"The Gear is Family" (ICWXP)

Featured Short:  "The Great American Chocolate Factory"

The Short

MAKE AMERICAN CHOCOLATE FACTORY GREAT AGAIN!

Chocolate lovers rejoice!  Hershey's is here to take you on a tour of their chocolate factory and no golden ticket is required!  See where cocoa beans come from, how they are refined, and turned into those deliciously chocolatey treats you love and make you obese!

This short is a fairly informative to those who are interested in the making of such fattening goodness.  I was actually intrigued for the most part and enjoyed seeing such familiar treats in their raw form and taking shape, from the classic Hershey bar to the Hershey Kiss.

But the short does wear out its welcome after twenty minutes.  One does question one's sanity after looking at all of the mechanics and cocoa.  The Great American Chocolate Factory gets kudos from me for not boring me, at least for a while.

The Episode

Watching the cold opening to The Gear is Family I found myself reflecting on the pureness of an independent production without restriction.  This episode begins with an eleven minute sequence told from the point of view of the little floating ball robot that rescued Rick in the previous episode, as we see it's life since Dr. Blackwood (now played by Rikk Wolf) created it to the point we first met it in the episode.  If this were something created for television this sequence would have been trimmed the eff down.  This is self-indulgence at it's most consuming, where Rikk Wolf is playing around with this idea he has and milking it for all it's worth.  I'm not going to judge or resent him for it, it's his production and his money so he can do whatever he wants, but I am going to say that if it's going to be as long as it is then it needs to be a home run.  As it is, it's just middling to good, as some moments work better than others.  I liked the Silent Fire Alarm personally ("We're going to save lives!"), though while the concept works I think it would have been more amusing if it were half of its runtime.  Especially coming off of a three-minute recap of the previous two episodes it just feels like we've made it fifteen minutes into the episode without anything really happening.

Once this hurdle is passed, we finally meet up back where the previous episode left off, with Rick and the Bots taking one of the baddies captive for questioning...except they don't really question him.  They "torture" him for a bit by reading Twilight at him (which is cute) but the only real thing that happens is that we discover that the outside world may not be as ravaged as we thought.

After the theater segment has ended we find our group having logged in online, which is pretty much an excuse for them to parody the internet for the rest of the episode.  Some of the YouTube videos they come up with are fun, including a return of The Count who is used to parody Christian Bale's famous rant on the set of Terminator:  Salvation.  A good amount of these parodies are solid and pretty funny, though I wouldn't say I had a very verbal laughter reaction to any of them.  The episode finally ends with very little progression other than internet access, making this feel like a filler episode of a show that spends more time in production between episodes than any other show of its type.

When it comes to the theater work, maybe the innovation of the previous episode spoiled me but I was a tad disappointed to see Rick, Topsy, and Cylon just riff a group of concessions commercials before the short begins.  There isn't a lot of meat on their bones and it feels like an exorcise in seeing how well the trio can riff dead air.  Some riffs are fun, though this sequence feels lengthy and doesn't whet the appetite for the feature presentation.

Once the short starts, riffing instantly improves.  The short actually gives them what they need to work with for the most part, even though the majority of it is imagery of machines making chocolate.  While I wouldn't say most of the riffing is inspirational, they get a surprisingly steady stream of laughs going at what could have been a monotonous affair, so I'll give them credit where credit is due.

Unlike the previous episode the highlight of the episode happens in the theater, which feels like that's how it should be.  The unfortunate counterpoint to this is that ICWXP currently wants what is both inside and outside of the theater to be equally important, which gives me pause as to whether I'd consider this a good episode or not.  If one took this short and put it in the previous episode, then yes I'd have no hesitance in saying it's worthwhile.  But given the lengthy cold opening, non-formative host segments, sluggish pre-riffing commercial appetizer, and a fairly funny but decidedly non-diverse feature, this episode just feels like a slog.  Ultimately I came out feeling mildly amused, but with an aftertaste that made me feel like I had wasted my time.

Average

The DVD

Like all of ICWXP offerings, this episode was released on DVD through icwxp.com as it's own disc or as a part of the Season 2 Collection Volume 1.  Picture and audio were solid and, as is normal for this show at this point, the theater sequence is presented in a stretch format to fill the entire widescreen television.  Special features are plentiful, though the page that displays them can be a little jarring.  Cleverly they are presented as candy from the concessions stand, though it's difficult to read the feature titles on the menu.

First up is a feature titled ICWXP@NAKA, which features the ICWXP crew visiting a Kansas convention and advertising their show.  Rick, Topsy, and Cylon actually riff a portion of this footage with laughter resulting.  Stay until the very end to see the best stream of riffs which target a Batman cosplayer ("This strip mall needs a symbol!").  There is also some footage of the Zombie Walk for Hunger.

Next up is a promo for the YouTube exclusive episode Zombie Poo-Pocalypse.  Rick, Topsy, and Cylon explain the premise and then make a poo joke.

Up next is a short riffed by Josh Way, How Do You Do?  It's a middling riff on a bizarre film that overthinks the greeting phrase of the title.  Overall it's okay.  There is also a promo for another riffing project, Cartoon Lagoon.

The special features conclude with two audio commentaries.  The first is by Rikk Wolf and Nick Evans, which delves deep into the creative decisions of the episode.  The duo has a good back and forth and some funny moments are had.  They even have a discussion about being compared to Mystery Science Theater which is well worth a listen and valid points are made.  The second commentary is just by Rikk Wolf, which skews technical.  He has a lot to say during the host segments, where he shares a lot of info about how things were pulled off on-set.  Wolf however talks himself into a corner when it comes to the theater segment, in which he seems to talk about the same subject in a loop for about twenty minutes, discussing what might happen if the series is picked up by a network (spoiler alert:  that never happened).