Tripping the Rift: S01E03: Miss Galaxy 5000

I’d just like to start by saying this episode totally made up for last weeks boring ending. It still had some jokes that seemed a bit too forced, but overall it was damn good.

This weeks episode brought us three things. one, the return of Bobo, about freakin time! Two, lots of great feminine bodies. And three, 22 goddamn commercials. I understand you’re a business and all that goes with it Sci Fi Channel, but this episode flowed so much better without all the ill-timed and overlong commercials. I had a better opinion of this episode only after I watched it without a fifth ad for Dawn of the Dead!

Anywho, the show jumps right into the plot this week. There’s virtually no fooling around on the bridge as with the last two episodes. It starts off with Chode being incredibly proud of his beauty pageant judge ID badge. Bought of course on the black-market, because no one in their right mind, or even in the trippin’ verse would give a perv like that, access to the judging panel! Chode considers the cost to be part of Whip’s overall education. The education of what is real boobs and what is plastic boobs of course! Hornballs aside, this money was really supposed to be used to pay for NEW detritium rods for the power core. Instead Chode bought used rods for less then pennies. That little business venture almost cost him the Free Enterprise, because the rods immediately began leaking and almost caused the ship to explode.

After the cataclysm is averted, Chode tells the crew of his master plan. He intends to enter the ship’s most beautiful lady in the contest for the $1 million reward. That cow T’Nuk believes that Chode is referring to her, and says she won’t do it. That pig is way too full of herself. Chode then reiterates and says that he wants Six to enter the competition. Six refuses! She goes on about women’s rights, and little girls with unrealistic dreams, and blah blah blah.

Skip to next scene. Chode is outside Six’s quarters dressed as a pirate. Sure why not, he is a space pirate, and it is good to see the purple blob wearing clothes for a change. But we soon find out why. It’s movie nite! He and Six, spend this quality time watching a movie. So what is it: Pirates of the Caribbean? Nope its Revenge of the Butt Pirates. It’s not as good as the first movie Crusade Butt Pirates, but who’s cares? Six is still mad at Chode about the beauty pageant. The two argue for a little while, but Chode eventually gets his way, when she finds out that she has already been entered in the contest. Six decides to make the most of this. No she doesn’t decided to make herself look as pretty as possible. But rather to use this opportunity to try to change the system and fight the good fight. Chode thinks that he’s won, and that he’ll now get to lay Six. Nope, entering Six in the pageant was the only way he was entering her tonite.

At the competition, Whip is scoping out the competition, with his personal camcorder. Check out the downloads section to see all the contestants yourself! Sure all the women are good looking, but so far none of them can beat Six. That is until he checks out Babette, a sweet babe with milky white skin, flaming red hair and lots of makeup. Oh crap, its a clown! Even worse its Bobo’s daughter!
Enter Bobo. We’ve been waiting a few episodes for his return, and finally he’s here! Immediately he and Chode start going at one another. No not like in the pilot, but with words. It turns out that Bobo also bought a fake judges badge, and entered his daughter in an attempt to win the million quid, just like Chode.

Elsewhere in the dressing room, the plastic surgeon has arrived. He’s got all the last minute goodies for the contestants; “breasts, lips, hips, tuck and nips”. A group of contestants swarm the doctor in an attempt to buy his wares. Six of course has to step in with her overbearing “moral of the story” and tell the girls that these beauty pageants are so fake, and that the women should think above it. None of ’em listen though, and continue to buy the surgeries.

Meanwhile, T’Nuk is also trying to bring and end to the competition. She’s dressed as a Black Panther, and is protesting the Pageant. Her resistance ends, when a staff member of her species is so impressed with her looks, that he tells her to enter the competition. That settles it, her entire race is totally screwy! She immediately stops her protest, and seeks help from a guy who knows lots about fashion. Naturally she goes to the flamboyant Gus. He agrees to help coach T’Nuk only after she flatters him, a lot. It’s a tedious process trying to get her ready for the show. In the end, she’s still no better off, but at least we got to see some of Gus’s wardrobe in the process.

Back in the dressing room, Six hears someone throwing up in the bathroom, at a beauty pageant, no way! It turns out to be Babbette, Six tries to tell her the evils of these shows, and that bulimia isn’t the answer. Its no use though, Babette just figures Six is trying to throw her off focus. Their conversation is interrupted when a dead contestants body drops out of a nearby locker. On the body is a note that reads, “I killed her! Sinserely, Six” The note is obviously written by the Dark Clown Babette.

After the break, Babette tries to rally the other girls to expel Six from the competition, and the mortal coil! Chode steps in at just the right time and defends her. In what must be his finest moment, he spins the attention away from the other contestants by pointing out that this means that the girls are one step closer to the crown themselves. Nice work Chode!

Time for the contest to begin, which the host describes as “eye-popping cavalcade of T and A” and Fast forward to the swim suit part of the pageant and the seven remaining contestants. Alright let’s see who the finalists are, Babbette, Six both looking real good in a swim suit, Spamella Anderslut, not looking so good, and finally T’Nuk. What da Fuck! Apparently T’Nuk made the final four because all the other contestants were killed. The murder objects all were clown items, but Bobo prefers to think of them as “macabre, yet terribly amusing”.

Onto the talent competition. Babette chooses to re-enact the scene from the film Basic Instinct. She crosses and uncrosses her legs giving the crowd a good view of her crotch. Yes the curtains do match the carpet. Chode tries to have her disqualified, because all contestant must where panties. But Babette has plenty of panties, which she proceeds to pull out in a long string from under her dress. You can only guess where its all coming from!
T’Nuk also choose this scene for her talent portion. Although her performance got the crowd more riled up then every conservative American after Janet’s half time show! Even Bobo was cringing!

For Six’s act, she came out on stage in her geek outfit, and read a poem about women’s empowerment. Chode spiced it up, by remote controlling her clothes. He stripped her naked, and the crowd went wild!
Finally is the T&A (I mean Q&A) portion of the competition. I’ll include the transcript for this part, since the host gets in some great one liners:

Blurt- Alrighty! The question is: “Why should you be namedmiss galaxy 5000?” Six?

Six- Because I would use the position to let young women all over the universe know that beauty is more than just skin deep. It is heart, its soul…

Blurt- Yes, we’ve already heard your poem, Elizabeth Barrett boring!
T’nuk?

T’Nuk- I wanna’ win for all the 4-legged, 3-breasted, big girls out there!

Blurt- And god willing there’s not that many! Babette?

Babette- If I win I will help blind, handicapped inner-city onions.
Blurt- Excuse me?

Babette- Orphans! Ha! Ha!

Blurt- Nice save, chuckles. And finally, Spamela!

Spamella- If I win, I will continue Stephen Hawking’s groundbreaking work on the dynamic repeating fractal patterns in hyper-string quantum mechanics.

Blurt- Okaaaay.

Now its time for the winner. No surprise there, it’s Six. Chode shows his enthusiasm by waving his fat purple ass in front of his nemeses Bobo. Remind you of anyone else who frequents this site? But the spiteful T’Nuk doesn’t like that very much. She points out that Six is a synthetic and therefore ineligible. So the prize goes to Babette. This time its Bobo who’s mooning Chode. Again T’Nuk intervenes, by proving that Babette killed the other contestants. She uses footage from Whip’s hidden cameras in the dressing room. Whip is so becoming my favourite character. Next in line is Spamella. With no usable dirt on her, T’Nuk just kicks out her breast supporter, and the pornstar’s huge breasts pull over, breaking her neck. The animators did a great job of animating this! This leaves T’Nuk to be crowned beauty queen. Damn and I really wanted one of the Venetians to win too!

In the end we all learned a valuable lesson. Crime pays! Because T’Nuk won, Chode still gets his million bucks. And Six gets her way by having some ugly cow win the pageant.

Pretty good episode. I’ll admit that I wasn’t head over heels about it at first. But mostly because of the lame commercial interruptions. I understand that the network has to sell ads to pay for the show, but can’t they do it at better times?!

Although I don’t like what happened to Darph Bobo. He’s no long the badass I remember from the computer shorts. Instead he’s a bit to cartoon like, too clownish. As opposed to Dark Clownish. I also do like this new flamboyant wussy Gus. I preferred the cantankerous insolent prick!

Finally I’d like to acknowledge the great efforts of the animators this week. Yet again they’ve done a terrific job. Especially with the finer (or in this case big jiggly) details. For instance it must’ve been really cold in that auditorium and dressing room. But rather then taking the easy way of showing the temperature, by say having the characters exhale steam, they went with a more stimulating approach.

I’d rate this episode a scintillating 38,843 out of 10. What did you think?

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Tripping the Rift reviews are © 2005 Ryan Bechtel.
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