Review: Black Dynamite ‘The Wizard of Watts or Oz Ain’t Got S&@; on the Wiz’

Spoilers Below

For those that don’t know, executive producer of Black Dynamite, Carl Jones is the mastermind the infamous Freaknik: The Musical, so I would hope no one is surprised that Carl would eventually combine the two ideas.

Enter, Black Dynamite, whom is just trying to take on a little rest and relaxation after long tirades of kick ass and swing dick. Problem is, when Black Dynamite takes off, the riots come alive and little orphan Rodney King gets the shit kicked out of him by some pigs. When the Whorephanage staff go outside to see what’s up, Black Dynamite gets smashed with a brick and wakes up in an alternate reality called ‘Oz-Watts’ where he has a talking dog named Froto, and is surrounded by a village of welted-up Rodney Kings. Turns out, Black Dynamite landed on a witch wearing magical ass-kicking shoes even if Black had no intention of starting shit whilst attempting to enjoy his vacation. He learns from a magical James Brown that the only way Black Dynamite is going to be able to get home and relax is if he takes one of two roads: 1) The much easier route (the MLK road) 2) The much harder route (the Malcolm X road). Obviously, Black Dynamite is known for kicking ass, so he goes the route of Malcolm X.

Don’t worry though, despite the threat of ‘Junkie Monkeys’, Pigs, and having to drive his car like Fred Flintstone, Black Dynamite comes across some new friends all looking to head to the Great and Powerful Motherf@$%er’s palace. Along the way he meets Scarecorn who is looking for some game, Lionhorn who wants a muzzle to shut his ‘lion’ ass up, Tin Bee who only wants some Baaaaaaaaawwwwwlllls! (That was my singing voice). The crew ends up making it to the Great and Powerful Motherf@$%er’s palace expecting to find Magic Johnson, instead we run into a homicidal Frog Curtis and a 30-foot rope-dick that nearly kills everyone until Black yanks it out! Once free, he heads into a basketballs arena and learns that the Great and Powerful Motherf@$%er was never Magic Johnson, instead it was Donald Sterling, and yea he’s just as much of a racist motherfucker as you first thought. Donald gets taken out, and outside another riot is about to explode between pigs and people. Black eventually realizes that he actually had the power to get out of this reality any time he wanted to, and that his trip and learning lessons was all just foreplay. Black sings, and eventually he wakes up surrounded by his pals, and heads outside to continue his fight, because he’s not the hero we deserve, but the one we’ve got. He’s Black Dynamite BITCH! SEEEEYYYUUUUUUU!!!

For those expecting political/racial overtones in maybe one of the most sensitive of times to be doing so, Black Dynamite does it right. For those looking for a hysterical musical-comedy, Black Dynamite does it right. But, the one thing you should take away from this week’s episode of Black Dynamite, is that the season finale was a parody of another famous franchise which is what this show does best. They’ve done it just like this for the last few seasons, whether it’d be takes on King Kong, Jaws, The Muppets, you name the franchise or celebrity and I assure you they are not safe as long as this show is around.

And that’s when it hit me. Black Dynamite sang a song (actually voiced by Carl Jones here, no Michael Jai White), and I couldn’t help but think this was a goodbye some. Arguably, one of Adult Swim’s most expensive franchises, was literally singing a swan song played to clips of some of the series’ most popular episodes and I couldn’t help but shed a tear. There are a million and one reasons why Black Dynamite should get a third season, and later this week we plan on naming a few of them in our season review, but if you needed the one episode that kind of paints the whole picture of just how talented the voice cast is along with the animators, and all of the other wonderful people whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, this episode is a great place to start. I could go into further detail about some of the songs I liked/didn’t like or which jokes were hit or miss, but not here…not today. Because this show stands for something so much more for everyone who makes cartoons for a living and for people like me who write about this industry.

‘The Wizard of Watts or Oz Ain’t Got S&@; on the Wiz’ isn’t even the best Black Dynamite episode I’ve ever seen either this season or last (sorry, for me, that’s a tie between ‘Black Jaws’ or ‘White Kong’). But if you were to bury a time capsule featuring the world’s greatest cartoons deep underground for aliens to discover thousands of years from now after this world ends up nuking the shit out of itself, I would certainly put this episode of Black Dynamite placed right next to a trade collection entitled Charlie Hebdo’s Muhammad.