Welcome back to our recap of Frisky Dingo, the Adult Swim series from the creators of Archer for bingers on a TV diet. This week’s episodes kick off with the much-anticipated presidential debate between Killface and Xander Crews and goes downhill from there.
1. Carter Hawkins
Eviscerating another modern media staple by presenting the political talking head and blowhard Carter Hawkins, a melding of Chris Matthews and Bill O’Reilly, Frisky Dingo again seems as prescient as ever. Hawkins is more interested in self-promotion than being a pillar of the fourth estate, but he does make quick work of the hapless presidential hopefuls Killface and Xander Crews by evoking the second amendment to the constitution that states that a presidential candidate must be 35 years old (Crews is 33) and a natural born citizen. “I’m not even a legal resident,” declares Killface. After effectively deflating the season-long presidential buildup, Killface cripples Crews and kills campaign mascot Baby Lamont in a fit of rage. Dottie, still using the whiteboard from season one—the one with “brainstorming” still permanently scrawled across the top—seals her fate by belittling Killface’s debate prep and insisting he stick to her talking points. A laser blast to the forehead removes her from the list of supporting characters. Hawkins, surprisingly, emerges from the campaign fallout unscathed, like all good cockroaches do.
2. Haggar the Horrible
The sponsor of the debates and the debate venue, Haggar, is the source of a running gag on the prevalence of consumerism in public forums. Effectively replacing the Scion automobile jokes from season one, Killface even dons a pair of sensible (and hopefully stain-proof) slacks before executing the documentary filmmakers chronicling the presidential campaign, thereby ending another season-long convention and returning the storytelling to the straightforward narrative style of season one. Most importantly the giant Haggar slacks that stand astride the arena are felled by a judicious missile from the Xcalibur in attempt by Hooper (Sinn) to assassinate Killface, but the only casualty is the Xtacle Ronnie. The pop-cultire references are strong in these episodes, but Ronnie’s dying lament (while lying underneath a giant pair of Haggar pants) that he would have liked to have seen Hannah Montana, a shoutout to Sam Neill’s death scene in The Hunt for Red October, is both comical and pitiful.
3. RIP Ronnie
The sexually predatory Ronnie has some of his finest moments in these episodes. When Xander Crews is incarcerated in the brig of the Xcalibur, he ends up sharing his cell with Ronnie. Perhaps making up for his violations of Crews in season one, he frees them from captivity, and serves as comic relief as Crews tries to make it to the venue in time for the debate. The film references come fast and furious as the two escape through a Shawshank Redemption-sized hole in the Xcalibur’s hull that is hidden by a loin-cloth wearing female with Crews’s face. While riding atop Awesome-X, Ronnie affectionally begins referring to Crews as eagle, generically name-checking the heroic Great Eagles from J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle Earth. Bilbo T. Baggins makes a double entendre appearance as well just to make sure Tolkien turns all the way over in his grave. Ronnie’s demise is a bit of a bummer as he had provided so many riotous comic beats in a short amount of time, but the one-dimensionality of the character likely made him slightly more expendable than his already hyper expendable Xtacle brethren. At least he got to go out a hero, saving Crews and Wendell from certain death. Whether it was a wise decision or not is up for debate.
4. Sisterhood of Chaos
As mentioned in previous recaps, the strengthening of the female characters in season two has been a welcome development, but the relationship between Sinn, Val, and Antagone soon devolves into a catty dynamic mainly focused on the arch supervillain maneuverings of the very pregnant Antagone. The anticipation over Antagone’s spawn creates some new tensions for all the players in the episode that will come to a head over the final three episodes, but for now, the forthcoming birth just makes Antagone a royal pain in the ass for her female cohorts. Val and Sinn make a quick decision that she’s got to go, and they’re not the only ones to come to a similar conclusion. Meanwhile, the lascivious Mr. Ford becomes a force to be reckoned with as the season time hops and Taqu’il somehow becomes the president of the United States by default. Ford begins systematically removing everyone in the line of succession with the aid of some ant poison and a familiar rocket launcher, on loan from Simon. Last week, we mentioned how the narrative tendrils for season two had been flaying in all directions, but Reed and Company are bringing the chicken’s home to roost in these episodes and returning to the original conceit of the first season. The Annihilatrix is back in play, and the earth is doomed, and not just figuratively this time. Killface, now freed from the burden of running for president, returns to his primary mission with renewed vigor. Unfortunately, the crippled Xander Crews is not his only adversary this time around. This time Killface enlists Simon, blackmailed into helping his father over the promise of a pair of Hannah Montana concert tickets. Why just name drop Miley Cyrus’s former alter ego once?
5. Muffintop-X!
Just as Wendell achieves new lows in these episodes, culminating in the execution of a pharmacist over the cost of a box of tampons (long story), he takes on the mantle of Awesome-X, much to Xander Crews’s now-crippled chagrin. Earlier in this article, I referred to Carter Hawkins as a cockroach, but it’s Wendell that is the true survivalist vermin in this show. The depths to which his character perpetually sinks are jaw-dropping, and his penchant for self-preservation are almost superhuman. Now that he’s clad in Awesome-X’s armor and welding his high-powered weaponry, expect him to do even more damage, sink to even lower levels of depravity, and somehow survive the melee to come in the final episodes of season two.
Join us next week for the final episodes of the criminally short-lived series.
