Review: Squidbillies “Ballad of the Latrine Marine”

And now, the MORE mature Sunday night animated take on recent issues.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Glenn’s wife Donna enters a restroom only to be accosted by Early, who asks her to put her “dangalang” into a provided whole for a “voluntary gender screening”. Donna flees, alerting the manager of the place where the restroom is that Early is harassing customers and orders Sheriff to get him out. Sheriff goes on to explain Early is only doing what’s right in checking if there are men in the women’s restrooms because men don’t belong in women’s restrooms, but it takes a man to make sure a women’s room is safe from men who think they’re women, hence why Early, a man, is in a women’s room. This is the code of the Latrine Marine. Did everybody get that? Okay, moving on.

After taking a pee break in the bathroom that God intended and assisting Denny with a nautical nomenclature SNAFU, Early emerges noticeably flushed and begins spontaneously bloating and becoming hormonal. Yep, he’s pregnant. As Granny explains, every ten years, a mud squid heads north to empty his-her egg sac. Turns out their species is simultaneously male and female, and just lay eggs every decade. This, of course, is hard to reconcile for Early, who prides himself entirely on falling in line with a masculine image, even when he “man-strates”. Despite very clear signs of pregnancy and having spelled out for him by the town’s doctor, Early clings tightly to his manliness with a loaded sawed-off shotgun in hand. Rusty is unsure how to proceed with his father, so Early suggests a “male bonding trip”, though packing suggestions show his hand and shifting gender identity. They arrive at the hatching site where Early passes off the laying process as mancave/manfart/mandump, as Rusty pokes holes in this at every step. Finally finished, Early seems to finally accept that he is a daddy AND a mama. Rusty tells him that God doesn’t make mistakes, even if his choices are odd. As new life blooms and Early welcomes it to the world…they are immediately eaten by crows with no way of protecting them, so Early laments his loss and then represses his feelings and half-feminine nature deep back down inside.

OUR TAKE

What weirdly good timing on an episode starting with bathroom monitoring just as the guy who made the bill was voted out! Though instead of using as a way to instigate a whole episode of bathroom humor, it actually segues nicely into a story about toxic masculinity and gender fluidity, which is certainly not what you would first expect from a show called Squidbillies. The topic of switching genders for hyper-masculine characters and seeing how they tackle things on the other end of the spectrum has been tackled in many ways in animation before (Johnny Bravo, Futurama, and American Dad to name a few), though it’s usually through some completely outside force changing a character to make them fit the situation. Here, due to the ambiguous nature of the Cuylers’ species, it’s portrayed as something that each of them has to deal with occasionally as a natural part of their lives. It’s just Early MAKES it an issue because of his identifying as a man all the restricting ways that make him unable to understand himself. Granny is completely at peace with it and Rusty, while ultimately accepting, only has his father’s narrow view of the subject to deal with, hence why he begins treating Early disrespectfully on impulse when he starts to behave feminine.

This isn’t the type of story that would work nearly as well with an ambiguous non-human character like, say, Roger from American Dad, as his character very clearly leans towards what is seen as feminine (which is another can of worms I’m not going to get into right now. And this isn’t even the first time we’ve seen a male Cuyler lay eggs, since Rusty did the same back in the second season (2006), although that turned into a more rambly take on the pro-life/pro-choice arguments. With all that in mind, I can’t say with certainty that tonight’s episode was the best possible way to tackle these kinds of complex topics, but I applaud the attempt regardless.

Score
9/10