NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.
NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.
NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.
Pop quiz: what kind of person gets treated the lousiest in television? Not just ANIMATED television, ALL television? You might think it's the mime, because it's generally agreed that mimes are terrifying. Or it could be postal workers, who are stereotyped as being grouchy and ready to snap at any moment. But nope, the one kind of person that is despised, the butt of practically every joke, considered worse than pond scum, by people who write for television shows, it is the NERD.
These are nerds. Scientific name Geekus Wimpus. It's pretty easy to identify a nerd: they usually wear glasses, bow ties, and a shirt with at least one pocket on it. Their hobbies include watching Star Trek, posting in internet message boards, and doing well in school. For some reason, the television industry thinks that these are things to be mocked. Name a cartoon show - ANY cartoon show - and I'm sure there was at least one joke at the expense of nerds in it, if not a character whose entire shtick is that he's a nerd.
And surely I do not need to mention the enormous, nerdy elephant in the room, do I? The show where a good chunk of the jokes are just "LOL they're nerds, laugh at them"?
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| Let's be honest, Sheldon is the only reason to watch this show. |
It seems that nowadays, with stereotypical "nerdy" things like sci-fi, gaming, and technology becoming more mainstream, people have realized that nerds are not something to be mocked, but rather our equals. Heck, look at me. I'M probably a huge nerd. You'd likely have to be to write an entire blog post about the history of an obscure Disney animated film from 2004. In other words, if you're a nerd, be proud of it. Don't let the jokes that shows like The Big Bang Theory make about how pathetic nerds are let you feel bad about yourself. You don't need six-pack abs, a sports car, and a love of professional wrestling to be considered cool.
Okay, okay, you want to hear about the actual cartoon now, don't you?
Nerds and Monsters focuses on three nerdy kids named Dudley Squat (voiced by Tabitha St. Germain), Irwin Chang-stein (Vincent Tong), and Becky Hooger (also Tabitha St. Germain)... and also a dumb jock named Stanley "Stan" Grissle (Ty Olsson). The kids get stranded on an island populated by monsters, led by the purple-skinned long-horned Zarg (Brian Dobson), who see them as a threat to their way of life. The show was created by Josh Mepham, Kathy Antonsen Rocchio, Greg Sullivan, and Vito Viscomi and premiered on YTV in March 2014. I'm not sure if it aired on TV in the U.S., but it has been avaliable on many streaming services, such as Hulu and Tubi.
Two seasons, consisting of each one consisting of twenty episodes (and each of those twenty episodes consisting of two segments, making for a total of eighty in all), of the show were produced. Reception towards it seems pretty mixed online, for every fan of it there's somebody who finds it lousy. Which side of the fence will I fall on? Well, we're going to watch the fifth episode of the show, which consists of the segments "Are You Gonna Eat That?" and "Monster BFF", to find out. This is Nerds and Monsters.
The episode starts off with Zarg sleepwalking - or rather, sleep-using another monster named Skur (Ian James Corlett) as a hammer. Why? Because he's dreaming about using Skur as a hammer, of course. To put a stop to this, Skur tells Zarg that the nerds have stolen his inner tube, resulting in Zarg dashing out of his cave and running into Becky, who's out searching for the island's nocturnal fauna - which in turn results in them falling over a cliff.
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| Ew, she's grabbing him by the nose hairs... |
Discount Eduardo says that Becky has saved his life. Usually, in cartoons, saving somebody's life means that they become your servant and drive you crazy waiting on you hand and foot until THEY save YOUR life, in which case you're even. But don't worry, they're not doing THAT cliche here. Instead, according to "monster law", Becky must now EAT Zarg.
Becky says that she can't eat Zarg because she's a vegetarian animal lover (does Zarg qualify as an animal?), but if she refuses to eat Zarg, then HE gets to eat HER. I'm not quite sure how "monster law" works, but something tells me the monsters don't quite know either. Nonetheless, Becky pulls Zarg to safety, and now she has to eat him in some big public ceremony.
And I'm gonna try not to make too many Big Bang Theory jokes in this review, but I have to point this out... Irwin looks a lot like Howard Wolowitz.
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| Seriously, the big nose, the hairstyle... just take off the glasses and you've got an animated Howard! |
"Just cover him with ketchup! That's how I eat food I hate!" Stan suggests. "Broccoli, liver, tomatoes..." Yes, like all jocks in cartoons, Stan is a few sodas short of a six-pack. Now that I think about it, jocks don't really have it much better than nerds in television, do they? Apparently, you can't be smart AND good-looking at the same time...
Irwin's idea is for Becky to just ignore the problem and it'll go away. Of course, that didn't work with his back acne... gross. But Dudley says that he can make it so Becky craves eating nothing but Zarg. How exactly he plans to do that, we'll have to find out later, as we promptly cut to Zarg bathing in soup broth. Hmmm, usually how this gag works is that the character who wants to eat the other character tricks them into relaxing in a hot tub or something that's actually a giant pot of soup. I guess Zarg wanted to skip right to the punchline.
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| "Hey, chicken broth is good for my complexion!" |
In walk Zarg's nephew Lyle (Brian Drummond), the one monster on the island who DOESN'T hate humans, and his parents, Urp (Lee Tockar) and Durn (Michael Adamthwaite), who share the same body. I like how they didn't go the usual "creature with two heads" design for them but rather had Urp's face be on Durn's stomach. Although this does raise the question as to whether or not Urp's mouth doubles as a belly button.
(NOTE: this joke was originally supposed to be me wondering how they digest food, but now that I think about it, they probably have a digestive tract just behind Urp's face)
"Uncle Zarg, this is so silly! Becky won't eat you if I ask her not to!" Lyle insists. But Durn says that every monster knows from the day they're hatched that someday, they'll be eaten. According to Urp, it's the circle of life. And it moves us all... through despair and hope... through faith and love... okay, I'll stop.
Meanwhile, Dudley tells Becky that he can erase her fear of meat - or "carnophobia", as he calls it - from her mind with hypnosis. Since this isn't a Disney movie, there aren't any pythons around to do the job, so instead Dudley, Irwin, and Stan have set up a large spinning wheel for her to stare at. Instead of hypnotizing Becky, however, it hypnotizes Irwin and Stan... who now think they're chickens. I gotta ask, what exactly is so funny about people acting like chickens? Is it because chickens aren't particularly intelligent (actually, they're smarter than people think)?
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| There's also a joke here about Stan crapping his pants. Nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck. Sarcastic laugh. |
Next, Dudley thinks that they can reprogram Becky's brain. This involves building a sculpture of Zarg entirely out of produce.
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| It reminds me of that genie made of produce from The Tale of Despereaux... |
That doesn't work either, but it seems that Becky has decided to eat Zarg after all: it's either that or she gets eaten herself. Besides, maybe he's chock-full of proteins and vitamins.
"Excellent! Now start with my feet and work your way up!" Zarg says, showing off his disgusting toenails.
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| Well, there goes my appetite. |
Despite her disgust, Becky attempts to bite one of the toenails... which tickles Zarg, causing him to fart. Apparently, monsters fart when they're tickled. Wow, I'm learning much more than I ever needed to know about monster biology today!
"Nope, I can't do it!" Becky declares. "Zarg, I want to honor your monster customs, but I can't eat food that can eat ME!" Other people don't seem to have this problem - believe it or not, there are people in this world who eat LION MEAT. LION MEAT. Why would anyone do that? My rule is, if it's not an animal I haven't already tasted (so, a chicken, a turkey, a pig, a fish, a lobster, a shrimp, or a cow), I won't eat it. I don't care how good alligator supposedly tastes, they're too cool an animal to be eaten.
Dudley and Skur both offer to eat Zarg instead, but he swats them away and demands that Becky chow down. Why doesn't HE just eat HER? "Monster law" says that he can do that, doesn't it? Well, anyway, Becky makes a run for it and jumps aboard a log floating downstream. She thinks she's safe, but discovers that the river has man-eating plants, piranha/alligator hybrids, and - you guessed it - a waterfall.
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| "This is the worst log flume ever!" |
Zarg saves Becky before she can go over the falls. He saved her life, which means that once she's done eating him, he can eat HER. It takes him a second to realize that would be impossible. So instead, Becky eats the produce statue of Zarg from before and Zarg eats a replica of Becky made from meat. Also, Stan managed to find some ketchup (which apparently grows on the tail of another monster on this island, so getting it wasn't particularly easy) and gives it to Becky.
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| Putting ketchup on watermelon? If I still had my appetite, I'd be oddly curious as to how that tastes... |
Next segment...
This one starts off with the nerds playing "Charades", then after that Stan suggests they play football. But through a combination of Stan playing too rough and the nerds' being nonathletic wimps (because it's impossible for a nerd to be good at sports, that's just common knowledge), Dudley, Irving, and Becky don't have much fun. Poor Dudley is even subjected to a wedgie, as nerds in cartoons often do.
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| Question: where are these kids' parents? There must be "MISSING CHILD" posters all over their hometown... |
Because Dudley, Irving and Becky suck at sports, Stan heads off to have some REAL fun: uprooting trees and sending them flying through the air! He eventually comes across a monster named Vink (Michael Daingerfield), who is ALSO tremendously strong and not particularly intelligent. They're a perfect match!
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| Boy, this Dirty Dancing remake is a lot stranger than the original... |
While Stan is off having fun with Vink, Dudley builds a "Stan-Proof Suit" out of logs so they can have fun with Stan minus the pain. Vink, meanwhile, brings Stan back to the monsters' turf, and this does not make Zarg happy. Before the episode gonna go all The Fox and the Hound on us, Vink manages to convince Zarg to let him keep Stan: but only if he promises to feed it and never pick up its crap. I think these monsters have confused a friend with a pet. All pets are friends, but not all friends are pets.
I wonder why so many pink cartoon characters are dimwitted. Vink, Patrick Star, Pinkie Pie, Gumpers from Pet Alien...
Anyway, Dudley comes across Stan, who shatters Dudley's wooden suit with just a pat on the back. "Well, on the bright side, I can finally relieve myself," Dudley says. He's also not too pleased to find out that Stan is friends with a monster, even though Vink, despite his enormous strength, seems pretty harmless. Well, maybe "harmless" isn't the right word... he doesn't seem MALICIOUS at all. Stan insists that hanging out with the monsters is better than hanging out with the nerds because they "don't talk about stupid stuff like math", they eat with their hands, and they don't shower. All he has to do is play the "don't you want me to be happy" card and Dudley agrees to let him stay with the monsters.
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| I sure hope monsters can't get pink eye. That would suck for that yellow monster with the eighteen eyeballs... |
Later on, Skur catches Dudley and brings him before Zarg. Uh oh, it looks like Stan will be torn between his new monster friends and his fellow human being. Especially since Zarg says that he's going to EAT Dudley. But first, he gives Dudley to Vink so he can tenderize him first. We get another fart joke... classy, fellas... and Vink carries Dudley into the forest, Stan running behind him. Long story short, Stan manages to save Dudley and bring him back to the nerds' side of the island, and it turns out that Dudley let Skur capture him to prove that Stan wouldn't be safe living with the monsters.
Then we cut to poor Vink crying over the fact that Stan isn't around... only to immediately befriend a squirrel/spider hybrid. Huh, usually this sort of story ends with everyone realizing that the two characters of different species CAN be friends. I guess the moral here is that giant monsters aren't good friends? That seems racist towards monsters...
What's the Verdict?
I'm gonna give this cartoon something that I haven't given a cartoon since my first review of Sidekick - a "YOU TRIED" stamp.
Nerds and Monsters has a unique premise, and I like the designs of the monsters and the Dr. Seuss-ish look of the island. The voice actors all do a good job, and the animation is decent. And they refreshingly don't do too many "LOL they're nerds" jokes. Too bad the jokes we DO have here aren't funny (there's waaaaaaaaaay too much toilet humor) and the characters aren't particularly interesting. It's not an awful show, but at best I'd say it's mediocre. Maybe I just chose one of the weaker episodes to review, I don't know. If you like it, go ahead and like it, but I wouldn't recommend watching Nerds and Monsters.
Well, another day, another cartoon I only find mediocre at worst. I know mediocre cartoons don't make for particularly funny reviews... it probably doesn't help that I go into a lot of these obscure Canadian cartoons with low expectations. I couldn't even think of a funny way to end this review.
Y'know what? Here, have a video I found on YouTube of The Big Bang Theory with the laugh track removed. It really highlights just how nasty the characters are to each other:
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