Pleasant Surprises (5+6/6)

Never underestimate your enemy, or your potential entertainment source.  

Sometimes disappointment will win out, but other times you may find a pleasant surprise lurking where you least expect it.  Here are six works I found waiting just around that proverbial corner.

Ranking of these is not by quality, but rather how unexpected it was that I liked them.

These last two entries I have place together because there is nothing much to analyze.

I just can't look away.

2.  “Hero Up, Squaddies!”   - Even the catchphrase is painful.

 

Hey, remember how we made Rescue Bots?  Let’s do it again!

PlaySkool aesthetic.  Check.  Marvel characters.  Check.

End result?  Hilarity.

I’m not going to lie; it took me a few tries to like this.  First scene I saw was the Silver Surfer as a surfer dude - Wow. Massive creativity there. - not understanding the difference between pants like the clothing and pants like a dog’s breathing.  

- Norrin Radd.  Cosmic explorer.  Doesn't understand suspenders. -
Super Hero Squad Episode 11

The humor was lame and seriously, the Silver Surfer is the incarnation of nobility in the Marvel Universe and this is how he’s portrayed?  It was painful enough that he barely got screentime in the second F4 film and his 1990’s show got cancelled, but now this is his enduring legacy for the mainstream cultural conscience?  Yay.

Then I kept hearing of all these talented voice actors working on this show and being encourage to improv it up.  Then it started reruns on the Hub and the Hub’s website.  So my curiosity got the better of me and when the Hub posted the first two episodes online, I took a watch.

I’m not sure if I have giggled so incessantly in my entire life.  Oh sure, there were fart jokes and belch jokes and jokes that made me roll my eyes.  That did nothing to sully the rest of it though.  I giggled like a maniac and then when this frame popped up, I lost it.  

-Falcon, Wolverine, and Iron Man just pressed the red button-

Super Hero Squad Episode 1

I just out and out lost it.  Then I went back so I could watch it again.  And again.  My sides hurt.  I thought such hilarity could not be topped.  Then I saw a clip of the Punisher.

Now, the Punisher is a vigilante to the extreme.  Think Batman with guns and without his “one rule.”  Think Marvel's Rorshach.  There is no way that anyone could make the Punisher kiddie material.

Well, paint me wrong.  Could you get a more G-rated Film Noir speech?  I will never look at macaroni or broccoli the same way ever again.

There is nothing deep or meaningful I learned from the Super Hero Squad.  There were no heart-wrenching moments.

Marvel’s Super Hero Squad is just hilarious.

1. This.  Why am I still watching?

Barbie has no right to be this entertaining outside of Toy Story.  This show is aware that it’s about a doll that has been mocked, loved, and despised with equal measure and milks it.  Slapstick.  Meta-humor.  Godfather and 2001 Space Odyssey references.

Some of the jokes work, some fall flat, and I have no excuse.  No deep or shallow analysis of the jokes or the acting or characters.  Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse is fluff at its fluffiest.  I like this show.

How did this happen?