#Dale Gribble would be all over those aliens

[paul-the-delivery-guy]

I seriously can't listen to this character without half expecting Hank and Bobby Hill to start speaking.

"That's my evil robot! I don't know you!"

"Dang it Professor Ex! That tears it, I'm gonna kick your a**!"

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House: No Bus, No Fuss and Resident Upheaveal Reviews

Welcome back Loudites! And i’ts time for a round of Lincoln focused episodes.. because apparently they couldn’t just.. you know, swap one of next weeks with one of this weeks so we got a sister episode with it like last time.. seriously now I know one of next week’s episodes involves Leni running for mayor I question why that’s not an episode every week.. or it’s own spinoff. And I know I have a mounting pile of those, Stella getting one, the diffrent world one with lori and bobby, The Snakebird Variety hour.. I know.. but tell me you wouldn’t watch that. Go on tell me.. i’ll know your lying. But it was an alright week and i’ll tell you all about it with spoilers after the cut. 

No Bus, No Fuss: We open with LIncoln arriving late for the bus, and Lynn not riding it because tracks starting and she has to get her workout in.. and because the writers need her not to be on the bus for this plot to work at all. It’s not a terrible way to write her out, she does do all the sports.. beacause apparently like Captain America she can do all the sports without having to train her body for each specific one because she’s in peak condition.  Though I do dock a few points from the episode for not having her run past it while saying on your left. 

But yeah as for why it couldn’t Lincoln takes a seat in the back not realizing it’s bat country.. and also home to a gang of 8th grade bullies. Which.. yeah assholes do tend to flock to where there’s the most plausable deniablity top notch show. Though I tended to pick the back in high school more just because it was freaking comfy but hey, who says goons can’t enjoy comfort. They can’t however let this slide, not helped by Lincoln accidently spilling soda on him or his friends trying to help. Look Clyde you mean well but they just want a reason to beat him into a coma, and you basically just offered to join him.  So unupsirisngly when the Lincrew exit the bus their all in pretty bad shape. Including stella....

Though in the bullies defense at least their equal opportunity jagoofs. One of them is a girl and they bullied stella just as mucha s the males. Dosen’t make them any less of a jungle gym full of tools but I can give them credit for not being sexist asshats just regular asshats. At their age that’s a hard bar to clear. Though LIncoln, Clyde and Stella all got off better than LIam, who got his undies pulled over his head, a bullying standard and rusty and Zach who. .had their underwear tied together in a not. 

Oh.. oh it gets worse. When we cut to them after school.. Rusty says the fire department had to cut them loose and Zach and I quote says “I saw too much of rusty.. and his birth mark”

I.. I do not want to think about what that entails.. both because Rusty’s 12 and i’m not a pedophile and because he’s rusty. I just.. why show.. why would you try and make me THINK about that. How is Zach being scarred for life funny? 

All valid questions. But moving right along past that waking nightmare, LIncoln assures them they had to have cooled off... spoilers they have not and our heroes all exit the bus at lincolns because they tied their underwear together.  Yes all of them and yes including stella. 

They naturally don’t want to go back and Lincoln has the idea of just having the parents drive them, one a day. Stella has to take hers off the table since her parents leave early in the morning: Her mom goes into work early and her dad has hot yoga. Which is a disapointment as I genuinely want to know about Stella’s parents and hope we actually get to see them at some point and finding out one of them works really early and the other does yoga every day, and hot yoga at that which if your wondering what that is, and when I first heard the term I was, it’s doing yoga but in an extremley humid and exhausting environment. It is sadly not learning to do this, as i’d hoped

Someday.. someday. But that still leaves a parent a piece so as you probably expect the bulk of the episode is “Parent drives them but is terrible about it” And honestly.. it’s not the series best stuff with most of these not being very funny. Most of them.  Zach’s Parents: Zach’s parents go by mighty morphin power rangers logic.. i.e. the parents look and act pretty much exactly like their kids. So the Gurdles are also discount dale gribbles who stalk a man in their van while the kids wait for death but death won’t come.. and as seen up top all are as fed up with Zach as I am. Again Rusty is growing on me, I still make fun of him because why wouldn’t I, but he at least serves a function in the group.  As i’ve mentioned before: Lincoln’s the leader and one of the main characters, Clyde is also a main charater and has been fairly fleshed out at this point, Stella is awesome and provides the brains and some pep, LIam is also optimsitic but provides farm jokes and muscle, and Rusty is the group asshole every gorup needs. Zach.. is the more sarcastic and cynical one but with Lynn now going to the same schoool.. why isn’t she in that roll? Have her date LIam, since I love that pairing since last week, and have her take Zach’s place since she plays the lancer role to lincoln better anyway. Zach just dosen’t do it well and comes off like a whiny baby and when he’s not in sarcasm mode he’s going off abotu aliens again, like a discount dale gribble. And look most viewers probably haven’t seen the genuine article which.. first off allow me

And second off dosen’t mean you can slack off as i’ve seen better paranoid nutjobs with that gimmick, like Stan Pines or Andromeda. You, can, do, better. So either do it or get rid of Zach already. 

Liam’s Parents: His meemaw takes them riding in her tractor, leanall in her bladder, cheated on her baby you can go and ask her. A pig vomits on Clyde because GET IT LIAM’S A HICK GET IT GET IT. 

Now THAT my friends is a hick. 

Rusty’s Dad: So yeah I was not looking forward to meeting the stygian void Rusty popped out of but turns out his dad is apparently single. Which dosen’t suprise me, he’s rusty’s dad and both looks and  is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz, which will never not be awesome and is not only perfect casting, as he plays dorks well, but also wonderful to see him in a modern production. I mean granted the zim movie was a modern production, but that was reviving a character he played a few decades ago. 

And while Rusty’s dad apparently showed up before, in an episode I SAW no less “Back Out There” so unlike some lapses in my Loud House Knowledge I have no excuse here, it was still intresting to get an explination for why Rusty’s like this. His dad is a salesman, who practically bathes in colonge, tells the same story and stops on the street to shill to people while driving his son to school, something his son helps with. And probably Rocky just rolls his eyes at. I miss rocky.  And suprisingly given I hated his son pretty quickly.. I love this guy. He’s pretty endearing: Sure he’s a schmooze factory.. but he kept the kids in the divorce meaning his wife either abndoned him, or he fought hard for htem and does seem to genuinely love his kid and have a great rapport with him. I mean it helps I have a soft spot for Schyster characters, especially Stan PInes, but I just like the guy. The fact he has a vetran voice actor whose great at this sorta roll probably helps but still, he’s just wonderful and actually makes me like Rusty better, and I was already warming up to the kid, phrasing, as it explains why he’s such a douche: his dad pumps him full of self esteem, probably well meaningly and is a grown up rusty.. which is a better application of power rangers logic as instead of groaning at Zach’s angtics, this gives an explnation for why Rusty’s like this. So yeah only one of the segments I really laughed at. 

Clyde’s Dads: Since we’ve met the boys before, it’s just a saftey based gag as they wrap the car in bubblerwap. 

Rita: Finally we get to Rita, who simply is a bit agressive getting parking.. btu she’s a mother of 11 and has had to deal with school parking for years and doing so for several children. So fair enough. She does cut off Lincoln’s asshole of a teacher who cuts him off in line in retrubution and then tells him “Tell your mom I said high”.. in a tone that implies he’s going to be hanging outside their house at 3 in the morning with a bat starring menacingly. Yeah not a big fan of Mr. Bohlmer anymore as he’s just your basic mean teacher sterotype.  So Lincoln cooks up another way, taking a plane. So we get flip back! 

What can I say he’s grown on me. And he’s hilarious here, taking the kids in a rusty plane that’s “No longer under federal investigation”, which is a SELLING POINT, has no refunds nd naturally the seatbelts are shoddy and he ejects them via trap door. I loved it. 

But our heros dont and now trapped in the trees Rusty and Zach bicker with one another which.. fellas I know a way to settle this. KAL-IF-FEE!

No matter who looses thier friends win. But they instead accept they have to ride the bus and face the bullies. But they also find when getting ready OHTER kids were bullied and the three cablebastards just take turns. But Lincoln has a plan to fix that and just.. outright stands up to them.. with the entire bus backing them. And honestly.. it’s not a bad message about bullying. Generally bullies won’t backed down when confronted all the time.. but when outmatched they will.. still not the best message but still far better than season 1′s “If a girl bullies you she secrety has a crush on you”. I.. will have to deal with those episodes someday but today is not that day. So our heroes celebrate and rusty does grow an inch, proving him right. Phrasing! Final Thoughts on NBNF:  This one was decent... it had a few dead spots, Zach’s parents are about as intresting as he is and given all the batshit and legitly dangerous conspiracy theories and theorists that came out of of the woodwork and were backed by the trump presdency, that bit plays even worse than it would normally and the stuff with Clyde’s dad’s has been done before.. and honestly is something they need to retire. The husbands have a better dynamic than this, let them use it. It was also a disapointment we dind’t get to see Stella’s family, especially since again the mcbride’s schitck is REALLY overplayed and it would’ve been nice ot get some fresh blood in there and we really didn’t need to see Zachs.  All those problems aside though this is a pretty standard plot with an okay ending, but some good gags along the way. Not Loud HOuse’s best and especially in a bad spot considering the last episode before this “Saved by the SPell” was not only way funnier but also used the lincrew better. Still can’t say i’ts bad just.. okay. Also I apparently like rusty as a character now....

Resident Upheaval:  This one was also just...okay. Not terrible, and it has an actually intresting premise, but it doesn’t do much with it. 

Our setup simple: Pop Pop’s girlfriend Myrtle wants to move into the same retirement home as his, explaining away her apparently living there by her just visting a lot. Sure why not. So Lincoln assures him he’s going to get her in, he’s the man with the plan. 

Before we get to what the problem with that is.. gotta talk about the elephant in the room since Pop Pop is pretty absent for the rest of the episode.. and that’s that .. their STILL using him. As some of you probably know, and if you don’t your about to, Pop Pop’s voice actor Fred Willard, comedy legend and really sweet guy, passed away. So you can imagine how WRONG it feels to have not only another voice coming out of one of his characters but one that just dosen’t match. And I don’t blame Chris Swindle here, he was given a pretty unfair task of pinch hitting for someone who just fucking died, and likely because the episode was too far into production to scrap. I’m certainly hoping so because honestly.. I genuinely DON’T see why Pop Pop can’t just die with Fred. And look i’m not against replacing an actor when the worst happens: Russi Taylor’s roles all had to be replaced after her unfortunate passing, it’s not something i’m against normally... but the combination of pop pop being an older character they can write out and the fact they HAD AN ENITRE EPISODE ABOUT ACCEPTING HE WOULDNT’ LAST FOREVER, means that one comes off a bit hollow if you keep dragging him around. You’d get a good episode out of it, and this episode sets it up so that Myrtle has plenty of potetiail to stick around. 

 Anyway Lincoln’s problem is the OTHER applicant is Clyde’s Nana Gayle.. whose actually come up a few times before, some i’ve seen some I haven’t, a continuity nod i’m happy their following up on. They even explain why sh’es just appearing in person now as Clyde, when later snapping at lincoln, exclaims “You knew my dad’s have been trying to get her to move closer for a while now!” She’s Harold’s mom and a sweetheart.  So our heroes procede to try and bribe the board, both working at it but both end up finding each other at the opera. And this.. COULD have been intresting, putting the two best friends against each other for one thing neither can both have, and both have stake in it: Myrtle is as good as grandma to Lincoln by this point and Nana Gayle is VERY close to clyde, so this isn’t great. But since the guys they’ve been bribing arne’t the end authority, they have to go to who is: SCOOTS!

As you can tell I love this old hellraiser.. and the fact she’s STILL seeing her younger boyfriend from “The Boss Maybe”. YOu get it scoots you get it. Naturally Scoots wants to see some blood, so she’s pitting both women against each other. Though neither grandma wants to do this so LIncoln and Clyde do the logical thing.. and dress up like each othe’rs grandmas, do the competition and get found out. Scoots disqulaifies both, the boys realize they were stupid and they go to apologize.

They instead find an easy solution to their problem!: Turns out Scoots as head had been hiding a double room behind a fake wall, to store both her scooters and her boyfriends motorcycle, so naturally now both grannies can move in as roomies while Scoot will just have to back her boyfriends hog into the single.. and I guess his motorbike too. The two grandmothers are instant friends, remdinng the boys fo each other and it’s.. really precious. Looks like I have yet another spinoff for the pile. 

Final Thoughts: As I said this one was fine.. the Pop Pop subtistion was probably a grim neciesity, though swindle reallyd idn’t do a good job mimicking willar’ds voice and they REALLY just need to either find someone better to do the job, sound alike or no or retire the character. That tiny issue aside i’ts not bad.. it’s just not GREAT, and since we rarely see Clyde and Lincoln and GENUINE cross purposes, and last week just lying to him made clyde ill, this REALLY could’ve been intresting seeing the two go against each other and see what resutled from that. But that angle’s basically ignored and they make up pretty easily. IT’s just a wasted potetial of an episode.  All in all this was an allright week. Nothing outstanding episode wise but a few good bits here and there. wehnever I get back to the loud house, Lisa becomes a teacher and Leni runs for mayor. Until then, it’s been a pleasure. 

[hanksterhillingtonexplained-blog]

Big E.T. in Arlen

Let’s start off with my very first video Big E.T. in Arlen. This video actually predates the Hankster Hillington channel, and was originally posted on a very different channel all the back in October of 2014. It never achieved more than a few hundred views, and when I decided to launch the Hankster Hillington channel a few months later, I reposted the video (along with the truly new Hank’s Waifu and You Only Dale Once), and for most people it was a brand new video. The opening joke of this YTP is simply “What if the opening of King of the Hill was boring?”. Basically, rather than having a time-lapse where many things happen, in this version nothing happens other than Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer looking all around. Truly, the pinnacle of clever comedy, I know.

The next joke, and the first proper bit of humor in this YTP begins with Hank exclaiming, “I heard a funny joke the other day.” The idea here is that Hank is reminiscing about the joke he heard, but isn’t going to tell his friends (or the audience) what it was. Really, this scene is just in here to set up the gag of Bill being destroyed by the ball. You think something will happen, but you aren’t sure what, so when Bill goes flying it should come as a big laugh, even if you have seen the real episode before. We see the ball fly past Hank, but it’s on screen for only 3 frames before cutting to Bill getting hit with it. This is quick enough to give the viewer the information they need so that the cut to Bill getting knocked over isn’t abrupt, but still fast enough that it feels instantaneous. Inside we get an assortment of more or less random jokes. We have Bobby lusting over Peggy’s giant breasts, “Warm Bulging Rains”, and Bill being pathetic before getting hit by another ball. There’s not much coherence to any of this. This was well before I started focusing on narrative driven humor, so these things are simply there to be funny without purpose. No more, no less. In the next scene we get our first of many sex jokes. This was well before I was comfortable showing any sort of real nudity in a video, so we have the brightness and coloring turned way down to simulate a dark room instead. It looks visually poor, but I think the dialogue works well despite that - especially  Hank falling asleep instantly after giving up on trying to pleasure Peggy.

“So what do you do? You just flick it?” The “Little Sister” song sequence that follows is nothing more than an excuse to showcase an underrated song I quite like. If there’s any joke here, it’s the unexpectedness of Bobby having a beautiful singing voice, perhaps juxtaposed against him holding a “black power” type fist pose. The scene of Bobby’s head expanding like a balloon before popping is supposed to be a physical manifestation of his ego. When Dale praises him it blows up, but it’s too much for him to handle and he “explodes” - quite literally. Dale sheds two tears here. Two are for Bobby’s beautiful song, and the third is for the death of Bobby himself. The “Joseph d-u-u-u-u-u-d-e” scene that follows is tantamount to filler. I couldn’t think a funnier follow up scene, so I stuck in this trite of Joseph’s vocals repeating quickly when he tries and is unable to correct himself from calling Peggy “dude”. Peggy’s reaction is supposed to be one of annoyance, and she quickly shuts Joseph without saying anything to him, but the whole scene doesn’t play well, and isn’t that funny. Luckily it’s over quick. The “Warm Buldging Rains” scene was supposed to be a little gag along the lines of, the YTP was bleeding into the actual real episode for a moment, before going back to the way it was. Or to put it another way, Big E.T. in Arlen is an alternate reality of the episode “Of Mice and Little Green Men”, and the other reality was peeking through for a moment. The joke doesn’t quite work however, and the typo doesn’t make it any better.

The next scene has a joke I really like. A man comes up to Peggy and asks, “Excuse me, is that seat free?”, and Peggy ever-so-slowly moves her purse into position before slamming it down on the empty chair. It’s unfortunate that the animation is so choppy here, because Peggy being a total bitch (and smiling at the pissed off guy) to a random stranger for basically no reason is pretty funny if you ask me. The cutaway to The Simpsons is a joke I would think twice about doing now. It’s funny as hell, but it feels like a bit of a tonal shift. Still, even if I would think twice about it, I would include a scene like it in a future video if I thought it was funny enough.

“Can you send a 13-year-old flowers?” If you look closely in this scene, you can see that Dale’s pants have some black lines, and a yellow spot on them. Likewise, his shoes have metallic stripes on them as well. The reason for this is because although this Dale was in the perfect pose to put in  this scene, he was partially obscured by some objects above him (he was originally on a mower, I believe) and I simply left those details in and hoped no one would notice. If I were making this video now, I would simply Photoshop those imperfections away, but I was young, naive, and needed the money.  (•﹏•) After a brief scene of more bitch Peggy (”Are you as nervous for Bobby as I am?”) we encounter that weird “Taters” scene that I for the life of me don’t recall how I came up with. It’s as bizarre to me as it is to all of you. I think it my thought process was something along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be funny if Peggy took a picture of Bobby, but it came out all real and grotesque”, and “Then the second time it comes out all real and cute”, but I honestly don’t remember for sure. We then come upon the “Go, Joe, Go!” scene, which isn’t really funny at all. The zoomed in Nancy face I thought was hilarious at the time, but now after having worked on so many YTPs and seeing so many off-model KotH characters, it just comes across as ordinary and boring to me.

So after another groan-worthy “Joe” joke, Dale and Hank get to talking, and Dale admits that Joseph isn’t his sus. This joke probably flew over the heads of most people, but the idea was that Dale calls Joseph his “sus” as a reference to all those older KotH YTPs where everyone would say “sus” and “yay”. Hank doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t understand what Dale means, before Dale corrects himself, by saying “son” instead. Luckily, this is followed up by an always hilarious gasp by Hank as he looks nervously back and forth, with Dale then stating, “Well, I didn’t impregnate Nancy’s pussy. So who did?” The word “pussy” fits so well into that sentence, you’ll almost wonder why it was never there to begin with. Okay, maybe not, but it feels more natural than having a character say “cock” out of nowhere like in some older YTPs. Anyway, the whole point of this scene is to imply (correctly) that Hank had an affair with Nancy and is in fact Joseph's father. Hank pulls the word “spacemen” out of his ass to try and cover his tracks, and Dale ignorantly believes him. Yet somehow Hank is completely right. Joseph is an alien, and he attacks Dale when confronted about this. Personally, I always like to think of Joseph lifting Dale up and breaking his back Bane / Batman style, but you can interpret it however you like. Next is a Big Wolf on Campus parody. I use the term “parody” lightly, as it’s basically just the theme song set to a bunch of clips from King of the Hill. It’s not a parody; it’s an AMV. You wouldn’t be surprised to see Vegeta powering up to Linkin Park at this point. To make matters worse, I didn’t have many episodes to work with at the time, so the clips in the sequence are all mostly from the same episode. It’s boring as hell in my opinion. I’ve never even seen Big Wolf, I just like the song. But unlike the earlier Rufus Wainwright tune, I feel this song was a mistake to include. The only positive that came out of it was Joseph’s scream at the end as he pops up in front of the title card, which I liked enough to keep as the thumbnail.

Some music from South Park plays as Hank enters the hospital. There’s this weird little scene where Hank talks with the receptionist that goes absolutely nowhere. You would be right to assume she’s talking with Dale, based on what happens in the next scene, but considering Dale is on his deathbed, I doubt he has the strength to even use the phone. Dale admits to knowing about Hank’s infidelity, and Hank apologizes before he dies. Hank then oddly smiles and walks away silently upon seeing his best friend die. This isn’t a joke. I just forget to add in footsteps and the sound of the door closing. I probably should’ve edited his face too to make him look more glum about this whole thing. But it turns out that Dale Winchester isn’t actually dead, but is now a demon! We see an extended sequence of fan girls reacting to the Gribble heartthrob dying and being resurrected as an agent of darkness. Personally, I think the whole thing goes on a little too long, but it was hard to trim it down, as it’s all buildup to the final scene where the two girls majorly overreact to Dale’s death. Funny enough, the girl from that finale clip actaully found out about this YouTube Poop and approved of her appearance in it. Who’da thunk it. (If you haven’t figured it out, those are actually reactions to the Supernatural season 9 finale, but with Dale taking the place of Dean who died and became a demon.)

“I don’t like this show anymore.” Dale uses his newfound second chance at life to live out his best Charles Whitman, in probably one of the funniest scenes in the episode. He blows off Bill’s head mid-sentence leaving a peeved Peggy on the other line to ponder Bill’s rudeness in hanging up on her. There aren’t any jokes in this scene. It’s just an excuse for Dale to be badass as he takes on the police and everyone in town. And honestly, I wouldn’t cut it for the world. I love this scene. It’s followed by a weird little snip of one of the Gun Club members saying “The police aren’t trained for this”, followed by them leaving, which seems like it’s going to set up another scene. I wish I could say that I put it in as a red herring so the ending would come as a surprise, but I actually forgot I had it in there, and didn’t remember to resolve the Gun Club subplot. Not that there was any story there to begin with. We then get a scene of Dale killing an unseen hostage (I probably should’ve put her body in a later scene), followed by the police shooting knockout gas at him. Cue shocked reactions from the cast. The idea here was that this would be a Dragon Ball Z-esque moment where all the characters are speechless by Dale’s new form, in which he’s able to withstand the police’s most toxic fumes, and they’re forced to think what they’re feeling instead of stating them aloud. It’s all very silly, but I feel like it works.

“The Dale we knew no longer exists.” Another funny little note... In the scene where the gas canister is shot into the tower, you can see Dale talking to someone, but we can’t hear his words. Perhaps he’s talking to the demon inhabiting his body? Perhaps he’s truly gone crazy? Or perhaps I simply forgot to put dialogue in that scene. It’s up to interpretation, and I think scholars will be debating it for years to come. In the finale, we get Hank slide-whistling his way up to try and talk Dale down. The scene takes itself fairly seriously, which is completely intentional. If there’s even a core of real emotion in this, it’s in this brief moment where the music kicks in, and Hank admits to his wrongdoings. It’s all set up to contrast what comes next. Curiosity gets the best ol’ Robert Hill, and in the ensuing struggle, the gun discharges shooting Hank, and causing him to fall to his death.

Hank’s dead. The end. We don’t get a resolution to the story. Much like life, it simply ends when it ends. I actually play (almost) the entire credits sequence set to  Blue Öyster Cult’s 1976 hit song “Don’t Fear the Reaper” to try to give it the feel like you were watching an actual episode of the show. This includes showing the production cards and 20th Century Fox logo with even a voice-over at the end of Bobby saying “Taters” and Joseph screaming his alien scream to mimic the actual show replaying a quote from the episode at the end. Honestly, I feel now that no one will actually watch the entire credits to the end, and most people will jump to another video or exit, so after this I shorted the credits when I used them before doing away with the idea completely (only bringing it back one last time for Metal Dale.) And that’s it. The first video that kicked off the Hankster Hilington channel you all know and love today. Ye-ep.