Review: The Awesomes ‘Indiana Johnson and the Nazi Granddaughters’

Spoilers Below:

When I first saw that The Awesomes were doing an Indiana Jones spoof, I have to admit, I was excited. I mean, just look at the title! Indy? Nazis? I’m pretty sure I went six to midnight faster than you can say you hate snakes.

Get it? Packed a lot of jokes into that one. Kind of like The Awesomes (or more specifically, episode writer Ben Warheit) did with this episode. You’ll see what I mean.

The show began with the Awesomes for Hire settling into a new shared work space when they received a call from an old friend, Indiana Johnson, who asked them to come to Argentina to locate his missing partner for $50,000. They found him immediately, dead, after he previously encountered a trio of murderous Nazi granddaughters while looking for the Weeping Angel Stone – a fact known to us, but not to our friends. Turns out the stone, in addition to being financially valuable, could also bring Indiana’s partner back from the dead, which it eventually did after they located it.

The Weeping Angel Stone later went on display in a museum, with the granddaughters in attendance to steal it, and the Awesomes there to receive an award for originally obtaining it. The girls managed to complete their goal, and used the stone to bring all sorts of dangerous characters to life. Fortunately, the Awesomes bested them, and they didn’t even need Perfect Man. In fact, PM almost fucked everything up in the end.

Meanwhile, in space, Malocchio opened up an Earth Food truck, and through a series of coincidences (and a chance run-in with Perfect Man) he managed to somehow recall his past.

In Case You Missed It:

1) “Freedom is not just a word. Freedom is a thing. A thing that is also a word. A word thing.” That was courtesy of Mr. Awesome, but I’m pretty sure it could have easily been Mr. Trump.

2) The newscast spoke of a “missing Malaysian spaceship.”

3) Having to clean the blender is the number one reason why I don’t make my own smoothies.

4) Malocchio’s Earth Food truck advertised: “At least 2x better than bugs & rocks or your $ back!”

5) The Awesomes’ potential missions included: stolen pie, kids throwing eggs in middle school, Mrs. Avery missing, Frantic missing contact lens, and mystery pee smell in library. (That last one was solved pretty quickly.)

6) Mr. Awesome’s patriotic tie choices were either blue with red stripes or napalm with eagles.

7) When the T-rex came to life, a banner fell in front of it, à la Jurassic Park.

Golly, this episode had a lot going for it.

First, as I previously mentioned, it was an Indiana Jones parody – and a well executed one at that. There were corny spoofs – like this Indy hating snacks instead of snakes – or deeper jokes, like Indy saying he slept with his partner’s wife. It’s important to note here that his partner bore an obvious resemblance to Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg, who, by the way, met his current wife while working on Temple of Doom. See what they did there?

The best lampoon laughs, however, came from the repeat gag of Indy calling Tim/Sumo “Shorty,” just like the Asian kid in the films, and constantly trying to place the signature baseball cap on him. He even once grabbed it while a temple door was closing, instead of his own trademark hat.

Speaking of repeat jokes, Muscle Man’s “Prank dudes!” lines were hilarious, and also the lines, “He can’t feel anything,” and “My head feels like it’s been hit with a million rocks,” being said by multiple characters. And let’s not forget the confusion between archaeology, paleontology, and geology (among others.)

Between the references, spoofs, repeat jokes, and other random lines (I loved when the girls’ teacher read their note aloud to the class), there were so many laughs that I had to go back and rewind the show because I kept missing ones. Add to that the fact that the final showdown (which is usually pretty predictable and uneventful) involved battling Nazis and dinosaurs at the same time, and this is an absolute success. In fact that’s putting it lightly.

I review a bunch of shows, but this is one where you don’t need to think too hard about the quality. There’s rarely any commentary on society or pop culture, there’s not much character development needed, and it all boils down to story and laughs.

This is the point where I throw in a critique or two – usually. This time, I honestly can’t think of a single one. All the characters got in on the fun, every line was hilarious, and the plot was amusing and entertaining from start to finish.

So what do we do when we have no complaints? We call it a perfect episode, easily the best one of the season, and possibly the best of all 25 released thus far.

And this is not a prank, dude.