Thursday, April 22, 2004 |
23:25 - I don't know how to break this to you...
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So I was flipping around on the channel guide in the half-hour dead zone before Adult Swim comes on with its balm of Futurama, and my gaze lighted on something on the Sci-Fi Channel titled Tripping the Rift.
"It couldn't be," I though. "...Could it?"
"Darph... Bobo!"
But lo, it was. Evidently the Sci-Fi Channel has picked up that Tripping the Rift and developed it into a full-fledged, raunchy late-night 3D-animated cartoon series.
"Oh boy!" I thought. "Looks like they're expecting it to follow the same pattern from mid-90s Internet meme to unstoppable cultural icon as South Park. Rah! Rah!"
What a fool I am sometimes.
I don't know which episode I saw of the series, but the all-new plotline featured the Captain and his freakish crew heading toward a planet called "Floridia 7", and that name alone told me all I needed to know what the story would be—I could extrapolate the whole thing just from that one tiny bit of information in the digital-cable info box.
And I was right. The planet was in the throes of a hotly contested Presidential election, between a clown-man (evidently all villains on the show are clowns), and a... George Goodfellow. (Yes, that's right.) Protruding chin, Satanic grin, cowboy boots, Southern accent, everything you'd expect. It's Our Heroes' job to become muckraking infiltrators and dig up incriminating dirt on ol' George so as to prevent him from winning the election. Due to his penchant for falling for any piece of ass that falls into his path (and his corruption at the hands of big something companies), this is not a difficult job.
Granted, there were plenty of Monica Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton gags too, but all in all the thing was dull and predictable; the only thing that I couldn't project from the seeds presented in the first five minutes was the general visual design of the characters. (Which itself wasn't great; the CG is awful and cheap, to a level that would have shamed a student filmmaker in 1995; the insides of people's mouths aren't even in shadow, for cryin' out loud.) The difference between this and South Park is that whereas the latter has great writing, an asset that transcends cheap-ass animation and a lack of star power, this show just has the (dubious) star power and the momentum of an Internet meme from around 1998 driving it.
Which means it's going to be lucky to last a whole season.
Canadians may envy us our Cartoon Network; but I am fully prepared to envy them the Space Channel, if this is the best the Sci-Fi Channel can do.
Ah well. I suppose I can always console myself with Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.
...Oh, wait. Now they're running the new season of MXC, which is filmed in America under US legal liability rules. Which means the contestants are now encased in padding from head to toe, the "mystery fluid" is a pool of clear distilled water (with a lifeguard in it), and there's a flock of laywers with clipboards following everyone around waiting for someone to get a boo-boo and claim their ten million bucks in an out-of-court settlement.
Aaaauuughhh!
...Ahh. Adult Swim is on. Sweet, sweet Futurama; at least you've never let me down...
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