Review: Golan the Insatiable “Shell Raiser”

Spoilers Below

Dylan attends a birthday party and it’s a complete disaster, but she comes across a supposedly demonic turtle to which decides to keep. After a rousing chase that sees Dylan blow up a puppy van, she comes away with her new pet now named ”Shell Raiser” and seemingly with a new plan to destroy Oak Grove. Turns out, this turtle is covered in germs that could be used to poison the town…Dylan’s target? The chili cook off!

Unfortunately, Golan breaks the turtle’s leg and it has to be put down at the vet’s, but Mr. and Mrs. Insatiable aren’t going down without a fight. As a result, Golan wants to get Shell Raiser a new arm, so he finds a kid and takes his arm as the potential new replacement.

Golan returns to the turtle and successfully merges a person’s arm with the turtle, but the arm is keeping the characteristics of its previous owner that being a pot smoker. Of course, the popular stereotype of your recreational drug user is that you procrastinate more which is exactly what happens to Golan. Dylan flips the fuck out and is furious that Golan wasn’t able to keep up with her end of the bargain in helping her poison Oak Grove. Dylan decides to commence her act of mass homicide all by herself, but her tunnel to the chili kick off collapses on itself leaving her trapped.

Golan saves Dylan, but when the duo try to poison the chili they end up just draining a huge chili pot that destroys the neighborhood. The turtle is dead, Dylan admits to screwing up the plan, and Golan might be a model.

Meanwhile, Carol gets a new job as a model and she seems to be kicking ass at it, but after a while she dislocates her shoulder and has to take a job as a dental assistant. Alexis feels that her mother isn’t living up to her potential and convinces her to keep doing her modeling gig…the next one being at the chili kick off. Poor lady puts up a good fight, but ends up snapping her arm.

Our Take

After watching an hour of BattleBots, I couldn’t help but think that Shell Raiser would be a worth contender. In any case, Golan is way more entertaining than the PGA or whatever the shit that was on last week at this same time.

Carol getting a job as a model seemed rather cliche, a bunch of other cartoons have written similar if not the same plots including The Simpsons and Family Guy, though neither quite had the finish that Carol did with her arm snapping in two.

Chili cook offs are popular tropes in cartoons as well, but we actually don’t spend a whole lot of time at the cook off per se’. Either way, Dylan is becoming quite the little Stewie-esque hell-raiser as she’s constantly coming up with new ways to destroy her small town. Golan seemed to take a bit of a back seat this week in terms of throwing out good jokes, but he still showed up. The pot jokes were rather stale, but I laughed my ass off when Golan made the prank call to the Fridge Depot. Loved it…

Not sure if these little victories are enough to save an episode that just had too much familiar in it to truly call it original. But a solid entry, nonetheless.