The Clay-mated series gets its first review…is it good? Or does it get…LOST……IN….SPAAAAAAAAAACE??

 

Some Spoilers Below

There are a TON of animated space comedies on Youtube nowadays so when a new one comes up I try to look for things that make it different from the pack. For a show like Deep Space 69 its the well-timed sex humor that makes it an awesome show, for New Eden its the big silly monsters, for Astro-Cons its drumming up more of a workplace comedy. And now we have Dark Minions, a new animated series coming from ShadowMachine that is part of Amazon’s new initiative to green-light originals. Ordinarily, I would have to pay for an episode of Dark Minions, but seeing as how this is a pilot, Amazon is putting out all of the pilot episodes free of charge in hopes the ones with the best fan-fair get the pick up.  As mentioned, with so many space comedies on the market now, this show would have to impress the hell out of me to make me wanna plunk down hard-earned dollars.

Now, if every episode was presented the way the pilot was, I would say fuck this shit, its bullshit, I’m out of here. The pilot is half done in that the producers half clay-animated some scenes and gave us hand-drawn animatics of the other scenes. If I had to pay for this, I would be furious, but with this one being free, I can give it a pass in hopes that future episodes will be fully animated especially if I am to pay the piper. The dialogue comes off as a bit too typical with dated drug humor, but definitely bringing in some fresh ideas like explicit language (lots of fucks are given here).  There are some notable names on this show too, with Futurama’s Phil Lamaar and the great Andrew Daly part of the fold with maybe Richard Kind (Spin City) as the funniest with his take on  the Woody Allen-esque ‘Feldenbaum’.  Unfortunately, these talents are somewhat wasted with the generic scripting, but maybe with an increased budget we can get a couple more writers to help spice things up a bit.

The claymation is superb and Shadowmachine has been doing it for a hell of a long time so its expected. But, I couldn’t help but grow tired of some of the settings whilst on the ship. For example, the command station from whence Drebnor (played by the outstanding Clancy Brown) gives off monologue after monologue about really nothing, but instead of giving us different settings,  we keep coming back to pretty much the same spot with no real variety in the drab backgrounds. The other clay settings primarily take place in the tunnels where Mel(Bowie) and Andy (Sussman) have their arguments, but again it seems like these characters are just rehashing the same setting over and over again with me feeling that this ship might be the smallest one ever. Then we have the animatics which are actually very well done, but they often interrupt the claymation scenes and I couldn’t help but be distracted as a result.

There are other space animated shows on the internet that are better, but the claymation and longer form story lines certainly give Dark Minions an edge. However, if I had to pay for this episode I would be beyond pissed off and probably would have ran this thing through the ringers. Thankfully, I didn’t but there are other issues hiding underneath the clay that need to be addressed before it can do battle.

6.5 out of 10