Freakazoid Gets a Doggie Sidekick and We Learn His Origin Story as My Patron-Funded Exploration of Freakazoid Continues

Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.

In Freakazoid! our hero is forever acquiring and losing sidekicks. He just can’t seem to hold onto a sidekick, which is to be expected of his former assistant Expendable Lad but is true of all of his other sidekicks as well. 

In “Foamy the Freakadog” Freakazoid goes outside of his species in his endless, perpetually unsuccessful crusade for a sidekick who will stick around for a while. While terrorizing a dogcatcher for a minor traffic violation, Freakazoid encounters a dog that’s foaming at the mouth with a look of pure murder in his eyes. 

He’s bad news, a seemingly feral, rabid beast who is to cartoon dogs what Bloom County’s Bill the Cat is to comic strip cats: a viscerally unnerving parody that’s uniquely worthless.

Freakazoid falls instantly in love with him all the same. In a gag that feels unmistakably improvised, Freakazoid keeps cooing over his new canine companion with blubbering baby talk about how the angry and psychotic animal has a “squeezy face” and is full of “sweetmeats.”

Freakazoid forces poor Foamy the Freakadog to look just like him. He gives him a pompadour identical to his own and colors his fur his own distinctive shade of blue. 

There’s no reason Freakazoid and his dog have to look the same beyond branding, I suppose, and tradition. Freakazoid and Foamy the Freakadog might have the same coloring and costume but they otherwise operate at cross purposes. 

Foamy’s default move in any fighting situation is to purposefully ignore the bad guys and attack Freakazoid instead. It may be a one note gag but it’s a gag that works, in no small part due to the genius of Foamy’s character design and an inspired voice performance by, you guessed it, Frank Welker, the animation legend who has voiced every cartoon animal since the beginning of time. 

Like Bill the Cat, Foamy is disturbing to look at yet oddly cute all the same. We’re so innately attracted to animals that even cartoon critters that are specifically designed to be as ugly, violent and as unpleasant as possible can’t help but seem at least a little bit charming and cute. 

We then check in with Lord Bravery, who is essentially a superhero version of John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, as he discovers that he must change his name due to the existence of a Lord Bravery Sweet Shoppe. 

The government is apparently VERY concerned that people will confuse Lord Bravery the superhero with the Lord Bravery Sweet Shoppe, where you can buy muffins and scones. 

So a genially deranged man suggests that Lord Bravery changes his name to that of another business, beginning with Smoked Meats and Fishes as well as Dreamworks, which, understandably, is already taken. 

So Lord Bravery the superhero visits the Lord Bravery Sweet Shoppe in an attempt to get them to change their name to one less identical to his own and discovers that the proprietor would be happy to change the name except that her name is Helen and that is already taken by another store. 

The apoplectic superhero tries to get another business to change its name to accommodate Helen and himself, which leads to seemingly every store in town changing its name before poor Lord Bravery ends up being re-christened Lord Smoked Meats and Fish. 

It’s a gloriously Pythonese piece of absurdity and wordplay, which is appropriate considering that Lord Bravery is very overtly a riff on John Cleese’s most famous character although its theme song is, of course, a parody of Gilbert & Sullivan, every child’s favorite. 

To put things in Pythonese terms, episode number six offers something completely different. Instead of a series of segments and blackout gags, “The Chip Part One” is one third of Freakazoid’s origin story. 

In a bit that’s random even by the show’s very lenient standards, Jack Valenti, the longtime head of the Motion Picture Association of America, playing himself, addresses us directly to explain that they’ve received so many letters asking for Freakazoid’s backstory that they were moved to chronicle it for posterity. 

Freakazoid’s tale begins with the sinister Apex corporation discovering that due to a flaw in their Pinnacle chip, there is a microscopic chance that if a user were to type a precise series of numbers and letters onto a computer keyboard and then press delete, it would transform them into a Freakazoid, someone with superhuman strength and intelligence but also a predilection for being very silly. 

Computer genius and kilt aficionado Roddy MacStew brings this glitch to the attention of the company’s board of directors and is hurled out of a window from a great height by Apex’s eyepatch-sporting chairman Armondo Guitierrez (Ricardo Montalbán, oozing villainy). 

This is Freakazoid!, however, so the muckraking employee survives his ostensibly fatal fall without so much as a minor scratch. 

Poindexter Dexter Douglas, meanwhile, gets a Pinnacle chip for a Christmas present and when his cat Mr. Chubbikins (voiced by Frank Welker) steps on a random series of keys on his owner’s keyboard, the glitch is activated and the nerdy teenager transforms into a blue skinned, wisecracking, super-smart and super smart-ass superhero. 

There’s an element of body horror in Dexter’s transformation from affable dork to lightning fast superhero as well as a very 1990s belief that computers and the internet are magical and all-powerful.

The show apparently wanted Mike Myers to voice Roddy MacStew but they ended up with Craig Ferguson instead. I believe that marks the first, last and only time Myers has ever turned down a chance to do a Scottish accent. 

MacStew discovers Dexter Douglas’ secret identity while Armondo Guitierrez schemes to get the code that turns nerds into heroes. 

“The Chip Part 1” is about as straightforward as Freakazoid gets structurally and plot-wise but that still means that Jack Valenti plays a huge role in the proceedings and a villain threatens Dexter’s family with the comedy of Marty Ingels. 

I’m also fascinated by the show waiting until its sixth show for its origin stories. Baywatch Nights did something similar, inexplicably choosing not to explain how its hero went from being a lifeguard to being a lifeguard/private investigator until deep into its first season.  

I wish someone would pay me to write about every episode of Baywatch Nights but I’ve started the process of writing up every episode for my Patreon followers and will hopefully get around to finishing that glorious journey some day. 

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