geekent's Buy Nothing Year

Stan is Xander's right-hand-man, a grumpy old fart with a moustache and a dozen (or so) clones of himself whose only uttered word is "Harumph". Stan has no tolerance for Xander's frivolous lifestyle nor his lack of corporate savvy and looks for any opportunity to dethrone him.

Arthur is an employee at Crews company who volunteered to become Awesome-X's nemesis, and was mutated into a man with large lobster claws. Xander sees the folly of his plan immediately.

Simon is Killface's son, his lot in life. Killface loves his son more than anything, and desperately wants to find his son a new mommy. Simon is a disturbed boy, talking only in mumbles, and has a habit of knocking his cereal bowl on the floor when he's upset. Simon also has an unhealthy history with rabbits... and knives... and combining the two... but not the way you might think.

Sinn is one of Killface's employees, Simon's au pere, I think, although it's not made very clear. She's South African with a cybernetic arm and capable of eating broke cereal bowls apparently. She falls in love with Arthur, the lobster man, in Vegas.

The Xtacles are Awesome-X's power-suited backup team. There's a whole bunch of these guys and they live in a Nick Fury-esque Heli-Carrier above the clouds. The Xtacles cost Crews Corp. about 5 Million dollars a year, but when Xander accidentally uses their salary to pay a hooker some hush money, they get a little miffed.

Philip is Killface's head of construction over on the Annihilatrix project. Phil gets cancer and sues Killface, but never stops working for him... well, "working".

Grace Ryan is Xander's girlfriend, barely, and is also, typically, a reporter. She's a horrible reporter though, and oblivious to her boyfriend's various extracurricular activities. Grace accidentally falls into a vat of radioactive toxic sludge where she's bitten by radioactive toxic ants, after which she develops a split-supervillainous-personality Antagone.

So, those are the characters in Frisky Dingo, now, here's what happens:

Xander tries to hunt Killface to get him to sign some documents giving him licensing rights for a Killface action figure. In the highly convoluted process of doing so Xander winds up losing his budget for the Xtacles, and pissing Killface off, both sides swearing revenge. Killface falls in love with Grace and swears to steal her away from Xander. After a terrible accident, Grace becomes Antagone and she too swears vengeance on Xander. Killface and others are also hurt in the accident, but are no longer covered by their medical care, which is provided by a subsidiary of the Crews Corporation. Killface again swears vengeance on Xander. Antagone falls for Killface, but he rejects her for Grace, not realizing they're the same person. She burns Killfaces eyes out and he's suddenly blind. Xander is kidnapped by the Xtacles, but steals a pair of their jetpants, only for them to conk out, where he collides into a trio of LARPers. Xander steals their car, runs over a blind Killface and befriends him under the guise of "Barnaby Jones". Back at Killface's place, Simon steals Barnaby's jetpants, and disappears, with all the kitchen knives, telling SInn he's gone to the pet store. Killface accidentally blinds Barnaby and the two stumble around, eventually enslaved into a sweatshop where they're unknowingly replacing the heads on Awesome-X action figures with that of Stan, now pretending to be Awesome-X. Stan has told the Xtacles if they don't have Xander Crews captive, he'll blow off one of their heads every hour. Enter Nearl, Xander's long-estranged, mentally-challenged twin brother. Barnaby and Killface learn of Simon's whereabouts from their fellow sweatshop worker, Old Spice, and they set off to rescue him, encountering the mob boss, Torpedo Vegas, where they're told Simon will be let go if they fight to the death. Grace Ryan hopes to scoop her nemesis, Darnell Jones, on the big story of the underground deathmatch circuit, but Grace is the perpetual career loser when compared to the reporting might of team Jaguar. Eventually Killface discovers Barnaby/Xander's deception and swears vengeance. Stan winds up buying the Annihilatrix from Killface just before Xander reclaims his company from Stan, only to find out it's broke. He goes to meet Killface to trade him the Annihilatrix for the $5 million cheque (made out to cash) and all goes a bit afoul.

In a convoluted nutshell, that's what happens, but then there's this whole bit about superstar actor/rapper Taqu'il, and 1-hour pottery shops, and Grace Ryan's vegas stalker, and Sinn and Arthur's burgeoning romance, and the marketing assistant Killface hired and turned into a geisha, and the guy posing as an Asian dry cleaner (to get a minority business loan) who Killface swindles, and dozens upon dozens of other things that happen in this insanely convoluted (but gleefully so) show.

The Adult Swim brand is alive and well, and though I have the softest spot for its earliest entries (Space Ghost: Coast To Coast, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021) the creators of its more recent programming (including The Venture Brothers, Boondocks, Robot Chicken) have managed to take the freedom Cartoon Network provides them and really develop some innovative, cutting edge, mainly cartoon programming that is in most cases hilarious. Frisky Dingo from the Sealab team is probably truest to the Adult Swim sensibility, in terms of how irreverent it is. Shows like Aqua Teen and Sealab, once they established their base conceit, took pleasure in antagonizing their audience, and Frisky Dingo does that better than any before it, stacking purposefully nonsensical storylines on top of one another to make the show utterly bizarre if hopping on at any point but the beginning, and even more inventively bizarre if you've watched from the get go.

The show's animation is a step up from Sealab, avoiding using old animation in any respect, but at the same time it looks partly like photos placed in Photoshop's "paint" filter mixed with comic book drawings. It's not as stilted as earlier Adult Swim cartoons, but far from polished like Boondocks or Venture Brothers. The hero vs. villain idea has never been more roundabout or twisted than it is here, to the point where the audience I think winds up with more sympathy for poor Killface than Xander Crews.

It's almost impossible to explain this show's appeal: you'll either get it or you wont, there's not much room for middle ground. While it's a serialized series and the first season builds itself into one giant arc, it's not like, say, Lost which seems to have a plan and answers come as often as questions... instead Frisky Dingo seems very stream of consciousness, with the writers putting themselves into a jam every episode, and then either choosing to resolve it, perpetuate it or ignore it in subsequent episodes.

The voice talent is brilliant, and I think it's equal part their performance and editing that make the comedy so heightened. The style of comedy in the show is very self-aware, often pointing out its own absurdity, only to sally forth with it shortly thereafter. The characters are completely out of control but also very accepting of their chaos. The fact that most everything, even at the height of lunacy, is portrayed as being relatively normal (or, otherwise, the lesser of many irreverences is chosen by a character to focus on) is where much of the humour lies, and the cast plays to that perfectly.

Having snooped at some of what Season 2 (already aired on Cartoon Network) has in store, it looks to get even more unusual, and I can't wait to see it.

Rating: 4/5