There Are No Walls in the House of Jearl - Mystery DVD #139

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August 14th, 2008
02:27 pm

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Mystery DVD #139
Jack of All Trades: The Complete Series: Disc Two

oh god what
agh
nooooo

okay. be the ball.

I have a new theory about Jack of All Trades. I think Palau-Palau is a manifestation of the Singularity. All terrible fiction comes here and interbreeds. What we observe as Jack of All Trades is just a snapshot of the tempest sliced from literature referencing the early nineteeth century, tearing into itself like a swarm of maddened eels. I further conjecture that at the time of the Singularity terrible erotic fanfiction will outweigh all other writings by wordcount, which would explain the strained sexual tension and awful puns the following episodes are so saturated in. Somehow the signal has propagated back to us, via the social construct that is Sam Raimi.

My housemate [info]julrosec says that it's all just a pity party for Bruce Campbell.
To recap a bit: the year is 1801. Jack Stiles is an American secret agent sent by Thomas Jefferson to the French colony of Palau-Palau to keep an eye on Napoleon's Pacific empire. He teams up with British agent Emilia Rothschild and moonlights as local folk hero the Daring Dragoon. Previous episodes reviewed here. Oddly, I seem to have missed four episodes. I don't think they were on Disc One.


1.9 "Croque for a Day" - Napoleon sends an inspector to Palau-Palau to check on Governor Croque. Jack and Emilia fear that he wll be replaced by someone competent, so they convince him to go on some diamond-prospecting boondoggle for a week while Jack impersonates Croque. Nothing really interesting happens except that Emilia has to impersonate Jack's superhero alterego, the Daring Dragoon, to bust up an execution. She sort of rules at it, especially with the terrible puns, to Jack's dismay.

1.10 "Dead Woman Walking" - The Daring Dragoon is very popular on Palau-Palau, and so to turn the islanders against him, Croque has his captain impersonate him and repeatedly defile an important tomb. Since Jack and Emilia are unable to focus long enough for a normal stakeout, Emilia decides to fake her own death with a potion of her own devising. Jack inadvertently traps himself in her coffin and they narrowly escape cremation. There is much sexual tension. It is horrible. Anyway somehow the crematorium is in the same place as the tomb, so they jump out and Jack fights the impostors, while Emilia scares the crap out of them by pretending to be a vengelful undead. Croque and Capt. what's-his-name promise a public apology. With that cleared up Emilia has a remarkable recovery and returns to her fake job.
So just before the Singularity people will sometimes come back from the dead. Good to know.

1.11 "Love Potion No. 10" - So horrible. Croque's wife is coming to Palau-Palau. Somehow everyone knows that Napoleon associates a strong sex drive with administrative ability, so basically if Croque doesn't prove his worth by satisfying Mme. Croque it will get back to Napoleon and he will be replaced. Sorry, every time I paid attention for more than two minutes at a time I would start to black out from the awful. Also, Mme Croque witnesses the Dashing Dragoon in action and finds him just the cutest little thing. Okay, so since Jack and Emilia don't want Croque replaced, they use Science! to make a superpowerful aphrodisiac to give him. Unfortunately, Jack knocks it over and it gets all over him and Emilia. Much terrible soul-killing sexual tension nonsense ensues. Anyway they manage to keeep their hands off each other long enough to convince Croque to dress up as the Daring Dragoon and have some good clean role-playing fun with his wife, it all works out, the end. The only way Croque doesn't know Jack is the Daring Dragoon is if he's in end-stage syphilitic dementia, so I don't know what Napoleon's worried about.

1.12 "Up the Creek" - On to a series of obscenely wrong historical figure guest stars. Jack and Emilia are relaxing on the beach when who should turn up but Lewis and Clark (expedition 1804-1806), horribly slandered as pig-ignorant buffoons. They got lost looking for Oregon, think America is still at war with the British, so Emilia is the enemy and Jack must be a traitor. They tie them up and go get themselves captured by the French. Meanwhile Croque has gone sompletely insane and has taken to wearing a suit of plate armor. Jack and Emilia save the day with some sort of magnet gizmo and Emilia hires Sacajawea to help them find Oregon. Very, very bad.

1.13 "X Marquis the Spot" - King George III's crown is stolen. Jack and Emilia are dispatched to another island to follow the only lead. The island turns out to be a sex resort run by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). Unspeakably lame, campy nonsense follows. Jack gets to be the bottom. Of course Croque and Captain what's his name are there, I think they might also be looking for the crown. Sorry for the lack of detail, I was busy covering my eyes and screaming. There's some sort of piggyback race. Jack fights de Sade and gets the crown back. I level up a character in CthulhuMUD, which is a lot less sanity-blasting.

1.14 "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Opera" - George III (reign 1760-1820) visits Palau-Palau, where a famous tenor is performing in an opera honoring Napoleon and Governor Croque. Jack and Emilia get wind that someone is trying to assassinate him. My character dream walks to Hatheg-Kla but my climb skill is way too low to reach the top. Probably for the best. Emilia invents a bomb detector. The opera makes the Daring Dragoon a cowardly midget, to Jack's dismay. Anyway they defeat the assassin, the end.

2.1 "A Horse of a Different Color" - Horse racing is suddenly a huge thing on Palau-Palau. Catherine the Great (1729-1796) turns up looking for her missing prize stallion. Many truly wretched sexual innuendoes come hurtling to earth. Catherine threatens to level Palau-Palau with her gunships if the horse doesn't turn up. Jack and Emilia check out the races and instantly waste the entire day becoming gambing addicts. After a play for more time, the Daring Dragoon enters a race on his daring steed Nutcracker (wow, last seen in episode 2 or 3) and spots the missing horse, which has been painted to look like a giraffe. Catherine the Great goes away happy and also dead, since this is supposed to be 1801.

2.2 "Shark Bait" Nardo Da Vinci, descendent of Leonardo, is terrorizing the tropics in a huge shark-shaped submarine. Jack and Emilia break out Emilia's little submarine (more continuity!) and investigate. They find Blackbeard imprisoned aboard. Large confusing fight scene ensues, there's a hot-air balloon involved, they defeat the sub, wow, anticlimax.

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From:[info]dulinor
Date:August 15th, 2008 02:41 pm (UTC)

Wow

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That there's some good reviewin'

Makes me want to crack the shrink wrap on my boxed set of these DVD's. Maybe I can find your missing episodes.

C'mon though, are you going to tell me you didn't hum along with the theme song even once?
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From:[info]jearl
Date:August 17th, 2008 03:07 pm (UTC)

Re: Wow

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it's worse than that. I get the opening phrase stuck in my head and visualize it in Rock Band graphics.

(there's Rock Band in my house now. So much for doing anything creative this summer.)
From:[info]jdyer
Date:August 19th, 2008 01:02 am (UTC)
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I see you took my levelling suggestion. Sanity is all a matter of multitasking!
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