Review: WTF 101 “Hoaxes & Scams”

He’s trying to get some use out of that philosophy degree, again.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Mindy storms into class, having learned that no one at Dunning-Kruger High has ever even heard of Professor Foxtrot. While the professor is initially stunned by her detective work, she quickly obfuscates this by taking the class on a tour of three of the UK’s most ridiculous scams.

First, in England, Foxtrot introduces the detention crew to a man who fooled the entire nation into thinking he was Taiwanese. For two years, no one was ever able to prove him a fraud, and he became a national celebrity. Eventually, he wrote a tell-all book revealing his hoax, but he was never punished. He became a successful writer and educator.

Next, they’re taken back to the colonial days, where an enterprising Scotsman tricks colonists into thinking an uninhabitable piece of jungle is actually a sovereign nation in need of white bodies. He made the modern-day equivalent of billions of dollars with only a few illustrations and a well-placed astro-turfing campaign. When he was eventually found out, his charisma was so great that the colonists didn’t sue him, but the people who planned their trips to the fake nation.

Finally, we are back to England, where we see a woman who claimed to be able to give birth to animals, mostly rabbits. This was during the period where people did not know how pregnancy worked, so junk science allowed her to become a medical marvel for a short period of time. She was eventually discovered to be shoving dead animals (and animal parts) into herself and was jailed for a time. She didn’t stay long, though, as she didn’t technically break any laws, but she did get a nasty infection for stuffing animal carcasses into her vagina.

The episode ends with the children ultimately deciding to keep the professor’s secret from the administration. Suddenly, a similarly-powered magical educator (who spent the episode tailing Foxtrot) appears and Foxtrot quickly dispatches him. We’re left on a cliffhanger to see what that will mean for the future of WTF 101.

Our Take

With “Hoaxes & Scams”, WTF 101 takes its first serious step into serialized storytelling. The season was always implied to have some kind of continuity. Older episodes would be lightly referenced in newer ones, and as the show goes on, the children seem to be more and more desensitized (but ever more exhausted) by the professor’s antics. This week, however, we have numerous direct callbacks to previous episodes from the season, and a suspenseful ending necessitating a conclusion next week.

I’ve been pretty clear on my stance with regards to modern cartoons finding the need to serialize. Simply put, they don’t need to unless there is a reason to. In WTF 101’s case, I think there is a reason to, but it’s pretty flimsy, as these things go. The show has an obvious formula. One of the students exhibits some strange behavior, and Professor Foxtrot tells them that nature/history have done much worse than that. This sets off an odyssey of three disgusting animations to illustrate her point. The five then return, the facile lesson having been learned. It’s not a hard nut to crack, so continuity injects some variety to this repetition. It didn’t work for me this week, but I’m open to the possibility that the conclusion is some kind of meta-narratively satisfying twist.

What I care more about is the idea that these adventures seem to be lessening in scope, not growing. All three off the adventures from this episode were from the UK, and two of them directly involve the colonial projects of the previous millennium. It’s, thus, even more of a glaring oversight to not present the follies of non-white culture, but—as I noticed today— to also not depict any nonwhite people in the history sections of the show.

Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek often tells a story about people of color who are annoyed at the “model immigrant” myth. This idea of the perfectly behaved, hard-working immigrant is used as a justification as to why reactionaries from the host country should leave immigrants alone. Zizek finds this tactic incomplete, as it infantilizes the immigrants. If people of color are not given the agency to be able to commit acts of evil, then they are being portrayed as less than complete people.

While I applaud WTF 101 for their two mischievous students of color in the present, they are still sorely lacking a history of horrible African, Asian, and Native American atrocities. I understand their reticence to do so up to this point, but it’s time to move past this gun-shy attitude, and do what this show claims to want: to teach its audience about the most disturbing parts of human history. I’m hoping this is one of the meta-narrative fixes Professor Foxtrot will have to encounter, but only time will tell.