Budruss

I remember seeing this show on TV late at night in the mid 90s, but I remember there being more episodes that just the two that IMDB lists.

It was a bit of a poor-man's "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" clone, with the difference that they plainly stated that the participants knew their challenges in advance. And there was even some cross-over with the more famous British (At the time. They hadn't moved it to the States yet) show.

I remember it wasn't as funny as "Who's Line Is It Anyway?", but it was still entertaining, with quite a few familiar faces appearing. It apparently wasn't enough to carry it through, though, as it was soon canceled and the American version of "Who's Line" came to our screens.

Most of the praise that is given to this production, though well deserved, is qualified by "For a fan film". But in a way this increases the value of said praise as the people doing this spent a lot of time, energy, and money on just doing a Futurama fan film for no other profit than to have done it.

What they did here was quite amazing! The reproductions of the sets are very well detailed and accurate. The characters, once you get over the fact that they are not the original cast, are portrayed extremely well. And the special effects, EG the puppet Bender, are... Well, acceptable. I was actually impressed at how they did it after seeing a behind-the-scenes video.

The only thig I really consider a bummer about the whole thing is that it's half an episode. They spent a lot of time setting up plot elements that you expect to pay off, only to have it end and Zapp Brannigan come out and deliver a "pity you won't see what happens next" monologue as an ending.

Though as a humorous side note, the guy who plays him, Vic Mignogna, also played Jim Kirk in "Star Trek Continues". I don't know if it was intentional or not but I thought it was a nice little in-joke.

Overall I'd say it's worth watching for any fan of the series. It's obvious a lot of love went into it as it rife with easter eggs and attention to detail. I just wish it was complete.

Imagine if the writers if one of those insipid carbon-copy Disney sitcoms were given the idea of "Clerks" to flesh out into a half-hour comedy show without being allowed to see the actual movie. Imagine they were only given a list of character names, brief (and heavily cleaned up) descriptions of their personalities, and a few plot points to focus on.

Now imagine that the script they eventually came up with was sent through a machine called the Bland-O-Matic 2000 before given to a director with no sense of humor.

Can you picture it? Probably not, because it's way worse than that.

Everything that made "Clerks" what it was has been stripped out resulting in yet another cookie-cutter sitcom that just happens to share the same name as the Kevin Smith movie.

No Quick-Stop. No Jay and Silent Bob, no drug references (Though there are one or two instances of someone saying the word "drunk"), and basically no sleaze. It's all been Disneyed to the point of being unrecognizable. If you were to change the characters names you would never even know it wasn't just some other ultra-formulaic Disney sitcom with the exact same tired jokes as every other show they've ever produced.

You can find this thing on YouTube, but I strongly advise you not to try to get through it in one sitting. Yes, it's that bad.

If I seem angry about this it's because I am, a little. I loved the movie when it first came out and still do to this day. It was bad enough what ABC did to the "Clerks" animated series, but this thing feels like a line was crossed.

Whatever your opinion of the movie "Clerks", whether you loved it or hated it, one thing we can all agree on was that this show was BAD!