Review: China IL ”Gummie World”

 

Spoilers Below

For as long as he can remember, BC and Steve have always been friends, but their paths to adulthood were rather quite different. Steve has grown up to be a womanizer obsessed with wanting to be rich whereas BC loves pitching ridiculous ideas in the hopes of starting a business. Fast forward to now, and Baby Cakes and Steve live very different lives, but they have each other. But, when Steve starts dreaming of his yacht, he teams up with Baby Cakes on his latest idea…a world made of GUMMIE!

Imagine cell phones, watches, even people, all made out of gummie. Welp, these guys did and they sold the idea and became very rich. Steve would get his boat while Baby Cakes would be more or less the face of the company ala Steve Jobs.

Unfortunately, the FDA shuts the Gummie World company down after reports of addictions, obesity, and even death at the hands of the sugary snack. Steve loses his yacht because now he can’t pay the note on it, and as such he goes ballistic and nearly kills his now-fired business partner Baby Cakes. The two make amends and decide to start a new business where people can buy tickets to ride the “Elephant Man”, the problem is they don’t have an Elephant Man for people to ride so clearly no one is going to show up to the attraction.

Speaking of large quantities of money, Frank turns down a cool $25k after he discovers Julia Roberts’ pubic hair. Unfortunately, he refuses to sell and soon becomes so attached to it that he begins having open conversations with it about topics such as sex, marriage, etc. The Dean finds out about the tryst, and he looks to take the pube as his own due to his own obsessions with the Academy Award-nominated actress.

The Dean offers Frank $1 million to have ONE NIGHT with the Roberts pube to which at first Frank flatly denies. As time goes on, Frank and the pube argue about the ramifications of such deal which ends in Frank collecting the cash and The Dean threatening to run away with his long lost love. Frank shows up in the nick of time to try and propose to the pubic hair, but The Dean eats it. Feeling dejected, Frank uses the $1 million to purchase the corpse of the Elephant Man to which Steve and BC strap to a bull riding machine, and now we’ve got another money-making venture on our hands.

Is Pony on to a murder mystery? After jogging with friends, they stumble on to Kim and Sammy not getting along which soon leads to Kim’s disappearance. After Kim doesn’t show up for class, Pony becomes suspicious of her whereabouts and as such asks her friends to come with her to Sammy’s house so as to investigate a possible murder scene. At first, Pony’s friends think that she is nuts, but when they see articles of Kim’s clothing in the trash, they buy in to the possibility.

Pony and friends get into Sammy’s house and discover a locked door. Sammy confronts them and admits that yes she has Kim locked in there, but she’s doing so for her own good. Turns out, Kim’s addiction to gummie bears has spun out of control and as such she was in the room in the same capacity as a rehab clinic, with Sammy hoping to slowly wean her student off of the copious amounts of sugar and nurse her back to health. Instead, we bust down the door and see Kim sprawled out on the floor dead in a pool of gummie which in turn explains a lot.

Pony heads over and runs into Steve and BC’s new store just as Frank is pulling up, and the credits roll.

Our Take

Let’s get two things out of the way. They both have to do with the fact that we have two amazing ideas for spin-off of shows that need to happen. The first is an origins series featuring Steve, Frank, and Baby Cakes as kids though I’d settle for a mini-series. The other is Fancy Boiled Potatoes. The latter needs to be a show and right away please, thanks.

That said, we just saw the greatness that is Brad Neely in this week’s episode of China IL. Together with Justin Roiland and Seth Green, Brad Neely has certainly elevated his craft to the point of being just as important to the future of cartoons on Adult Swim as The Simpsons are to FOX.

Baby Cakes’ ridiculous ideas? Hysterical. Steve blowing a bunch of money and stooping to Baby Cakes’ level in terms of naivete’? Yep…it happened and I loved every minute of it. Pony’s bit was probably your most typical part of the episode using the classic detective trope made famous by Lisa Simpson, but the ending tied up so well with the rest of Steve and BC’s ‘Gummie World’ that you couldn’t help but be in awe of Neely’s story-telling.

Last but not least, Frank’s fascination with the pube. We’ve seen other animated characters obsess over equally as mundane objects, Randy Marsh probably being my favorite example, but then something happened…The Dean swallowed a pubic hair supposedly belonging to Julia Roberts. First of all, I am a bit disappointed we couldn’t see this world’s take on Julia Roberts. Second, I wanted to so be in the room when the voice director is telling Hulk Hogan what is happening in this scene because reactions must’ve been priceless. The execution? Flawless. We’ve got an hour-long special happening next Sunday Night, but it’s going to be tough to top this one.