天下制覇

I'm pretty sure a masturbation joke was very badly missed there.

Sorry, this airs too late on a work-night for me to get to in the evening between puppy stuff in more evening and morning. Waking up at the crack of dawn is painful.

Quasi-Impressions:

This is another western show that probably needs no introduction, given that the internet has latched onto it like a tapeworm, which, like Venture Bros back in the day, is one of the reasons why I'm fairly loathe to say much about it. I mostly enjoy it, broadly speaking, but it's very hit or miss for me, and seeing the reams and reams of repetition of awkward jokes, not to mention theories, analyses, and pure fanwank that comes out fatigues me immensely. It's very similar to Community in that regard (Dan Harmon was showrunner on both it and this), and I fear that it's kind of going down the same path where it becomes less about comedy or parody with actual people, and more into playing off the loudest and craziest members of the online audience. Hardly a unique issue for anything that cultivates a rabid fan following (see also Dr Who, Lost, and the aforementioned Venture Bros). It very transparently relies on more chaotic improvisational-style humor, and I think that reading into anything the show does given that is some high grade navel gazing.

As for this particular episode, it was very much more focused on heavy drama, delivered with a sledgehammer to the chops, and I can only assume that it's because the fandom is in love with such, making veritable mountain ranges of hay out of a throaway little dark humor bit here and there in previous seasons. The Mad Max parody was pretty underbaked, and most of the best jokes with it were already shown off in promos weeks ago. I'd have much rather seen more of the robot family, although Beth seemed particularly stupid considering that she's supposed to be one of the smart characters. I also don't get what they're doing with Jerry either, and he seems the biggest casualty to it suddenly deciding it wants to have a melodramatic, continuous-running plot thread. Definitely not one of the stronger episodes by a very large margin.