Review: Rooster Teeth Pilot Program “Million Dollars, But…ANIMATED”

A picture’s worth a thousand words, and a second of animation’s a thousand frames.

OVERVIEW

Gavin, Burnie, and Gus discuss the virtues and vices of constant shrinking and growing.

OUR TAKE

It’s by no means a secret that the founders of Rooster Teeth are gold mines of comedy, even in the idlest of conversation. It’s a joke that RVB is a lot of standing around and talking, but it’s really something that people like Burnie and Gus (and Gavin) excel at. As such, another show solely meant to give visuals to them talking is a pretty good deal, especially based on their one of their current shows, Million Dollars, But. It’s a noticeably different art and animation style than Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures, which has more or less adopted Jordan’s art as its trademark look, but that should be good for setting it apart. It actually reminds me quite a bit of X-Ray and Vav in its simplicity.

Growing up, I was a fan of anthology shows of prospective cartoon pilots like “Oh Yeah! Cartoons!” or whenever Cartoon Network would air pilots that got eventually greenlit, so seeing Rooster Teeth take a chance on potential projects like this gives me some nostalgia for those times. I’m not exactly sure how this pilot program is supposed to work or how it’s selected which shows will live or die, but I have a feeling this one is a guarantee to continue. The animation does cost time and money, but in this first episode is barely two minutes long and is making use of other show audio, so it might be pretty cost effective. I haven’t really given Million Dollars a proper watch, mostly because I’m not as into Rooster Teeth’slive-actionn work as I probably should be, but this was certainly a good gateway into it. That said, having listened to the Animated Adventures for years now, I am rarely tempted to seek out the podcast they come from, mostly due to those things being as long as a feature length film, but I’ve heard Million Dollars is considerably shorter and more focused, thus making it a lot more digestible for people like me.

With all that in mind, Rooster Teeth is usually pretty prideful in their animated projects, even pushing Nomad of Nowhere to air when there have clearly been some things still needed to be worked out, so to put this seemingly less risky show only out as a possibility must be saying something. Maybe they’re learning things from Nomad, maybe they’re just not super interested in having another animated clip show, or maybe they’re just throwing it in to get reactions and impressions to test out how they receive that sort of data this way. I didn’t expect a small two-minute clip about shrinking to expand my mind with so many theories based almost entirely on my own conjecture, but I think that means it’s safe to say this show should go to full series.