Review: Dream Corp LLC “Wild Bill”

It just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Dr. Roberts is entertaining a guest this week, an old friend from science college, Bill Ruff. Dr. Roberts accidentally melted Bill’s teeth off back in school, (For science, of course) but Bill doesn’t seem to hold it against him, and just keeps on trying to sell the good doctor overpriced hotel artwork.

However, Bill has vengeance on the brain, and secretly wants to steal the dream technology at the lab and sell it off for profit. 88 learns of his dastardly plan, but gets tossed into the garbage pit by Bill, and must climb through the vents with a garbage snake puppet friend to warn his boss of Bill’s betrayal.

Bill manages to download the lab’s secret codes and plans but gets stopped by Dr. Roberts, who punches him in the face when 88 and T.E.R.R.Y. warn him. Randy, who had been trying to impress Bill, isn’t happy, but all’s well that ends well, and in the end, the day was saved.

Our Take:

This episode is quite the deviation from the usual (If you can say anything about Dream Corp is “usual”) presentation we get from Dream Corp LLC. Instead of following the model of looking into a patient’s head and discovering their inner workings with a trippy dream sequence about their inner struggles, we have an episode that remains entirely out of dreams. That’s right, if you came to see another one of the trademark dreams that have made Dream Corp one of the best-animated shows on television, you’ll be sorely deported.

However, that’s not to say that there isn’t anything to like here. This episode greatly benefits from the lack of a dream sequence by spending more time with the main cast of characters and getting little moments to see into their personal lives. Not to mention Bill Ruff, who serves as the first “villain” that this show as seen. Bill’s tendency to recycle movie plots as stories about his life is a pretty funny shtick and one that allows 88’s snide cynicism to shine. I love 88, and he doesn’t really get a lot of time to be a character. But his travels through the A/C labyrinth are both funny and adventurous.

Yet, I think its Randy who steals the show this time around, getting some of the weirder, but more laugh-inducing than anyone else. His obsession with teeth is just another thing to add to the list of “Randy’s weird shit”, along with his little homemade paper dolls of the lab. Surprisingly, Dr. Roberts takes something of a backseat this episode, not having a whole lot to do other than work on a patient who we don’t even get to see while Bill’s sabotage of the lab is going on. Dr. Roberts is usually the funniest one in the cast, but I don’t mind him taking a step back so we can get to know everyone else a little bit better.

This is a more “conventional” kind of episode for Dream Corp LLC to run. It’s a straightforward story about an angry ex-friend who wants vengeance on Dr. Roberts for accidentally destroying his teeth. And it goes about as you would expect, with Bill getting defeated at the last moment by the lab employees. Still, there’s plenty of good laughs to be had here, along with some fun puppetry to enjoy as well. Dream Corp just can’t seem to get it wrong.