calvind-4 Reviews

It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988 TV Movie)

I don't remember seeing a more depressing Peanuts special.

[3/10 · 6 October 2022]

I wanted to like this, I really did. I like the Peanuts specials, as a rule, and I didn't think that any of them was truly bad (but then that may be because I haven't yet seen all of them). But sitting down and watching this made me question my life choices.

To start with, it's mostly live action, with only a handful of fully animated segments linking the beginning to the rest of the feature. This is the only point in which Charlie Brown and Snoopy appear. That's fine, but for the rest, the live action cast interact with an animated character (Spike), which raises questions as to how their worlds connect. Where does the animated world stop and the real world begin? Is there some kind of portal between them? It's really an unusual way to make something like this, but it may have something to do with Roger Rabbit being in theatres around the time this special aired.

The general premise is that Spike gets himself picked up by the titlular Girl in the Red Truck, Jenny (played by Charles Schulz's daughter, Jill). They hang out, her boyfriend Jeff comes along... unfortunately, little of value happens until the last 15 minutes or so, where Spike is involved in a gunfight and is saved by the couple. They offer him a nice home with them, but he trades it all for his old, quiet, isolated life in the desert, leaving us with really a sad ending.

The problem is, it's all loosely tied together with things that just sort of happen. We have only a vague idea of what goes on in the live characters' world. We know Jenny aspires to be a jazz dancer, and Jeff tries to arrange an audition over her aerobics class, but we get little beyond that. For all we know, they were both just ill-informed of each other's plans. Maybe that's what it's meant to be, but you're never sure.

I did have hopes for this special, as previously stated, so it really struck me how plodding and miserable the whole thing is. Of course, the next special, "Why, Charlie Brown, Why?" gets the Peanuts Animated Canon back on track with its handling of its hard-hitting subject matter, and is not saddening for puerile reasons. This one, however, remains a strange anomaly.

Titanic (2012)

A poor way to mark Titanic's centenary.

[2/10 · 2 August 2021]

The first time I watched this series, I said "it was heartbreaking". And it is - but for all the wrong reasons.

In writing this miniseries, Julian Fellowes criticized James Cameron's version for his liberties with the truth, saying that his depiction of the sinking is accurate and will "set the record straight". But the reality is that he somehow mangles the history of the Titanic into a nigh-unrecognizable dirge - arguably even more so than the 1996 miniseries. People getting into the wrong lifeboats, people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the sets being crude approximations of the actual ship. But perhaps the worst is Bruce Ismay apparently deliberately locking up the A la Carte Restaurant staff and leaving them to die, something he would never think to do, especially considering he was the one who hired them in the first place. Without this deliberate ignorance of the facts, the drama could've got away with being average. With its inclusion, it's just offensive.

The fictional characters have a bit more leeway. Telling individual stories leading up to the disaster and so on makes for an interesting concept. Unfortunately not even that is executed well. It almost works, but is let down by the farrago of distortion that surrounds it. Most of the characters aren't that memorable anyway. I liked Toby Jones as Mr. Bately, but that's it.

Quite frankly, this miniseries is a sham, and considering it was made for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, that's unpardonable. I'm not sure if Fellowes made these mistakes deliberately or what, but he certainly needs to buck his ideas up if he thinks he can topple the giant that is the Cameron version.

Titanic (1996)

Actually it's quite offensive.

[2/10 · 15 June 2021]

This is an unusual specimen. Ostensibly, when James Cameron was making his blockbuster "Titanic", CBS wanted to get their foot in the door with their own take on the story. They got an all-star cast, and they got a first-rate musical score, but somehow they get almost everything else wrong. The representation of the Titanic's personnel and passengers is wrong. The layout of the ship is wrong. Great liberties are taken with the history of the Titanic. Thomas Andrews is nowhere to be seen. It feels, at times, like we're on a completely different ship - a feeling which becomes more apparent on repeated viewings. The fiction about Alice Cleaver being a murderer was taken without verification from "Titanic: An Illustrated History", which Don Lynch had to do a U-turn on.

But perhaps the crowning insult of the production is the scene in which Tim Curry as the villain violates a steerage girl in the showers. It is stunning how OFFENSIVE this sequence is, and the reason I say it's stunning is because it's clear that they would NEVER have gotten away with it in some other premise. It serves little purpose in this story but to be a shock moment for the viewers. Absolutely despicable! There is no other word for it!

I'll say this much: you can't tear your eyes away from the screen even when you want to. Some scenes, particularly near the end, are powerful in a way. George C. Scott as Captain Smith makes for interesting viewing, even if the only similarity is that he has a white beard. In the end, however, the promise this miniseries showed was ruthlessly squandered and butchered. The only redeeming value is Catherine Zeta Jones.

Nostalgia Critic: The Wall (2019) Season 12, Episode 38

Worst review ever made.

[1/10 · 2 September 2020]

Already reeling from the Change the Channel protests, Doug Walker renders his reputation completely unrecoverable with this episode of the long-running Nostalgia Critic series. This is the story of a man who's love for movies was transformed into a cynical scam by paranoid copyright holders, until he was turned into a shadow of himself, having lost his friends, his personality, and any sense of credibility.

As you may be aware, YouTube's freedom of speech is under constant attack by a bunch of insecure Hollywood goons. So Doug had a better idea: gather up his crew to reenact scenes from the movie and work from there. The result is that it's all gotten very... impersonal. It became less about critique and more about just making parodies for parody's sake. The idea came to a head with this hideous, misguided, ill-thought-out, poorly-edited parody of a pinnacle of British pop culture.

For reference, Pink Floyd's The Wall deals with subjects like the needless deaths of World War II, the draconian education system of 1950s Britain, Thatcherism, and drug abuse, all causing a rock star to isolate himself from the world, building the titular Wall around him. Here, the Nostalgia Critic brushes all that under the rug and tacks it down to sheer pretentiousness. He himself says "Many saw it as too pretentious and full of itself," which is a thought that only a handful of people share.

Schools were abhorrently cruel to children at the time; Thatcher's Tories were abhorrently cruel to the common people at the time - and he makes a mockery of it all! Why else would someone say "LOL, so school sucks; grow a damn pair of balls"? Society has evolved from the days of corporal punishment in schools, but still man, have some respect for the people who had to suffer in those days!

From beginning to end, it's just PAINFUL to watch, and it baffles me that the show survived even this. If neglecting your own cast and crew doesn't kill your show, if this doesn't kill your show... what will?

Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (2013) Season Unknown, Episode Unknown

The most disappointing thing since Dimensions in Time.

[1/10 · 19 August 2016]

Frankly, I'm not surprised people love this one so much. They weren't there at the beginning; they don't know how important it was. This is it for them, this jumped-up firework display of a toy advert!

Look, let's forget for a moment that this special completely screwed up the Doctor's timeline by splicing another incarnation in the middle. Let's put aside how history was written in a way that sabotages emotional depth in early revival episodes. That I could forgive. But... this special plainly doesn't even attempt to celebrate the past 50 years. The original series ran for 26 years; the current series ran for 8, at least at the time of this special. In celebrating 50 years, this programme should be celebrating BOTH eras.

The producers invited back both of the past Doctors from the current series (only one of whom said yes), but no Doctors from the original, even though they were all willing to participate. They invited back the first companion in the current series, but no companions from the original. It doesn't matter how much of a master actor he is, John Hurt is never going to be any of the classic Doctors, however much he tries. A story about the two most recent Doctors, plus a brand new one, revisiting moments from just the last 8 years, is no celebration of the last 50 years, by anyone's measure.

Consider: the 10th anniversary four-part serial in 1973 gave us The Three Doctors. The 20th anniversary special in '83 gave us The Five Doctors, featuring an ensemble of returning companions. Even the 30th anniversary minisode in '93 gave us five returning Doctors in Dimensions In Time! Their plots may be derided to a degree, but at least they reunified us with so many old friends. Doctor Who's decennial rounding up of past Doctors and companions is the sole thing that fans follow the series for. Instead of a glorious celebration of the original series, any hope I might have had of seeing those characters again was rendered null and void.

This should have been a multi-part story, not a one-off. They should have built up to this special within the storyline of the regular series, made a new full-length two-part story starring each of the available returning Doctors (to give each of them the chance to be the Doctor for a full week again), plus minisodes, culminating in the big reunion show on the big night. What's that?! The general public would tune out after 30 minutes of episode one?! Maybe, but they could've at least tried; there's always going to be a loyal band of people sticking through it. Not enough time or money? The BBC didn't even make a Doctor Who series for this year! What's the point of inserting duplicates of Clara throughout the Doctor's entire existence if they're not going to shoot any new 'past Doctor' scenes for her to appear in? The far superior docudrama, "An Adventure In Space And Time", could have instead been 4 new 25-minute episodes starring at least one classic Doctor. Instead this single new episode was all about this new character, who nobody had ever seen before. What did viewers really want to see here? Somebody who no-one associated with the series? Because that's what they got! Why did the BBC go to so much effort to avoid the successful creatives who this programme was supposed to be paying tribute to? Did their lawyers fear litigation from Big Finish, who hold the 'past Doctors' audio story license? The only past Doctor who does get suitably represented (only to an extent, mind) - David Tennant's 10th (now 11th or 12th) Doctor - is similarly only permitted in the audios when he is not playing the Doctor, much like Tom Baker in this episode. Tennant's solitary presence here has the opposite of the intended effect, by making the episode look thoroughly ashamed of its heritage - which, I grant you, is quite possible: in Doctor Who's 15-year absence, the BBC had recurrently complained about how abysmal it was.

Was it perhaps because BBC America felt they couldn't market a 50th anniversary, but could market the return of Tennant? Perhaps they thought they were representative of all the American advertisers who fund the show's production these days more than the UK license-payer does. Good God, do they even know how long and successful the original series was in the US? You think Moffat did that all himself? Because he didn't! Just look at the Bally pinball machine, for a start! The US Tour truck!

Supporting the last 50 years of Doctor Who has been the character's belief of the significance of times gone by, something which the makers of this episode do not appear to share. It seems unjust to commemorate such an accomplishment by ignoring the contributors and all-time audiences who have allowed it to run for that long.

The reason why I watched New Who is because on some level I wanted to see a touch of the original series again, which is less likely during the course of a regular series, but if they can't even do that in the 50th anniversary special, then what's the point in me watching?

It's sad, really - All Steven Moffat has going for him is his luck (what with "The Empty Child" and "Blink"), and money (stupid people like us who buy his deuces whenever he spawns them). But now, he's intent on further wasting the time we gave to the BBC for five decades. I'll say it here and now: No more Doctor Who, no more Steven Moffat. It's obvious that we won't get what we want or deserve, so it's high time to move on. Doctor Who has died.

The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! (2010)

This sickening movie should be banned!

[1/10 · 19 December 2015]

I've sat through the epic-turned-porn Caligula, and THIS is what grinds my gears so badly. This is, beyond doubt and reservation, the WORST movie I have ever seen. Not only is there not a single likable character in this movie, but there also isn't a single scene that leaves you with anything better than a vague sense of discomfort after viewing it, most of which inspire active anger and pain. There is absolutely nothing in this movie worth seeing. Even if you just want to be titillated by the genitalia, don't waste your time; it isn't remotely titillating, it's just there. From what I can gather, this movie tries to be a scathing commentary on American censorship. But all it comes out as is a scathing commentary on the libidos and frat-boy mentality of Matt and Dave. I don't know what these guys were on when they wrote this script, but even Matt Stone and Trey Parker could've done a far better job.

The gist of the movie stems from the TV show about eight cartoon characters in a kind of reality show setting: Foxxy (played by Cree Summer - I haven't been able to watch My Life as a Teenage Robot since), Princess Clara (played by Tara Strong - I've only barely been able to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic since), Wooldoor (supposedly a Spongebob expy, but certainly doesn't act like it), Captain Hero (who exhibits a horrifying necrophilia throughout), Spanky Ham (who inexplicably reminds me of Squigley from Sinfest), Toot (who has somehow been impregnated by Barney Rubble), Xandir and Ling-Ling. Foxxy surmises that their show is off-air when she realises that nothing is being censored anymore - which would only make sense from the perspective that it was still on TV and the uncensored DVDs weren't available yet. It transpires that their CEO is trying to remove them from existence with a machine called ISRAEL (why call it that anyway? What's the point??), but their producer tries to help them escape. The film takes jabs at the producer being Jewish, at one point having him bother his neighbour to press the call button on his phone for him on account of it being Shabbat. Uh huh. Why he even had his phone on for the occasion, I cannot imagine. Anyway, the whole thing takes the housemates on a rampage across the desert into a cheap imitation of Disney animation into some kind of stage show with a South Park version of Baby June from 'Gypsy', through which many pointless attempts at making penises funny and the vehicular manslaughter of several beloved and respected cartoon characters occur. It actually gets worse in the last half-hour, with an animated sex scene in 3D, which, while not as hardcore as I'd feared, still is a psychedelic mind-rape that drags on for too long and again is not remotely titillating, after which the remaining housemates fly to Make-a-Point Land where they're greeted by a tornado of Foxxy's abortions, a wretched giant whose rostrum deposits waste into his mouth, and yes, more erection gags, proving once again that Matt and Dave have no limits when it comes to pointless and senseless exhibitionism.

I HATE this movie with a passion. I feel STUPIDER for having even attempted to sit through this disgusting, misleading, irresponsible film that should never have been made. To paraphrase the Cinema Snob, maybe that'll work out in future when I watch cruder films like Showgirls or Gross Out, because guess what: half of my brain is now missing!!

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Profound.

[9/10 · 4 August 2015]

If there's one franchise that's been hanging over me for the last five years, it's Scott Pilgrim. I'd always taken a liking to the art style of the books, and I vowed that I'd get to reading them one day. Since the last colourised book came out in May this year, I don't think I could've come up with a more appropriate time to get started. I bought the first volume, read it - couldn't put it down! It was a real page-turner! So I bought the rest, and thoroughly enjoyed it. For those unaware, Scott Pilgrim is a guy who has to fight his girlfriend's seven evil exes over the course of a year in a Toronto where RPG and video game elements are the most prevalent aspects of those who live in it, what with levelling systems and extra lives and save points and what have you. It's an epic in its own right, very well written - but I'm not going to deny that it has flaws, too. In spite of them though, it's at heart a story set in late-80s early-90s pop culture, with Bryan Lee O'Malley's distinctive style defining it. The movie came out a mere month after the last volume, in August 2010, which probably would have meant that the ending of the books was still being written when it was being filmed, I guess? The director is Edgar Wright, who also directed those movies with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, so I think we're in good hands.

So... wow, is this movie deep. Particularly toward the beginning, it follows the books particularly closely, while still allowing room to deviate into its own plot line. It does start to derail toward the end, to the point where there are TWO endings to the film! (I've only seen the theatrical one at the time of this writing.) Also, instead of playing out over a year, it plays out within only a month, which is kind of a shame since I think to take anything from the Scott Pilgrim books would hurt them, but what're you gonna do. For what we have though, I'm happy with how faithful it is to the source material.

Edgar Wright really brings the conventions of comic books to the screen what with experimental camera movement and the interplay between fore and background, and as a nod to the multitudinous Easter eggs to be found in the books, the movie has a multitude of his own. You know how each evil ex are assigned a number? Their scenes have that number in the background somewhere. On top of that, the letter X is played among them (you know - X, ex?) See how many you can spot! Even if the RPG elements are abandoned, the video game elements are not, carrying over from the comics and scattered in spades, turning up in even the most mundane of situations. Which also leads into its use of typography, invoking onomatopoeia every which way where and when suitably evocative.

As with the books, the story follows Scott and his battle with the League of Evil Exes. He's willing to go through with it, accept it as inevitability on his path to a relationship with Ramona Flowers. Having watched David Chen's video essay on this movie before watching it, I understand that the battles are metaphoric of the battles we go through in our own lives, attempting to overcome obstacles and emotional baggage, which seems daunting and sometimes feels just not worth going to the trouble of. Something like that. Anyway, each battle has their own distinctive vision, and Scott uses various methods to conquer them, including assistance from Ramona, and his own ex, Knives Chau. Speaking of which... I think her story's switched around a bit, she doesn't use hair dye as part of her battle costume - she uses it to mimic Ramona's when she's trying to hook up with Young Neil. I... am not sure how this works, but I'm not going to question it. The Katayanagi brothers really don't get much of a part either, unfortunately. They just come and go. Which, unfortunately, is what comes of having to cram six books' worth of material into 112 minutes. To that end, if you're expecting characters like Lisa Miller, Joseph, Mobile, and Gideon the cat, you won't find them. They're not here.

While we're on the subject of subtractions... the Subspace doors are only ever used twice in the film, even though it was a concrete element in the books. This causes a few truncations to some scenes which, while not having a major effect on the story, still do give rise to some unfortunate implications. Ramona also mentions a computer chip on the back of her neck, which I don't remember from the books, but that has some meaning too. Gideon represents how a significant other's most recent ex still has a hold on them, and still has a possibility of reclaiming them (which probably explains the sub-dom fantasy thing seen in Subspace/the Chaos Theatre).

So, after all that, where does this whole thing leave Scott? He realises he needs much more than love and infatuation: he needs humility, contrition, self respect... and apparently, Balls +8. But by now I'm probably giving away too much detail, so I'm just going to wrap things up.

This movie speaks a truth - and David's essay pointed me towards it: when you intertwine your life with someone else's, you share their burdens, struggles, and the ghosts of their past - and when you emerge from the battle with the past, the best thing you can anticipate is the doorway to an uncertain future, with the reassurance that we can walk through that door together. That's what makes Scott Pilgrim - both the books AND this movie - so sublime.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

This movie had a major influence on my recent life.

[9/10 · 21 May 2015]

And for all of its flaws, that is a significant accomplishment. On top of that, the movie is directed by Don Hall, who happens to have co-directed Winnie the Pooh (2011), one of my favourite kid's films. And the music comes from Henry Jackman, who also composed the music for that same. So I'd think we're in good hands.

Like most Marvel comics and movies, Big Hero 6 is defined by tragedy in the protagonist's life (namely, Hiro losing his brother), which leads through a series of events which creates the team of crime-fighters. Admittedly, the team itself is not really the main focus: it's really mostly Baymax and Hiro. Baymax, being the main attraction, is highly suited to his built purpose, and of course, is pretty darn adorable. Hiro's pretty awesome too. We do get a handful of scenes with his brother Tadashi too, and he seems like a nice guy. So much so, that the scenes with Hiro trying to cope with his death really got to me. I mean... REALLY. In fact I'm still pretty bummed that Tadashi had to die the way he did.

I cared about these people. Immensely. I wanted them to succeed, and that's the important part of any movie, even a Disney one. This caring forms sequences that may be TOO intense for some young children, like Wall-E, one of the only films that made me cry, and at the same time I hailed as one of Pixar's finest.

The film certainly does not fail in the visual department, either. As the name "San Fransokyo" might imply, it's a futuristic amalgamation of both Eastern and Western cultures, and it is certainly a sight to behold. It takes a vision of the future we've seen before and makes it look fresh and innovative, to say the least. The attention to detail is astounding, in fact it might need repeated viewings just to take it all in! Which, of course, might prove somewhat distracting from the story. The story might not be much of a surprise to you, but then, with these origin stories, what is surprising?

In short: Big Hero 6 is worthy of its Oscar. Just about. I'm just a bit saddened that most reviews on IMDb don't share my sentiment on that. And I'm also annoyed that they delayed the film in UK cinemas just to put together a cameo of two British YouTubers! Come on guys, stop wasting time and give us our masterpiece!!! You know it's a masterpiece just as well as I do!

Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992)

I have to confess...

[5/10 · 11 October 2014]

I liked this film as a child. I know, what was wrong with me!? Tom & Jerry speak and try to be friends? A story that's been heard several dozen times before? And money. Yes. I just cannot comprehend what I saw in this movie anymore. Except maybe the animation's nice and colourful, and the music's pretty dandy. But the latter would probably have been better off in some other movie. Anyway, the film does seem to focus more on Robyn's story, and that's not a good thing - if Robyn was the main focus, why bring the great cat and mouse duo into it? No, something like Tom & Jerry does not translate well into a 90-minute feature... as this attempt at it shows.

Caligula (1979)

A pile of unsaleable tat.

[1/10 · 6 July 2014]

When a glorified pimp steals control of a masterpiece, and when the moral compasses of all involves withers away, then worlds of cinemas collapse. Logical, no?

Once, several years before Star Wars, Gore Vidal wrote a screenplay about possibly the most depraved Roman emperor of Ancient times. It's probably safe to say that his mistake was in asking a porn magazine to fund this movie's production. Throw in the involvement of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione and you have Caligula, one of the most notorious failures of 70s cinema. While it's not quite as vicious as Cannibal Holocaust, it's still excessively exploitative; while Holocaust used real killings, Caligula used real sex - so as to try to boost sales of Penthouse magazine, apparently. So what grabbed my attention for this film so strongly, especially when I initially thought it'd give me nightmares? I mean it's not like it's entirely historically accurate, is it? Well... it's got Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren, among others. And the musical score is recognisable, at least among classical music aficionados.

Well, I took one for the team when I went to pick up a copy of the Imperial Edition DVD set. This included the uncut release... which SHOULD warrant an R18 where I live but somehow doesn't... the 1999 "Rated Version", misrepresented as the "Theatrical Version"... and there's the one I chanced at, the Alternative "Pre-Release" Edition, a new edit created from an earlier cut which re-arranges a few scenes back into their original context, and most of the explicit sexual inserts added by Guccione are removed, filled in by a handful of 16mm behind-the-scenes footage. So, fair enough, it's not so much of a sex film as it was before. But not even that could save Caligula from being one of the most miserable films I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

From start to finish this turkey blows (in more ways than one!), and it's not hard to see why: you have three conflicting artistic differences duking it out, and while sometimes it works, it can't really be excused that sometimes you can forget you're watching a film with explicit sex, and then a helping of genitalia brings you back to earth with an unpleasant thump. Not to mention the violence, as well - in one early scene, a soldier has several gallons of wine poured down his gullet, and Tiberius personally pokes a hole in him... just to prove to us that neither the Ancient Romans nor the Modern Writers have limits when it comes to pointless and senseless violence. Still... I guess it's fair game if, historically, Tiberius ordered to have the scales of a fish rub off a victim's face...

And as for the explicit porn - how did this get into public cinemas again? It's clear proof that Bob was a sex tycoon who sneaked back onto the set to film a hardcore porno movie for which - though as I recall, most of the acts are legal - the authorities could shut down the set and sentence everyone to jail. It almost happened anyway - in several theatres the movie was shut down and seized by police! I'm just saying that this is the sort of thing that doesn't bear watching if you aren't in the mood. I'm not going to say anything about them, for obvious reasons. Even if I did, perhaps my arguments would be invalid - except for the fact that they replaced some of the more important scenes.

This excessive sex and violence aside, the point is this: Caligula in general is a major dud - a long, drawn-out (seriously it drags on well over two hours!!) piece of work of which not one bit is historically accurate, nor assembled in a historically accurate order. If Bob was holding out for artistic freedom, then he'd failed in that respect because really, even ART has standards! Of course, it's not all bad news... Malcolm, Helen, Peter, John and co. did a fairly good job in their acting, and the music, like I said, is a splendid compilation to listen to. The sets aren't bad either, even if they do represent a nightmarish version of Ancient Rome. Also on the Imperial Edition DVD, there are a few deleted scenes which SHOULD have stayed in the film, as they surely would make it less of a disgrace than it is now. A complete and detailed history of the production of the film is also being written by James Ellis Chaffin and Ranjit Sandhu, with research from Thomas Ryerson, called 200 Degrees of Failure: The Unmaking of Caligula, slated for a release sometime this year, or possibly the next. You can find a lot of their research at their site (caligula.ws). I'm sure that the story behind how Gore Vidal's work fell apart would be a much interesting read, and I'm looking forward to it.

The Boondocks: Freedomland (2014) Season 4, Episode 7

Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

[1/10 · 6 July 2014]

It's not enough that this show had to offend me on account of being British, but it also has to insult its own target demographic. Quite apart from expanding on the ridiculous slavery plot from "Good Times" (which was also bad), but everything that happens in this episode is mean-spirited, cruel, and just flat out unnecessary. And anyway, why does Tom sign up to learn about the part of history he and his people would rather forget?! He and Ruckus' characters are massively derailed - not that it matters much for Ruckus, he'd lost all likability long ago. And this was written by Rodney Barnes! The executive producer and Aaron McGruder's right-hand man! I would think he would know better than this!! Sorry Boondocks - I have to hate you now.