Failure To Launch

This week, we allegedly murdered our collective will to continue the podcast by subjecting ourselves to "Juiced", a hidden camera prank "show" starring sportsman, actor and...guy OJ Simpson. OJ does what Jackass was doing when those guys were 13, only with more gratutious female nudity, bad rapping and poorly thought-out "ideas".

Now that we have seen this slight against God of a pilot, we can only pray for future generations, and you, to never have to witness the birth of the spawn of the Dark One, or this show.

Have mercy.

Show notes:

Vice - I Was OJ Simpson's Accomplice (on His Hidden-Camera Prank Show)

Filmdrunk - Remembering 'Juiced,' OJ Simpson's Bizarre, Punk'd-Style Prank Video

IMDB - Juiced with OJ Simpson

Reviewers: James Ferris, Lisa Dib, Alex Malone, Harry Brimage

Soundboard: Dave Shaw

The year is 1964. Producer Selig J. Seligman convinces the American Broadcasting Corporation to dump a truckload of money into the pilot episode of Alexander the Great, a historical war series on an epic scale (for TV, at least). ABC watched it, said no, and as this was the 60s and there wasn't some dumb cable channel to dump it on at 2am, the pilot was placed on a shelf to gather dust, never to be aired.

At least, that was the plan, until the bloke who played Alexander (William Shatner) and the bloke who played, um… someone else (Adam West) became Captain Kirk and Batman. ABC realised they could probably trick Star Trek & Batman fans into watching this thing, and chucked it on air in 1968.

And thus, the concept of "pretending a dead pilot is a TV movie" was born.

…sorry? Oh, the pilot! It's old and dumb and nobody can punch. Also, it was the 60s, so take a guess how well the one female character was portrayed.

Reviewers: James Ferris, Lisa Dib, Andrew Cherry

Soundboard: Alex Malone

Payton Westlake (Chrisopher Bowen) is Darkman, a man with an only occasional face who likes yelling at homeless children, and old mate Larry Drake is back in villain form as Durant.

This reimagining/weird cut-and-paste job of the Sam Raimi film answers all those questions you might have had about the Darkman character, like: If he's homeless, how does he get all the gadgets? What's his beef with bad grammar? Why does synthetic skin boil like lava after an hour and a half? All that, and less!

If you like 90% voice-over explanation dialogue, you'll love* Darkman!

Darkman - IMDB

Darkman - Wikipedia

Reviewers: James Ferris, Alex Malone, Lisa Dib, Harry Brimage

Soundboard: Fabian Lapham

*why would you like that what's wrong with you

Far out! Geekomatic! Hypnotronic! Battletoads!

Written by David Wise, who should have known better, and made for probably 95 cents, Battletoads is a battle courageously yet dumbly across galaxies in the vein of their more famous turtle cousins, to save someone from...something. It's not super clear. There's a lot of portals.

We were pretty unanimous on the creepy bird doctor, though.

Reviewers: James Ferris, Fabian Lapham, Lisa Dib, Harry Brimage

Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

Pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey for some reason host this deeply Sonny and Cher-reminiscent old-school variety show, without the glorious absurdity of Steve Martin or Telly Savales' giant creepy head. There's bygone-era musical guests, hackneyed comedy sketches and more duets than you would ever need or want! Variety has never been more various!

We were divided quite harshly on this one: was it bad TV? Was it knowingly and ironically tongue-in-cheek? Was it bad but still ironic? Why all the mentioning of pole vaulting? We couldn't decide but, in fairness, neither could the show.

IMDB - The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour

Reviewers: James Ferris, Fabian Lapham, Lisa Dib, David Shaw

Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

This early 90s adventure series tells the tale of a disparate group of castaways, stranded on a mysterious tropical island, following a harrowing plane crash. But it's not Lost. As they battle against the elements and each other, they discover that the island is home to all manner of bizarre unexplainable phenomena. But it's totally not Lost. Alright?

Things begin to fall into place when they discover an abandoned military outpost. I swear it was over a decade before Lost. An outpost that was conducting bizarre paranormal experiments. Holy shit, I know it sounds like we just watched a few episodes of Lost, but I swear we didn't.

But if you loved Lost, or hated Lost, or never saw even a single episode of Lost, then Danger Island is just awful either way.

The Presence - IMDB

The Presence - Wikipedia

Reviewers: James Ferris, Andrew Cherry, Lisa Dib

Soundboard: David Shaw

LA detective Eddie Munroe hates machines and machines seem to hate him, so it's a twist of cruel fate that sees him teamed up with a German Shepard who's brain has been replaced with a hitch computer. To be honest Eddie actually rolls with the whole scenario pretty smoothly.

Along the way they're joined by a sexy scientists who claims to love animals despite performing numerous, painful tests on them as well as helping to build a machine that exists entirely to remove dogs brains while they're still alive. For money.

But who can get hung up on that when there's international thieves to thwart, human shields to use and so, so much glass to break? Through it all Eddie and his new pal K9000 learn to laugh, to love and eventually to make dick jokes together.

IMDB - K-9000

Wikipedia - K-9000

Reviewers: James Ferris, Alex Malone, Harry Brimage

Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

This week we examine Driving Miss Daisy, an attempt by CBS to cash in on the Oscar winning film by converting it into a laugh-a-minute sitcom, with such wacky antics as "Hoke fixes the cabinet door", and "Miss Daisy meets Eleanor Roosevelt and it goes fine."

This sounds dull (and it is), so it might surprise you to know that this pilot garnered protests when it aired in 1992. Give this episode a listen and… you just might understand why.

Reviewers: James Ferris, David Shaw, Fabian Lapham

Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

From the Book of Failure, S2-16:

"The man, who was named Ferris, toiled in the fields of the Internet, searching for a pilot which was of formidable quality. He went up from Rutube.ru to Torrentfreak, but he would not be satisfied, and no merchant of pilots whose lights were not green could impress him with his wares.

After many days wandering the desert of Wiki, he collapsed, and at this time the Lord of Bad Pilots appeared to him in a vision, taking the forms of Billy Zane and Adrianne Palicki. "Oh Lord", cried Ferris, "End my suffering! Provide unto me a hyperlink to the pilot which shall destroy television, and bring about the end of all screen entertainment!"

With these words, the Lord Billy Zane did smile upon him, as the Lord Adrianne Palicki speaketh, "Don't really have anything like that. We've got this thing called Gay Robot though. Will that do?"

"Fuckin' done!" cried Ferris

And then Ferris saw some children, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys*."

*That bit is from 2 Kings 2:23-24. Seemed appropriate though.

Reviewers: James Ferris, Harry Brimage, Alex Malone, Andrew Cherry

Soundboard: Fabian Lapham

This week we examine Blood Ties, a 1991 attempt to bring the "vampires live among us, and they're SEXY" genre to life over a decade before HBO did it with True Blood.

The problem, however, was that this was a network show. So where HBO added sex appeal into True Blood with Tons o' Nudity and Sex™, Blood Ties had to settle for sexy innuendos. When it turned out they couldn't write sexy innuendos (there's a twinkie metaphor that isn't the obvious one), they tried adding incest to spice things up, which is akin to spicing up a curry with a small chemical fire.

Also, one of the vampires was named Corey Puckett. Even without the incest, this was the level of sexiness we were working with.

Reviewers: James Ferris, Harry Brimage, Alex Malone

Soundboard: David Shaw