This eventually culminated with them ending up with a 52 page script for this particular episode. Given that scripts tend to be approximately one minute per page, that is very excessive for a 21 minute episode. On top of that, the script wasn't particularly good, since it was mainly just the characters talking about things that had happened as opposed to showing us these things, and also included things that would have been impossible to implement at the time due to the constraints of the technology such as vines. Gavin and Ian's solution to this? Take the things that were discussed in the script but never shown and put them in the episode, take lines from earlier episodes and cut them together to make the episode work. The end result turned out pretty well, and also allowed them to begin taking the reigns of the show and push it in the direction that they intended to go in.
We start the episode at Bob's apartment. Bob is hiding behind his couch, and tells Dot and Enzo to go away as they'll give away his hiding place. They both ask Bob what he’s hiding from, giving incorrect guesses such as Megabyte and Hexadecimal. However, Bob says it’s worse than any of their guesses, before announcing that whatever he’s hiding from is coming 'right this way', leading all three of them to scream in terror from...
...Mike the TV. Mike begins advertising a product that comes with a free Log O Matic for the amazing price of '99.99.99'. Enzo asks why they can’t just turn him off, and Bob reveals he can’t due to Mike's remote control running away. Following Mike showing a commercial for a 'Bucket 'O Nothing', Bob decides to try dismantling him, commanding Glitch to turn into a screwdriver. Mike cowers in terror behind Dot, who tells Bob to calm down. The commotion is then interrupted by a Game Cube, which lands on Bob's apartment.
Bob, Dot, and Enzo are in a field outside a cave. Four Users run past them into the cave. Bob says that this game is called ‘ A Dungeon Deep', and the objective is to beat The User's team to the end of the game. Dot ReBoots into a wizard, Enzo ReBoots into an elf, and Bob ReBoots into a thief. Bob isn’t too happy about this, since he’s always the warrior. If he’s not the warrior, then who is? It turns out to be Mike the TV, calling himself 'Mike, The Mighty Warrior' (in a thick Austrian accent not too dissimilar to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Conan the Barbarian). However, he falls over trying to lift his sword. Bob attempts to pick up the sword, but his hand goes straight through it since a thief is unable to use a warriors weapons. Dot and Enzo tell Mike to wait here while they beat the game, but after Mike is incredibly downtrodden about this, Dot and Enzo feel guilty. After some convincing, Bob allows Mike to tag along as long as he stays out of their way.
On the first level, the heroes are met with a wooden door that has a gargoyle face above it. The face states that the key to the chalice is 'one all, all in one', although they aren’t sure what this means. Bob, Dot, and Enzo start pushing against the door in order to open it. Enzo asks Mike to help, and he rushes into the door, causing it to fall over and form a raft that eventually reaches a sewer. Dot reaches into her hat and pulls out a map. The map shows where The User is and where they are as well as all the levels in the game. Dot says that they are currently travelling down 'The Hopeless Valley of Eternal Imprisonment', heading towards the 'vicious pit of eternal oblivion'. The raft falls down into the pit, but luckily Bob is able to grab onto a nearby ledge with Dot, Enzo, and Mike grabbing onto each other as well.
On Level 2, the characters enter a room with several doors. Mike shuts the entrance to the level behind him, annoying Bob. As they traverse through the room, the giant suits of armour in the room spring to life. Our heroes run to the back of the room, and Bob attempts to draw his weapon only to find he’s only equipped with a butter knife. He gets Dot to cast a spell on them. This shrinks the suits of armour, but also doubles their numbers. She does this a couple more times, making them small enough for Bob and Enzo to stomp on. Mike commentates this, but Dot uses her magic to zip his mouth shut temporarily. This now leaves them to decide which door to leave out of. The first door they open has a monster inside, so they instantly close it. Luckily, it’s a case of second time lucky as the second door they open is the correct one.
We then jump ahead 10 levels to Level 13, where Bob, Dot, Enzo, and Mike are travelling down a very long staircase. They’re soon joined by a giant spider, which causes Mike to let out an incredibly high pitched scream. Bob climbs up the spider, and uses his butter knife to cut the web, causing the spider to fall to its doom. On Level 23, Mike begins to rant about how there’s 'no way out'. Bob tells him to log off, and Dot points them in the right direction. Then on Level 31, they’re met by three carrot knights. Bob uses Glitch to slice them up, allowing them to get past. On Level 37, we see Bob and Dot arguing in a dark room as the camera pans around them to reveal they’re all standing on an incredibly small platform in the middle of the room. On Level 42, Dot uses her magic to freeze a monster made of water.
Eleven levels later on Level 53, Bob opens a door, revealing a shadowy knight standing behind it. Enzo knocks his head off using an arrow tipped with a clown's head. Five levels later, we see them running from an eyeball with tentacles. On Level 65, Bob, Dot, Enzo and Mike a riding on a giant banana. Dot reveals they have one level to go, and The User is already there. They then get ambushed by a giant skeletal centipede that breathes fire, leading Enzo to list all the absurd creatures they’ve had to overcome within this game. They eventually dismount the giant banana, and Bob gets separated from the rest of the party. Dot, Enzo and Mike traverse a deadly obstacle course only to be met by Bob on the other side. Once, they’re all together, a trap door opens leading them to the next level.
The next level finds them in a room with a door at the end and a giant hole in the middle of the floor. They initially get ambushed by a shadow monster who proceeds to quickly defeat Bob, Dot, and Enzo, leaving Mike to defeat it. While he struggles at first, he eventually gets rid of it by blowing out the candle casting the shadow, an idea he got from a movie he saw. The rest of the characters forgive him, and head for the door. The gargoyle head from earlier repeats the riddle from before, and then the floor behind them begins disappearing. Dot works out the riddle means all of them have to work together, so they all put their hands in the door's giant keyhole to open it.
The chalice is in the centre of a room full of mirrors. Out of the mirrors come evil doppelgängers of Bob, Dot, Enzo, and Mike. They struggle at first, but Dot and Bob's doppelgängers are scared away by Mike the TV showing bad television, and Dot is able to take care of Mike and Enzo's doppelgängers. However, just as they’re defeated, the user's tea, arrives. Dot, Enzo and Mike try to lift the dome around the chalice as Bob tries to stop the users from entering. However, Bob forgoes this after Dot points out they need to lift the dome together. This then allows anyone to grab the chalice. Bob knocks the chalice as the User tries to grab it, causing it to go flying into the hands of Mike the TV, ending the game. After the game leaves, the chalice becomes a toilet plunger.
At Dot's Diner, Bob, Dot and Enzo apologise for how they treated Mike in the game, who then proceeds to give an Oscar Acceptance speech. This annoys the rest of the characters, who tell him to cut to commercial, ending the episode.
This is probably the episode with the best humour. The gags in this episode are some of the best in the show, and we can see that the show has really got the hang of balancing the humour and the drama with the action set pieces being balanced out with absurdity such as carrot knights and Bob pulling out a butter knife. For instance, the opening scene of the episode has incredibly melodramatic music making us believe that something nasty is coming for the characters, which is exemplified by Bob's cowering in terror behind the couch from whatever this supposedly nasty thing is, only to completely subvert our expectations when it's revealed that it was only Mike the TV.
However, the episode's true star is Mike the TV himself. This is the most prominently he’s been featured within the show so far, and while he has a presence later on, he's not as prominently featured. As stated in my post on The Tiff, the character can be seen as annoying, but he manages to avoid this by being self aware enough about how annoying he is to cross over into humour. His presence is really felt within this episode, providing several quips to lighten a scene, and he even manages to win the game at the end of the episode.
That doesn’t mean the other characters don’t get their moments, though. Bob is forced a bit out of his element during the game since, while he’s played the game before, he’s used to playing the role of the warrior. Instead, he’s stuck as the thief, leaving him with a mere butter knife at his disposal as opposed to the large sword gifted to the warrior. This means he has to use more ingenuity and intuition in order to progress through the game. Likewise, Dot is once again shown to be a more than capable character, being the voice of reason this episode as well as being the one who figures out the key to winning the game.
Another element that I feel works very well in this episode is the use of the gauntlets that tell you which level the characters are currently playing. This was done in order for the creators to easily jump from scene to scene using the elements of the script they liked and wanted to use. It really helps with the flow of the episode since it provides us with a means to jump between several action set pieces at once without having to show how the characters got in or out of the situation that they were currently in. It also allowed them to include things such as the battle carrots that were only mentioned in the original script, using dialogue from earlier episodes to make the sequence work.
The episode's moral is to appreciate those around you and not neglect them (at least, that’s how I read it), which I feel was executed pretty well throughout the episode. The characters are very reluctant to have Mike on this adventure with them, and we can’t blame them for being this way; Mike is presented as annoying, so we can see why they don’t want him along for the ride. However, they realise their error by the game's end since he was able to use his unique skills to help win the game, even his irritating personality comes in handy when dealing with the doppelgängers.
Like I said in my opening paragraphs, this episode helped Gavin, Ian, and Phil to get more control over the scripts. Jenny Trias, the head of ABC at the time, was very impressed with the episode, going as far as to phone Ian to tell him that it was 'the best thing I've ever seen'. The episode they'd completed was funny and action packed, and it had nothing to do with the script. So good, in fact, that it later won a Gemini Award for 'Best Animated Program or Series' in 1995. A directive was then issued stating that the script writers were to listen to what the show's creators had to say with regards to the scripts.
This was also the point where the approach of the show changed. Whereas before, it was being approached as if it was traditional cel animation, the creators realised that it actually had more in common with live action due to the need to build sets and having to set up a camera inside the computer that acted like a film camera. After this episode, they began to approach the show as if they were producing a live action series. While of course, they still had to contend with BSNP's ridiculous standards, they now had more control over the show, allowing them to take it in their desired direction.
Next week: A new character hinted at in a previous episode makes her debut in 'The Great Brain Robbery'
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