Review: The Cyanide & Happiness Show “The Man-Marryin’ Candidate”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Now that America is Great Again, Star Spangled Bastard is finally ready to hang up his cape and settle down, but a mishap with a stripper in a cake leads his longtime sidekick Eagle to have his mind put in said stripper! Naturally, this means Bastard must now marry him…her? But their marriage is interrupted by the passing of a new law BANNING ALL STRAIGHT MARRIAGES. Now, Bastard must come out of retirement in order to fight The Deep State and their liberal agenda.

OUR TAKE
Finally, another episode with a solid plot structure and not just a gag being beaten into the ground. And continuing the theme of the first and third episode, it’s entirely focused on one of the show’s enduring cast. This time, we add a new tale to the ongoing alt-patriotic adventures of Star Spangled Bastard, the physical embodiment of all political humor since the series began, but what that humor entails has changed quite a bit since the show began in 2014. As such, the Bastard had to change with the times, going from an ineffectual conservative gun nut parody, to a GREATLY effectual conservative gun nut parody! In fact, as the many subplots of the first three seasons came together near the end of the third season, he ended up leading Those Guys (that’s the actual name of the superhero group) in the final battle against Pain Co.

I tend to enjoy episodes he’s in because of this sort of thinly veiled commentary and the superhero parodies, with this episode being no exception. But with this episode starting with his retirement and ending with him becoming president, it almost feels like a bit of a coda on his story arc. His sidekick Eagle (after going through numerous bodies of other animals, including a second eagle body) now is in a body of a stripper, which has somehow enabled bastard to see his inner beauty, which is in no way connected to him simply being in the body of a hot lady. And Bastard is the president of the United States now, meaning that he’s the most powerful man in the free world. It doesn’t seem like there’s much else they can do with his character, even though I doubt his tenure in the office will be anywhere near as good as Carrot Man’s.

Putting this alongside the episodes with the Captain and Chip Chapley, it almost feels like Cyanide & Happiness is giving send offs to these characters. We know that there’s a Lunk episode coming up, so that might or might not follow this trend, but it does give me a strong hunch. Does that mean they’ll end the show once this season is done? Or is it to clear the board for new characters and usher in a new era for the foreseeable future? We’re not even to the halfway point of the season, so it’s hard to say.