1009: Hamlet Movie: Most of us probably know the story of Hamlet; a boy avenges the death of his father on his uncle, the king. Only this version of Shakespeare's play....was made in Germany. So leave it to the Germans to make a bleak production even bleaker. Opening: Servo insists that everyone call him "Sirveaux" from now on. Spelled different, sounds the same. Oh, and he now spells his first name "Htom." Crow suggests that perhaps Htom could hlick him. Host Segment 1: Pearl has come up with a horrible world-killing mutant virus. Mike couldn't give a rat's ass; he wants to play three-card monte for the choice of today's movie. Mike wins and picks Hamlet as his movie. Pearl pulls a double-whammy on Mike and sends him the horrible German version. Host Segment 2: Crow and Servo dress up as Mike's dead dad to scare him and perhaps have a good chuckle. Turns out that Mike's dad isn't dead, nor are any of his relatives that they can name. Ultimately Crow and Servo yell at each other and fall over in a snappy bit of physical.....comedy. Host Segment 3: Crow and Servo rehearse their own unorthodox staging of Hamlet. After having tried an all-scuba diving version, a bucket-head version and an all- furniture version, they decide on an all-percussion version. In this way we "stick it to all those pretentious bastards who want to do something different with this classic tragedy." Host Segment 4: Mike dresses in full Elizabethan drag for a "nutty" game show parody called "Alas Poor WHO???" in which Tom and Crow, who play small robots who live with Mike, try to guess which celebrity an old bone comes from. Surprisingly, there isn't a trace of irony in this funny yet series-canceling sketch. End: The bots, as they usually do when they like a character, have made an action figure of Hamlet. It talks and has a string you pull. A really long string. I mean a REALLLLLY long string, because it talks a lot, so mIke discovers new portions of the ship when he tries to find space to pull it. In the castle, Pearl and Co. are visited by Fortinbras, a character from the end of the Hamlet play, who is outraged that he was excluded from this version of Hamlet. Pearl calmly tells him to pour poison in his ear and it kills him. Ultimately, Mike lets go of the very long string from the Hamlet doll, and we hear the entire "to be or not to be" soliloquy during the credits. Stinger: The King is startled like a bullfrog in a swamp. Special Notes: This movie was orignially over three hours but had to be cut down to 80 minutes. |
