Review: Rolling With Dad ‘Pilot’
Spoilers Below
You gotta love when a new show sums up the entire backstory in the opening theme. Immediately I was informed that this is a show about a brilliant scientist who was left paralyzed after a rocket ship crash. He (Walt Stickle) now lives his life in a wheelchair, communicating via a computer voice à la Stephen Hawking. His family includes a son named Einstein, a wife named Brenda (voiced by Lori Alan a.k.a. Diane Simmons from Family Guy and Pearl from Spongebob Squarepants) and Cassie Stickle voiced by my love, Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation. Not only that, but her second sentence began with, “The world is Gonzo right now.” I’m her world. We were meant to be.
Rolling With Dad is one of two shows (along with Coffin Dodgers – stay tuned for that review later) vying for viewer votes to become the next Adult Swim TV show. Two shows will be posted on the AS site each week in a promotion that runs into August 12, and this guy will have each and every one for ya right here.
The pilot began with an obvious ploy to win my support: Walt’s birthday breakfast consisted of bacon arranged to spell his name, an obvious homage to the pilot of Breaking Bad, in which Bryan Cranston’s character (also named Walt) has his birthday bacon shaped to reflect his age. Good start.
The plot revolved around Walt attempting to find the antidote for a horrible illness (and gruesome skeletal death) that befell his scientist colleagues on each of their 40th birthdays, stemming from prior exposure to an failed anti-aging substance in the lab. Since Walt was also exposed to the toxic matter, he had to race to find a cure before midnight.
My first impression of the series was, and still is, generally positive. It was humorous enough, well animated, and exceptionally voiced, by both the notable persons above, and an additional cast that featured a dead-on impression of Obama, as well as one of Morgan Freeman – narrating of course. There was another voice – the neighbor boy, Little Gus – that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on the actor. Thanks to Google, I now know it was a blast from my childhood past, the voice of Al and Moo Sleech, the weird, twin classmates of Doug Funnie.
The show raises a few questions, like how much humor can come from a protagonist with an emotionless robot voice, but if they can pull it off it’ll be all-the-more funny.
Pilots are rarely among the best of any series’ episodes, but Rolling With Dad showed a heck of a lot of potential for a first crack.
@Gonzo_Green
Do we know if Hulu will be the only entity to have the dub, or if it will be on other platforms, too? The show in general is definitely going to be on multiple platforms.