Scullyfied Simpsons: "Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"" (Season 10, Episode 8)

Airdate: December 6th, 1998

Truly a heartwarming moment... that will be spoiled in two seconds.

Synopsis: The whole family (plus Abe, for reasons needed to generate the plot) take a trip up to Bloodbath Gulch, a ghost town turned tourist trap. There, Abe drinks way too many sasparillas, and Homer refuses to stop for a rest stop on the way home. End result? Abe's kidneys blow out, and Homer is the only available donor. While initially willing to go through with the procedure, fears brought on by his friends cause Homer to bolt from the operating table.

Review (SPOILER): To paraphrase Futurama, Mike Scully, you raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir! Bravo! Yup, two steps forward with "D'oh-in" and "Lisa Gets an "A"", and one moonwalk back with "Kidney Trouble", among the most despised episodes in The Simpsons history. So, my expectations heading into this episode were lowered quite a bit.

And I still left, not only disappointed, but disgusted.

Red Dwarf Review: "Pete" (Series VIII, Story 4)

Airdate: 25 March, 1999 (Part I), 1 April, 1999 (Part II).

Synopsis: Lister and Rimmer finally drive Hollister up the wall one too many times, including pulling a prank on Warden Ackerman and slipping a drug into the juice of a basketball team led by Hollister to hinder their performance in a game against the convicts. (Yes, there's a basketball scene in Red Dwarf, why do you ask?) After their punishment in Spud Duty makes Hollister bald, the two are put in "the hole", where they meet a professor with a bird. Meanwhile, the Canaries discover a time wand on one of the derelicts. The two paths meet, and the professors bird turns into... a T-rex. "Hilarity" ensues.

Review: I think I've mentioned this episode in passing once or twice. It's often brought up as the nadir of Red Dwarf. As "Back to Reality" is considered the zenith, this is the bottom of the barrel. In both of the surveys launched by the Ganymede and Titan website, Part II of "Pete" ranked dead last in the polls: the 2013 survey put Part 1 just ahead of Part 2, while the 2008 survey put it a few spots ahead. The question is this: does either episode deserve the bad reputation they've gotten?

Well, yes... sort of.

Red Dwarf Review: Series VIII, Story 3: "Krytie TV"

Airdate: 18 March, 1999

This is what money does to you, guys. You become involved in the stupidest TV ever made. Damn you, BBC!

Synopsis: When Kill Crazy (amongst the other males in prison) finds out that Kryten has to shower with the women, he is reprogrammed by the prisoners. He goes from a pro-feminist who refuses to exploit his fellow prisoners to a nasty media mogul, who's lowbrow comedy and programming (under the name Krytie TV) make him wealthy... thanks to beer cans.

Review: ...what the hell was that?

This episode is one of the saddest episodes of Red Dwarf ever made... and not in a good way. A solid 90% of the positives that this episode has are nullified due to the pathetic writing. Simply put, as much as "Cassandra" felt like a classic Red Dwarf episode, this feels like nothing of the sort. It feels like I threw on a bad American sitcom.

Remember when Red Dwarf used to have complex characters that I cared for? No, I don't either. This episode dismisses the development that every character has had the past six, seven seasons to make everybody either sexist, perverted, a jackass in some other form, or some combination of the three. Lister used to have honour and some respect for his friends, and while he lusted after Kochanski, he used to try and do it in something of a respectful manner. He also used to have something of a moral centre. Here, the mere thought of Kryten in the women's showers is considered attractive to him, and he keeps looking at the video of the shower for three hours, barely trying to move out of the room. Why does he want to move out of the room? It's not because Kochanski and the rest of the women are being violated, no. It's because it will smeg up his appeal. And as we learn later, it's an appeal that only deals with his own self-desires. When did Lister become such a selfish git? (Oh, yeah, "Tikka to Ride").

I know Kryten is something of a neat freak, but come on. He's not totally gullible... he should've known something was amiss with the trash. Nope. Instead, Kryten puts the trash away, and gets knocked out and reprogrammed by... maybe (see below) Kill Crazy! Yup, Kill Crazy, the character who just wanted to shoot stuff up, now knows how to reprogramme a mechanoid (maybe). Could it be character development? It would if we had cared about the character from day one... but read the "Tidbits" below on why I doubt that. Oh, and he loses all desire to shoot stuff. He's just as much of a perv as the rest of the cast with a Y chromosome (except for Ackerman).

Back to Kryten, how the hell did he become a corrupt executive thanks to beer cans?

Sure, Kochanski gets a scene where she's livid over the fact that her privacy being violated. But that's it: she only gets one worthwhile scene. She only gets mentioned twice: once, she's seen painting her toes with Kryten (who is painting his entire foot), and second, she's mentioned having gotten over Lister (and, I guess, putting the invasion of her privacy) to date some schmuck who we don't care about. A part of me is willing to forgive this lack of Kochanski, as Chloe Annett got sick during filming. Still, it's pretty insulting to make an episode on peeping toms and not have a lot of representation from the "offended" gender.

Rimmer is tragically left in the dust, just there to aid Lister and get knocked down by the now self-centred Scouse. Yet, I don't feel anything for this character. All of his development, even the one in the previous episode, was erased, and he's back to being underdeveloped. He shows no defining character traits in this episode other than being a pervert.

TL;DR: the men are all perverts, or motivated by their perversion. Women are left in the dust. Both sides are hampered by sexism!

The humour? Barring a couple of chuckles, it's all lowbrow, frat humour. I will admit to chuckling at the first "bunk scene" with Lister and Rimmer (post, anyone), and the "Attack of the Giant Savage Completely Invisible Aliens" is a bit funny (although I'll explain later why I may not have found it as comic as others might have), but the rest of the episode's comedy can be summed up as "men are perverts, Kryten's a horrible mechanoid, and there's some visual puns."

Plot? Shifts around too many times to count. So, Kryten's humiliated because he has to shower with the women because he considers himself more of a man. Instead of appealing and trying to get switched into the men's bunks, he continues on his merry way until Kill Crazy reprogrammes him and turns him into a Pay-Per-View mogul who films in the showers, amongst other things. Oh, Lister has an appeal, is too perverted to actively care about Kochanski, gets upset about Kochanski walking off, and winds up getting "Krytered".

There has been quite a bit of debate on the internet on what the worst episode of Red Dwarf is. The most common answer seems to be our next story, "Pete"- specifically, the second part. At that rate, "Pete" must drive me close to the brink of insanity to be worse than "Krytie TV". It's staved off the 0 score on an interim basis. If "Pete" is better, "Krytie TV" will get the honour of the first 0 score. Not even a few chuckles can wash out the utter degradation of character, lack of coherent plot, and what feels like sexism against both sides of the coin.

Tidbits:

• If the Red Dwarf Wiki is correct, this episode is actually said to have replaced an episode that would've had the Canaries discover an derelict ship where a sexual magnetism virus is in full effect... to the point where that's how the crew aboard that ship died. It would've ended with Lister trying to kill Rimmer for trying to make love to Kochanski. Apparently, Naylor thought it would've been too inappropriate... so instead, this borderline (if not outright) sexist schlock was put on the air.
• The official Red Dwarf website notes, in an "interview" with Kill Crazy, that Kill Crazy didn't programme Kryten: instead, it was a prisoner that we never saw. I'm a bit sceptical: how are we sure that he's not lying under his teeth? It feels a bit cop-out-ish.
• So, yeah, Kryten apparently makes his money off of beer cans. And not just money: his armour is gold, for one. Either it's "faux-gold", there's scarce amounts of beer on ship, or the prisoners have a drinking problem.
• Second question: HOW THE HELL ARE PRISONERS GIVEN ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES?
• Third, why didn't any officer stop the exploitation? Hell, where are the officers? All we get is Ackerman flipping out about the lack of his glass eye.
• Now, about the B-movie parody. While I otherwise found it funny, I find it hypocritical that Naylor is blasting B-movies for stupid plots and poor special effects, when "Pete" is judged to have both a poor plot and poor special effects. (And no, I'm not buying into the "it's a parody of a B-movie" camp.)

Favourite Scene: Uh, the credits? OK, the "Attack of the Giant Savage Completely Invisible Aliens" was alright.

Least Favourite Joke: Too much competition.

Score: 1... for now. This episode is on a pseudo-probation. 

Update 9 November 2014: Actually, giving it a score would give it too much dignity. I won't give it the 0, but only because that would justify it as an episode of Red Dwarf. 

Red Dwarf Review: Series VII, Episode 6: "Beyond A Joke"

Airdate: 21 February, 1997

Synopsis: Kryten gets so jealous, his head blows up. The rest of the group need to find a second droid to help repair him, or something. They come across a simulant, that tries to show Kryten why he was created.

Yes. This went to air.

Review: The fine folks at the Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede and Titan (which is something like a Dead Homer Society-type blog) have dubbed this episode "Barely a Joke", for it's supposed lack of good humour and dull plot. Is it that bad?

Sorta.

A decent problem here is Kryten's character. Again, Kryten continues to be overtly jealous. Sure, it's justified: I'd be a bit miffed if somebody forgot the anniversary of me meeting my best friends. However, it goes to irrational levels in Jane Austen World. Once he commandeers a tank to destroy the Jane Austen World scenario, all sympathy for him is gone. You want to see Kryten shoved out an airlock at that point. Yet the crew go on and praise his lobster... yet apparently ketchup sends him over the edge. Once his head's restored, his character gets mildly better. I did like the reveal on his backstory... or at least, I tried. The nega-drive, though...

...let's just make this clear. The Kryten from Series III-VI was not pompous. Overbearing? A tiny bit, but he was dealing with idiots. Ridiculous-looking? A little. But his main character trait was being a relative bastion of sanity on a ship of fools, only held back by relatively dated technology, his prior loneliness aboard the Nova 5, and a relative aloofness compared to other humans. It helped give him depth, and provided humour. This episode is essentially saying that all of Kryten's actions this season, the jealousy, the selfishness, the screechy behaviour, were all ingrained in his personality, and that he was meant to become a druggie. Doug Naylor has effectively destroyed Kryten's character, for the sake of tension and to do a "drugs are bad, okay" story.

However, the big, overlying problem in this episode? It's probably the most boring episode in Red Dwarf history. There are few decent jokes in the first half. It's pretty much a dead zone from the simulants on. The joke about PMT is bad, the heads/tails joke goes on too long, the Vietnam joke is boring and explained to us, the GELF costumes are horrid... It's a boring, boring episode, meant to make a simple note about drug use.

Oh, and there are way too many plots in this episode.

The saddest part by a mile? This episode was co-written by Robert Freaking Llewellyn. Yes. Kryten himself wrote this episode. Now consider this; he wrote this episode to give himself less involvement. Edits done by Naylor made it so that he had more involvement than ever before. I'm starting to really hate Doug Naylor now. He's destroyed (or mishandled) two characters, has not used a third to her full potential, sacrificed comedy in favour of boring plots, and seems to be acting like a smeghead to the co-writers. No wonder why Norman Lovett would eventually swear off any future involvement with the franchise.

This is incredible. Series I-V had a 100% pass rate, and VI only had one duff episode. Even that duff episode was pretty funny. Here, a solid 50% of the series is bad. Thank god we only have 2 episodes left.

Tidbits:

• Kryten's head exploding is one of the single worst special effects in the history of the show. You actually see the dummy head. Remember when the show's editors used to care a little? I don't, either.
• ...I have nothing else. This is the most depressed that Red Dwarf has ever made me.

Favourite Scene: I will admit that the scene with the Cat trying to decide what century Kryten came from was decent, if a bit too long.

Least Favourite Scene: From the moment the simulant appears, there is pretty much nothing funny about the episode.

Score: 1. We've sunk that low. I might amend it down to a 0 if Series VIII doesn't sink lower.