Review: The Awesomes ‘Day of Awesomes, Part 1’

Spoilers Below

This week’s episode of Hulu’s The Awesomes opened with a flashback to the “Day of Awesomes Parade” in 1993, where a disappointed young Giuseppe (a.k.a. Malocchio Jr.) lamented the fact that he was not riding on a float with his father. Fast-forward to present day, where the Day of Awesomes Parade is back because the Awesomes are suddenly good & relevant again.

Meanwhile, the newly completed PRICKS were training to kill the heroic superhero team, including Hotwire. Malocchio Jr.’s first attempt? Poisoned peanut butter lemon pudding, which was served at the dinner in which Prock met Lady Malocchio. (Junior knew his mother wouldn’t accidentally have any, because she’s allergic to pudding.)

Fortunately, before the deadly desserts could be devoured, Lady Malocchio spilled the beans about Giuseppe’s evil plans, as well as the exact address of his secret lair. After heading to confront him, Prock & Hotwire only discovered an enraged Jaclyn, whom they were still unaware had turned evil.

Failing to find Junior, the Awesomes proceeded with their celebratory event, and eventually discovered that the PRICKS chose that time to strike. After a long battle, the villains escaped through a portal, and the heroes chased them through it.

Cliffhanger!

In Case You Missed It:

1) I wish I had counted how many times Prock’s arm got injured at various times throughout the season.

2) Having a basketball as a friend might make you crazy. Especially if it’s a girlfriend. And you named her Spaldetta. And made her mother out of a football.

3) Man, there’s a lot of product placement for Windows devices in this show. The days of obvious plugs for Jack Link’s Beef Jerky at the end are clearly over.

4) The newspaper sub-headline read: “President Attacked By Pandas While on Safari.” Where the H were the Awesomes when that went down?!

5) Guess the writer’s didn’t foresee Chelsea Lately ending before this episode aired.

5) Who would’ve thought Muscle Man’s shitty doppelganger plan would have actually worked? And that he’d be so insightful.

6) When Impresario conjured up some stairs to help Prock & Hotwire climb aboard the float, the steps didn’t talk like his mother. And neither did any of their various weapons. There is no god.

7) Prock’s former password: jaclyncutie44. His current one: hotwirecutie44.

8) I like Jaclyn better as a supervillain. Except I miss all the swearing.

9) Hulu gets its own fair share of shameless plugs as well.

Overall, this episode had about as much plot as you could expect for part one of a two-parter. There was the culmination of the evil team’s evil plan, lots of action, and the obligatory cliffhanger at the end. That last part was definitely expected (and is understandable) but it’s hard to feel satisfied with this type of episode.

Also, I must say that this was one of the least funny episodes this year. It still had its moments, but they weren’t terribly frequent, and there weren’t any really big laughs. That hurt as well. One bright spot, though, was the fact that Perfect Man’s subplot was surprisingly entertaining. I mean, the whole basketball thing was a funny joke at first, but I didn’t think they could stretch it out for an entire episode. But they did. So here we are.

One last random gripe: what was the point of the poisoned pudding? I mean, if that worked, wouldn’t the long, drawn-out process of forming the PRICKS with the explicit goal to eliminate the Awesomes have been pretty pointless? You don’t need a whole team to poison two people, and Lady Malocchio cooked the pudding anyway, so none of the supervillains even did any of the work. But I digress.

Perhaps my expectations were a bit high following last week’s episode, which was the best of the season. Or perhaps the whole point of this episode was just to build up anticipation for next week’s finale. Either way, I’m in, folks. So I’ll see you there.