Drawn Together "Charlotte's Web of Lies" Talkback

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kyldyer

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New Drawn Together tonight at 10:30 pm (9:30 Central)!

CHARLOTTE'S WEB OF LIES: Rebecca Romijn plays a spider who has a one night stand with Spanky Ham, and their relationship quickly turns into a fatal attraction. Meanwhile, Captain Hero comes face to face with his arch nemesis, and forges an unlikely bond, but can he really ever trust him... or himself? We also learn the origin of Ling-Ling's violent tendencies - he never truly wanted to be a fighter, oh no, all he wanted to do was dance.

The show people seem to be pretty high on this one, so it ought to be a good one.
 
Well it seems to only be one of the subplots (I think the Spanky Ham plot is the main one this time around. Which is good because Spanky Ham does need more focused plots about him). I hope the Ling Ling plot takes up more then the Hero plot. I mean I know that Captain Hero is a great character and the creative staff can do the most with Hero since Jess Harnell is so open about any line they give him but really they have to dial down on using him. Then again guess they already made all the DT eps anyway (though that latest interview seems to indicate there's a chance it may come back. I mean why say Comedy Central wanted to delay the show to a more profitable time if they plan on just ending it after these seven eps?).
 
I never like how they make Ling-Ling's trainer badly animated like that. I mean, I'm not an expert in animation or anything, so I can't say if the animation in Pokemon is worse than most American shows or anything, but if it is, I never notice it. I don't think I've ever seen an anime that's animated as badly as Ling-Ling's trainer was.
 
It's a stereotype of anime for mainstream america - most of which recall Speed Racer and all it's awful and dated animation. The style is poking at Pokemon, the quality is poking fun at a greater idea of what anime is to the mainstream public.
 
While the trainer is obviously poking fun at Pokemon, the jerky animation is just a typical parody of how Japanese animation is extremely lower-budget (i.e. less frames per second) than American animation, which is more or less true. A lot of other shows have done a similar parody.

And I must be the only one who doesn't mind Captain Hero plots :sweat:
 
Pokemon is a very low-budget show with stiff animation, but it's able to do a pretty decent job of hiding it. Especially now that they have shiny CGI to distract the kiddies.
 
And now for my review.

I liked this one. It was random as hell, but still entertaining. I wouldn't call it one of their greatest episodes ever, but it's probably the third best of Season Three so far behind "Lost in Parking Space" and "Freaks & Greeks".

Some random observations:

* It's interesting that the episode would be titled after Spanky's story given that it's given probably the least amount of screen time out of all three stories. And what was there was pretty funny (the Fatal Attraction refs were great), but I kinda wish there was more of it. Perhaps the uncensored version will have a couple more scenes from this story. I loved the way he rids himself of the problem- quick and to the point! Reminded me of the Raiders of the Lost Ark scene where a swordsman tries to intimidate Indy with a flashy, elaborate sword routine, and Indy responds by simply pulling out his gun and blowing him away.

* I feel like the world's biggest juvenile for laughing at this, but somehow the thought of a supervillain whose entire reason for being is to make Captain Hero wash his balls is endlessly amusing to me.

* The way the girls would always act whenever they realized there were no guys around... interesting. Curiously, I once wrote a fanfic where the girls leave the guys alone... and the guys respond by having a tea party. I guess this is the opposite of that.

* I loved Clara's line after Ling-Ling kills Xandir: "This time it was Xandir, but next time it may be someone we actually care about!" LOL!

* A lot of references in this one; my favorite was the kidney thief urban legend. Toot's mildly pissed off reaction (her usual "Goddammit!") was great.

* I would have liked to have seen more of Drawn Together: The Musical. But then... with that cast (Fran Drescher and Gwyneth Paltrow???), maybe not. It also would have been kind of nice if they had sung actual songs from the series, but I guess that would have required giving the story more screen time than it was meant to take up.

* Whoever was in charge of typing Ling-Ling's subtitles misspelled Pete Townshend's name. (Unless "Townsend" is the Engrish spelling.)

That's all I have for now. I may think of more later.
 
I liked this episode quite a bit myself and enjoyed both subplots quite a bit actually. Charlotte going psycho and her random vengeful spider web messages to Spanky was great particularly 'The zoom zoom' one parodying that awful car commercial.

Other highlights I enjoyed was the guys singing in the car and wooldoor crossdressing throughout the entire episode.

Anyone else notice the coloring mistake on his shorts when picked up by Capt. Hero? :lol:
 
Guess what? I actually watched the episode more than once last night, because the cable didn't go out at 10:30! :anime:

Charlotte's a crazy chick. She was putting these spider webs all over the house when Spanky was with this other girl who I didn't notice he had until now (and a human to boot, talk about interspecies relationship!) Good thing Charlotte got hers in the end - and pretty convenient that menu Spanky was holding was about three, four times her size...

I wonder why no one has made a "spider-pig" joke yet, given the popularity of The Simpsons Movie?

Oh, that's right. That episode was already made way before then, but somebody at Comedy Central didn't want it to air until late this year! Silly me!

By the way, my family's installing a new computer at my house. Maybe I'll actually be able watch the Judge Fudge webisodes this time...
 
I love how this episode made use of the characters who didn't get much screentime.

"Hey, the guys are gone." [whip out sex toys]
"Hey, Ling-Ling is gone." [whip out sex toys]

Loved Captain Hero's high-pitched singing as well.

"Your balls are now CLEEEEEEEAN!"

Can't wait for the uncensored DVD to see what that nasty picture looked like and the stuff they edited out.
 
Good episode, but all three plots felt a bit rushed (small complaint considering how funny the episode was). Weird how the commercials pushed Spanky's plot the most when it really wasn't around that much.

B+
 
Okay writing staff, I know you get the most enjoyment from Captain hero and love Jess Harnell, but that dosen't mean you need to have him be so overused in pretty much every episode. Because the novelty I feel has finallly worn thin: I would much rather see him be just be part of the gang/non-dominate any more episodes this season. Espically since his plotline here for the most part stank. I did like Hero's attempt at murdering his arch nemesis (killing some of the other house-mates, including a repeat scene of Clara and Foxxy from "Hot Tub"), the reading scene and Woodlor's lines about the situation ("We were drinking while driving!" "So your arch enemy just goes around tricking other superheroes to wash his balls?"). The actual finding of the Luthor look alike, most of they're bonding moments and Captain Hero's song at the end (Jess Harnell has a good singing voice but the material wasn't really funny), and the actual ball scrubbings were pretty meh. I mean really I would of either just scrapped this one or at least had it a small diversion to the more interesting plotlines this episode: Spanky's and Ling Ling's. I think both could of benefited from more screentime (I'm trying to think who deserves the main plot of this episode. Ling Ling's was funnier but I think Spanky needs more screentime in a sense) since we got good stuff from each of them. From Spanky we got Charolette diving into him and writing down her number, Spanky's attempt at getting with some other girl (like her line the second time she came in the house though having trouble forgetting what it is) and Spanky easily crushing her and the eggs at the end. Ling Ling's plot line was also funnY: I'm glad to see them explore his psycho killer persona seen rarley nowadays by actually murdering Xandir all those times. Also liked the anger managment group (though more then Hulk could of had lines. Maybe if a certain other plot had been shortened...), Ling Ling's backstory on being caught by Gash to be a battle monster, Frankie Muniz in puberty, the Drawn Together musical, and Gash and Ling Ling reuniting at the end. There were some other good jobs scrapped around here: mainly the drinking game of gayness and the girls actions whenever they noticed the male housemates weren't around. Overall a good episode with one sour plot that could of been dropped and I doubt anyone would of cared.
 
I think he's the best character, that's only due to Jess Harnell's range with the character. And he's a superhero that does stupid & lawful things, that's a gimmick that's barely tapped.
 
Captain Hero is a great character and Jess Harnell is a great actor but the fact that he has so many episodes with him in the main plot/sub-plot isn't cool. This show has 8 main characters, let some of the other ones shine
 
In one of the commentaries, the creators said that the reason they use Captain Hero so much is because the guy will do ANYTHING, which makes him incredible easy to write for. One unique thing about Drawn Together, though, is I think just about all the characters have their fans. Someone's going to get short shrifted, and that character's fans will complain about it- and naturally the target of those complaints will be whoever happens to be getting a lot of screen time, which for the last two seasons has been Captain Hero. It would be nice if the show was more democratic with giving out storylines, but we may have to face the fact that the show's writers simply have an easier time writing certain characters than they do others.
 
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