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A little Manimal and lots of non-Manimal talk, such as:

KNIGHT RIDER CLIPS:

Episode 1: the not-Hoff appears right at 15:20

Episode 2: it's worth tuning in at 15:30 to see Manimal star Michael D. Roberts get ejected from the car, which transitions right into a HUMAN CHAIR before the Hoff gets in.

Next month: WEREWOLVES and a visit from KEN HITE on our February bonus episode - we're gonna talk lycanthropes and not a little bit about STORYTELLING IN GAMING!

Comments

Anonymous

YESSSSS!!! I have waited for so long for this. I remember the TV series the first time around. Even then, Manimal earned the title of: TV SO BAD, IT'S BAD!

Anonymous

As a child of the 80s, I love me some Manimal! I haven’t even listened yet, but I already love this episode.

Anonymous

Wait, Chris is sexually attracted to ghosts? In that case, he should be made aware of the theme of spectral fetishists the world over: https://youtu.be/0tdyU_gW6WE

Jason Thompson

Man, you guys cut right to one of my greatest pet peeves: I *hate* sympathetic-monster stories. Having monsters as a standin for some kind of marginalized group is so played-out, and “but humans eat cows, so it’s perfectly moral for this monster to eat humans” is such a highschool level “gotcha”. The point of monsters is to be the Other, an existential threat, like death or loss of individuality or pollution or whatever animal the author has a phobia of. I only dig sympathetic, or semi-sympathetic, monster stories when the monster is, essentially, a literalization of some kind of sin or failing and it’s really about experiencing the mindset of a dangerously crazy or evil person, plus tentacles or rotting skin or whatever. Stories of moral weakness and corruption and people being evil to other people are always interesting and it’s cool when some kind of monsterism gives that a fantasy gloss. But “pure” sympathetic monsters —- AAAGGHHHhhhh spare me! Except I’ll give a pass to Godzilla. 😂 At least he doesn’t talk constantly.

Jason Thompson

tldr; what I love in horror is stories that make ordinary things and people scary, not stories that make scary things ordinary

Anonymous

Luke does try pacifism when he refuses to strike down the emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi. It doesn’t work and he gets force lighting from the emperor and has to get his dad Vader to sacrifice himself in taking out the emperor. Theres not much of a grey area in Star Wars with the evil being so evil that its wiping out planets and has an empire that wants to take over or destroy everything so unless someone fights it then it wont ever stop. Maybe the force should be taken away from Jedi. I think its a bad influence on them. Also if Manimal got a reboot should he fight an evil Manimal with them changing into different animals like the shape changing wizard v witch fight in the animated film The Sword and The Stone

Anonymous

The funny thing about Star Wars is, a big problem I have with it is how spotty the pacifism is when it's there. Jedi tend to be fine mowing down the grunts on the ground working for the Empire et alia, but when it comes to the people that actually have *authority* it's suddenly "if you give in to hate you'll fall to the Dark Siiiiiiide." It happened with Luke—heck, Anakin icing Dooku is framed as one more step he takes toward becoming a Darth, with Palpatine egging him on and everything. It's also something that crops up in what expanded universe stuff I've seen—like in KOTOR I, Carth gets talked down from getting "revenge" which, in this case, meant killing a high ranking military commander of a fascist state that killed Carth's family...while genociding an entire planet. But killing the goose-stepping prick would have been "bad." Though really, the underlying problem here is one shared by other media, like Legend of Korra—the metaphysics of the setting are structured to superficially resemble dualistic ideas often associated with Asian cultures, but they still uncritically treat their version of "dark" as exactly the same thing as the Christian concept of "evil." The Dark Side is an equal and necessary part of the Force...but It's not an ethically neutral driver of change, It's actively malevolent and warps those who use It into unnatural monsters. Honestly, Darth Traya was right. The people of the Star Wars universe should just kill the Force so the galaxy can live without it, because it's a hot mess. ...I realize now that I have stronger opinions about Star Wars than I'd thought.

Anonymous

Okay, y'all, when Heather said "don't ask yourself why" I started laughing, and I'm still laughing, so I'm gonna have to listen to the rest of this episode later, assuming I stop laughing eventually.

Richard Horsman

I could legit still sing you the theme song to Jennifer Slept Here.

Anonymous

Jennifer Slept Here is one of those shoes that looms so large in my childhood that I could swear it ran for years, instead of being a mid-season replacement that only lasted thirteen episodes. I looked it up again a few years back after seeing the life-affirming seasonal classic Christmas Evil because I recognised the killer Santa as playing the dad on that show.

Incaptivity

Been waiting for the return of the manimal episodes for so long, the first batch kept me very good company on a particular painful set of flights (alongside several of the usual episodes of course)

Anonymous

Whenever a Manimal episode drops I think about that time Chad gave me shit for watching Baywatch Nights.

Anonymous

Most shows that were going to be sold internationally were shot on 35mm to avoid having to convert NTSC to PAL or vice versa. So to upgrade to HD all you need to do is re-scan the original prints. The HD reissues of TNG even re-composited the VFX shots shot on 35mm. This leads to a tsituation where some shows from the late 90s and early 00s are a lot more difficult to upgrade than ones shot up to then because they were used video not film. One of the reason Star Trek Voyager never got an upgrade was because most of the VFX shots were shot on video and they used full CGI instead of models, rendered using video settings, for their space shots.

Anonymous

As an "elder millennial" I live in the penumbra between folks who's childhood included Harry Potter, and folks who's childhood included 'classic' 80s television. While there is plenty of highly visible media that I 'grew up with', I seem to have 'just missed' a lot of the big cultural in-groups centered around classic television, movies, and books. Granted they can be experienced retroactively, and sometimes that works out, but like Chad alluded to I think that TV can be a bit harder if nostalgia is not tied up with it. As a result, episodes like this really do achieve a similar result as many of the 'real' episodes - they talk about this older media, something I'd never personally experienced, that sounds pretty terrible, but fun-terrible. Added bonus, I suppose, is that the guys filter out all the "not fun terrible" for me, but I mean that's what I pay them for! I may not like capitalism, but if I can utilize it for force two grown people to experience sub-optimal media and then make jokes for my amusement then I guess it can't all be bad...

Anonymous

Woo more manimal! Sorry the episode wasn't great but at least your coverage of it was as always. I always love going through old shows and seeing how they did things before we had CGI. They had to get pretty creative a lot of the time. In regards to having a pacifist in Star Wars it actually sounds like you're describing Doctor Who. The Doctor never carries a weapon and always tries to find a peaceful solution to problems. It'd actually be pretty awesome to have a character like that in the Star Wars universe. Looking forward to werewolves next month!

Anonymous

A unique bit of insight regarding how media was treated due to the limitations of the time. It also makes me think of Patton Oswald when he wrote a piece about how fandoms have changed as well seeing as people didn't have the benefit of centralized bodies of information to catch up on the thing you were interested in making the information you do get all the meaningful and mystical in a way. I suppose now instead of having to run into another fan to discuss your fandom and swap knowledge you have to dig through fanfiction, misinformation, and various idea camps on how something ought to be viewed/interpreted/accepted.

Anonymous

No pacifists in Star Wars, Chad? I see you're one of those people who pretends Last Jedi never happened. Luke does the total Kung-fu master stuff at the end, dodging every attack, not making any of his own. On another mote, I can't believe I'm defending a Star War.

Anonymous

Manimal! Holy cow, I am finally around for one of these eps going live. I have strong memories of watching this show as a child. Big fan of Melody Anderson, between Flash Gordon and V, and of course superheroes, however lame and confined by a 1980s network TV budget, were must-see for me (lets talk about the Powers of Matthew Star some day). But outside of these reviews, I have absolutely no wish to revisit Manimal in any way. Its utterly bizarre at this remove, to think of this show and how it made it past the pilot stage and became an actual series. Terrible name, weird concept, dull execution. You guys make it great radio though - even if this particular ep suggests exhaustion has set in.

Anonymous

I'm always on board for Manimal. I do think he seems to have a Zan brain in a Jayna body, though. He could turn into any animal, but seems to have limited himself to some pretty boring choices. Man, It'd be great to see a rhino on the racetrack. Why a panther to break into an office when he could be a sloth? A sloth would have been adorable. Especially with reading glasses. Turning to monsters... I think there's still a bit of the original meaning of monster in how we treat our modern monsters. The word referred to an omen. A sign of the times. We see that creature and know that it signals something very bad about the world, or our culture, or our future, or . . . us.

Anonymous

A month of Nutcracker, followed by the Spicy Tales, and now this. I'm starting to miss the days of HPL stories to be honest guys :(

Anonymous

Oh man! I watched SO MUCH “It’s A Living”… I don’t remember anything that happened in any episode except for the one when one of the girls dated a cartoonist. He based a side character on her and when she broke up with him he killed that character off by having her fall out of the plane. (Sadly, Manimal wasn’t available to save her.)

Anonymous

I am a fan of the manimal episodes, probably just the utter ridiculousness of it all.

Anonymous

First off, I LOVE the manimal episodes, so keep 'em coming. Secondly, the image of a bunch of toys coming alive in a landfill made me flash back to a trilogy of films I made as a kid called "Attack of the Beanie Babies," which featured a plot very similar to what you all described. These shorts were terrible, but did feature a piece of cinematic B movie gold that I unashamedly love. The scene involved my friend getting killed by a large crocodile beanie baby in my bathtub as we blasted the classic Jaws score. He struggled and splashed before finally slamming his face against the glass door, before slowly—and with the melodramatic cheese that'd make any telenovela actor proud, sliding out of our view to be consumed by the malevolent, plastic pelleted beast. Oh to be young again...

Steve

I missed this one somehow. Glad you mentioned it in the comments. Manimal!

Steve

I misheard and thought you said Jennifer Sleipnir, probably about a girl who finds an eight legged horse and has amazing adventures thwarting the criminal plans of Doc Loki.