Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Episode Twenty-Two: Mxyzpixilated

The mysterious tomfoolery of a tiny man has Superman confused and frustrated. After several disastrous incidents that seem to happen only to him in some sort of alternate reality (including punching the head off of "The Thinker"), Clark turns to Ma and Pa Kent to vent his experiences. When the little man appears once again in their home, turning his beloved family into monsters, Superman makes a deal with the imp: if Superman can get him to say his name backwards, he'll leave for three months.  Superman easily beats Mr. Mxyzptlk several times over the next nine months.  Finally a frustrated Mxyzptlk proposes a new deal: get him to say his name backwards twice in a row and he'll leave for good.  Superman feigns disinterest, and leads him through a long chase with Mxyzptlk turning into a rocket to chase him.  Surprise, surprise as it turns out the rocket's trail spelled the magic words twice.  Mxyzptlk is sent back to the fifth dimension for good, swearing revenge.  


Evan:  This episode was an awful mess.  It physically hurt me.  The casting of Gilbert Gottfried was simply malicious.  And yet, there's something about it that makes me feel like that was the reaction I was supposed to have.  I think that this one was supposed to be an ordeal to get through.  A dilemma of awful crap to make you feel relieved when Superman tricks the most annoying man in the universe into finally vanishing.  In that sense, it was a masterpiece.

In a much more accurate sense, it was a terrible, miserable half-hour of television.  I hated every moment of this one.  Seeing this episode largely from Mr. Mxyzptlk's point of view only made it worse, as it was more time spent with an annoying idiot.  Even worse, localizing the events on Superman alone, without anyone else noticing, cut out the rest of the cast.  Lois gets nothing to do, because she's not aware of the crisis.

I enjoyed a few of the ways Superman tricked Mxyzptlk, but all in all the episode was a bust.  I understand that Mxyzptlk allows writers to tell stories where Superman isn't the most powerful.  I also know that there are thousands of ways to tell a Mxyzptlk story that wouldn't have injured me as much as this one.

Kristin: I am not going to make this redundant by repeating how awful it was to spend - nay, waste - a half an hour of my life listening to Gilbert Gottfried screech about his stupid name and his games with Superman. I am not even going to give the writers credit for making him as annoying as he was because it simply was unwatchable.

My bone is with his "girlfriend", Gsptlsnz. No typo.

Her purpose in the entire episode is to sit in the fifth dimension dressing herself in new outfits in an attempt to win some love and attention from Mxyzptlk. I kid you not, she spends an entire segment morphing from pin-up to sexpot to fresh-from-the-shower in order to get some good old fashioned lovin' from her waste of space leprechaun friend. Not only does she barely speak except to plead for more affection, she has no life outside of doing exactly this! (Or so it is implied, as she reclines on the couch in the fifth dimension lazily flipping through magazines until her darling nails-on-chalkboard returns from his more manly endeavours.) Gsptlsnz is merely a sexed up woman-object injected into the story to show how fixated on Superman Mxyzptlk is! And no, there are no signs of her leaving him any time soon. That would make way too much sense, and take far too much brainpower from a woman... I guess.

Final Thoughts: Holy shit that was awful.

Evan's Episode Rating: 2/10 (Lois Lane Ratio: 0 incompetent / 0 insane) - Never again.

Kristin's Episode Rating: 0....... -10000000000/10 - Gwaaaaarrrrgggggh!

Monday, December 13, 2010

Interlude: A Pause for Horror

The good news is that we watched the next episode, Mxyzpixilated!  The bad news is that we are only slowly regaining the will to live after seeing it.  An episode review should be up shortly, if our Christmas cheer can overcome our Mxyzpixilated-related depression.

--Evan