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Five Thoughts On Frisky Dingo‘s “Meet Antagone,” “Blind Faith,” and “The Odd Couple”

By | June 7th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back to our review of Frisky Dingo, the Adult Swim series from the creators of Archer for bingers on a TV diet. Episodes seven through nine reveals the development of an unlikely alliance and a new foe. Let’s jump into the highlights.

1. “Once more the mall has become my Waterloo.”
After Simon, Killface’s androgynous spawn, breaks their last bowl, Killface’s trip to the bowl store at the local mall leads to a confrontation with the new series baddie, Antagone, the mutated-by-radioactive-ants alter ego of Grace Ryan of Force 10 News who also happens to be robbing a Crews company-owned bank. When the altercation leads to Killface being defeated and then blinded by a formic acid loogie, the villain is forced to take up dark glasses and a cane. Seeing the physically-imposing specimen humbled over the course of the following episodes and even duped by a fast food purveyor of chicken parmesan combos yields some great comedic beats, but more importantly it leads to the unlikely pairing with his arch nemesis. Watching Frisky Dingo, one gets the sense that the plot doesn’t develop as much as it swerves into the most unlikely territory, typically into oncoming traffic.

2. The Warriors Three
When Xander Crews escapes from the floating SHIELD-like heli-carrier and home to the Xtacles, the Xcaliber, he finds himself in the company of three hapless larpers who then chauffeur him around for the remainder of the episode. One even suffers from an allergy to nuts and wheat gluten. He hears Jay-Z has it too. One of the joys in watching Frisky Dingo now is in seeing how much has changed in the decade-plus since it was released, but there are also aspects that were way ahead of the comedy curve, i.e. the comedic fodder of gluten allergies that would become the digestive malady du jour for a good part of the next decade. In fact, season two looks almost Nostradamus-like in it’s ability to foretell our country’s political future, but more on that later. Another prescient aspect in these episodes is in the use of GPS, once considered a luxury level technology that is now so commonplace on our mobile phones as to be almost passé. In fact, it serves as a plot device in our next bullet point.

3. Ronnie’s Robot Pants
Let’s just say Ronnie, the vaguely Eastern European-sounding Xtacle, has a bit of a thing for Xander Crews, but in his zeal for, um, intimacy, he provides Xander Crews the means to escape the Xtacles clutches. Luckily, Ronnie’s GPS-enabled robot pants are just the thing that the Xtacles need to track Crews down. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Xtacles armor is also equipped with something else. After Stan sells Crews Manor (to the hooker from episode two, naturally) and takes up the mantle of Awesome-X, he reveals that an incendiary device is planted in the helmet of each Xtacle and threatens to execute an Xtacle an hour until Crews is recaptured. It’s ironic that Stan is so eager to suit up as Awesome-X after lobbying so hard for Crews to retire from crimefighting, but it’s clear that Stan’s only interest in the Awesome-X tech is to feel young, vital, and more than a little menacing. In a throwaway moment where Stan flexes his new capabilities, it’s also revealed that his clones are cannibals. Of course they are.

4. Barnaby Jones!
Once Crews finds himself homeless, friendless, and destitute, he turns to the least likely of allies in order to get back on his feet. Staging a hit-and-run with the blind Killface serves as the impetus to move in and supplant Sinn as Killface’s assistant under the guise of Barnaby Jones. Barnaby Jones was the name of a character played by Buddy Ebsen on the long-running television series of the same name in the late ’70s. Luckily, pop culture is a bit of a blind spot for Killface. That and his obvious concussion symptoms make him an easy mark for Crews’s short-sighted and desperate schemes. Barnaby Jones isn’t the only callback to a television detective of yesteryear. In fact, episode eight name drops Magnum P.I. and Rick Simon from Simon & Simon as well. Season two will even feature an extended bit on fictional LAPD detective played by Fred Dryer in the ’80s NBC series Hunter, but we’ll get to that later. Reed and Thompson clearly have a soft spot for West Coast detective shows from that era.

Continued below

5. “Oh my God, it’s Arizona all over again!”
When Simon commandeers Crews’s discarded robot pants and disappears, the endgame for season one is put in motion. As referenced by Killface earlier in the season something bad happened to Killface and crew in Arizona before moving to the unnamed setting of the events that transpire in Frisky Dingo. All we really know is that is involved knives and rabbits. The mind reels. At this point of the season, the Annihilatrix has become an afterthought and Killface’s plot to destroy the earth has taken a deep back seat to the series of unfortunate events that have spiraled out of Killface’s fiduciary shortcomings. Now he’s out to find Simon using the same magical GPS technology that the Xtacles are using to find Crews, and things do not go well. When the ninth episode ends with Killface and Barnaby/Xander (also now blind thanks to Killface’s marksmanship and another half-baked Crews scheme) boarding a human traffickers box truck (“This bus needs a Stick Up” Remember those?), it’s clear that the final four episodes of season one are going to include more out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire moments like this one. Also by the time the episode ends, viewers have gotten their first glimpse at a recurring series highlight, the prickly but disarmingly affectionate rapport between Crews and Killface.

Join us next week for a look at episodes ten through thirteen, the conclusion of season one. Until then, where does Killface holster his gun?


//TAGS | 2018 Summer TV Binge | Frisky Dingo

Jonathan O'Neal

Jonathan is a Tennessee native. He likes comics and baseball, two of America's greatest art forms.

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