Review: The Cyanide & Happiness Show “The Good, the Butt and the Tumbling”

OVERVIEW

The infamous outlaw Butt Blaster takes in an orphaned little girl in a Wild West setting terrorized by tumbling butts.

OUR TAKE
There have definitely been points in this series where it has dabbled more indulgent in the weird over the funny. For some people, that might be enough. I know I’ve seen plenty a nonsensical skit or meme that has gotten me laughing for days. Cyanide & Happiness has managed to make a solid joke premises before, but sometimes they apply just a bit too much logic to the illogical for it to be as funny as they hoped. In this case, you have a Wild West world surrounded by people sucking their own butts, created by a scientist who thinks humans should suck their own butts and turning himself into part Armadillo but also making it a virus and…yeah. Kinda craps out once you start thinking about it, huh?

I mean it’s not a terrible idea or anything, just that this felt like a “less is more” type of situation. We probably could’ve gotten a few Butt Blaster shorts here or there to set things up and establish the main gags, but to get introduced to it all at once kinda blurs the line between whether this is meant to be a joke story or an actual serious story with jokey elements. There’s a clear difference between this and other episodes this season which is pulling from multiple seasons worth of storylines, both used for humor and to make a real story. Perhaps if we had seen some Butt Blaster throughout the past three prior to this, we would have more sentimental value to him which would at least make ME more welcome to seeing him in such a tense and high stakes situation.

Then again, that IS what is most difficult about reviewing comedy shows. The best I can do is simply explain the joke, which inherently makes it less funny. And for all I know, this could simply be the start of more Butt Blaster adventures, though through his protégé since she takes the title at the end. But what I think I got here was something like what Butt Blaster Episode 6 should look like, not his very first outing. Either way, this season’s only got two episodes left, and the next one centers around Mega Mom, another one of the superheroes with her own crazy history. I think THAT will be more in line with what I’m talking about than this one was, but we’ll see.