Great Episodes: The Angry Beavers: Fancy Prance

The Angry Beavers was one of my favorite shows growing up, as I found it one of the most consistently hilarious shows on air at the time (keep in mind it aired from 1997 to 2001, right as The Simpsons was beginning its lengthy plunge in quality). As a model railroader, my favorite episode of The Angry Beavers is Gift Hoarse, but if I was going to select a representative episode to show someone who's never seen The Angry Beavers, I'd choose the episode Fancy Prance, an episode which simultaneously parodies Rocky, Full Metal Jacket, and Babe.

Episode Synopsis:

An enraged poodle with mangled fur is seen running out of Norbert and Daggett's dam, pursued by Daggett who still has to apply the styling mousse.  When he fails to catch up to the poodle, he tells Norb that he's giving up his lifelong dream of being a poodle groomer.  Norb reveals that according to his computer calculations, that wasn't Dag's lifelong dream, it was his thousandth lifelong dream!

Dag tells Norb that while he might have a new lifelong dream every few, at least he has lifelong dreams, unlike Norb; Norb tells dag that he does have a lifelong dream, but he's never told anyone and he's not going to tell Dag what it is.  Dag says he'll just wheedle the dream out of Norb, which he does by saying "wheedle" over and over again day and night until Norb gives in.

Norb eventually breaks down and tells Dag that his lifelong dream is to be a Lippizaner Stallion, but dismisses it as a silly idea; on the contrary, Dag thinks it's a great idea and encourages Norb to pursue it.  Dag also accompanies Norb, telling him that his new lifelong dream is "to be the crusty but lovable trainer for the little guy who's going for his lifelong dream", so the two of them take a transatlantic bus to Vienna.

When they arrive, Norb finds out that Lippizaner tryouts are being held this week.  At the training center, he meets "Horsery Sergeant Günther" (voiced by the late, great R. Lee Ermey), who turns the audition into the beginning of Full Metal Jacket.  Although he's impressed with Norb's attitude and solo performance, Norb is a failure with a rider.

When Norb tells Dag he's giving up on his lifelong dream, Dag tells Norb "You ain't going nowhere" and proceeds to put Norb through a training regimen, in which Norb must dodge spitballs shot at him by the Vienna Boys' Choir, rhino-wrestle, and perform an interpretive dance while drinking soup without slurping, spilling or belching.  It soon turns into a Rocky-esque montage (in which the show's theme song can be heard being played in the style of the Rocky theme), culminating in Norb running up the steps of a building and raising his arms.

The day of the test, Norb finds out that  while his training may have made him able to handle a rider, he still doesn't manage to pull off "the leap of the goat".  Dag tells him to give up, which Norb thinks is a case of Dag using reverse psychology.  This makes Norb pass the test with flying colors, and he's accepted as a true Lippizaner by the other stallions.  During the denouement, Günther narrates that Norbert went on to become one of the most beloved Lippizaners of all time (whose double leap has never been equaled), while Dagget went on to become "a target holder, a weasel polisher, a steeplejack, a rollerskate repair technician..."; while listing Dagget's accomplishments, the screen fades to black and the narration fades out, ending the episode.

What makes this a great episode:

Like many well-done episodes where the whole story parodies a film, this episode offers a bonus for people who have seen the work it's parodying (or works, in this case), while still being a hilarious episode to watch for those who haven't seen them*.  Getting R. Lee Ermey to voice Günther really made this episode stand out; with one of the cast regulars (or even another guest voice) voicing Günther instead it wouldn't have been the same.

For those who have seen Rocky and Full Metal Jacket, there's a bonus to viewing this episode, as many shots from those films are recreated in this episode.  In addition, much of Günther's dialogue is remarkably similar to R. Lee Ermey's dialogue in Full Metal Jacket (albeit profanity-free).

* For a good comparison between a good and bad whole-plot parody, watch the Simpsons episodes Cape Feare and The Debarted; while the former works well as a stand-alone work, that latter really requires the viewer to have watched The Departed for it to make any sense. 

Great Episodes: Blackadder Goes Forth: Goodbyeee

Spoiler Alert: if you have not yet seen the Blackadder series, please do so before reading this blog post.

For four series, the various Blackadder shows gave audiences a hilarious look at various points in British history, including:

• The Wars of the Roses (The Black Adder)
• The Elizabethan era (Blackadder II)
• The Regency era (Blackadder the Third)
• and finally, the First World War (Blackadder Goes Forth)

Most of these series featured Rowan Atkinson as a witty and sarcastic "only sane man" snarking about various aspects of the time period he's living in (although sometimes he's been described as someone with a present-day outlook on the past, I could see a contemporary Edmund being just as sarcastic about the present day).  He's usually paired with Baldrick, a servant of low intelligence and questionable hygiene, a capricious and often immature or stupid superior (Queenie in II, Prince George in III, and Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth).  In both II and Blackadder Goes Forth, Edmund has a counterpart of roughly the same rank as him with a mutual dislike; in II it's Lord Melchett and in Blackadder Goes Forth it's Captain Darling.

Although the other Blackadder series ended with one or all of the characters getting killed off, those endings were all played for laughs; in Godbyeee, that is definitely not the case.  Probably the biggest reason is the "too soon" aspect; while the other time periods were far-removed for 1980s audiences, WWI still had a number of surviving veterans then.  As a result, the protagonists who go over the top are treated with the utmost of respect and sympathy, making for a poignant and memorable ending for not only the episode but the series as a whole.

Episode synopsis:

The episode begins with Bladrick, Blackadder, and George waiting in their dugout for "the big push".  George is eager to go, telling Edmund that he volunteered to join at the start of the war alongside his classmates from Cambridge (interestingly, this episode is the only time in the series that we are told the backstories of the characters), only to reveal that all of his classmates are now dead.

Edmund tells George that the high rate of casualties is exactly why he's going to try to get out of the big push, and tells Baldrick to get two pencils and a pair of underpants.  His plan is to put the underwear on his head , stick the pencils up his nose, and say "wooble"; the army would think he's gone insane and send him back home, as he puts it "a poor, gormless idiot".  Baldrick asks why the army didn't send him home, as he's a poor gormless idiot as well, but Edmund replies that it's because Baldrick never said "wooble".

George sees Edmund in his new getup and is convinced that Edmund is genuinely insane, and sends for General Melchett and Captain Darling.  Baldrick offers Edmund a coffee with "substitute ingredients" of mud (substituting for the coffee), dandruff (sugar), and saliva (milk); Edmund declines.  While waiting in the dugout, Baldrick asks how the war started (he thinks someone named Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry).  When Melchett and Darling arrive, they ask George if Edmund is genuinely crazy, or has he simply put his underwear on his head and stuffed two pencils up his nose.  When Edmund overhears Melchett threatening to shoot anyone who tried to use that trick, he backs down and plays it off as showing Baldrick how soldiers used to pretend to be insane.  Darling and Melchett leave (after the former does a spit-take, having tried Baldrick's "coffee:), and Edmund is left with George and Baldrick in the dugout.  Baldrick reads two of his war poems, the first of which is:

Hear the words I sing,

War's a horrid thing.

So I sing, sing, sing,

Dingalingaling.

 Edmund's review is that "It started badly, tailed off in the middle, and the less said about the ending the better, but apart from that, excellent.", which prompts Baldrick to share another poem, which is titled "The German Guns:

Boom, boom, boom, boom,

boom boom boom.

Boom boom boom boom,

boom boom boom.

(Baldrick is no Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon...)

This makes Edmund stir-crazy, which results in Baldrick offering Edmund a plan: call up Field Marshall Haig, and ask him to get him out of the offensive.  Realizing that Haig owes him a favor because he saved Haig's life back during a colonial war, Edmund gets ready to leave.  George offers to bring everyone over to his house after the war, where they could relive old times.  Edmund asks if this means they would dig a hole in his garden, fill it with water, and get their gamekeeper to shoot at them all day.  George wonders why Edmund is a career officer if he hates war so much; Edmund replies it's because when he joined the army "the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns".

Baldrick shares his own memory of joining up at the start of the war, which segues into him asking why they don't just stop the war; neither Edmund nor George can provide an answer.  George recalls the Christmas truce of 1914, including a soccer game; Edmund is still livid over being declared "offside" by a referee.  Meanwhile, at headquarters, Melchett tells Darling that he's sending him to the front line.

Back in the dugout, Edmund makes his call to Haig, asking to get out of the coming offensive; Haig tells Edmund that if he does get him out of this, he never wants to hear from him again.  His advice to Edmund? "Put your underwear on your head and stick two pencils up your nose.  They'll think you've gone insane and sens you home.  Right, favor returned.", and hangs up.  Edmund stares in disbelief at the receiver, and tells Baldrick and George "I think the phrase rhymes with 'clucking bell'".  Edmund gets another call, this time from General Melchett, who tells them that Captain Darling will be joining them.

Darling arrives on the front line, and for once Edmund treats him decently; throughout the series, much of the antagonism directed at Darling from Edmund was because Darling managed to do what Edmund couldn't: get a position behind the lines and out of the trenches.  With Darling now at the front line, the reason for this animosity has now vanished.

As they leave their dugout George admits he's scared and Baldrick offers yet another cunning plan to get out of the offensive.  Edmund tells him that "Well, I'm afraid it will have to wait.  Whatever it was, I'm sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad.  I mean, who would notice another madman around here?  Good luck, everyone."  Edmund blows his whistle, and everyone charges over the top to their fate while a slow piano rendition of the theme song plays.  The scene of the battlefield then fades to a peaceful poppy-filled field, with the sound of birds in the background.

What makes this episode so great:

This series manages to achieve the impossible, that is both be respectful of the soldiers of WWI and their sacrifices while simultaneously being one of the most consistently hilarious Britcoms ever made.  This episode is the ultimate example of that; in less than half an hour you go from jokes about making coffee out of mud to an ending that would have been utterly devastating even in a dramatic work.

In addition, this episode in particular is quite well-written.  For example, when George recalls his classmates who joined up with him, he gets into almost a "dead parrot sketch" number of euphemisms for death (not to mention the ridiculous nicknames):

George: Well, er, Jocko and the Badger bought it at the first Ypres front,
        unfortunately -- quite a shock, that. I remember Bumfluff's house-
        master wrote and told me that Sticky had been out for a duck, and the
        Gubber had snitched a parcel sausage-end and gone goose-over-stump
        frogside.

Edmund: Meaning...?

George: I don't know, sir, but I read in the Times that they'd both been
        killed.

Edmund: And Bumfluff himself...?

George: Copped a packet at Galipoli with the Aussies -- so had Drippy and
        Strangely Brown. I remember we heard on the first morning of the
        Somme when Titch and Mr Floppy got gassed back to Blighty.* 

What, me? I joined up straightaway, sir.
August the 4th, 1914.
Ah, what a day that was.
Myself and the rest of the fellows, leapfrogging down to the Cambridge recruiting office and then playing tiddlywinks in the queue.
We'd hammered Oxford's tiddlywinkers only the week before, and there we were, off to hammer the Bosche.
A crashingly superb bunch of blokes fine, clean-limbed even our acne had a strange nobility about it.
Yes, and how are all the boys now? Well, ah, Jocko and the Badger bought it at the First Ypres run, unfortunately.
What a shock, that.
I remember Bumfluff's housemaster wrote and told me that Sticky had been out for a duck, and the gubber had snitched a parcel sausage end and gone goose over stumps frog side.
Meaning? I don't know, sir, but I read in the "Times" that they'd both been killed.
And Bumfluff himself? Copped a packet at Gallipoli with the Aussies.
So did Drippy and Strangely Brown.
I remember we heard on the first morning of the Somme, when Titch and Mr.
Floppy got gassed back to Blighty.
- Which leaves? - Gosh, yes, I I suppose I'm the only one of the Trinity Tiddlers still alive.
Blimey, there's a thought, and not a jolly one.

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=blackadder&episode=s04e06  

The serious and comedic elements are often seamlessly juxtaposed; for example, Edmund's speech about how Britain's in a glass house when it comes to blaming Germany for its colonial expansionism starting the war...:

Edmund: Do you mean "How did the war start?"

Baldrick: Yeah.

George: The war started because of the vile Hun and his villainous empire-
        building.

Edmund: George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe,
        while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in
        Tanganyika. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame
        on the imperialistic front.

...is being delivered by a man with his underwear on his head.

Later on, George reminisces about the Christmas Truce of 1914, to which Edmund responds with the legendary Blackadder Sarcasm: 

Edmund: Both sides advanced more during one Christmas piss-up than they
        managed in the next two-and-a-half years of war.

On the visual side, this is quite a well-directed episode, with many moments of brilliance; for example look at how menacing the driver taking Darling to the front looks, even though he's just a silhouette:

Almost all of the episode takes place in Edmund and George's dugout; as a result, there's a very claustrophobic atmosphere throughout the episode.

Ultimately, this episode ended up being a send-off for the series as a whole; while in later years a few specials would be made, they never made any regular episodes after this.

Other notes:

• Edmund goes through many of the Kübler-Ross "stages of grief" in this episode, including denial, anger, bargaining, and finally acceptance.
• "Good luck, everyone" is just about the only altruistic thing a Blackadder ever said...
• Blackadder (and Blackadder Goes Forth in particular) have been accused of being more about depicting popular perceptions of the periods they depict rather than depicting the periods themselves; Blackadder Goes Forth definitely plays up the "lions led by donkeys" perception of the British Army in WWI; Melchett is treating the war like a game or sporting event (he thinks that his sending Darling to the front line is a special treat), and Haig is shown sweeping toy soldiers off of a miniature landscape with a dustpan.
• George and Baldrick's tales of joining up en masse with their friends on the outbreak of the war only to suffer horrendous casualties is all too common; perhaps the best-known real-life example of this is the "Accrington Pals", who lost 585 out of a total of 700 volunteers in a half hour during the Battle of the Somme.
• For more information on WWI in general, I recommend the excellent Youtube series The Great War; one episode of their feature "Out of the Trenches" discusses Blackadder Goes Forth.

*Transcript from: BlackAdder Scripts

The A-Team Episode Plot Outline (or, how being a writer for The A-Team must have been one of the easiest jobs ever)

At lunch last week I got into a discussion about classic TV shows, and one show that ended up getting mentioned was that 80s guilty pleasure show The A-Team.  While talking about the show, I realized that at least half the episodes consisted of the following plot:

• Somebody is bullying somebody else.
• One of the victims goes looking for the A-Team to help them out and ends up getting contacted by Hannibal in disguise.
• Hannibal (in disguise) goes to whoever is doing the bullying and asks them to stop; they refuse, he takes off the disguise, and tells them that now they're going to face the wrath of The A-Team.
• The team builds something in preparation for the big confrontation, but we don't see exactly what they're building, just a series of closeup shots of welding and connecting things.
• Murdock does something crazy (often annoying B.A. in the process).
• B.A. does something awesome.
• One of the group being victimized is an attractive woman that Face hooks up with.
• There's a climactic battle in which whatever the A-Team built is revealed, and which often has lots of guns being fired but nobody actually getting killed or even hit.
• The villain surrenders.
• Conclusion.

Ideally, there should be a "hey, it's that guy!" moment with at least one of the guest actors; for me, peak it's-that-guy-ness was reached in the episode The Taxicab Wars, in which Michael Ironside played an evil taxi company owner, Brion James and Donald Gibb (Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds) played evil taxi drivers, Ernie Hudson played a good taxi driver, and one of the taxi passengers was played by the actress who played Jerry's mother in Seinfeld.

What makes A New Hope's two signature scenes so iconic?

When talking to someone about Star Wars (either the series in general or specifically A New Hope), two scenes from A New Hope almost invariably get mentioned: the opening scene with the two spaceships, and the cantina/bar scene.  The other day, a thought occurred to me: just what is it about these scenes that makes them stand out in the viewer's mind?  With that question in mind, I rewatched those two scenes and made the following observations:

The Opening Chase:

• It makes for a memorable opening
• There is the opening crawl, then we see a spaceship flying past the screen, with lasers firing back and forth, all of which has been seen before.  Then, however, we are shown who is pursuing that spaceship, by having the underside of the pursuing Star Destroyer slowly fill the screen until we think it just can't get any bigger.  Even when viewed on TV or a computer screen this shot is still quite impressive, but when seen on a big screen it is truly spectacular (especially if it is the first time an audience has seen something like this).  
• It drives home the David and Goliath aspect of the rebels vs. the empire
• Just looking at the relative size of the two ships drives home the odds the rebels have to overcome and how powerful the Empire is.
  
• It started a trend for the opening scenes of the other films in the trilogy, and other works
• The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi both used a shot of a Star Destroyer for their opening scenes; similarly, Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy had each book open with a scene taking place on the bridge of a Star Destroyer.
  

  

  The Empire Strikes Back

  

  

  Return Of The Jedi

• It draws the audience in
• Having an action-filled introduction, with both ship-to-ship combat and an infantry-based firefight, makes for a compelling opening sequence, and keeps the audience interested in the rest of the film, even during the more slow-paced sequences that follow on the surface of Tatooine.

The Bar Scene:

• It's thematically important
• Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed describes the scene as the "Crossing the Threshold" part of the hero's journey.  The door to Luke's past way of life has been shut; when he enters the Cantina, it's his first step into the wider universe.  In addition, the bar scene introduces the characters Han and Chewbacca (RIP Peter Mayhew), and also shows the lightsaber in action for the first time.
• It's a classic example of a "big reveal" 
• Up until now, all lifeforms seen in the film have been either humans, animals, or aliens who were always seen wrapped in robes.  Now, however, we not only see alien lifeforms, but we see such a sheer variety of vastly different species that it's almost overwhelming.  In addition, the alien lifeforms look truly "alien", rather than just humans with pieces of rubber glued to their ears or foreheads.
  
  
  
• It's both utterly alien and highly familiar at the same time 
• For all the ways that the bar is alien, there is still something oddly familiar about it; the bar is highly reminiscent of anything from an old west saloon to a pirate's tavern to a Prohibition-era speakeasy to the inn that the farmers in The Seven Samurai stay in when they try to hire samurai.
  

  

  Back To The Future Part III

  

  The Seven Samurai

  

  

  The Magnificent Seven

  

  

  High And Low

• It creates the feeling for the audience that there's a larger universe out there, beyond just the protagonists of the film
• Looking at the other people and aliens in the bar, I often got the feeling that if the film had followed them around instead of Luke, Obi-Wan, Han, and Chewie, it would make for a film just as interesting (well, OK, almost as interesting).