Review: Red vs Blue: Grey vs Gray

This week’s single part story is written by Barry Kramer and Brian “Ninja Brian” Wecht of the Let’s Play channel “Game Grumps”…and that right there might be an indicator of why it’s probably the first clear misstep this season.

SPOILERS

Essentially, this is a Bottle Story, as in a story that takes place entirely in one location. Two teams, one red and one blue, have locked themselves in to reach a unanimous decision or die trying. Although, weirdly enough, it’s the Red leader that wants everyone to make peace as opposed to what we’ve usually seen. Naturally, the general and irrational hatred both teams have for each other gets in the way of negotiations and things end poorly for everyone, most of all being the viewer who has to sit through this. How things got so desperate that it came to this is unexplained, but apparently this was the only option available. Also of note is that, as the title indicates, this episode is entirely in black and white…which actually turns out to be plot relevant, and not a throwback to noir style mysteries like it seems at first.

This story is actually similar in a few ways to the Funhaus-written episodes from earlier in the season. Both focus on completely new characters made up of Reds (and Blues in this case) that are unrelated to the ones from Blood Gulch, the groups are kinda one note and simple in characterization, and then are killed at the end of their respective stories, thus making them completely unusable later on. Only, what the Funhaus team of Reds may have lacked in distinct personality, they somewhat made up for in worldbuilding. Their story presented a scenario that wouldn’t have worked for the Blood Gulch teams, but still had possibilities and outcomes worth exploring. A Red team, through sheer luck, has their Blues wiped out by a crashed alien ship and has to figure out their purpose without an enemy to fight. It’s a shame they had to die in the end for a gag, but at least by the time we got there, this group had been sufficiently fleshed out to reach a fitting conclusion.

Grey vs Gray, on the other hand, doesn’t really do any of that to make up for its cast. We have no idea what caused them to think sealing themselves in room to reach an agreement was a good idea, what things were like before, or even that much about who these people are. Aside from a few overplayed accents, they all just seem to blend together, and not just because the uncolored filter makes it look that way. Not that it matters, because they all die at the end of the story, which makes you feel like you’ve wasted ten minutes watching people you don’t care about bicker over nothing.

Also interesting is that I’ve never seen much of Funhaus, but loved their story…and yet I watch Game Grumps fairly frequently and am not too fond of a story from their group. Funny, that.

Barry Kramer is a video editor for Game Grumps, and Ninja Brian is a performer with Dan Avidan on their band Ninja Sex Party. They’re both very talented in their respective fields, which are not easy feats by any means. It just seems like they were not really prepared to jump into screenwriting, which is an equally harsh and unforgiving craft, and so what we get out of that is this fumble that will probably fade into the background as one of the more forgettable tales this anthology had to offer. On the bright side, as we enter the final third of the season, I can’t imagine we’ll have to revisit these depths again.