Street Sharks S3E4: “First Shark”

Like the previous Street Sharks episode, these next two were commissioned by @krinsbez.

Jumping ahead all the way into Street Sharks' third and final season. It's Street Sharks, so it shouldn't be any harder to understand what's going on than it would be if I'd watched it all the way through. Let's check out "First shark."

After the terrible OP, we open on the street sharks holding a press conference. In front of the White House, while American flags wave and patriotic music plays. Okay then. Either this is a dream sequence, or the sharks have really moved up in the world.

Their voices sound different too. Much more mature and less "radical," and like, with some vague hints of actual emotion here and there. Either new VA's, or better direction for the existing ones, but either way it's a very, very good change.

The conference is interrupted by Dr. Paradigm's helicopter, which suddenly appears over the DC skyline and starts shooting its 1990's children's television lasers at everything. Yeah, this is a dream sequence, it's got to be (or...well, probably. This IS Street Sharks, after all). The good doctor is piloting the chopper alone this time, and also seems to have gained the ability to shift between human and...some kind of bony fish with sharp teeth? Anglerfish, maybe, or piranha? Looks more like a piranha...werepiranha forms at will. I guess he's perfected the gene-splicing tech and used it on himself sometime in the last two seasons. Not surprising; he did seem to think this was a desirable future for humanity as a whole, so naturally he'd be eager to do it to himself as soon as he had all the bugs worked out.

"I've got you this time, President Slamu!" Paradigm shouts at the whale shark guy, who I guess is named Slam now. "Never fear: Slamu's here!" President Slamu replies. The voice acting might have taken a major step up, but the dialogue unfortunately hasn't. While the other three sharks watch uselessly (okay, yeah, this is definitely Slamu's dream), the president scales onto the white house roof while Paradigm's chopper obligingly hovers nearby without shooting or evading. He tears off a flagpole and sticks it in the rotor, bringing the chopper down.

Then, as I predicted, Slamu wakes up. Or rather, is woken up in...wherever the shark hideout is supposed to be...by the hammerhead guy. This cut makes me realize how many favors the dress suits that the sharks were wearing in the dream did for them. When they're dressed up, they look ugly in a deliberate, in-universe way, like a decent artistic depiction of an ugly creature. Then we jump from that to their usual appearances and UUUURUGGGGH:

Why.

The reason Hammy walk Slamu up is because Dr. Paradigm (who they now refer to as "Dr. Piranhoid," so werepiranha it is!) is on TV. In front of the white house. In a Warhammer cosplay outfit. Seriously, he looks like a slightly toned down Fabius Bile. He has a mutant in a cage, and he apparently just dragged it up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and is insisting he needs to show it to the President in person.

He tells the secret service guy that this is another one of the still at large Dr. Bolton's creations (okay, he's framing Bolton for any slip-ups of his own that get public attention. I guess? Something like that), and that the President NEEDS to see it himself so he can understand the dangers of unregulated genetic engineering.

Paradigm wants to restrict that? Maybe his ideology is tempered with a desire to be the only one able to do the transhumanism himself.

He manages to gain entry, and then we see the president giving Paradigm (still in his homemade powered armor suit with a villainous cloak wrapped over it. Does the guy not go out in civies anymore? How is that not suspicious?) a white house press conference of his own to warn people about genetic engineering, Dr. Bolton, and Dr. Bolton's own mutated sons who he turned into uncontrollable shark monsters. I guess the street sharks have not been winning the PR war, which is kind of sad when their opponent is a criminal who can't even remember to not wear his victims' prized possessions in public the day after their disappearances. And then...cut back to the sharks watching TV again.

Are they supposed to have been watching that entire time? What was even the point of showing Paradigm being filmed while approaching the white house if we were just going to see him give the exact same speech again to the press right afterward. Eh, I guess they had trouble filling their time slot this episode.

When he gets to the part about the Boltons' father having turned them into street sharks (for the second time), Slamu says "that's not true" in a slightly impatient voice, and tears the TV out of the wall to throw onto a pile of other broken TV's they've gone through. I guess the dream sequence part was a fluke, and we're back to the sharks' VA's being completely awful now. Slamu and Hammy argue about whether or not the sitting US President (whose accent sounds like Bill Clinton's, although he at least doesn't look like him) is to blame for being hoodwinked by the obvious supervillain. All while sounding neutrally radical, with perhaps a touch of what could almost be called emotion as they get "heated" at each other. Finally, the great white guy tells them that "Piranhoid" is up to something big if he's bringing his creations into Washington DC and courting audiences with top politicians. From the way the TV clips were framed, I got the impression that Paradigm had already insinuated himself into political power by now, but maybe this is actually new after all. They'd better go hunt him down before he does whatever thing he's planning to do, but they'll need to find out where his lab is before they can catch him there.

Erm.

This is early season three, and I don't know what's been going on from the pilot until now, but...were they ever not hunting down Dr. Paradigm in that meantime? If not, why not? I can see how Paradigm appearing with the president might give them reason to think hunting him down is now more urgent than before, but that's not how the dialogue and following action is written. It's more like they only just had the idea to go searching for Dr. Paradigm's lab right now.

Of course, that's on top of the much bigger issue of why Dr. Paradigm is so hard to find. If he's in the public's good graces, schmoozing with the US president in front of the press, and (according to the president and newscasters) maintaining at least some kind of relationship with the Fusion City university, how secretive could the guy possibly be? It kinda feels like the show wants to have its cake and eat it in terms of what kind of supervillain Paradigm is. The madman hiding from the law in a secret lair, and the slick cyberpunk baddy who uses society as ablative armor. The two aren't really compatible, especially when it comes to questions like "how easy is this person to find?"

Anyway, the sharks just go out onto the street and start driving around on a collection of bikes and weird dieselpunk-looking things to look for "seaviates," which I guess is what Paradigm's creations are called now. At least they're not nonchalantly destroying the city anymore by burrowing through the asphalt, when they can help it. They seem to be acting as if it's only a matter of time until their enhanced sense of smell detects a seaviate, and then they can capture and interrogate it. Again, why have they not done this before now, if it's that simple? Before long, they indeed catch a seaviate scent, and it brings them to an alley in which a pair of mutants are hiding. One of them pushes its companion - a wereshrimp with a high pitched voice and a ridiculous New York gangster accent - out to confront the sharks, who quickly surround it.

They recognize "Shrimp Louis" as one of Paradigm's lackeys, but their reaction to running into him on the street in broad daylight is surprisingly...non-hostile. It's not just the voice actors' perpetual nonchalance, this time. The blocking, body language, etc all read more like "oh hey, we know this guy" than "this is a known enemy."

Louis tells them that he was actually just looking for them himself. He's just rebelled against his creator, and would like to aid the sharks in defeating him. Slamu just asks him if that means he'll show them to Paradigm's secret lab, and Louis is like "yeah, sure, let's go fuck his shit up," and they all just follow him without any more questions.

Sigh.............

There was a nice bit of subtler-than-usual visual storytelling, with how we're shown Louis in the company of another seaviate seconds before this exchange. That little touch makes it clear to the audience that the shrimp is lying about having gone solo, without having to hit us over the head with it. That's damning with faint praise though, because it ultimately just highlights how obviously sketchy this is and how utterly stupid our main characters are being in just following him without further questions.

Also, this brings me back to the question I had last time. Why are Dr. Paradigm's non-Bolton creations so loyal to him in the first place? This is an issue that most stories within the same genre and target demographic DO tend to engage with, and that engagement is conspicuous by its absence here.

Anyway. Louis the shrimp leads them to the Piranha Cave. They dismount their eclectic fleet of vehicles and break in, and we see that Ben the lab tech is coming with them.

When did he meet up with them? Why are they bringing him along? Who the hell knows. Just to drive the point home, Ben tries to open the door to the secret lab and despairs at it being locked, only for the sharks to break it down effortlessly. So, yeah, why is he here?

Said lab bears a suspicious resemblance to an empty warehouse with one cheap monitor screen hastily rigged up in the corner, but they all just march in without a care in the world. Once they've all approached said obvious decoy monitor, Louis' companion comes out of hiding, and they throw a switch hidden on the wall. Metal plates start extending out of the walls and floor. The sharks and Ben stand in place saying "it's a trap, get out" to each other for about 5-10 seconds until the mechanism does its work, trapping them in a cubical box made of metal too strong for them to break.

They seriously just stood there telling each other to run away while the trap slowly caught them.

Incredible.

After bemoaning how they were tricked by a wereshrimp (not that it took much effort on the shrimp's part. Or any effort on the shrimp's part. I'm starting to get the impression that the only reason the conflict has lasted this long is because the sharks and Paradigm have been equally incompetent), they're greeted by Dr. Paradigm who just teleported(?) into the prison with them. He's wearing the power suit, but has ditched the cloak.

Maybe he only wears it when he's not expecting combat, though that raises the question of why he still wears the suit all the time.

Anyway, he tells them that since they're not escaping this trap, he might as well tell them his evil plan, which he seems to have come here in person specifically to do. Because of course. I was thinking he'd arranged that national TV appearance just to provoke the sharks into stumbling into his lab, but no, I guess not; that was just a secondary motive. He's developed a new gene mode that he's termed "genewashing," presumably a play off of brainwashing. The mutagen changes the subject's brain to make them loyal to him, without any other effects on the body or mind. Basically, it's a permanent mind control serum. You know, if he'd invented a cruder version of that right at the beginning of the series instead of just now, it would have explained a lot about how his organization is supposed to operate. At any rate, he's planning to use his access to the president and other powerful government figures to genewash them, and then begin his mass experimentation projects unopposed.

I will say. In a show that was less...this...a concept like that could be played for some real existential horror. A genetic modification that makes you the willing slave of its creator, without any other changes to who and what you are? Even the smallest amount of exploration of this would lead to some extremely dark themes about the nature of identity.

Also...he wants to use mad science to subvert the leaders of the government, and then use his control of the country to experiment on its entire population. Is it just me, or are the shows I'm reviewing starting to display some very specific patterns?

They try to attack him (while unenthusiastically shouting "shark attack!" Only not actually shouting. More just talking in their normal tone, but louder), but his suit has some kind of force field or something protecting it so they can't touch him. He oohs and ahs over the prospect of having hundreds of millions of human test subjects at his disposal, like he's getting off in his power suit at the thought of so many fish people. Then he bids them farewell, teleports away (okay, so that was actual teleportation. We see him vanish with a glowy particle effect onscreen this time), and then the walls of the prison start closing in. They work together and use all their combined strength to break free or at least halt the compression, but to no avail.

Back in Washington DC, the president is musing to one of his cabinet members that Dr. Paradigm doesn't seem like the sanest individual himself, however much worse the elusive Dr. Bolton might be. The other man responds by saying "Doctor Paradigm is a genius" in a robotic monotone voice. Okay, I guess Paradigm was just high on his own supply when he said that genewashing is "undetectable," if this guy is supposed to have been a victim of such. Dr. Paradigm himself then walks into the room, in his full armored and becloaked glory, to the President's surprise and outrage. He and the genewashed staffer (who is now identified as the vice president) drag President Clintonaccent down to the store room where the secret service stashed the cages full of mutants Paradigm brought in.

The prez was okay with multiple monsters being not only brought to the white house, but kept there for a lengthy period? Why wouldn't the prez just tell him to bring them to a military research facility or something and meet him there? Or hell, even the capital building would make more sense than the white house itself, provided congress wasn't in session at the moment. Eh, whatever. Receiving some sort of signal, the seaviates easily open their cages from the inside and...well, we see them descending on the secret service guys who were guarding them and...it cuts away.

Damn. That's brutal for a 90's SatAm. The show pretty strongly implied that those guards just got ripped into literal pieces. Offscreen, of course, but still, most similar shows of the era wouldn't risk even implying something like that.

Paradigm and the genewashed VP bring the president to that room, where the seaviates grab him. And yeah, there's no sign of those secret servicemen. Fuck.

Paradigm tells Clintonaccent that his VP has been genewashed, but the process was really designed with someone else in mind. He then forces the president's mouth open (!!!), presumably to force feed him a retrovirus capsule or the like, and we cut back to the sharks trying to escape from the very, very, very slowly closing compactor.

The sharks and Ben realize that while they can't break the compactor open, they can break the compactor open. So, they throw their bodies against the side in a different way than they were doing before, and it works. :/

So, it's off to DC. Ben is only a lab tech rather than a professor, so he only owns an unarmed civilian helicopter, but that's still enough to get them there. He warns them that DC air security is tight, so he can only fly them to the outskirts. Too bad the ground security, conversely, is so completely shit that they let a weirdo in a combat hardsuit bring a truck full of sea monsters right to the white house. So, he airdrops them. Into the Potomac, thank god, they're swimming through the water rather than the cement.

Come to think of it, they haven't done any asphalt swimming at all this episode so far; maybe they decided that that was too WTF even for Street Sharks and moved away from it over time, idk.

They explode into the sewer system (I don't just mean they dug or broke through the sewer wall dramatically, I mean they used a literal explosion. Smoke, fire, loud boom, the works. Don't ask me how they did it, much less why) and start making their way toward the white house. I guess they had the animators blow their load on that first wall-explosion, because when they break into the white house's basement there isn't only no explosion, but not even any digging. There's a preexisting hole very similar to the one they created a minute ago blasted out of the wall, poorly hidden behind a stack of boxes, and the sharks come through it.

I really want to know what the behind the scenes story was, here. Was it really cheaper/easier to show those boxes being knocked out of the way than it would have been to draw a before-and-after state for the background? Why did they do such an overdramatic wallbursting scene just a scene ago, thereby prepping the audience to expect this, and then follow it up with...this?

Whatever the case, there's some lame, decades-overused jokes about a stack of Nixon tapes they accidentally knock over, and then they find a blueprint of the building and use it to navigate upstairs. They were able to navigate the sewer system of a medium-sized city on their own, but to find their way around the white house they need a map. Sharks have a peculiar sense of direction. The next thing we know, they're tearing their way up through the floor of the president's office. If they were going to do that, why even bother with the map? Just tunneling through random walls would let them cover ground faster. Oh, whatever.

Shortly after their senselessly dramatic (and animated onscreen. What the HELL was up with that one preexisting crater in the basement wall?) entrance, another group of secret service come in and demand to know where the president is. Relieved to have found armed humans who aren't shooting on sight and who Paradigm hasn't gotten to yet, the sharks quickly explain the situation as best they can at short notice and OOPS SORRY I WAS ACCIDENTALLY WATCHING THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE VERSION THAT WASN'T WRITTEN BY LAZY HACKS, what I meant to say is that hammy just randomly starts insulting and picking a fight with the servicemen, and Whitey has to let them cuff him to salvage the situation.

Because, you know. If they had said "we're the Bolton boys, Dr. Paradigm is lying, he's captured the president," the servicemen might look into that possibility. And then the show's status quo would be broken. Why would a character want to break the status quo and try to work toward major goals of theirs instead of self-sabotaging to keep the circus running forever? That's just basic hack writing. Every 13 year old learns this in their first week of ff.net.

As the other sharks faff around with the secret service without telling them anything helpful or making a respectable effort to explain themselves, Slamu slips away and finds his way into an elevator. This elevator takes him down into the secret torture chamber under the white house, where there are these dentist chair type apparatuses with restraints built in just waiting for Paradigm to use them. Because why the fuck not at this point. It turns out that President Clintonaccent hasn't actually been genewashed yet, I guess Paradigm was just being randomly creepy when he grabbed his jaw like that. I guess genewashing is a more involved process than that (although in that case, how'd he manage to do it to the VP?). Slamu, who was in the pro-Clintonaccent camp in the political argument near the beginning, is so overcome with awe and admiration at the sight of the man that he stops paying attention to the seaviates all around him and promptly gets his ass handed to him.

He and the president then exchange introductions and have a friendly, only mildly perturbed, conversation while being strapped in to the vivisection chairs. Once they're in place, Paradigm explains that he was planning to genewash the president, but now he's decided to just mutate him into another sea monster and let the already-genewashed VP take over in the wake of his disappearance. Paradigm sure is flightly. Slamu begs him not to mutate the president, doesn't he realize how wrong that would be? Paradigm replies by reciting his own, extremely lame villainous parody of the American pledge of allegiance.

Then, Slamu breaks out of the human-specced restraints, grabs the prez, and flees through the hole he burrowed up through.

Well, that plan wasn't very well thought out. :/

Paradigm sends a pair of seaviates after Slamu, and then takes his enslaved VP to go start working on damage control. Outside, the secret service are leading the other three street sharks away in handcuffs. Oh wow, they're actually cooperating! They try to explain the situation, but the people arresting them aren't having it. Maybe they should have tried doing this to begin with. And also, like, specify that Dr. Paradigm is responsible for their current state, which they pointedly DON'T mention here and would close a lot of the holes the feds are poking in their story.

Just then, Slamu unburrows nearby (for some reason?) and runs out into downtown DC, carrying the president over his shoulder. The feds start giving chase. Unfortunately, the president is unconscious or something (when did that happen? Just shaken too hard and/or suffocation during the escape?) so he can't help the situation right now. With the servicemen off chasing Slamu and no longer arresting the other three, they just shrug and break out of their handcuffs to go help. A couple of agents shoot after them with their nineties laspistols, but the ranking officer tells them to cut that shit out or they'll hit the president, what are they CIA or something?

Okay, that actually got a little smile out of me. For those who don't know, the institutional rivalry between the American black-vest-and-shades agencies has been the stuff of legends and memery for decades.

Then the seaviates catch up, but they're no match for all four street sharks rather than just the one they'd been chasing, so they're easily and comically defeated. And...the secret service are nowhere in sight during this part.

They WERE right there. Chasing. Telling each other not to shoot. The other pair of mutants would have had to overtake them to reach the street sharks and president. For a second, I thought there was another (much more poorly telegraphed in this case) gory offscreen killing spree as the baddies came up on the servicemen from behind, but no: a second AFTER the mutant-on-mutant battle, the same group of agents come running across a nearby hilltop to catch the four sharks alone with the president, with no sign of the defeated seaviates.

Reality just folded itself into creases to prevent the agents from seeing that there are two opposing factions of mutants, and that the sharks' story may therefore have some truth to it. The agents were onscreen, the seaviates were behind them, and the sharks and prez were right in front of them. Then the seaviates caught up to the sharks, fought them, and were forced to retreat. Then the agents come back onscreen from somewhere *far away* just in time to have not seen anything that would have helped the sharks' story.

Fucking railroading DM's who can't even keep their damned stories straight...

Then, Clintonaccent looks up and tells them he'd rather not escape through the ground again, as that was uncomfortable last time. Revealing that, no, he actually WAS conscious this whole time. He just didn't feel like saying anything when the secret service were chasing them and shouting for them to release the president. Or when they were shooting. Or even right now at this moment, when they're clearly in sight and hearing range "again" and the president has been shown to be conscious and able to speak at this very moment right now.

This episode just went from maybe actually mildly engaging, to absolutely painful.

They burrow up through the floor of a building...somewhere nearby, I guess...and the president thanks them and tells them he'll go clear up this misunderstanding right now. Rather than a few seconds ago, when it would have been the easiest thing in the world and saved everyone including him a lot of trouble and discomfort.

However, Whitey has had his ear to the door of the room, and he looks over and tells them it won't be that simple. Apparently, this room is back in the white house, and Dr. Paradigm, the secret service captain, and the genewashed VP are talking right outside in the hall. Paradigm asks the captain if the sharks told him any crazy stories about "genewashing," and when he nods assent Paradigm tells him that genewashing is an ability that they themselves possess, and that they'll have probably turned the president by now. They'll probably have to arrest or kill the prez for the safety of the nation. The vice president agrees, in his robotic mind controlled voice. The secret service guy looks confused, but says he'll do it.

This is Kafkaesque in a way that not even the pilot's transformation sequence was. Only with much worse writing.

Like, on top of the insanity of the secret service obeying the vice president's order to kill or arrest the actual president, Dr. Paradigm is saying that the sharks are telling the truth about genewashing, but lying about who can perform it. Why would they make up a lie that's that close to the truth, and that would give away the reality of an ability that's most devastating if it's kept a secret? Why would Paradigm have not already mentioned this incredibly dangerous mind control power of theirs when he was warning the President (and the nation as a whole, via the news) about them before, if he knew they had such a power? This story he's weaving doesn't just have holes in it, it's a giant fucking hole with some ragged bits of story hanging feebly from the edges. And now the VP is visibly agreeing with every inane part of it, and obsequiously praising Dr. Paradigm in a stiff, robotic voice.

And the secret service still fall for it.

Back in the pilot, Dr. Paradigm came across as a bumbling buffoon of an enemy who it was hard to take seriously. I guess sometime in the intervening seasons, he genetically augmented himself into a godmode Villain Sue. It's not an improvement.

The sharks ask if there are secret passages under the white house they can escape through, after having just demonstrated that they're perfectly able to create their own (the hole they came up through is still visible while they're asking this. Fuck my life). The president says that he has an idea. When the SS break down the door (I guess they heard them or something? Oh, who cares, Dr. Paradigm probably just read the script), the prez is alone in the room, the sharks having fled underground again. As soon as they enter, he tells them that he just barely managed to escape from the sharks, and that they fled when they heard them banging on the door, hurry go chase after them!

The look on Dr. Paradigm's face is well drawn, at least.

I guess it's a clever move by NotClinton, within the context of the utterly nonsensical circumstances in which cunning ideas only work or don't work by the arbitrary whim of the lazy authors. That's the problem with writing a Villain Sue. If their plans only work because the story ties itself into knots to force them to work through no merit of the villain's, then there's no satisfaction in seeing them defeated. The good guys escaping or winning in the end can't be to their own credit if author fiat was the only reason the villain stopped being invincible long enough for it to happen.

The sharks are now running through the sewers again, and the secret service is chasing them. They don't burrow again to escape, because fuck you that's why. Then again, the agents aren't shooting, despite the president's safety being the only reason they stopped shooting during the last chase, so I guess the story at least isn't favoring any one side with its stupidity this time. They manage to outrun the feds, and then hear Ben (okay, I'm SURE there's an S on the end of his name now. Is it Bens? Or maybe Bends, like the decompression sickness that divers get, to keep with the marine theme?) driving over to pick them up with the "road ripper," a garish vehicle that cracks the pavement open as it advances to help the sharks get through the surface when they arbitrarily can't do it themselves.

That Washington DC security. So tight.

They climb out of the trench he just cut clean into the sewer system and hope aboard the contraption that somehow hasn't brought more cops down on Bends' head than the incident at the white house, and they tell him to bring them to the Washington monument for a planned rendezvous. Cut to them bursting out of the floor in the...visitors' center? I don't know, some sort of indoor environment that I guess is supposed to be near the monument. I lived in DC for four years, and I have no idea what this place is supposed to be. Maybe they mixed it up with the Lincoln memorial building? It looks a little bit like that, idk. The president is waiting for them, alone and unprotected, which would certainly not be a great opportunity for the monsters who just tried to capture him to try to capture him again.

Also, I guess they can burrow through stone again now. :/

He tells them that he's going to have to keep the truth a secret, as if he shows even the slightest hint of sympathy for the sharks he'll be removed from office and held in indefinite hospitalization. I...don't think I can say much about this that I haven't already. Slamu tells him that he took a big risk by coming here, and he tells them not to worry; they should have faith in the power of the presidency. The ambiguously foreign scientists might have subverted the rest of the government and tricked the public into panicking over a fictional threat in order to obfuscate the actual ones, but the President knows the truth, and will be working in secret to oppose them while you boys keep working against them directly. They underestimate the power of the Presidency (word for word quote) if they think it won’t prevail over the machinations of the government as an institution. He gives the sharks some fast food burgers as a token of his appreciation, and they engage in some good old American banter.

I wish I was exaggerating, but...I'm not. This is almost word for word what is said and done onscreen. Well, it's a pretty silly narrative, I guess, so I don't think I should worry about anyone over the age of 12 or so finding it attractive or compelling, let alone realistic. I'll finish this review when I'm done crying for ten hours.

Okay, back.

He assures them that he'll make sure the world knows who the real heroes are, and that it's made safe from Dr. Paradigm. They part with the status quo ostensibly unchanged, but POTUS is secretly on their side now, so the creators can use this to actually start advancing the plot (which doesn't seem to have advanced much at all in the fifteen episodes since the pilot), or to just abruptly end it when they know they're not getting another season. End episode.

This show certainly hasn't gotten any less weird or lazy since the pilot, but...well, it definitely feels more inspired than it did at first. It's just that the inspiration is for a completely different show, genre, and target audience.

It's like there's someone on the writing team who really wanted to be doing a show for slightly older kids with strong horror elements, along the lines of Animorphs or some of the darker 90's superhero toons. The genetically imposed mind control as a concept, a villain who actually succeeds at taking over the government with all the paranoia that that entails, the strongly implied gory deaths for multiple security guards...it's such an inane clash with the TMNT-but-even-dumber tone, concept, and genre expectations. It's more idiosyncratic than the weird details like asphalt-swimming and a newscaster with an irrelevant air pollution ax to grind, and in a way that just confuses the brain as it scrambles to figure out how it's supposed to be thinking, feeling or even processing any of this. Throw in the terrible production values, and it's almost hypnotic. Like something eldritch and alien.

That description might be making it sound better than it actually is, though. For all the emergent surreal weirdness, it's not quite enough to distract from how just plain bad the writing, animation, and voice acting all are. The pacing is also a total mess; I almost forgot about that introductory thing with the decoy-lab and the compactor trap because of how totally irrelevant it was to the rest of the plot. It felt like the plot to a different episode that they couldn't figure out how to pad out to 22 minutes, so they instead compressed it (hehehe) and used it to pad out this one. And, of course, Paradigm's plot-warping powers were just insufferable, even before they created the conditions that led to QAnon With Sharks in the denouement.

One more Street Sharks episode, hopefully tomorrow.