Spoilers Below

 

Every Dad is different; they each have their own quirks that separate them from the rest of the pack. If your Dad just so happens to be ‘un-physically’ inclined (like in Chad’s case) and you’re looking to get yourself some team sports into the mix with the old man – a good match this will not make. This just so happens to be the exact pickle that Chad has found himself burdened with. Although he is usually not one for organized competition, in the case of this year’s ‘Hexathalon’ during Viking Days (the town’s yearly celebration of their aforementioned heritage) he finds himself oddly compelled to fit in. After Chad’s own poppa, Wayne, politely refuses the invitation to compete, he turns to his (super-brand-new) girlfriend’s [Charla] macho-as-a-motha manly Super Dad – who is happy to oblige. This new psuedo-friendship becomes the sub-sub-sub plot of this episode (as Chad ends up spending all of his newly found Charla girlfriend time actually with her father instead of her (Irony?).

Chad does his best to sharpen his viking skills to impress Charla’s Dad and prove his own man-worth (which is an uphill battle), and hits the Hexathalon starting line only to find his own shook up father standing toe to toe against him with a perma-distracted Jay at his side. Eventually push comes to shove, and after finding his own father flailing and generally failing pretty hard, Chad decides to join Team Stevens and become a glorious loser once more (with both men happily deciding to not even finish the race).

All the while during Chad’s training (here comes the sub-sub plot), Chris and Terry spend their time hatching a scheme to ‘fake’ run the race (that Chris’s Mom, Joanie, has talked them into running) so that they can get the most pride per minimum effort put in. In typical Chris/Terry fashion, their ‘we fuck shit up’ powers combine and spirals their plan into failure-town pretty quickly. Ironically, by spending all their time pretending to be a team – they are actually working as a team – and eventually rebound their plan (ultimately getting Joanie’s seal of approval).

I found this episode to be overly cliché. I’ve seen both these two main plot (we hate each other but we end up a good team / I don’t like my family, oh wait, now I appreciate them) lines played out in other shows before (a number of times) and wasn’t blown away by finding them again. Additionally, I can’t seem to determine what themes would make this an ‘adult’ cartoon rather than one for basically everyone (besides the super occasional ‘son of a bitch!’ or ‘shit!’) and it makes me wish it would either be more ‘mature’ in its subject mature or just go on earlier at night. Although the special guest voices they are managing to pull in every week are kind of cool in a “hey I know that guy!” kind of way, I’m also not being shot in the face with awesome – they are introducing a shit-ton of characters very early when they could probably have gone a lot further with just the core ones we already have.

Out There has some great original and unique characters but finds itself using tired plots/themes that are in no way unique to the show. Lets see some innovation for the finale, let your freak flag fly #FingersCrossed

7 out of 10

@Achilles_Word