Review: Happy Wheels “Friday Night Races”

Gouged eyes, stabbed hearts, always lose.

Spoilers Below

We return to Happy Wheels for the second episode of the season and of the day, as the residents are lined up for a supposedly weekly event called Friday Night Races (which the announcers even say doesn’t really make sense as a name). The race is as painful for these people to be in as it is for me to watch, with any and all accidents resulting in multiple deaths, not helped by the multiple spikes and mines lying around in random places. Jim pulls ahead to win, not noticing his son having bounced around the track and almost joining the body count. He is then given a trophy by the apparent ruler of the town, King Harold, who wears only a crown, cape, belt, and underwear, as well as being so fat that he needs to be fork lifted around. He also seems to hate everyone in town so much that he openly insults them. Luckily he was right about them being morons, since none of them thought to stab him in his exposed giant target of a stomach. Then again, he’d probably revive soon after anyway just like everyone else, so I guess there wouldn’t be much point in assassination.

Even so, one of the announcers for the race decides to raise the issue about there being so many dangerous objects around public areas. Being immortal probably makes this less of a problem than it would be for us, but it’s still probably pretty annoying. Harold says they kept them safe during a zombie apocalypse, but maybe that didn’t happen? Who knows. But to shut them up, he decides to put together a committee to look into it, namely our main cast. Or maybe they decide to put it together on their own? It feels like two drafts of the same script that got mixed into each other. And because Jim is the youngest able-bodied white guy on the team, he naturally takes charge and names them “DEATHS”. Because the most ironic nickname obviously means it’s funny. Since none of them could possibly move any of the objects safely, they instead design signs to keep people from running into them, which doesn’t work at all, which is comedy, I think maybe I dunno.

Biggest thing about this episode is introducing the main premise, which is these characters coming together to help their death trap town be a little safer. It also works arguably just as well as an introduction to the cast as last episode, so you could probably call this the first episode and not have any problems. There’s even a little bit of worldbuilding (if you can call it that) by introducing King Harold as some actual authority in the town, but who knows where that’s going to go. But the problem is one that started with the actual first episode and likely isn’t going away, and that’s how desensitizing the violence has become. Body parts and fluids flying everywhere while most just shrug it off. Even worse is that this is where it’s confirmed that going through all of that crap doesn’t last at all by the next story, so there is zero tension in anything. Nothing matters and everything resets, so there’s absolutely nothing holding this story together. The show runs on it’s over the top injuries and deaths are, and yet the joke runs thin very VERY quickly, so with no consequences or stakes, there’s nothing to build on, and therefore nothing to get attached to. This isn’t helped by butt ugly animation and characters that couldn’t be closer to actually being one note.

One more for the week. Bare with me.