Written by Robin Stein
Synopsis:
One day, Andy spends all the money in his bank account, money both he and Kevin have to live by, on an electronic organ. Andy intends to use his paycheque to refill the account, but when he goes to work the next day he finds the waterbed store has been seized by the IRS. It seems Ron has been cheating on his taxes.
After a series of failed jobs, Andy and Kevin are forced to live on almost no money. Kevin only stands so much before he goes to visit Ron in prison and make him sign a form so Andy will receive unemployment benefits. In exchange, Ron gives Kevin the title to his car, a shiny new Ferarro, so the IRS can’t seize it.
The car proves to be a lot of trouble though, since Kevin is forced to buy insurance from a shady dealer, and the car is very costly to maintain. Andy becomes extremely jealous that Kevin gets to drive around such a fancy car, even the organ loses its charm after a while, so he insists he and Gwen use it on their date. Kevin ends up being their chauffeur, but at a toll booth Andy discovers Kevin spent all their money on auto maintenance. At that moment, the car’s battery dies.
After pushing the car to the side of the bridge they’re on, Andy and Kevin argue. Meanwhile, the Ferrarro rolls away and gets hit by a truck, and then falls off the edge of the bridge and into the water below. Unfortunately, the insurance payoff from the shady dealer turns out to be only $400. Despite all that’s happened, Kevin and Andy visit Ron in prison and tell him what happened to his car. He gets extremely angry, but it does make Kevin feel better that at least he told Ron.
Review:
This episode noticeably used more cartoony physical humour and general cartoon-like exaggerations such as intense blushing, shaking and the visualization of thoughts (how’s that for complicated analysis?). Which is just fine, in fact it’s probably an advantage this show has over a live-action sitcom. Since it is animated it can use outlandish visual gags. And Ron was used quite effectively in this episode. I loved his loud, angry, incomprehensible outburst at the end of the show.
When Kevin got the car, he hilariously nerds up the Ferarro, a point Andy even mentioned. It’s handled in a subtle way that’s pretty consistent with how Kevin has behaved in the past, so it came off pretty natural and not forced. Somehow he failed to look cool while driving a cool red sports car.
Oh, and the gag at the beginning in the waterbed store was just hilarious, although it’s another in the long-list of Mission Hill’s sex jokes, this one was quite funny and in some ways clever.
Interestingly, the two subplots of this episode were tied very closely together, it was more like different sides to the same situation rather than differing story branches. In fact I’m almost hard-pressed to call them subplots, but I’ll consider them subplots because one was Andy’s story and one was Kevin’s story. And they did end off together nicely, kind of tying back to each other.
All in all, a funny premise and a lot of funny scenes make one really funny episode.
4 out of 5
Capsule:
No Capsule Yet
Trivia:
-Andy makes a gripe about the History Channel, saying that it is always showing programs about World War II instead of Cavemen and other historic specials, a reference to the channel’s reputation for often showing World War II-related programs.
Was watching the DVD earlier, and at the point where Gwen says she “would feel safer riding with strangers”, a loud music starts to play up until the point when one of the passer-byers is yelling something out his car window. I was wondering 1)Is this just a glitch with the DVD and 2)What song is that?
The original song was “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida_(song)
but apparently the rights to that song for the DVD would have been too expensive, so this alternate song was put in its place, but whomever mastered the DVDs must not have been paying attention to the audio level of the sample being put in its place as it was WAY TOO LOUD, as you, and everyone else notices. As for the replacement song, I tried googling the words I can comprehend, but I’m not getting any results, but it does sound like a proper song. I doubt it was created just for this purpose, but it’s possible.
It is a shame that many of the iconic songs for the show were removed “Looper-Burning Flies”, “REM- Everybody Hurts”, and this stated one, but for all the trouble, I’m very happy that a DVD even came out.
I was planning a part of this site to do side-by-side type audio differences from what aired and what went on the DVD.
-Scott