Saturday, March 29, 2014

SBTB 03.11 - Pipe Dreams

I wasn't sure when I saw this scene:
Is that our troll to the right? The facial structure looks correct. The bangs. I'm almost positive -
Boo yah! Molly the Troll. Two on-campus episodes in a row. This makes me very happy.

Moving on, let's meet the man who plays Mr. Phelps.
Hiram Kasten
Do you recognize this man? Maybe not, but he is a regular showman. This is Hiram Kasten. He's been around. Not only has he been on some of the funniest shows on television (do I need to say more beyond "Seinfeld?"), but he has also had Vegas shows, most notably the "The Rat Pack is Back." His comedy act has opened for Jerry Seinfeld. He also tutors on showmanship. Nice.

How about the other guest star? Can he live up to the hype of Mr. Kasten? Maybe.
Gary Lahti
This is Gary Lahti, the man who played Dan Grayson, the oil man. His resume seems less impressive, but only because it is pretty short. Mr. Lahti made some uncredited appearances on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in the early days, which gave him exposure to then-writer Louis C.K. This exposure earned Mr. Lahti a spot in Louis C.K.'s indie movie "Tomorrow Night."

Speaking of comedians, did anyone get a 90s movie ping when they heard Screech claim to be an H2O Distribution Engineer? Yeah, Adam Sandler claimed this title as a team's waterboy in "The Waterboy" (though I think he just claimed to be a Water Distribution Engineer). Ah, SBTB continues to influence pop culture.

One thing I do want to note/applaud is the stronger - albeit cheesier - writing of this episode. Normally we get a pretty straight forward problem and Zack-genius solution. For this episode, however, things are strung out a bit. First, Zack makes a connection with a duck when he takes it home for the weekend. Then, the school finds oil. Then it all comes back to the duck getting hurt by something Zack was totally supporting. It's not until then that Zack is able to hatch a plan and save the school/ducks. Kudos, writers. But let's not be so sober next time. I don't watch SBTB for morality lessons!

To end, let's examine the final scene's high five. You have seen this numerous times in the show's opening. The one thing that has always stood out to me is the person who misses. For the life of me, I could never tell if the hand was Kelly's (perish the thought!) or Screech (serves him right?). Having finally reached this episode, I thought we could take a moment to analyze the high five and come to a determination as to who missed. Here is the scene:
Let's take a look at the pre-five:
Note that Screech is wearing something on his wrist while Kelly's is bare. Now the high five in action:
Is it just me, or does the goofy hand have something on its wrist? Furthermore, if it were Kelly's hand that shot too low then why is she looking up as if her hand were sky high? I think it is safe to say that Screech is the one that misses the high five. This almost makes me feel bad for picking on him in all my other blogs. But not really. If it is any consolation to Screech, it seems that Kelly's hand has also missed, as it isn't actually fiving anything but just sticking out the back. Her's just made it close enough for us not to make a big deal out of it.

Feel free to share what stood out to you in the comments below.

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