Review: Space Dandy “The Lonely Pooch Planet, Baby”

There may be  a new companion coming to the Aloha-Oe…

Spoilers!

Somewhere in the Andromeda-Like Galaxy, we find Dr. Gel trying to find Dandy again.  His new tracker system finds Dandy, and after a call from the Admiral, the warp to Dandy. Speaking of which, Dandy is on Planet Machinia, tracking more aliens. Everyone is finding something to be giddy over, except Dandy. That is, until Dandy sees a dog. We get a weird scene with two twins in a field, then we get Meow finishing his meal, and QT coming back with a bunch of spare parts for the ship.

Of course, Meow doesn’t want the dog on the ship, but he has no say in the matter. Meow pretends to understand the dog, saying they need to get off her planet, and fast. Then Dandy’s communicator kicks in, and Meow was found out. Back to the twins, they are trying to find out a new land, because the Machinians are dead except for them. We get some of the of Pup’s backstory, where she is deserted on this planet without anyone around. Dandy and the gang made her final moments peaceful and fun, before she passed on. Dandy gets in the Little Aloha, and builds a rocket coffin for pup, in rememberance. The narrator gets a little emotional and speculative, and it was a fantastic touch. We’ll touch on that in a sec.

Meow is scratching the hell out of himself, and QT finds two things fly off of him. Turns out, it’s the two Machinians from before. What a twist! They make it out of the room. Turns out, they are a Graviton, and a Gravitino. One dies, when he gets caught between hair, gel, and a comb. Turns out, that the living one is Leflea, He takes over QT, and causes havok in the ship. Leflea gets outed by a flying beer, and goes for the ship’s console, only to be killed by Meow’s foot. His death causes the gravitational collapse of Machinia, because they were keeping the planet together. QT warps the ship out of the problem, and right past Dr. Gel, who is going headfirst into the black hole. Bee tries to use the tracker missiles to collapse the hole, to no avail. They make it, and Dandy kicks Meow for smelling like dead fish.

This was one of those feels episodes. For me, whenever a show puts a dog into an episode, it never ends well and this week’s episode was proof. I was actually hoping for Pup to come on, just to add a different dynamic to the crew. Speaking of Pup, the narrator finally showed something other than snarky sarcasm when he actually choked up a little bit. He gave us a real, factual story of the Soviet space program sending up Laika, a part husky, part terrier-mongrel up in space. I think this week’s episode may have been a little better as a two-parter, part one would be all about Pup, and giving us a deeper connection to her. Part two would have been all about the Machinians. This felt mashed, and not completely fulfilling on either end. There was definitely room for improvement, but it was a good episode to watch.