Failure To Launch

Two years before her big break as Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye, Famke Janssen played another sexy femme fatale of sorts; World-famous, globe-trotting supermodel Lex. After seeing her best friend/same-birthday-haver Amy seriously injured in a carjacking, Lex begins a double life as Lady X, a sexy vigilante who uses her martial arts skills to fight crime in the name of downtrodden women everywhere. Hmm. Well, we say fights crime, but the crimefighting stops being a priority for Lex pretty early on, if it ever was the priority. Also, we say in the name of women everywhere, but it’s really only about Amy, and, um, she’s probably fine, sooooo… Also also, we say sexy, but whenever Model By Day’s attempts at sexy stray beyond, “Look, boobs”, they get a little… confused. Confusion is rife in this episode of Failure to Launch; this one took us a while to unpack. Rest assured, though, by the end we’ll get to the bottom of everything that went wrong in Model By Day. Except the StackHat. I’ll never understand the StackHat.

Failure to Launch is BACK with one of the most divisive, confused, dare we say Baffling™ pilots we’ve seen Crispin Glover try on jeans during. Nicolas Cage, Crispin Glover and a slew of other teenagers bring us many, many, MANY vignettes of life as a 1980s All-American teen; a life that’s often musical and only occasionally involves serious property damage and/or existential despair. Also, Jackie Mason’s there, playing a character with the last name ‘O’Reilly’. We’d tell you more but, honestly, we’re still not totally sure what this thing was. Crispin Glover definitely tries on jeans though. That happened. We think.   The Best of Times (Wiki) The Best of Times (IMDB)   Technical note: Failure to Launch now comes with Podcast Chapters! Aside from dividing the podcasts into neat little packages, you’ll also get to see a different still from the pilot with each chapter. If this new format gives you any trouble, please please please let us know on Facebook or Twitter (@consumptionthe) and we’ll try to sort someth

In the Failure to Launch season finale, we go out with a baffling bang. Or, I guess, a crash, a premonition and age-disguising lighting. Old mate Leonard Nimoy plays Tom, a race-car driver who develops psychic powers somehow and get whisked off to "merry" old England to solve a number of odd mysteries in one big creepy mansion. We couldn't really grasp why a lot of it was happening but after last week's episode, we were just happy not to have been violently vomiting onto the floor. That’s it for this season; Failure to Launch returns early next year. See you then, Internet!   IMDB - Baffled! Wikipedia - Baffled!   Reviewers: James Ferris, Lisa Dib, Harry Brimage Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

This week, we allegedly murdered our collective will to continue the podcast by subjecting ourselves to "Juiced", a hidden camera prank "show" starring sportsman, actor and...guy OJ Simpson. OJ does what Jackass was doing when those guys were 13, only with more gratutious female nudity, bad rapping and poorly thought-out "ideas". Now that we have seen this slight against God of a pilot, we can only pray for future generations, and you, to never have to witness the birth of the spawn of the Dark One, or this show.  Have mercy.   Show notes: Vice - I Was OJ Simpson's Accomplice (on His Hidden-Camera Prank Show) Filmdrunk - Remembering ‘Juiced,’ OJ Simpson’s Bizarre, Punk’d-Style Prank Video IMDB - Juiced with OJ Simpson   Reviewers: James Ferris, Lisa Dib, Alex Malone, Harry Brimage Soundboard: Dave Shaw

The year is 1964. Producer Selig J. Seligman convinces the American Broadcasting Corporation to dump a truckload of money into the pilot episode of Alexander the Great, a historical war series on an epic scale (for TV, at least). ABC watched it, said no, and as this was the 60s and there wasn’t some dumb cable channel to dump it on at 2am, the pilot was placed on a shelf to gather dust, never to be aired. At least, that was the plan, until the bloke who played Alexander (William Shatner) and the bloke who played, um… someone else (Adam West) became Captain Kirk and Batman. ABC realised they could probably trick Star Trek & Batman fans into watching this thing, and chucked it on air in 1968. And thus, the concept of “pretending a dead pilot is a TV movie” was born. …sorry? Oh, the pilot! It’s old and dumb and nobody can punch. Also, it was the 60s, so take a guess how well the one female character was portrayed.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Lisa Dib, Andrew Cherry Soundboard: Alex Malone

Payton Westlake (Chrisopher Bowen) is Darkman, a man with an only occasional face who likes yelling at homeless children, and old mate Larry Drake is back in villain form as Durant.  This reimagining/weird cut-and-paste job of the Sam Raimi film answers all those questions you might have had about the Darkman character, like: If he's homeless, how does he get all the gadgets? What's his beef with bad grammar? Why does synthetic skin boil like lava after an hour and a half? All that, and less!  If you like 90% voice-over explanation dialogue, you'll love* Darkman!   Darkman - IMDB Darkman - Wikipedia   Reviewers: James Ferris, Alex Malone, Lisa Dib, Harry Brimage Soundboard: Fabian Lapham   *why would you like that what's wrong with you

Far out! Geekomatic! Hypnotronic! Battletoads! Written by David Wise, who should have known better, and made for probably 95 cents, Battletoads is a battle courageously yet dumbly across galaxies in the vein of their more famous turtle cousins, to save someone from...something. It's not super clear. There's a lot of portals. We were pretty unanimous on the creepy bird doctor, though.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Fabian Lapham, Lisa Dib, Harry Brimage Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

Pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey for some reason host this deeply Sonny and Cher-reminiscent old-school variety show, without the glorious absurdity of Steve Martin or Telly Savales' giant creepy head. There's bygone-era musical guests, hackneyed comedy sketches and more duets than you would ever need or want! Variety has never been more various! We were divided quite harshly on this one: was it bad TV? Was it knowingly and ironically tongue-in-cheek? Was it bad but still ironic? Why all the mentioning of pole vaulting? We couldn't decide but, in fairness, neither could the show.   IMDB - The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour Reviewers: James Ferris, Fabian Lapham, Lisa Dib, David Shaw Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

This early 90s adventure series tells the tale of a disparate group of castaways, stranded on a mysterious tropical island, following a harrowing plane crash. But it's not Lost. As they battle against the elements and each other, they discover that the island is home to all manner of bizarre unexplainable phenomena. But it's totally not Lost. Alright? Things begin to fall into place when they discover an abandoned military outpost. I swear it was over a decade before Lost. An outpost that was conducting bizarre paranormal experiments. Holy shit, I know it sounds like we just watched a few episodes of Lost, but I swear we didn't. But if you loved Lost, or hated Lost, or never saw even a single episode of Lost, then Danger Island is just awful either way.   The Presence - IMDB The Presence - Wikipedia Reviewers: James Ferris, Andrew Cherry, Lisa Dib Soundboard: David Shaw

LA detective Eddie Munroe hates machines and machines seem to hate him, so it's a twist of cruel fate that sees him teamed up with a German Shepard who's brain has been replaced with a hitch computer. To be honest Eddie actually rolls with the whole scenario pretty smoothly. Along the way they're joined by a sexy scientists who claims to love animals despite performing numerous, painful tests on them as well as helping to build a machine that exists entirely to remove dogs brains while they're still alive. For money. But who can get hung up on that when there's international thieves to thwart, human shields to use and so, so much glass to break? Through it all Eddie and his new pal K9000 learn to laugh, to love and eventually to make dick jokes together. IMDB - K-9000 Wikipedia - K-9000 Reviewers: James Ferris, Alex Malone, Harry Brimage Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

This week we examine Driving Miss Daisy, an attempt by CBS to cash in on the Oscar winning film by converting it into a laugh-a-minute sitcom, with such wacky antics as “Hoke fixes the cabinet door”, and “Miss Daisy meets Eleanor Roosevelt and it goes fine.” This sounds dull (and it is), so it might surprise you to know that this pilot garnered protests when it aired in 1992. Give this episode a listen and… you just might understand why.   Reviewers: James Ferris, David Shaw, Fabian Lapham Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

From the Book of Failure, S2-16:   “The man, who was named Ferris, toiled in the fields of the Internet, searching for a pilot which was of formidable quality. He went up from Rutube.ru to Torrentfreak, but he would not be satisfied, and no merchant of pilots whose lights were not green could impress him with his wares.   After many days wandering the desert of Wiki, he collapsed, and at this time the Lord of Bad Pilots appeared to him in a vision, taking the forms of Billy Zane and Adrianne Palicki. “Oh Lord”, cried Ferris, “End my suffering! Provide unto me a hyperlink to the pilot which shall destroy television, and bring about the end of all screen entertainment!"   With these words, the Lord Billy Zane did smile upon him, as the Lord Adrianne Palicki speaketh, “Don't really have anything like that. We've got this thing called Gay Robot though. Will that do?”   "Fuckin' done!" cried Ferris   And then Ferris saw some children, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came ou

This week we examine Blood Ties, a 1991 attempt to bring the “vampires live among us, and they’re SEXY” genre to life over a decade before HBO did it with True Blood. The problem, however, was that this was a network show. So where HBO added sex appeal into True Blood with Tons o’ Nudity and Sex™, Blood Ties had to settle for sexy innuendos. When it turned out they couldn’t write sexy innuendos (there’s a twinkie metaphor that isn’t the obvious one), they tried adding incest to spice things up, which is akin to spicing up a curry with a small chemical fire. Also, one of the vampires was named Corey Puckett. Even without the incest, this was the level of sexiness we were working with.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Harry Brimage, Alex Malone Soundboard: David Shaw

This week’s FtL examines Mickey & Nora, a boilerplate 80s sitcom about the travails of a young newly-married couple and their wacky, disgraced West-African dictator sidekick, Colonel Ntsunge. And wacky side-characters don't come much wackier than the Colonel, as he bumbles through American customs, mispronounces catch phrases, and threatens his political enemies with ethnic cleansing. Mickey is a former CIA agent now working as a go-go eighties lawyer, only (wouldn't-ya-know-it) nobody believes he's left the agency! And for some reason everybody knows that he was in the agency! And he still acts and works and behaves like he's in the agency!! And - I can't stress this enough - his best friend is a disgraced Senegalese dictator hell bent on returning to power. It kind of seems like he's still in the agency! Only he can't be in the agency, see, because if was still in the agency then that would mean he wouldn't be allowed to nail his wife... and he really, really, really wants to nail his wife. Like, give i

Channing Taylor is a cop from the future who's out to prove that policing is a people’s job and not a computer’s. So he goes back in time to convince his Grandpa (Bill Maher) that Adam Ant's evil plot to cure all diseases has to be stopped, and the only way to do it is to break every time travel rule and irreparably ruin the future. But Bill Maher is determined to make policing a computer’s job and not a people's. Can Channing and Grandpa see eye to eye? Can you wrap a man in fruit loops? Can you cut to every single shot in a feature length pilot with the sound of a broken jack-in-the-box? Only TIME will tell.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Harry Brimage, Alex Malone, David Shaw Soundboard: Fabian Lapham

This week, Failure to Launch examines Faceless, a gritty crime drama in which Game of Thrones star Sean Bean actually lives to the end credits for once! Although the opening scene is him getting shot in the face. So y'know, grain of salt.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Martin Dunlop, Lisa Dib, Alex Malone Soundboard: Harry Brimage

Sam Elliott brings his distinctive southern charm to this series about the beloved dare-devil travelling the country with his trusty pit crew. Along the way they deal out action, adventure and good old fashioned 70s style misogyny you just like your dad used to make. But, when Evel threatened by a female stunt rider, him and the boys must band together and do everything they can to put this young upstart back in her place. But, when Evel is threatened by a mad bomber, determined to end his career and his life, him and the boys don't really give two shits. And neither will you! We promise.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Harry Brimage, Lisa Dib, Martin Dunlop Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

The year is 1998 and the world has recently discovered ironic detachment. Scream 2 is but a fading memory, and Scream 3 is still a glimmer in Courtney Cox-Arquette's eye. Somebody had to fill that gap. In steps Shaun Cassidy, Failure to Launch's favourite snow globe enthusiast-cum-director, with another snow globe filled romp. It's fun. It's sexy. It's shot like a Smash Mouth video. It's almost certainly meta. Two aspiring film-makers team up with a generic 90s slacker-dude to make 1998's most daring reality show: Hollyweird. They bait, trap and torture suspected criminals, all on film, and all while apparently evading legal sanction. Then they have a nice pot of Ovaltine. At least I think they do. Or at least we spent a long time speculating that they might. Or on what exactly Ovaltine is. It's all a little hazy. All I know is that Americans should at least consider drinking Milo.   Reviewers: James Ferris, David Shaw, Harry Brimage, Alex Malone Soundboard: Andrew Cherry

This week's pilot documents the real-life exploits of several couples who practise "the lifestyle", and what a life style it is! There's terrible parties, clumsy innuendo and even the occasional game of truth or dare. Well, that, and constant extra-marital affairs, so it's not all lame. This reality series about suburban swingers aired 2 episodes, so it's not technically a failed pilot. But as Neighbors with Benefits teaches us, it's not cheating if it doesn't break the rules.   Reviewers: James Ferris, David Shaw, Fabian Lapham Soundboard: Alex Malone

In this week’s unexpectedly raunchy episode of Failure to Launch, we examine Island City, a world ravaged by formerly-human-now-super-strong-neanderthals, the victims of a genetic experiment gone wrong. The remnants of humanity cower inside the fortress-like Island City, desperately searching for a cure. Well… I’ve used words like “cower” and “desperate”, but for the most part everyone’s really relaxed about the whole situation. So much so, that when a rescue worker is lost in the mutant-infested wasteland and given 48 hours to live, the rest of his team just grab a drink, catch up on some sleep, kinda, y’know, have a bit of R&R. Just 48 hours of “me” time. Also, Abraham Lincoln hits on someone’s mum. Oh, and there’s eugenics, and everyone’s cool with it (including the writers). This was a weird one.   Reviewers: James Ferris, Harry Brimage, Alex Malone, David Shaw Soundboard: Fabian Lapham