The episode's setup: black porn star Ringo Mandingo (and his own mandingo, covered up by comically large black censor bars) have been sliced and diced by a chainsaw, shortly before production was about to begin on the first black-on-white porn, Willy Wanker and the Chocolate F**ktory. Before you know it, Black Dynamite and the team are on the case, and proceed to the set of many of Mandingo's films. Before you know it, Bullhorn and his eloquent rhymes catch the attention of a Jack Horner-esque producer, and he becomes a porn star in his own right: "Sweet Throat". Meanwhile, black porn stars continue to be bumped off, leaving only Bullhorn and "Isaac Layes"... and Layes soon meets his demise by way of grenade after being picked for Willy Wanker. (His priceless death line: "My grave... can you dig it?")
As amusing as Bullhorn can be, he's the type of character that works best in small doses, as this episode quickly makes clear. (I can only handle so much rhyming, you know!) As such, we get inverse amounts of Bullhorn and BD than I'd prefer. Even worse, the killer lines that we do get from BD are recycled from the original movie, such as "I thought I told you honkies from the adult-film industry that Black Dynamite don't hump on film no more!" Although, I was quite surprised that this week's episode attempted to reprise one of the film's slow-burn gags: the chalkboard deconstruction at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles (or as this episode depicts it, "Roscoe's Grits 'n Jello")... leading to the episode's most bizarre revelation: that the wave of murders is the result of a bizarre partnership between the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan (?!?!?) in order to prevent interracial porn from hitting the market.
The episode's last 7 minutes pick up considerably, starting with the Roscoe's sequence, and leading directly into a scene from Willy Wanker and the Chocolate F**ktory, as Bullhorn croons the XXX version of "Pure Imagination", accompanied by a crew of "Humpa-Lumpas". I'll be honest: I'm a sucker for Willy Wonka parodies, given my love for that film, and the elaborate animation of this sequence certainly helps. (Sidebar: Is every modern animated TV series required to do a Willy Wonka parody? Remember "Wasted Talent" from the original run of Family Guy? Or "Fry and the Slurm Factory" from the first cycle of Futurama?)
But then, the parody comes to a halt, as BD confronts the KKK and the Panthers (or, the Black Pumas - Huey P. was "a hell of a revolutionary, and extremely litigious"), leading to a bunch of gory shotgun blasts and anime-stylized action, consistent with the show's animation style. And then, we leave the episode as our lead characters debate on what the episode's moral is. For the record, I'll quote Black Dynamite's: "Sometimes having a giant johnson is just enough rope to hang yourself." Wise words, Black Dynamite... wise words, indeed. :-) Still, a fine third act can't resolve a meandering first two-thirds of the episode. Hopefully, the show can get out of its rut soon: we've only got 8 episodes to go!
Random notes:
- Here's the link to this week's episode, courtesy of adultswim.com. In addition, episodes re-air Saturday nights on [adult swim].
- Anachronism Alert: Would there seriously be a porn movie called Big Trouble in Little Vagina in the 1970s? Just remember what ol' Jack Burton would say: "No!" (Also disorienting: an out-of-place reference to Lionel Richie's "Hello".)
- Black Dynamite, after a particularly dramatic music cue: "Dang, with a sting like that, I know it's got to be some heavy shit!"
- I think I counted six or seven "Dy-no-mite! Dy-no-mite!" cues. Nice!
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