating him more like a human being--even though for almost the entire episode, they think he's just a talking TV set?

"That's My Television" also questions whether it's worth it for performers like RGB2's portrayer to sacrifice a normal life--and their health--for fame and syndication money. Fortunately, the episode raises these questions without a single bit of speechifying and without trotting out Mordecai and Rigby after the episode to address the audience and deliver a moral like Filmation used to do with its characters. That's how terribly written most cartoons used to be back in the day. To borrow the words of one of the network thugs who get attacked by Mordecai, Rigby and RGB2 with weaponized cans of '80s Air, "Aw, sick! It smells like the '80s!"

Other memorable quotes:
* RGB2 defends himself with a rocket launcher: "It was a gift from the Russian Prime Minister! He loves the show!"

* "Bravo, gentlemen, bravo! Overall, that was a pretty nice PG getaway. Way to reach out to the 18-to-35 demographic. Oh, and nice third-act climax, by the way. The helicopter explosion really tied it all in with a cherry on top."

* "We just have a couple of notes for you. You see, our research groups have shown that nobody wants to see the good guys win anymore."

* The network exec threatens Mordecai, Rigby and RGB2 with his new, heavily armed and Poochie-like action star, who emerges on a skateboard: "Our focus group studied everything that boys ages nine to 14 find the most brutal and destructive!"

* "I'm not dead! I was just resting."


Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, "Come Undone" (from April 10, 2013)

"Come Undone," the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated series finale, takes one of the most wack and least imaginative story resolutions in sci-fi, the reset button, and somehow makes it work, much like how Mystery Incorporated took a franchise that was entertaining only when you were a kid--and had become so unwatchable--and made it appealing again and genuinely dark and funny. The Mystery Incorporated team manages to defeat the Evil Entity, the previously imprisoned Anunnaki deity that's responsible for all the costumed criminals and evilness in Crystal Cove and has ended up consuming all of the town's inhabitants except for the detectives (in a series of scenes that are the darkest and bleakest this franchise has ever gotten and are therefore, awesome). Their triumph over the entity erases every trace of it from existence and creates a new timeline where Crystal Cove, "the Most Hauntedest Place on Earth," is now "the Sunniest Place on Earth" because the entity wasn't there to corrupt any of it.

Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby discover that their lives in this new timeline are perfect, and everyone who was previously killed off, including Velma's lesbian lover Marcy (let's face it, Linda Cardellini's reading of Marcy's last line in "Come Undone,""That's my girl," confirms it), is alive again. (Patrick Warburton's Sheriff Stone says the funniest line in "Come Undone," when he introduces his and Mayor Nettles' kids: "Now Eastwood, Norris and Little Billy Jack need to be asleep by eight. Lynda Carter here can stay up as long as she likes, on account of her being more adorable than her brothers.") But in a great turn of expectations, everyone in the team is dissatisfied with this timeline because there are no mysteries for them to solve.

Then here's where "Come Undone" cleverly handles the reset button: previous Mystery Incorporated guest star Harlan Ellison--the new Mr. E in this timeline and the only other person who knows of the changes the team made to the previous timeline because of his ability to see the events of alternate dimensions--contacts the detectives to let them know that he's enrolled them as students at his campus of Miskatonic University, the same setting from H.P. Lovecraft stories. At Miskatonic, there'll be plenty of mysteries for the team to solve, so in a brand new Mystery Machine they repaint after they destroyed the previous one earlier in the season, the detectives drive off to Miskatonic, perhaps encountering a few mysteries along the way, much like the ones they stumbled into while on the road back in the late '60s and early '70s. That means the entire run of Mystery Incorporated was basically a prequel to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

It's a brilliant way to end a cartoon that modernized Scooby and made it more like a Joss Whedon show by stocking it with snappy dialogue or in-jokes for older viewers (my favorite recent gag that no Cartoon Network viewer under 30 would understand was former MTV VJ Martha Quinn as herself, attempting to sell the detectives a bootleg of a Scritti Politti Christmas album that was recorded in Esperanto) and raising the stakes by building elaborate, apocalypse-related mythologies, which is interesting because Buffy affectionately borrowed from Scooby and nicknamed its central heroes the Scooby Gang. (Whedon regular Amy Acker even turned up on Mystery Incorporated and voiced the benevolent Anunnaki being who possessed Scooby's puppy girlfriend Nova.) The showrunner of the next animated Scooby incarnation should just give up. Whatever he has in mind for his iteration of those meddling kids is hardly going to be as good as Mystery Incorporated was.


American Dad, "The Missing Kink" (from April 17, 2013)

If there's any American Dad episode that I wish a group of radicals (much like the counter-protesters who came up with a bunch of brilliant ways to mock hateful protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con) would show in a screening room if they kidnapped the members of the Parents Television Council, strapped them down and forced them to watch some great comedic TV made for adults while subjecting them to some sort of Ludovico treatment-like experiment so that their heads would explode, and then they'd wind up catatonic so that they'd shut the fuck up and stop trying to ruin adult animation or adult sitcoms for everybody else, that episode would be "The Missing Kink."

I'm on and off with American Dad, even though it's the best of the many animated shows produced by Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door Productions. On some weeks, I'll hear about an American Dad plot summary or catch a promo of the latest episode, and I'll see some potential sight gag that makes me worry about Fuzzy Door indulging in some of MacFarlane's lame racial shtick from Family Guy or Ted, and then I'll choose to skip the show. And then there are other weeks where an American Dad plot summary will interest me because of how strange it sounds, so I tune in or download the show on iTunes, and the episode ends up being a laugh riot. "The Missing Kink"--which centers on Francine's discovery of a way to spice things up in the bedroom because her conservative, Bible-thumping husband Stan has been making their sex life boring due to his preference for the missionary position--is one of those riotous episodes.

(Photo source: American Dad Wikia)

Francine realizes that getting spanked turns her on. Stan becomes appalled by her fetish and banishes her to the woods, where a side story about a bluebird who disappoints Francine because of his crack addiction ("You're using again, aren't you? You piece of garbage.") is funnier than the B-story about Hayley getting back into the dating scene after Roger sent her husband Jeff away to space at the end of "Naked to the Limit, One More Time." But after some persuasion from Roger ("Sometimes it takes a lavish song-and-dance number to make a man realize he was wrong"), Stan changes his mind about people's fetishes and opts to be more adventurous in the bedroom.

However, Stan's newfound willingness to try every single kink ends up exhausting and weirding out Francine, and it leads to a hilarious montage that stays affixed on a range of astonished or horrified reactions from Principal Lewis (Kevin Michael Richardson) and his "ride" Marguerite (a Morris Day-esque hot tub salesman whom the show killed off last season and has been brought back to life in "The Missing Kink") while they watch Stan, Francine and their various sexual partners. Marguerite, by the way, is voiced by Eastbound & Down scene-stealer Michael Peña, who doesn't get any lines like "That's voyeurism, man! I love to voyeurism, bro!" but should have.

This all could have turned into a laughless, immature and oddly-embarrassed-about-its-subject fiasco on the order of the much-maligned Garry Marshall version of Exit to Eden, but "The Missing Kink," with its grown-up attitude towards freaky behavior, never does. The fact that it's done by younger writers (Jeff Chiang and Eric Ziobrowski) instead of 60-year-old men whose idea of a wild night out is watching Fonzie leap his motorcycle into a fried chicken stand sort of helps.

Other memorable quotes:
* "Fun fact: The church sent missionaries to America to teach the Indians the proper way to have sex. In turn, they taught us the proper way to sit when you're in second grade."

* Klaus, after Steve angrily tosses him out of his fishbowl: "My ankle!"

* "You made this hand filthy! The hand I wipe with!"

* Snot (Curtis Armstrong), on his boredom with dating Hayley: "I guess I'm just more interested in the hunt. I'm like a lion who brings down a zebra and then loses interest and realizes he has to go home and take a huge deuce."

* "So I'll try out something new/Like when Carradine turned blue/Who am I to think my wife is sick and strange?"


Bob's Burgers, "Boyz 4 Now" (from May 1, 2013)

An array of great reaction shots from Louise elevates Bob's Burgers'"Boyz 4 Now" episode from amusing and kind of predictable boy band parody to standout Louise episode. Sociopathic, previously-indifferent-to-boys Louise experiences her first crush while accompanying Tina to a concert by Boyz 4 Now, Tina's favorite boy band, but Louise is initially in denial about her irrational crush and expresses it in ways that are classic Louise. Her wish to administer a slap to the face of Boo Boo (New Girl's Max Greenfield), the littlest Boyz 4 Now member, instead of kissing him is so punk rock.

"Ew, gross, it's so gorgeous. I wish I would slap it. I want to slap it. I just want to slap his hideous, beautiful face!," exclaims Kristen Schaal as she channels a bit of her own breakout role, Flight of the Conchords' Mel, the stalker who was obsessed with both Bret and Jemaine. Another bit of fangirl behavior that's even more reminiscent of Mel is the sight gag of Tina sniffing the singers' underwear while hiding with Louise inside the tour bus' laundry hamper. The fact that "Boyz 4 Now" is scripted by a pair of sisters, Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux, must be why the scenes where Tina helps Louise process her first crush ring so true. (Another nice touch in "Boyz 4 Now" is the casting of comedian Tig Notaro in a bit part as the band's tour bus driver, which is fitting because one of Notaro's signature bits is about her admiration of the singing voice of one of her favorite pop stars, Taylor Dayne, and her real-life and frequent run-ins with Dayne, "the easiest person in the world to run into.")

The B-story has Bob expressing indifference about Gene's table-settingtablescaping competition that, like Louise's initial indifference about boy band singers, transforms into something else. In Bob's case, he gets swept up in Gene's competition and turns into an excitable stage dad. The B-story is a little less memorable than Louise's attempt to slap a preteen celebrity, but it contains a couple of funny lines each from Gene and Linda and adds a few more outstanding bits of dialogue to an episode that's endlessly quotable.

Other memorable quotes:
* Gene, regarding Linda's purse and the items that frequently go missing in there: "You put my baby brother in there, and that was the last we saw of him! Javier Belcher, I love you!"

* Gene, replying to Bob's suggestion that he should set the tables at the restaurant or at home: "No, Dad. I don't set where I eat."

* "This is the best thing Aunt Gayle's done since she pooped her pants at the cell phone store last year!"

* "Ugh, no wonder no one likes women."

* "Be careful. There's a lot of puberty in there."

* Linda, trying to help Gene come up with a new tablescaping theme: "Lipstick, pepper spray, tiny bag of carrots." Bob: "Uh, what's the theme?" Linda: "Uh, 'Woman of the Night.' She gets dressed up, she kills a john, she has a snack."

* "Tina, did you learn nothing from the Boyz 4 Now song 'Girl, You Don't Need a Backstage Pass'?"

* "Is 'booster seat' code for drugs?"

* Gene to the tablescaping judge (Brooke Dillman): "As you'll see, beside the plate is a sanitary napkin. May I place it on your lap in case there's a big spill?"

* Linda: "Ooh, I got an idea for next year. Baby Jessica stuck in a well." Gene: "Yes! You have to look for your dinner for two days as the nation watches."

* "I'm no hero. I put my bra on one boob at a time like everyone else."

* "Which friends are you mad at, girl?/What size are your shoes?/You just went to the bathroom, number one or number two?/I want to know everything, everything about you."

(Photo source: American Dad Wikia)

American Dad, "Lost in Space" (from May 8, 2013)

"Lost in Space,"American Dad's epic-looking 150th episode and the first to not feature either Stan or Francine, proves that the show is the best of the Fuzzy Door cartoons at handling pathos, in addition to being the company's funniest and strangest show. The episode pulls off the once-thought-to-be-impossible feat of making me give a shit about Jeff (Jeff Fischer), Hayley's dim-witted and not-very-interesting stoner husband. He's the focus of "Lost in Space," which checks up on Jeff's life as a space slave, after Roger, who's been having too much fun scamming the people of Earth with his various schemes, sent Jeff away by shoving him into the alien mothership that was supposed to take Roger back to the birth planet he no longer considers home.

Anybody who's ever dreaded shopping mall work will enjoy how the aliens' idea of slave labor is not to have Jeff push a giant wheel of pain but to have him work the counter at a Shawarma Hut in an alien shopping mall within the ship. The next time we see the Rura Penthe prison planet in one of Bad Robot's Star Trek movies, there ought to be a shot of a prisoner groaning in agony because the Orange Julius blender he's been put in charge of has started to break down.

Jeff pushes for his freedom by submitting himself to a test presided by Emperor Zing (Michael McKean). The test is to see if Jeff's love for Hayley is genuine, and if he passes it, the aliens must return him to Hayley. If he fails, he won't be freed, and Jeff will have to be subjected to what all the other male slaves on the ship (including an Andorian from Star Trek) have experienced: a "smoothening." In other words, his dick will be snipped off and kept in a fish tank. Sinbad (voiced by none other than Sinbad himself), Jeff's Shawarma Hut co-worker, as well as the only other human slave, unbuttons his pants to show the results of the smoothening, and the sight gag reminds me of the controversial intro NBC deleted from the series premiere of The Richard Pryor Show.



I'm not big on hippie bands--"Wait a minute, what about your De La Soul drawing that you use as your Twitter wallpaper?," you might ask, and then I'll say, "Yo, De La's not a hippie band, you possibly Republican dumb fuck who hasn't listened to a rap record since Young MC's 'Bust a Move'"--but I like the original score that Wax Fang provided for this episode. The smaller-scale and sometimes dreamy-sounding cues the band wrote and performed are a huge departure from the orchestral sounds of regular composer Joel McNeely and are quite effective in establishing the alien feel of both the ship and the episode (along with the imaginative character designs for the ship's various alien species).

Wax Fang's offbeat 2007 ballad "Majestic" fuels the highlight of "Lost in Space": the visually stunning, Defending Your Life-esque sequence where a singing alien official called the Summoner gets the Majestic, the giant creature in a pit that probes the test subjects' minds and displays their memories, to plug its tentacles into Jeff's mind, and the Majestic shows the other aliens Jeff's worst and laziest moments as a boyfriend and husband to Hayley (like when a mugger held him and Hayley up at gunpoint, and he left Hayley alone with the mugger). A frequent gag on these Fuzzy Door shows is to have a teenage or adult character erupt into tears and run away from the room while regressing into a four-year-old (a gag that's reprised here with a drunk alien who fails to pick up a female bartender). But when Jeff tears up from watching on the Summoner's big screen how much of a dick he was to Hayley, "Lost in Space" doesn't play his sadness and regret for laughs, and the Wax Fang song builds up pathos more effectively than the strained, All in the Family-style attempts to be serious during another similarly risky and equally quasi-dramatic 150th episode of a Fuzzy Door cartoon, Family Guy's "Brian & Stewie."

Of course, the test is rigged every time by Zing, who's been ordering the Majestic to project only the slaves' least flattering moments and not their better moments. The emperor is so bitter from being two-timed by his own true love--who turns out to have been Roger, which explains why he switched places with Jeff at the last second back on Earth--that he's been taking it out on his slaves and "waging a war against love." Sending Jeff away to a slave ship and having him fight Zing and his minions to get back home to Hayley both force Jeff to step up as a grown-up. The change in scenery does wonders for this previously inconsequential and one-joke character, although he still doesn't think through some of his actions (I chuckled over Jeff forgetting to tie his rope to an anchor before plunging into the pit to reason with the Majestic on his own).

But the MVP of "Lost in Space" is Sinbad, who's been poking fun at his own stalled acting career ever since his guest appearance with singer Rob Thomas on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and continues to do so here--to genuinely funny results--in this episode, which posits that the former Different World star disappeared from the Hollywood radar because these aliens captured him. So if Katt Williams' 15 headline-making, store employee-abusing minutes should someday be over and he suddenly drops out of the public eye, he probably wound up manning the counter at Zing's Shawarma Hut.

Memorable quotes:
* Sinbad, regarding the shape-shifting alien bartender voiced by frequent American Dad guest star Paget Brewster: "She's hornier than Kadeem Hardison. I'm talking when his glasses were flipped up."

(Photo source: American Dad Wikia)

* Jeff to the shape-shifter, who's taken the form of Hayley: "You look like her, but you're not her. I mean, I didn't learn to read for you or stop eating my scabs for you or start to pee sitting down so I wouldn't wake you up!"

* Sinbad's last words (in corporeal form): "Jeff, when you get to Earth, do me this one last solid... Clear my... Internet browser history."


The Venture Bros., "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?" (from June 5, 2013)

Many TV critics who binge-watched all 15 new episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix last week complained that the show has lost its spark and its seven-year hiatus "was not good for its comedy." The new season's tacky-looking reliance on green-screen to accommodate the cast members' busy schedules and the forced attempts at political satire, which Arrested excelled at during the dark days of the Bush Administration (although I laughed at the new season's gags about "Halliburton Teen" and Halliburton's ice cream division), were among the haters' most frequent criticisms.

Lovers of smart TV--in other words, TV that doesn't involve singing contests, untalented trophy wives, creepy-looking child pageants or handfishing--who were disappointed with the new Arrested will probably be relieved to know that the return of The Venture Bros., another cult favorite that also experienced a prolonged break between seasons, isn't as shaky a viewing experience as some of those new Arrested episodes on Netflix. The seven-year hiatus has marred one particular aspect of Arrested, the interaction between Bluth family members, which was greatly reduced to cover up Mitchell Hurwitz's difficulties with getting all the original cast members in the same room, whereas the two-and-a-half-year hiatus between The Venture Bros.' fourth and fifth seasons, aside from a couple of specials to tide fans over, including last fall's Halloween special, has had no effect on "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?,"The Venture Bros.' outstanding fifth-season premiere (which is actually the ninth episode in the season's production order).

The Venture Bros. is a rare example of a lengthy hiatus paying off hugely. Maybe it's simply because The Venture Bros. is animation, where you can easily work around certain obstacles the Arrested crew had to deal with and you're unable to be distracted by the stars' aging looks and attempts to freeze time on their faces because you can't see those faces. (But you can detect some signs of aging in the stars' voices, like when 2008's Batman: Gotham Knight got longtime Batman voice actor--and soon-to-be-two-time Venture Bros. guest star--Kevin Conroy to voice an anime incarnation of Bruce Wayne who looked as if he didn't shave yet, and the disconnect between middle-aged voice and youthful-looking character design was really off-putting.)

Or maybe it's because Venture Bros. creators Chris McCulloch, a.k.a. Jackson Publick, and Doc Hammer are huge perfectionists who wanted--and were granted--more time from Adult Swim to work on the fifth season, even with Titmouse Inc. now lending a hand with the animation since the Halloween special. (By the way, the addition of Titmouse has resulted in a slight uptick in animation quality--peep the dazzling-looking moment in the Halloween special when Hank, who's voiced by Publick, and his friend Dermott, who's voiced by Hammer, are surrounded by zombies.) Judging from the results of "A Very Venture Halloween" and now the ambitious, hour-long "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?," Publick and Hammer deserved the extra production time (and the duo is more than up to the challenge of crafting consistently funny comedy for an hour-long running time, a format that doesn't often work out so well when other half-hour comedy shows like The Office take a stab at it).

"What Color Is Your Cleansuit?" picks up right where "Operation P.R.O.M." left off and opens during the morning after the home school prom Dr. Venture (James Urbaniak) threw for Dean (Michael Sinterniklaas) and Hank, but it also cleverly ties in to "A Very Venture Halloween," a pivotal story for Dean, who finally learned from Ben, J.K. Simmons' disheveled scientist character, that he and Hank are clones, a helluva thing for Dean to discover when he's still in the middle of trying to get over Triana Orpheus' rejection of him. It turns out that the entire Halloween special occurred between the first and second acts of "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?," so that means the season premiere takes place over the course of several months (the off-screen growth of the angstier, now-Goth-y Dean's hair length from spiky to quasi-emo between the first and second acts is a nice little way for Publick and Hammer to establish the passage of time without relying too much on clunky-ass exposition). The months-long time frame makes Dr. Venture's pathetic inability to notice the gradual mutations his color-coded-cleansuit-clad interns have exhibited even more amusingly pathetic. Their mutations were inadvertently caused by the mutagenic radiation from the ray shield project he's recruited them to finish for his brother Jonas Jr. (Urbaniak)--without pay and with Dr. Venture taking all the credit for their work, of course, because it's Dr. Venture we're talking about here.

"Operation P.R.O.M." was a particularly intriguing episode for this show about failure because it started to point towards redemption for several characters, especially the long-suffering Gary (Hammer), a.k.a. Henchman 21, who grew a backbone over the course of the fourth season, got over the death of his Ray Romano-voiced best friend 24, quit henching for the Monarch and joined SPHINX. But as we see in "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?," Gary still can't catch a break because people still call him 21, and former Venture family bodyguard Brock Samson (Patrick Warburton) prevents 21 from joining his SPHINX team on their exciting missions and saddles him with less exciting Venture Compound security detail (Brock's absence for most of the premiere and perhaps most of the rest of the season, due to what I assume is his investigation of the whereabouts of his once-thought-to-be-dead lover/nemesis Molotov Cocktease, is bound to disappoint Brock's biggest fans).

However, what starts out as mundane detail escalates into a situation where the fate of the world is being threatened by mutated college interns with "Sixth Finger"-style telekinetic powers, extra limbs and a vengeful streak, all led by Martin, who's voiced by perfectly cast guest star Aziz Ansari (as Wyatt Cenac's intern character Tommy amusingly notes, you get a bunch of mutated nerds together, and things get all Syfy Original Movie up in this piece). The path towards redemption that "Operation P.R.O.M." started continues when Gary ends up rising to the occasion, as do Billy Quizboy (Hammer) and Pete White (Publick), who are far better scientists than Dr. Venture, and together, Gary, Billy and Pete attempt to save the day.

Dean also gets a chance to triumph here (although temporarily), when he competes with Martin in a series of challenges to become the "Lee-Hun-Took" of Martin's tribe and win the hand of a mutated intern named Thalia (SNL's Kate McKinnon). The more sensitive half of the Venture brothers views Thalia as his rebound girl in a great dream sequence where he fantasizes about Thalia continually placing her hand on his crotch in a hilariously mechanical, TV-14-level (rather than TV-MA-level) manner that proves that even though Dean has burnt up the learning bed that educated him as an act of rebellion, he still has a lot to learn about the opposite sex.

(Photo source: 2ton21)

In the previous four seasons, what distinguished The Venture Bros. from other nerd comedies like Chuck was its stubborn refusal to hand its loser characters huge victories, but I think at this point in the series run, it's earned the right to finally let the likes of Gary, Billy, Pete and Dean win a few battles. This is why I think the increasingly diminished presence of Brock, the killing machine who always saved the day in previous seasons, is great for the show. It gives most of the rest of the show's characters a chance to shine in Brock's old role as hero.

One character who hasn't needed such a moment of redemption because she's always so much smarter and more sensible than the man she both works for and is married to is the raspy-voiced Dr. Mrs. the Monarch (Hammer), née Dr. Girlfriend. In "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?," her suggestions to the Monarch on how to attack Dr. Venture and her overall cognizance of things, lack of knowledge of Game of Thrones aside (she's aware that Gary, who made out with her in the fourth season, quit the Fluttering Horde, while her husband is under the impression that Gary still works for him), all prove once again that this hottie is the real brains of the Monarch's criminal organization.



In addition to Gary's heroism and Billy's smarts, whether in the lab or during a crucial trivia contest with his lifelong rival Augustus St. Cloud (Publick), a nerd collectible-obsessed snob who drives around in the Anton Furst version of the Batmobile, of course, and thinks he excels at nerd trivia (I love the little detail in which Augustus, early on in the episode, misidentifies the first Highlander film as being from 1983 instead of 1986 and isn't corrected by anyone), Dr. Mrs. the Monarch's actions during "What Color Is Your Cleansuit?" reinforce a recurring theme of The Venture Bros.: the second-in-commands or underlings are far more deserving to be running things than the idiots who get to do so in this cruel world, whether they're the Monarch or Dr. Venture. "Don't take this as an insult, but working for you and the Monarch--it's like the same thing," notes Gary to Dr. Venture in one of the premiere's best bits of dialogue.

Dean, Gary and even reformed pedophile Sgt. Hatred (Publick), the Ventures' current bodyguard, have changed a lot over the course of the series run, while Dr. Venture, who's neck and neck with Malory Archer for the worst parent in cable animation ever, still has ways to go. After his scene with Dean while the teen torches the learning bed he confined him to for all of his life instead of letting him experience a normal child's education ("I haven't learned shit! I could tell you how many tastebuds are on the human tongue, but I've never even French-kissed a girl!... I'm sick of living my life in a box!," says Dean to his dad), I now feel like the real villain of the show has never been the Monarch or any of the Guild of Calamitous Intent members. It's self-absorbed Rusty, whose obsession with living up to the legacy of Jonas Sr., his not-so-great-as-the-history-books-say adventurer dad, always results in disaster or bringing down everyone around him. No wonder Brock isn't itching to come back to the Venture Compound any time soon. But what Brock perceives as a low point in his espionage career remains--even after an extended hiatus--wildly funny and entertaining as hell for the rest of us.


Samurai Flamenco, "Capture Samumenco!" (from November 15, 2013)

Harazuka (Toru Okawa), the R&D guy from a stationery company who presents Samurai Flamenco with his first gadgets in "Capture Samumenco!,"Samurai Flamenco's latest episode, is significant for being the first person--outside of Hazama's dead grandfather--to tell the wanna-be superhero he genuinely believes in him and his mission to do some good. Kaname, the self-absorbed action star who's trained Hazama in the ways of fighting, says similar things to his student ("Superheroes will never die!"), but they ring hollow, and he does it to stroke his ego. Mari doesn't care about Hazama's mission; she's in the superhero game to indulge her kinks for dominating men (and being dominated herself, by a man in uniform), as we see in "Capture Samumenco!" when she blurts out, "Time to blow off steam!," in front of the other Flamenco Girls and quickly corrects herself by saying, "Time for the Flamenco Girls to save the day!"

You'd think Goto, the closest thing a friendless only child like Hazama has to a best friend and protective older brother, would have told Hazama by now that he believes in him, but he genuinely doesn't (although some of Hazama's flair for the dramatic is starting to rub off on him, like when he realized he enjoyed dressing up in the Samurai Flamenco costume at the end of "Flamenco vs. Fake Flamenco"). Goto still considers Hazama crazy for choosing to enforce the law as if he's the hero of a tokusatsu show, rather than opting for saner avenues of law enforcement, like becoming a prosecutor or a cop like him.

During the first meeting between Samurai Flamenco and Harazuka, the handsome-looking coloring, which brings to mind Wally Pfister's sepia-toned cinematography in Batman Begins, underscores that something monumental is happening. Harazuka is clearly being established as the Lucius Fox or Q to Samurai Flamenco, a technical genius who disguises weapons as mundane office supplies in the episode's best joke, even though it's a bit Blankman-ish (the tape measure that turns into an effective grappling hook pistol is sure to be a hit with Samurai Flamenco cosplayers). He's snappier than the calm and unassuming Lucius (I like his shouty response to Hazama's insistence that the fighting moves he learned from Kaname are sufficient enough to protect him in a tough spot: "Your passion is not enough!") but not snarky or irritable like Q. He even gives his gadgets to Samurai Flamenco free of charge, which is fucking insane in a stagnant economy like Japan's. That's probably the least realistic moment in an animated show that's been surprisingly realistic and grounded about so many things, whether it's the drudgery of filming a TV show on location (like in "The Meaning of Justice" last week) or how the world reacts to people in superhero costumes who aren't San Francisco'sBatkid.

In "Capture Samumenco!," the world reacts in different ways. You have otaku who dig seeing superhero genre tropes being brought to real life or become believers in heroes again after Samurai Flamenco saves them. You have cynics like Goto who find it all to be crazy ("Why do weirdos keep flocking to me?"). And then you have those who, when presented with an opportunity for mad guap like the High Rollers Hi news site's 10 million yen reward for capturing Samurai Flamenco, will see him not as a hero but as yen signs in their eyes. The hordes of greedy bounty chasers become so out of control that Samurai Flamenco has to be saved from them instead of him saving them, and that's where Harazuka's gadgets come in handy for Samurai Flamenco.

Akira Konno (Satoshi Mikami), the High Rollers Hi editor who started the reward, is the closest Samurai Flamenco has gotten to a supervillain (and judging from a lower-level Yakuza thug's line of dialogue about Samurai Flamenco's off-screen interference in a drug ring, I take it the Yakuza is going to be taking on that adversarial role real soon), but in keeping with the show's subdued nature, Akira doesn't twirl his facial hair or cackle loudly. He didn't start the reward because of hatred for Samurai Flamenco. Like Mari during the events of "Idol Devastation" and Kaname (and anybody in reality TV), he's in it mainly for the publicity. On a show where the hero is confronted not with supervillains but with everyday assholes like the blond-haired douchebag with the knife at the start of "Capture Samumenco!," the craving for publicity is the ultimate supervillain.

"Capture Samumenco!" is another satisfying episode of an animated show that's quickly become one of my favorites. Like that Weekend Update nightlife correspondent Stefon once said, this place has everything. Smart showbiz satire. Social commentary that hasn't taken a turn for the didactic so far. The subversion of superhero genre tropes. Characters who are smarter than what I usually expect from the superhero genre (I like how everyone's correctly guessing that Samurai Flamenco is Hazama). Tokusatsu parodies. Japanese panel show parodies. J-pop parodies. Humor in an anime that doesn't make me say, "There once was a time when I would have laughed at this shit. It was called '12 years old.'" A lesbian idol singer who's pining for a bandmate who, in turn, is pining for a male cop because she has a fetish for dudes in uniforms (Samurai Flamenco clearly--and fortunately--isn't a kids' show even though the titular character is an overgrown kid). And now, gadgets.


Stray observations:
* "Capture Samumenco!" writer Takahiro drops clues that Goto (whom Mari now thinks is having a gay relationship with Hazama after she fails to seduce him) is being catfished by peppering the texts from Goto's "girlfriend" with the words "cat,""sushi" and "hirame" (a.k.a. halibut).

* Samurai Flamenco's reaction to everyone chasing him is, of course, the following: "Something isn't right. This is just like what happened in Harakiri Sunshine, episode 8, 'Brainwashed! A City Full of Enemies!'"

* Nameless Yakuza thug #1: "Then we should bring in the ultimate weapon Gouriki-san..." Nameless Yakuza thug #2: "I hear he killed a bear during image training!"

* Like those quick shots in Stir Crazy of a bully's dick being crushed by a pair of pliers, the shot of the Flamenco Girls' heels flattening Gouriki-san's crotch will make every male viewer's balls implode.

* So I take it Hazama prefers the bike helmet over the helmet his grandfather made for him. I wonder why Hazama reverted to the bike helmet instead of continuing to rock the horned helmet. Maybe he doesn't want to look like Magneto had a three-way with El Chapulín Colorado and the Great Gazoo.

* The end credits footage of Kamen Rider Black, an '80s tokusatsu show I'm not familiar with but was mentioned in dialogue between Goto and another cop in the series premiere, was what the animators were paying tribute to during last week's poignant sequence where Hazama read his grandfather's letter about carrying on his dream of creating a real-life superhero.




Rick and Morty, "Pilot" (from November 29, 2013)

Rick and Morty doesn't debut on Adult Swim until December 2, but the network has already posted the premiere episode on YouTube, and it's one of the strongest first episodes of an animated show for adults I've seen in a while. Most adult animated shows I've grown to love--whether it's The Venture Bros., The Boondocks or Bob's Burgers--don't even start off as confidently as Rick and Morty does right out of the gate. That's mainly because Rick and Morty is the first animated show from Community mastermind Dan Harmon. It's the show Harmon worked on during the interval between his controversial ouster from his own creation by Sony Pictures Television and his return to Community a year later, and that distinctive comedic voice of Harmon's that was sorely missing from Community's creatively bumpy fourth season is all over Rick and Morty (Harmon's knack for sharp and spontaneous-sounding dialogue is also all over this new show). Harmon's offbeat sensibilities--the same sensibilities that irritated Sony executives (who wanted a more traditional sitcom about community college life than the one Harmon was crafting for them), as well as some Community staffers who found Harmon difficult to work with--are born for animation.

If Doctor Who were both a wacky suburban grandpa and a drunken sociopath, he'd be Rick, a scientific genius who's moved in with his grown-up daughter Beth (Sarah Chalke), an animal heart surgeon, and her family. Beth's strait-laced husband Jerry (Chris Parnell) despises Rick and wants him out of the house; teenage daughter Summer (Spencer Grammer) despises her family and cares only about looking for her next boyfriend; and teenage son Morty is grappling with learning disabilities and is lacking in self-confidence. Rick hates all forms of bureaucracy, including high school, and is continually yanking Morty out of school and taking the kid along with him on his dangerous experiments and excursions into other dimensions to build up both Morty's smarts and his self-confidence. He thinks high school is to blame for Morty's low intelligence, and in one of the pilot episode's best jokes, it turns out he's right when we see that Morty and his classmates are still being taught in math class that 2 + 2 = 4 and 5 + 5 = 10.

Like much of Harmon's work on Community, Rick and Morty is high-concept. It originated as a crudely animated series of Channel 101 shorts from Rick and Morty co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland (a.k.a. the Earl of Lemongrab on Adventure Time), The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, which took Doc Brown from Back to the Future and turned him into an inebriated pedophile. Rick and Morty retains neither the Back to the Future spoofery nor the creepiness of those gross shorts. Rick is now grandpa to the kid, and his abusive treatment of Morty is toned way down, but he's still a puke-stained drunk (Roiland also returns to voice both characters). You can tell where Harmon's input came in as he and Roiland reworked Doc and Mharti for Adult Swim. Harmon's made Rick more likable, or rather, as likable as a sociopathic grandpa who cares a small bit about his grandson can be. Instead of urging Morty to lick his balls to save the universe, Rick is seen attempting to help the weak-willed kid get closer to his dream girl Jessica (Kari Wahlgren) by procuring a neutrino bomb that he'll detonate to replace the current world with a new one where Morty and Jessica would be the sole survivors and would live like Adam and Eve.

The animation is also a million times more impressive on Rick and Morty than in the Channel 101 shorts. The premiere's best moments of animation take place during an epic chase through an extraterrestrial customs facility on one of the other dimensions Rick takes Morty along with him to. The alien character designs in this sequence are even weirder than the ones that were found on Futurama, and there's a brilliant and batshit crazy sight gag where Morty collides with an alien stoner who's smoking a hookah with an alien fetus floating inside the water jar, and the kid ingests some of the vapor and coughs out a loogie, which comes to life and rapidly ages from a baby to a dead old man in four seconds.

Only occasionally does the premiere suffer from pilot episode-itis. Chalke is saddled with all of the pilot's most exposition-y lines ("I'm my father's daughter. I'm smart. Why do you think I'm a heart surgeon?"). According to the Harmontown podcast episode where Harmon and co-host Jeff Davis riffed on-stage with Roiland, Chalke and upcoming Rick and Morty guest star John Oliver at the Largo in L.A., Harmon and Roiland hired the former Scrubs star after they were impressed by her ability to burp on cue. Here's hoping Chalke gets more to do comedically in future episodes. (In that Harmontown episode, Chalke, who's fluent in French and German, busts out incredible-sounding impressions of her French Canadian and German schoolteachers.) In the next few weeks, we'll see if Rick and Morty can maintain the premiere's consistently funny vibe and impressive look, but for now, it's off to a good start--unlike the convulsive Morty in the midst of side effects from his intelligence boost at the end of the premiere.

Memorable quotes:
* Summer: "OmigodmyparentsaresoloudIwannadie." Rick: "There is no God, Summer. You gotta rip that Band-Aid off now. You'll thank me later."

* "You're young, you've got your whole life ahead of you and your anal cavity is still taut yet malleable! You gotta do it for Grandpa, Morty! You gotta put these seeds inside your butt!"

* "We had a little incident and a student was frozen to death. AND THERE'S NO EVIDENCE THAT A LATINO STUDENT DID IT! Everyone wants to take this to a racial place. I won't let them."

* "They're just robots, Morty! It's okay to shoot them! They're robots!""They're not robots, Rick!""It's a figure of speech, Morty! They're bureaucrats! I don't respect them! Just keep shooting, Morty!"

* Rick: "I'm a genius! I build robots for fun." Jerry: "Well, now you can build baskets and watch Paul Newman movies on VHS and mentally scar the Boy Scouts every Christmas." Beth: "What does that mean?" Jerry: "It's personal."

* "Oh, for crying out... he's got some kind of disability or something! Is that what you want us to say?""I do?""Well, da-doy, son." Harmon sure loves his da-doys (Britta is fond of saying "Da-doy" on Community).

* "Rick and Morty forever a hundred times! Over and over! rickandmortyadventures.com! www.atrickandmorty.com, wwwrickandmortyadventures, a hundred years! Every minute, rickandmorty.com! wwwahundredtimesrickandmorty.com!"

Rocky Rivera (pictured with her "GRLZ" and "Ain't No Way" collaborators DJ Roza and Irie Eyez) is one of the artists whose albums I most recently reviewed for Word Is Bond. I'm glad to have been made a part of WIB's review team in 2013.

Shad, Flying Colours (November 7, 2013)
"Top it off with a well-chosen Jay Z sample hook and you have another tuneful banger along the lines of 2010's 'Rose Garden,' which was produced by returning beatmaker DJ T Lo, as well as one of many highlights of Flying Colours. Good thing Shad and Skratch Bastid sampled one of Hov's verses from the enjoyable 'Otis' instead of Hov's really imaginative 'Cake cake cake cake cake cake' verse from Drake's 'Pound Cake.'"

Rocky Rivera, Gangster of Love (November 12, 2013)
"As usual, executive producer and Beatrock label founder Fatgums works his production magic on another solid-sounding Beatrock album, which is also an album we need right now: a fierce antidote to what author Jeff Chang referred to as a painful summer for racial justice, the summer of such delightful moments as the Zimmerman acquittal and Levy Tran's 'Asian Girlz' debacle. Rocky is one Asian girl--or rather, woman--who doesn't play that 'I love your sticky rice' shit."

"10 Hilarious Rapper Impressions" (November 25, 2013)
"Whether it's Pharoah's impression of Kendrick's flow, which seems to have been inspired by K.Dot's killer guest verse on DJ Khaled's 'They Ready,' or former MADtv regular Aries Spears turning DMX into Sally whenever she orders food in When Harry Met Sally, these impressions are so entertaining that for a few minutes, they've made me briefly forget about the dual heartbreak of the creative stagnancy of a late-night show I grew up watching and the unjust demise of a late-night show that could have become a game-changer for progressively minded comedians of color."

Rapsody introduces a little anarchy in her video for "Dark Knights."

"12 Great Albums That We Didn't Review This Year" (December 19, 2013; co-written with Hardeep, Matticus Finch and Paddy)
"'Footnote: Kendrick ain't mention no females! Rapsody, we gotta change that!,' says DJ Drama during the Raleigh spitter's 2013 mixtape. With bangers like 'Lonely Thoughts,' which features a laugh-out-loud funny guest verse by Chance the Rapper, and the Dark Knight Rises-inspired 'Dark Knights,' which has Rapsody and Wale dropping the nerdiest Batman references outside of nerdcore, Rapsody proves she belongs on Kendrick's infamous 'Control' list of the game's most skilled MCs."

"Music Videos That Stood Out In 2013" (December 25, 2013)
"Director Patricio Ginelsa picks up on the tune's fake '90s vibe and surrounds Bambu and Geo with animated graphics straight out of Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock's 'It Takes Two' video and backup dancers with moves from old Queen Latifah videos. You keep thinking, 'Yo, is Blossom gonna Cabbage Patch her way onto the set at some point?' The 'Books' video could have just consisted of the '90s R&B throwback material, and it would have been a decent video. But no, Ginelsa had to throw in footage of Bambu and Geo starring in a fake sitcom about an undocumented Filipino immigrant called Tago ng Tago (it's Tagalog for 'always hiding'), and that turned a decent video into a great one."