Spoilers Below

Every grand tale begins with an intro and in the case of Outlands we get to meet Winston (Dana Snyder), Ben (Andrew Racho), Hutch (Adam De La Pena) as they start their first day on the job under the allegiance of Sgt. Skill. These guys were brought here for one reason and one reason only…to exterminate life in the name of mass commerce. Problem is that Hutch kills the Sarge in like the first minute or two so now these guys are basically on their own. Well…except the android known as Mac a character that is none too dissimilar to that of the popular ‘David’ character from the blockbuster hit movie Prometheus. 

The crew lands on a planet inhabited by tiny bears and with that Hutch and Ben end up partying with the bears in their total man-bear cave? Well YOU describe it! It’s a cave where bears live and in this cave is a bunch of video games and a hot tub!! At first everything seems all fun and games, but when Winston comes by the bears end up drinkin some booze and they turn into these big huge aliens! The guys obviously run away but they actually do put up a pretty good laser fight before they take off. In the process the guys find this black shit that somehow reanimates the Sarge’s corpse, but his personality is nowhere near as douchey. Back on the space ship, the guys head to their next spot, but Hutch tries to smuggle one last bear on board which would certainly make for an entertaining bumper sticker but not on this Voyager.

If Futurama had sex with Code Monkeys what would follow is a face hugger of a show in Outlands. that is the perfect way to describe this series. It features creator Adam De La Pena’s well-known snarkiness with his role as Hutch, definitely giving us shades of Dave from Code Monkeys but not as terrible at his job. ‘Ben’ played by Andrew Racho is not nearly as flawed as Matt Mariska’s ‘Jerry’ in Code Monkeys (HA! Ben and Jerry) so it definitely makes for a truer buddy-comedy type relationship. It’s also rather refreshing to see Dana Snyder get to play smarter characters as for too long a lot of shows were looking for him to copy and paste Master Shake’s personality, but lately I’ve been enjoying his work as Mr. Baldwin on Fish Hooks and its good to see more of the latter-type live on in Winston despite the fact that Fish Hooks will be no more.

As a guy who was raised on Aliens and /or movies and furthermore the continuation of the former franchise with its prequel Prometheus, I couldn’t help but fall in love with all of the clear hat tips to these properties. From the opening title credits clearly inspired by Aliens, to the Mac character that shares all of the scumbaggery that David was known for in Prometheus, to even the bear-aliens looking somewhat resembling Xenomorphs, Outlands certainly paid homages to franchises but with respect despite the fact that it’s a comedy we are dealing with here. Ben and Hutch help serve up the volley of laughs with geek jokes that would certainly make fans of Geek and Sundry proud.

My one somewhat major gripe with the series Outlands is the credits. If you look in the description it says ‘Starring Felicia Day, Dana Snyder, Doug Benson and many more!’ Of course in this episode I heard NO Doug Benson and NO Felicia Day. None…so, my question for the marketing department is why would you advertise those two as the stars if they aren’t even in the series yet? In my opinion I think the stars are Adam De La Pena, Andrew Racho, and Dana Snyder…these guys don’t need the added star power, because they’ve got plenty of fire power.

9 out of 10

http://youtu.be/zy2994XuDMA