It’s time to look at the final filler story of the first season. We’ve had arguments, pirates, a dumbed down Mainframe, and a microscopic adventure inside Enzo’s brain. Now it’s time for a big birthday extravaganza with surprises, excitement, and plenty of cheap shots at everyone’s favorite buzzkills, broadcast standards and practices. Let’s take a look at “Talent Night”.
We open the episode on a giant cube, but for the first time, it’s not a game cube. It’s instead this weird race where platers have to catch the ball as the tiles beneath them flip. It comes down to a tie as Bob and Enzo are playing. It’s Bob’s gift to Enzo for his first birthday to spend time with him. Since the computer world moves faster, and seconds in this world are measured in nanoseconds, that apparently means that one year our time is equal to 10 years Mainframe time.
Of course, there’s an ulterior motive to why Bob is spending time with Enzo, as we see that on the other side of town, Dot is in the middle of setting up a talent show for her little brother’s big birthday. She’s still in auditions as all of the acts have been pretty terrible. And the acts that Dot does like are constantly shut down by Emma the program sensor.
And with this reference comes Mainframe Entertainment’s ultimate act of meta as the show is referencing the real life struggles with standards and practices, who heavily censored the show and shot down so many of the ideas the show wanted to do.
Dot tells Bob to keep Enzo distracted until they’re ready as more acts are auditioned. First up is an acrobat act, which Dot is all for. But of course Emma quickly shuts down. Another binome performs the act of dismantling himself to the shock of everyone. And of all things, a full on reference to Dire Straits infamous CGI “Money for Nothing” music video, which is easily one of the most brilliant references the show has thrown out already.
Binary comedian Johnny O’Binome delights the crowd, except for Emma See, who again says no. In fact, she’s rejected every act the show has tried to do. And then the offensive act of null juggling. Which when you consider the fact that nulls were the downgraded versions of sprites and binomes, is actually pretty disgusting.
As all of this is going down, Megabyte spies on the talent auditions, and informs his crew to set up for his latest plan. As Enzo and Bob continue their gaming, he intrudes on their game, wanting to know more about what Dot is up to, and why he wasn’t invited. However, Enzo learns that something’s going down, and his interest has piqued, not to mention he’s becoming bored and hungry.
Meanwhile, the events continue onward, as Phong’s attempt at singing goes bad with him not knowing his lines. And if Emma See wasn’t enough of a shot at the censors, we suddenly get a song about the BS&P, done as a rendition of “YMCA”. and performed by a binome version of The Village People. Yes, it’s indeed fun to play in a non-violent way. And of course, this is the first act Emma actually enjoys. Even a reference to William Shatner’s rendition of “Rocket Man”.
Even Megabyte’s spies get caught in the acts as one of the binomes get booked for breakdancing. They report to Megabyte about the talent show. Megabyte informs his crew to set up code “214”. He clearly has something big planned that no one will ever expect.
Enzo finally manages to ditch Bob, and notices all of the traffic, as well as the acts. He is surprised by the crowd, as the clock counts down his upgrade from 01 to 10. The talen show begins with of all things, a sensual song by Dot to Enzo and Bob. And if this lovely sendup to the censors wasn’t good enough, they actually had a scene where Dot kisses Enzo on the cheek cut fearing it would come off as incest. Gotta love those kooky censors.
But before the Elvis binome can strut his stuff, Megabyte and his goons arrive and set up what appears to be a speaker system, and a drum set run by Hack and Slash. Yes, Megabyte’s evil plan was in fact to…
Give the most bitchin’ guitar solo ever.
And if this wasn’t awesome enough, Bob counters with his own guitar, the BFG. And we get a guitar duel between Bob and Megabyte as the two have an epic duet. Megabyte is pleased with his actions, and gives Enzo his guitar. Megabyte leaves the building like a rock star as this episode comes to an end.
This episode is absolutely perfect. From top to bottom one of the most fun episodes of the series. A great amount of parodies and jokes that all land with great execution. And while it seems most definitely out of character for Megabyte to instead of just infect everyone at a prime opportunity, we get to see the epic showman side of the virus. As even he knows he’ll never get a prime opportunity to show his bad ass guitar skills.
The jokes at the expense of the censors were also on point, and felt silly and fun. Being more a visual parody of the clashing with the censors instead of being vicious and spite filled. This just goes to show just how good the writers were getting with the show. And all of the parodies were smart and on point. Especially the fun shot at the “Money for Nothing” video.
In the end “Talent Night” is a top tier episode of the series. Now that the show has been able to build itself so well, it finally gets to let its writing and comedy speak for itself. And this was the finest example of the great humor the show has.
Now all that remains in season 1 is the two part season finale. What will happen when we tackle “Identity Crisis”?