Episode 822-
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
Movie
Summary: Raul Julia stars as
Aram Fingal (yeah, right), a brilliant but bored
data-input-something-or-other for the huge Novicorp
Corporation, which acts really benign, but -- gosh, wouldn't
you know it -- we find out that they're really kinda evil.
After being busted for watching movies on the job (movies
being cleverly renamed "cinemas," in a genius stroke of
faux-Orwell), Fingal's essence gets lost in the
corporation's huge mainframe during a mandatory "dopple,"
wherein his mind, or something, is put in to an aging
baboon, for reasons known only to the screenwriter. Some
creepy little sex-crazed kid switches Fingal's toe-tags in
the operating room, and his essence goes running around the
computer changing everything into some watered-down version
of the movie Casablanca. And, oh yeah, when he does
that...it's really "funny."
Prologue: Crow decides he has a famous catch phrase: "You
know you want me, baby!" He's already got LOTS of T-shirts
printed up.
Segment One: Following instructions from Pearl, The 'bots
try to come up with catch phrases for Mike. He keeps
choosing the dullest ones. Meanwhile, Pearl has decided she
has her own public television station, and can make lots of
cold hard cash holding a pledge drive.
Segment Two: Crow and Servo order a pet monkey for the SOL
from Instant Monkeys Online. The monkey takes an instant
dislike to Mike, and keeps throwing things at him. Funny,
huh?!
Segment
Three: Mike is still having
his dominance challenged by the monkey. Down at the pledge
drive, Pearl is calling attention to some of the other fine
programming on her public TV station, notably a stunning
special starring well, herself. She shows an excerpt: she
and Brain Guy performing a lyrcially deficient love duet.
Segment Four: Inspired by the movie, Servo decides to dopple
himself down to Nanite world and mess with them. But he
winds up in a tough Nanite neighborhood, and gets his
dopple-butt syntho-kicked.
Segment Five: The 'Bots have enlisted Bobo to come up to the
SOL and talk the monkey down. But Bobo goes over to the
other side, and in a show of simian solidarity, begins
chucking HUGE things on the bridge. Meanwhile, Pearl is
winding up her pledge drive, counting her greenbacks. She
makes sure to tip her phone bank -- which consists of
Ortega, and only Ortega.
Stinger: Raul Julia: "Mom my nuts." (That's sure what
it sounds like.)
Reflections:The real problem here -- rare indeed for our
show -- is that the lead character is played by an actor who
is actually a very good and highly respected actor: Raul
Julia. And the recently deceased Raul Julia, at that. So we
spent much of the movie feeling a bit worried that we might
be besmirching the late Mr. Julia's reputation.
But in the end, we went light on Raul and hard on this
extraordinarily dumb movie whose relentless "funny"
techno-futuro-jargon was the screenwriting equivalent of
water torture. And we felt buoyed by the happy
knowledge that Raul's legacy outlived this early career
train wreck of a movie (which was shot on horrible
cheap-TV-looking video, no less! Not easy on the eyes).
The Public Pearl TV sketches were inspired by the weird and
disturbing fact that this movie was partially bankrolled by
a New York PBS affiliate, WNET. It's in the credits! Look!
They can't deny it! Think about that next time your local
public televsion station fires up Riverdance again
and tries to guilt-trip you into cutting them a big check!
-- Bill Corbett.
|