Many, I tell you.
Very many.
Critter latches on as a janitor at the club, Buzz falls right into drug dealing, and there's all kinds of tension between Buzz and Critter regarding the attentions of the zaftig Michele. Critter admits to Michele that he's planning to become a draft dodger someday, which for some reason makes it impossible for him to declare his love for her. She keeps dancing and replacing the increasingly addicted Joan, while Leo grins and drips oil.
Buzz takes part in a jailhouse robbery and kills a guy. Critter and Michele find out. (I'm losing interest here, just as I did while watching the movie.) Critter beats up everybody and calls the police and joins the Marines. An ending arrives which is presented as happy.
Prologue: Crow wears a "WWBSMD" bracelet -- 'What Would Buffy St. Marie Do?" His answer to a hypothetical moral dilemma: write a folk song. An odd shift to the castle: Pearl warns she's about to become a fully-accredited mad scientist.
Segment One: Pearl tries her darndest to act like a mad scientist, as a mad scientist inspector is visiting. She shocks Bobo, gives Brain Guy a latex hump, and talks Mike and the 'Bots into overreacting to the movie. When she starts hitting Brain Guy, the inspector nods approvingly.
Segment Two: Crow dresses as Buzz, Servo as Michele; Crow tries to exact revenge (for what? Who knows?) on Mike by making Mike pour beer on his most prized possessions, as in the movie. Those turn out to be Mike's beer stein and then Crow himself.
Segment Three: Crow's legs are all that are visible as he dances provocatively, wearing gold boots, apparently sporting a tiny bikini. Mike's outraged; the 'Bots accuse him of being uncomfortable acknowledging Crow as a sexual creature.
Segment Four: Mimicking the film, Mike sings a folk song in front of a window as it rains. Crow keeps appearing, telling him that the water has caused a fire. Mike's oblivious and sings; Crow and Servo finally extinguish the fire.
Segment Five: Everybody on the SOL dresses like Leo; they're embarrassed. In the castle, the inspector concludes that Pearl's experiment is a failure -- until he sees Brain Guy in a dress, dancing. He accredits Pearl as a mad scientist, "conditionally."
Stinger: Joan: "Oh God, I wish I had my pretty mind back."
The whole mad scientist accreditation sub-plot has an interesting history. Our overseers at Sci Fi, both of whom are long gone, fooled themselves into thinking that if we were somehow able to build an over- arching plot into our show, people would start watching it. We didn't like the idea, since the new shows are usually presented several weeks apart and then never again shown in order; and we seem to write better when we don't have to pay attention to stuff like plot. But, we had to do it. It seemed sort of sad, really, because by this time we were already pretty sure we were writing the last season.
We all loved Leo, the club owner. He joins our pantheon of oily guys, where he's welcomed by the likes of the oily guy in a sweater dress, from Attack of the Eye Creatures, way back in the Other Years. Granted, he's no Manos, but who is?
The nightclub is called The Haunted House, and has an odd dragon hovering over the stage, emitting smoke from its nostrils. I assume this place actually existed, back in the Sixties. Anybody out there remember it?
- Paul Chaplin
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