Measure Metric Volume 2: Doc Cranshaw and the Kid - The Contest (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2017
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

This short that attempts to teach volume in cubic decimeters is way more frustrating than it needs to be.  It's storyline that pretends it's going somewhere but is really as aimless as someone hopped up on the cough medicine grandpa is selling goes something like this:  a peddler and his grandson are in town while there is a local contest asking you to guess how much candy is in a jar and the winner gets a puppy.  While at school, the grandson learns about volume and tries to use it to win the puppy.

Spoiler alert:  By the short's end we discover that the duo aren't even staying in town long enough to see who wins the contest, leaving how much candy is in the jar and whether or not the boy won the puppy up in the air, so if you're looking for closure this isn't the short for you.  The closest I can figure is that it was a setup for real classrooms to have their own contests where students guessed how much candy was in a jar so they can use the lessons taught in the short and bring conclusion to it themselves.  I doubt they won a puppy, but meh.

What concerns me is that this is "Volume 2," which means there is a "Volume 1" of some sort.  Maybe even more.  This doesn't really seem like a great idea for an educational series, which might have followed peddlers from town to town so they can learn metrics (this is assuming the series followed these two characters at all, which might not have been the case).  What I can say is that most of what we learn in this short is from the kid's teacher droning on about cubic decimeters, which is something students could have had in actual class, and if the storyline about a puppy goes nowhere, what is the point?

The riffing is fairly solid throughout this thing.  They love to mock the main characters' profession as professional con artists.  The classroom setting provides plenty of jokes about "special" students, while also mocking that maybe an old west setting feels like the wrong place to teach volume.  They have some great jabs at the production itself, like when this short hilariously makes a mule whinny like a horse.

My favorite dark riff of the short:  The shopkeep asks the boy in to take a closer look at the puppy, prompting the response of "And tell me if you think 30 cents a pound is fair."

This short isn't always on fire, but it's just funny enough to be recommended.  Be warned that the short is a bit of a drone, and it doesn't quite go anywhere special, but you'll laugh enough for it to be a worthwhile endeavor.

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