English Dub Review: The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi! Season 3 Part 2

These latest chapters continue to meander away from the show’s origin as a scantly-plotted mixed bag of monster of the week episodes. The first half of this season set its sights on varied parodies of major blockbusters ranging from Star Wars to Jurassic Park. These last five episodes cast a wider net for source material to parody, while still tossing in some classic Zarbi creature features.

The demonic hijinks start with a possessed hockey team inciting a riot and escalates into all the beer in Canada being transmogrified into urine. Even the puerile humor that has long plagued this show is a little bit higher-stakes now. Entire toilet paper factories are destroyed, Canada is plunged into chaos, and The Cheesebuger Festival lays in ruins. (Side note: a person at a Cheeseburger Festival yelling ‘Cheeseburger’ is never not funny.)

The Lucifer of this universe wears a business suit – within his bitchin’, hell-based skull lair is a pretty standard boardroom. He even has a pentacle sticker on his ever-present laptop. His shadowy demon team decimated the toilet-paper supplies and citizens are given a stay-at-home order. If this wasn’t Professor Zarbi, you’d swear there was some kind of social commentary going on.

This season’s bigger storylines and increased visual appeal doesn’t mean there’s been a decrease in Canadian content –  the Can Con remains strong in this show, poutine and hockey coaches being some of the more obvious allusions. Other, deep-cut Canuckisms often flash by – Sasquatch and raccoons both love 30 Ale – a beer whose label is very similar to hoser-favourite 50 Ale.

On first glance, Zarbi seems like a Quebecois knock-off Rick and Morty – a reasonable assumption, given that both shows focus of the strange adventures of a grey-haired scientist and a hapless boy. But beyond the surface similarities, these are two very different shows. Professor Zarbi has none of Rick and Morty’s trademark brand of aspirational nihilism – Zarbi and Benjamin hearken back to a simpler time, and they’ve always been more on the Mr. Peabody and Sherman level of reckless child endangerment. (Don’t worry – the reckless child endangerment IS there, though!) Another difference – Rick and Morty is just a much better show in basically every way. The Bizarre Stories of Professor Zarbi has never been a perfect show, but every episode is always working to be better, and that alone is reason enough to root for it.

There is a breezy conversational pace between English-dub actors Scammel as and Galuppo that has developed slowly – it’s easy to feel like these two are their third season of bizarre stories together. The show’s sophomoric sense of humor is slowly aging up, and there is the slightest hint that it may sometimes be trying to say something. This season ends on a series high-note, and you can’t help but wonder where future episodes will take Zarbi and Benjamin, if more are to be made. Season three has given us more than enough reasons to hope that happens.