Recap

Scarlet tries to deter her crazed ex by hiring Dandy to be her fake new boyfriend.

Zigg’s Thoughts

It’s always tough to hit that perfect combination of funny and emotional. Too much saccharine will take the edge off your jokes, while being too profound makes the laughs feel out of place. It’s a credit to Space Dandy‘s excellent writing then that this episode manages to walk the tightrope perfectly. It’s mostly a hilarious date-movie parodying romp filled with wild visuals and amusing spacey spins on old jokes. But it also adds an emotional edge at just the right time. The result is a beautifully crafted, complete slice of excellent television.

Like many of the great Space Dandy episodes we’ve seen by now, this one takes a relatively well explored idea – woman ropes in fake boyfriend, they have to get along – and makes hay with it. It’s great to see Scarlet get some more screen time and the writers wisely play up the goofishly charming side of Dandy. Using the old ‘opposites attract’ rule, the two have surprisingly good chemistry and consequently their odd couple romance rings true. Wisely though the angle is mostly backgrounded until the closing segment. Instead, this episode plays fast and loose with cutting lines and great sight gags, and it’s the closest the show has gotten to a straight sitcom in quite a few weeks. As ever, the scifi setting and general madness of the world means these jokes can be well exaggerated to get bigger laughs. I’m a particularly big fan of the stalker robot popping up in completely inappropriate places. The resort satellite is the perfect excuse for a bunch of totally different locations and there’s a nicely exotic, world-hopping vibe. It’s not hurt by some of the slickest, most consistently on-model animation we’ve seen from the show in quite some time. There’s not the amazing artistic vision of some endeavours but it’s a slick, very good looking episode.

It’s the ending of this episode though which really lifts it above the pack. It’s a brave decision to go for an entirely wordless finale, but it works out here. I give the writers major props for not taking the easy out and giving us the happy ending, especially since they know they have the reset button of no continuity to fall back on. Instead, what we get is a soulful, slightly sad climax, perfectly accompanied by the show’s enduring love of weird 80’s disco-electronic music. Even the obvious nod to Five Centimeters Per Second neatly toes the line between silly joke and loving homage. Even when it’s being deep Space Dandy finds time to be funny, and even when it’s being funny it finds time to fill it with heart.

Random Observations

• The narrator spewing all sorts of horrible street slang was an absolute highlight.
• Scarlet gets some great new looks, and the fact that Dandy stoically stays in his horrifying polo club combo throughout is a fantastic visual gag.
• Iro’s Note: The stalker is voiced by Bryan Massey (Baccano!‘s Ladd Russo) in the dub, who really deserves more prominent roles.

Marlin’s Thoughts

The fake boyfriend episode is quite a stereotypical scenario. Yet, in true Dandy fashion, it manages to toe the line in some respects while flipping the whole idea on its head in others and it works really well. Dandy is such an asshole, and yet its hard not to be put in stitches after watching him steal from a child for the second time or kill the Thornberry Spider and destroy Scarlet’s apartment at the same time. The gag of Dandy keeping that same stupid 80’s get up every day like he’s trying to do his best Kaiki impression or something was also funny. They definitely missed out on some good sight gags where the stalker robot could have been in totally implausible places like the movie theater or mall, but maybe they were trying to go with a modicum of seriousness beyond the idea of a dude stalking his ex in his mech.

Scarlet really hit it on the head when she said she seems to only fall for losers. Dandy can be a sweet guy when he wants to be, but every date just showed how little focus he has even with the fact that he knows its just supposed to be pretend. Watching Scarlet slowly fall for his dumb antics was cute, and even though it was totally predictable it at least knew the kind of impact it was going for. I admire the show for going through with the emotional sucker punch of them not crossing paths on that last day. It’s simply the truth that not all romances in real life turn out for the best, even for a Dandy. Plus, it looks like an old flame is going to invade his life next episode anyway. Unfortunately that would seem to imply that will be another episode without much of an influence by Meow and QT. I agree with the guys that it is a bit criminal how underutilized they’ve been in this new season. Sure, there have been a lot of good gems, but they’re great characters in their own right. As the show’s costars, I do wish we got to see more things from their viewpoint.