“Ah, my petite sausage of rapture!”
In 1994, video game makers at Shiny Entertainment unleashed upon the gaming world one of the most original and “spit take” inducing sci-fi superhero parody characters of all time: Earthworm Jim. For those who remember Jim’s first release, you know what kind of craziness this little cartridge had in store for gamers when it first became popular some 14 years ago... wow, it's already been 14 years... spooky. Anyway, Jim was the Joe Shmoe of earthworms, until one day an experimental alien “super suit” fell from the sky and landed just close enough to Jim that he was able to crawl inside of it while escaping pursuit by a hungry crow. The suit mutated Jim, making him much larger and giving him human intelligence, while the suit itself provides our hero with arms, legs, super strength, a blaster gun and what can best be described as a “pocket rocket”. Oh yeah, and Jim also stole Ash's “Groovy!” catchphrase, only he tries to say it like “Guh-roovy”. Jim soon got himself wrapped up in the intergalactic civil war between the evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt (called “Queen Slug-for-a-Butt” to keep a generation of gamers from hyperventilating every time they referred to her) and her hot, not-evil sister Princess What's-Her-Name. Fighting on the side of the good Princess in the generic role of “hero trying to stop the bad guys so he can get laid”, Jim waged a one worm war on the Queen's evil minions with colorful names like Psy-Crow, Major Mucus, Evil the Cat, Chuck and Fifi, Bob the Killer Goldfish, and the super suit's creator, Professor Monkey-for-a-Head. The whole thing was a genius parody of science fiction on par with
a David Zucker – Jim Abrahms movie. As such it should come as little surprise that the following year the game would be turned into a cartoon by the people at Universal and sold to the folks at Warner Bros., who were looking for new Saturday morning programming with which to kick off the “Kids' WB” portion of their new television station, debuting with reruns of “Animaniacs” and “Batman: the Animated Series”, and new original programs like “Freakazoid”. Voicing the title hero? None other than Homer Simpson himself, Dan Castellaneta!
In this premiere episode, Jim and his sidekick Peter Puppy (voiced by Jeff Bennett, who does so much voice work that he needs a team of accountants to keep track of all of his W2 forms... heh heh, tax humor) start off cornered by the sinister Prof. Monkey-for-a-Head (voiced by Charlie Adler, who fans of “Rocko's Modern Life” recognize as Ed Bighead) and his latest deviant invention: a spittoon armed with a giant finger powered by a series of robotic feet with sneakers that, when rubbed on the ground, create a fatal static discharge that'll put your insides on your outside. While the guy sharing skull space with his evolutionary ancestor is distracted, Jimbo clocks the prof with a detachable rocket hand (“Did you forget I'm modular?”) and saves the day... until he accidentally steps on Pete's foot/paw and the adorable sidekick goes all Bruce Banner, hulking into a purple monstrosity and getting into a cartoon cloud of smoke and limbs with his boss as Monkey Brains Watusis to freedom, stage left.
Unhappy with Pete's inability to keep from turning into a bad knock-off of the Tasmanian Devil (I refuse to call him “Taz”, damn it!), Jim has to kick the Sprout to his Green Giant to the proverbial curb. While EJ looks for a new partner in crime (fighting), Queen Ass Slug has discovered the whereabouts of her elusive sister Princess What's-Her-Name and sends Psy-Crow to kidnap her so they can ransom her curvaceous thorax to our hero in exchange for his super suit. Before going off in search of his lady love, (who's not nearly as helpless as Psy-Crow had hoped...) Jim stops at the local sidekick store, where he checks out Whooping Cough Boy (with the power of gale force coughs), Mr. Forehead Vein (with his giant, villain clutching forehead veins), and Zantor (the conservatively dressed master of the “flying toupee”) before settling on a Shadow... no, he's not the Shadow... nor is he even the crappy Archie Comics version from the '60s (as seen HERE hitting Plastic Man's sexual predator disc jockey uncle during a domestic dispute)... No, Jim's Shadow's amazing ability is making shadow puppets. A power that will no doubt paralyze any ne'er-do-well in his or her tracks... provided they're under the age of 7 and easily amused.
As you can imagine, a Shadow doesn't fare too well when the duo run into a swamp planet populated by mutant alligators (that look like humanoid scorpion-meal worm-hybrids or something) and Jim is left on his own to... be eaten by a big mutant alligator dressed like June Cleaver. Back at Jim's house, Peter Puppy expresses his emo-ness over being fired to his friend, the sentient pile of phlegm known as Snott (voiced incoherently by the Crypt Keeper himself, John Kassir!), and disturbs us with a topless tutu interpretive dance... oddly enough it's not the idea of a male character in a tutu that unsettles my lunch, cuz Bugs Bunny (aka Efrem the Retarded Rabbit) has been doing drag since Pearl Harbor, but somehow giving Pete a skirt but no shirt is the problem. Whatever deep rooted psychological trauma I may have, Jim escapes his prison of greasy grimy gator guts only to learn that his Princess is in another castle... a little something for the old skoolers out there from me to you, *wink*wink*.
Trying out additional new sidekicks like Whoopee Cushion Man (the gassy wonder), Captain Cabbage (whose sole reason for being is to become a coleslaw reference on the Planet of Enormous Hammers), and Turns-His-Eyelids-Inside-Out Boy, Jim finally finds the right planet where PC is holding Princess I Know She's An Insect And A Cartoon Character But I'd Still Fuck Her, on the Boulevard of Acute Discomfort. EJ gets his super suited butt handed to him by the crow's new high tech suit of armor (which is made of a pot-bellied stove and should have “ACME” printed on the side), only to be saved at the last possible minute by Peter Puppy who proves his worth to Jim by Hulking out and doing all the villain smashing himself. The Princess is “saved”, Petey's been reinstated in the Kickers of Side Union, and a random cow falling from the sky takes us out. Oh yeah, this episode also includes a little side story in which Evil the Cat attempts to mercilessly slaughter the purest, most innocent boy in the universe, only to be himself melted with acid, hit by cars, turned into sausage links, and finally blown up in a fireworks factory and launched into a star. Ladies and gentlemen, the Wile E. Coyote of our show: Evil the Cat.
“Earthworm Jim” was one of those programs that liked to blend big words with slapstick comedy so we didn't feel like children for watching it, but at the same time the Stooge inside of us got his/her fair share of attention. From the bizarre (but comical) names of the planets that inhabit Jim’s solar system to the increasingly strange lines of dialogue to the fact that they got the Crypt Keeper to voice a sentient pile of snot whose only lines are gurgling sounds like a backed up toilet is all very odd and excellent if that’s the kind of thing you’re into… which I am. The animation is understandably kid friendly (with the exception of the massive cup sizes and backside curves the ladies like to sport) and something of a turn off given the stylized art that the games introduced us to. Oh well, some of us get what we want, some of us not. As far as pilot episodes go, “Sidekicked” forgets the point of having a pilot episode: introducing people to the main characters and explaining how and why everybody fits into the story where they do. This pilot just assumes that everybody watching has already played the video games, thus playing to their already established fan base instead of trying to make the uninitiated feel comfortable with a simple 20 minute (or 40 minute in the case of a two parter pilot, which is more common) handshake and offering them a beer. The disadvantage of this of course being that if the game's fans think the cartoon sucks you're screwed while the alienated would-be newcomers are switching over to see what's on the other channels. It'd be too easy to say that a simple pilot error (*rimshot*) was the sole reason the show didn't make it past a second season, so I'll just say it's because there were too many big words spoken too fast for the average child raised by their Saturday morning TV parents to follow along with properly and leave it at that.
Moral of the Story: Plan A? SENSELESS VIOLENCE! Plan B? Senseless terror...
