Review: Regular Show “Happy Birthday Song Contest”

Who knew that “Happy Birthday” was such a hated song?

That is the question of the night. I mean, I hate the song, but I didn’t think it was enough to stage a contest to get a new song. We have YouTube for that. Anyway, the ideas for episode premises continue to come out of the most obscure places, but that’s part of what makes this show unique.

What’s important about “Happy Birthday Song Contest” isn’t how Mordecai, Rigby, CJ, and Eileen got to the contest, the payoff is the song duel between Happy Birthday, and Mordecai and Rigby. The song Mordecai and Rigby come up with to take over for Happy Birthday was really catchy. But what stood out was Happy Birthday. His voice was so sinister, and so suave. I can listen to Happy Birthday reading the telephone because his voice is that entrancing.

Unfortunately, there are two distinct halves of “Happy Birthday Song Contest.” The first half was a combination of the song coming together, getting Muscle Man to listen to it, and getting to the contest. The rest of the episode was the contest, and that’s where everything came together. This is a problem that Regular Show tends to have sometimes, and that detracts from the killer ending these episodes generally have.

If “Happy Birthday Song Contest” started right from when the car entered the contest venue, this would have been a great episode. Unfortunately, the first five minutes was rather pointless, and was too much of a detraction to be anything more than “meh.”