Review: Supermansion “Summer Vacation Special”

Can these writers get a break? Yes they can!

https://youtu.be/iaOI7dl0VdI

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The League’s plane touches down in Hawaii, with Rex using all of his mileage points on a ticket…for just him. Cooch is made to act like a service animal, while Robobot is put with the luggage, and Lex had to fly behind the plane and inhale exhaust. Ranger managed to get passage from the USO and Saturn is rich. Little do they know that they are being monitored by the shark-headed…Shaka, who has imprisoned the undersea hero Mermanaught.

Once situated in vacation mode, everyone starts splitting off into their own respective subplots. Rex notices an offer for two free jet skis rentals if someone sits through their timeshare presentation, and so he sends Robo to try and make it through without submitting to an agreement. Ranger goes to perform at a USO show but is outraged by his profane opening act. Cooch is afraid of water, so Saturn tells her a story about how his parents almost left him to drown until the Mermanaught gave him a necklace that allowed him to breathe underwater, and tries to quell her fear like his was by throwing her unconscious into the ocean while Lex watches. While drinking heavily, Rex meets former president Barack Obama (Jay Pharaoh), and the two past-their-prime figures try to live it up.

As expected, pretty much all of these go awry. The timeshare presentation turns into a Saw-style torture show and eventually folds when he is forced to kill his new Japanese friend Toko (Masi Oka). Ranger is unable to adapt to modern tastes in entertaining, shallow as they may be. Saturn, Cooch, and Lex are captured by Sharka to retrieve the necklace, but the fish fight leads them back to the beach, but Cooch DOES learn to swim. Rex and Obama relate over the fact they both are bored by retirement before helping take out Shaka and giving back the necklace to Mermanaught. And now the whole team can be bored for years to come, as Robobot got them a timeshare on the island.

OUR TAKE

Well, that was a whole lot of nothing. Supermansion’s never been a very substantive show on its best day, but usua,lly the holiday specials have SOME sort of clever gimmick to them. This feels like they just threw concepts for “summer” at a dart board and threw it in a blender. Ranger being out of touch with modern times is as boring as ever and the Robobot timeshare plot is the biggest waste of Masi Oka since Heroes Reborn, but the other plots have…something. We get to meet this universe’s version of Aquaman here, with nothing to say on that subject other than “boy he’s useless and a little effeminate”, which is a bit ironic considering the incoming trainwreck that is this year’s eventual Aquaman movie. Although I guess the main joke about Aquaman is that no one takes him seriously, but they didn’t even tap into that.

The other main thing is that this is, as far as I know, the first animated appearance of Barack Obama as a former president. I’ve always liked Jay Pharaoh’s take on him during his time on SNL and was really annoyed they didn’t keep him around for the season during the election, so it’s nice to see him get to reprise the role in a pretty unique way. Unfortunately, because of all of the other shenanigans going on, whatever possibly good character work that they could have pulled from Obama’s anxiety and Rex’s view of his place in the world was pretty much completely squandered. Plus, of all the things for a fictionalized Barack Obama to be worried about, you’d think it’d be the guy who came after him. But I get that Crackle probably wants to stay as apolitical as they can in situations like these.

But yeah, this was a pretty unfulfilling little interlude, all things considered. The past two specials could at least give us a clear idea of where they were in the timeline of things, but this seems like it couldn’t be bothered to even do that. Best I can gather is that it might take place before the third season began, since Lex has her character development haircut, but there’s no mention of the villains becoming heroes and what not, and certainly no talk of all the craziness that occurred in the mid-season finale. I am more or less eager to get back to Supermansion when it returns this fall, but MAN will I not be remembering this.