Sunday, May 12, 2019

Episode 11 - Talent Night




This episode's origin is rather interesting. When this episode was initially conceived, it was intended to be a 'bottle episode' (i.e. an episode where the characters are all confined to a singular location) where everyone is stranded in the Diner for Enzo's birthday due to a static storm outside. However, of course, this idea ended up expanding and growing into something much different as we can see from the finished product.

We start the episode in a sphere with a green cube that looks like circuitry rotating inside it. Bob and Enzo are in cars attached to the cube with magnets, and begin racing with some binomes after a ball round this cube. Eventually, they all make it to the ball at the same time, and the binomes call for a rematch. Bob says he’ll catch up once he's checked his messages. Enzo thanks Bob for spending all this time with him, to which he responds that since it’s Enzo's first birthday, he deserves to be spoiled. Enzo races off, and Bob uses Glitch to contact Dot.

Next to Dot's Diner, we see a large stage where Dot and a female binome are sitting. It appears that Dot is auditioning acts for Enzo's birthday party. Bob checks in, and Dot reports that she’s behind schedule due to the acts being terrible, and the acts she does like are rejected by M.C (Emma Cee) the binome who’s with her (who has a police badge with the words 'Prog Censor' written on it). She tells Bob to keep Enzo busy until at least 25:50, and signs out as Mike the TV introduces a group of acrobats.



Dot likes the acrobats, but, unsurprisingly to her, Emma rejects them. They’re then followed by a 0 binome who breaks apart into sections which neither of them like. Then the Dire's Sal and Harv come on stage only to be met by booing from the audience. Emma orders Mike to pull the plug, so he pulls a lever that drops sandbags on their heads. Obviously, these are the characters from the Dire Straits 'Money for Nothing' video created by Blair and Pearson that lead to them creating ReBoot, and this sequence serves as a means for them to vent their frustrations after the 'three and a half weeks of hell' they endured trying to get that video finished.



The next act is a Stand Up Binome named Johnny O'Binome. He says a joke in binary language that causes the audience asides from Emma to burst into fits of laughter. Dot wants to book him, but Emma won’t approve him because 'there will be children in the audience'. Funnily enough, when you convert the joke from binary to English, it translates as 'Take my wife, please'.  Following this, Al's Waiter takes to the stage with his bagpipes and accordion. This is followed by a clown binome on a unicycle performing 'live null juggling', an act which has supposedly been banned. He ties the nulls together in order to make null balloon animals, culminating in a giant null dinosaur (causing the nulls to silently shriek in pain). We then zoom away from the stage and see that Megabyte is observing the events on a vid window. He gets another vid window up to order his lieutenant to investigate, commenting how rude it was of Dot to not invite him.



We then see Bob and Enzo playing another game. This one is Jet Ball, which involves shooting a ball into the opponent's goal while on jet packs. Their game is interrupted by Megabyte popping up on a vid window to ask what’s going on at the Diner. Bob, not wanting to ruin his surprise party, throws Enzo into one of the goals. He re emerges after Megabyte signs off, and then Bob suggests they go to the Data Slides. However, Enzo says that he’s getting hungry and that he wants to go to the Diner instead, prompting Bob to drag him away.



Back at the auditions, Phong is up next. He sings the first word of the song, but stops after he forgets what the next line is. Dot calls the next act on, and Phong ends up falling off the stage as he was reading a file while hovering. Next, we get the 'Small Town Binomes' (an obvious parody of the Village People) performing a parody of the YMCA called BSNP, proclaiming that it’s 'fun to play in the non violent way'. This is met with a positive reaction from the crowd, and both Dot and Emma agree on them making the cut. Following this, we get a cube, sphere and cone called 'the primitives' performing a jazzy music number before coming together to form the ReBoot logo, prompting Dot to look down at her icon and comment 'that’s what it is'.



The next act is Captain Quirk, a stand in for William Shatner, preforming a parody of Shatner's infamous cover of Elton John's hit 'Rocket Man'. This ends with Quirk taking a bow as his wig falls off before teleporting away in true Star Trek fashion. We then cut to backstage to see the Viral binomes sneaking around. However, their cover is blown when the curtain is raised, leading to most of them leaving the stage while one break dances. Dot hates break dancing, but it turns out that Emma loves it. Once outside, Megabyte's lieutenant checks in to report his findings, to which Megabyte orders them to prepare for 'Operation 214', which terrifies the binomes. Once they’ve signed off, Megabyte monologues about how there will be so many people in one place and how 'they’ll never know what hit them'.



At the Data Slides, Enzo comments that, while he’s had fun, he’s getting tired and wants to grab something to eat. Bob insists that Enzo goes down one more time before throwing him down the slide. While he’s going down, Bob checks in with Dot, who says they aren’t ready yet, and as Bob tells Dot that Enzo's getting suspicious, he spots Enzo heading towards the Diner.  Enzo eventually reaches the Diner, walking through the backstage area before getting to the stage. He’s greeted by a crowd of binomes who shout 'SURPRISE!'. Enzo then is raised up on a platform in front of a countdown. Once the countdown reaches 0, Enzo gets upgraded into a new costume.



Enzo's birthday serves two purposes behind the scenes. For one, it allows them to create a new costume for Enzo. Enzo's original costume had clunky shoulder pads that kept getting in the way of animation, so it was decided to give him a birthday so that they had an excuse to alter his costume to something that's easier to animate with. Another reason is that it helps to explain why Enzo's voice has changed since this is the first episode where Enzo is voiced by Matthew Sinclair rather than original voice Jesse Moss. Typically, animated shows tend to get women to voice young boys since their voices don't break leading to needing to find a new voice actor. Blair and Pearson opted to have actual young boys voice Enzo instead, meaning we go through four voices for young Enzo

Dot then takes to the stage in a red dress, singing a song for Enzo called 'You’re Alphanumeric'. Bob is clearly stunned by Dot's outfit. After the song, an Elvis binome comes on stage only to soon be crushed by a Viral tank knocking over the backdrop behind him. Two more tanks form giant speakers, and the one in the middle has a rotating drum kit on the top manned by Hack and Slash. A coffin the pen springs up and opens with Megabyte emerging out of it. With everyone in Mainframe now at his mercy, Megabyte....



....picks up a guitar and starts shredding. He’s then joined on stage by Bob, who uses the Glitch command 'BFG' to transform Glitch into a guitar. The two then have a guitar battle, with both trying to out riff each other. After the battle, Megabyte comments that he’s always wanted to do that, gives Enzo his guitar and rides off in his limo, ending the episode.



When I first saw this episode at 14, I hated it, mainly for the part where Megabyte gives Enzo his guitar. Being more used to the more sinister Megabyte from later seasons, I thought that it was incredibly out of character for such an evil character to commit such an act of kindness. Of course, this scene does still make me question this episode's place in canon since Megabyte wouldn’t realistically do this instead of just infecting everyone there, but my overall stance on this episode has changed, and it’s honestly a lot of fun.

Granted, plot wise it’s wafer thin, but that can be excused given the amount of jokes we get, and in spite of my complaints about why Megabyte is out of character in that scene, the guitar duelling with Bob and Megabyte is absolutely awesome, and it has some great build up to it. Right from his introduction in this episode, we are lead to believe that Megabyte is conducting some nasty scheme to infect Mainframe while everyone is in one place, but the punch line is that it wasn’t his intention at all, he just wanted to pick up a guitar and shred like there’s no tomorrow. While edgy 14 year old me who wanted everything to be dark and gritty thought this was lame, 25 year old me sees the humour in this and finds it hilarious.

Of course, a lot of this episode is spent lampooning BSNP and Mainframe's struggles in making the show they wanted to make while having to comply with their ridiculous standards. The most obvious of these is, of course, the BSNP song, but the slightly more subtle one is is the Prog Censor herself, Emma Cee, or M.C. She gets her name from Mary Connelly, who was the woman from BSNP ensuring that ReBoot was within their standards. Her rejection of practically every act echoes the frustrations of Mainframe's staff from being prevented from doing things they wanted to do. Funnily enough, though, there was only one thing which BSNP objected to in this episode. During the sequence when she's singing to Enzo on his birthday, Dot was going to kiss him on the cheek affectionately. This was cut since BSNP felt this promoted incest, something which Ian Pearson described as 'one of the sickest things I've ever heard'.



It’s also interesting to see what activities the Mainframers do for recreation asides from sitting round at the Diner, which is all we've seen so far. This time, we get to see Bob and Enzo partake in Circuit Racing and Jet Ball, games that are fun where you aren’t at risk of turning into a parasitic slug creature if you were to lose, as well as the Data Slides. Granted, it’s not much, but it’s nice to see that there are things to do in Mainframe asides from stopping viruses and sitting around a Diner.

While I question whether or not this episode is canon, I still find it an enjoyable episode full of some of the show's funniest gags and the guitar duel is one of the best moments in this season of ReBoot. It’s certainly leagues above Enzo the Smart, too.

Next week: Dot expresses her political activist side in 'Identity Crisis Part 1'

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