Review: Moonbeam City “The Wedding of Rad (Lie)”

Spoilers Below

Dazzle gets a new lady in Nebula Deluxiardo and apparently Rad does too. Problem is we haven’t met Rad’s lady and Dazzle demands to see proof of her existence. Enter Talc, a girl that is actually Rad’s sister pretending to be his girlfriend whom has plans of her own to con this town out of whatever she can. First step? Talc announces her impending marriage to Rad. You know what that means, right? Time to meet Rad’s parents! Quench and Glam Cunningham.

This ends up being a nightmare for Rad because we find out his parents are even more bat shit crazy than he is. While the mob continues to plan its next move, Rad’s really just going with the flow, but that soon unravels out of control leaving Rad to ask Chrysalis for help.

Chrysalis finds out and tells everyone that Rad is actually Greg Manning, a child that was supposedly stolen from another rich family. The revelation causes the wedding to end a big huge shootout with the cops, the mob, and the Cunningham family. Everyone gets shot, like everyone, but Rad’s onetime family is arrested. So, do the rest of the Moonbeam PD actually respect Rad now that the dust has settled? Maybe not…but possibly they are more understanding of Rad’s oddness…and his one toe’d foot.

Our Take

We’ll get into a full season rundown next week, but one thing is for certain, I don’t think there will be another show quite like Moonbeam City. We’ve talked about the stellar art direction a lot, but tonight we got a whole heck of a lot of heart out of Rad. RAD! Rad of all people that has been whining and carrying on like a nut job, but to get closure on WHO he is is quite incredible. As a matter of fact, due to meeting everyone’s family, maybe we’ve figured out exactly why the Moonbeam PD are together in the first place. One could argue, this is the closest thing that Dazzle, Rad, Pizzaz, and Chrysalis had in terms of a tight-knit family unit. Think about it! Dazzle just uses his dad on how to do crazier shit, Chrysalis just simply puts up her own father, and the Miller family is all sorts of bat-shit crazy.

While not a traditional family by any stretch of the animation, this week’s episode of Moonbeam City did a fan-friggin tastic job of creating a show that harbors the elements that make great your family comedies, but that just happens to take place in a work place. Early on in the show’s initial previews, a lot of Archer comparisons are made, but those guys are always at each other’s throats. You can’t really find an element of family with Kroeger and say Cyril, but with Moonbeam City all four characters, no matter how nuts, really do stick up for each other when needed.

Viacom has a sordid history when it comes to animation. The media conglomerate’s graveyard is rife with franchises that probably could have still been popular had maybe the technology been there to make the show cheaper or if the fan base caught on too late, which is what I think is the case here. A year from now you very well could be looking into said graveyard whether on Hulu or Netflix, but make sure you look for a tombstone colored hot-pink…because you may fall in love.