Ask Palpatine was recently reviewed by Tubefilter News, in a post titled “Review: The Latest in Puppet-Themed Web Series.”

The author, Arjun Sharma, speaks at first about the lack of adult-themed puppet shows, or his lack of awareness of adult-themed puppet shows, aside from Crank Yankers. Puppets who Kill immediately springs to mind, as does Greg the Bunny, though the latter has been off the air for a number of years. The Muppet Show also figures into adult-themed puppet shows, if you view it as an adult, but I think Mr. Sharma was thinking of adult-only shows (though I would assume that a bunch of kids watch Crank Yankers, as it is, from what I’ve seen, only “adult” in the sense that it has jokes about sex in it. Why is a purile sense of humor a marker of something being “adult?” When I think of something as being adult, I think of nuance, of complexity, of sophistication. Dick and fart jokes are extremely childish things, as far as I’m concerned. [not that I have a problem with them, having done my fair share of dick and fart jokes on dotBoom, but I'm under no illusions of what they are]).

In addition to Ask Palpatine, other shows are reviewed: Apollo’s Pad, P-Dash News, and The Rag Show. The only one of those that I was unfamiliar with is P-Dash News, which seems to be a hip-hop-esque fake news show featuring some very sharp looking puppets, but less-than-sharp puppetry. Apollo’s Pad is good fun and extremely well-produced, and The Rag Show is a very fun, but visually hard-to-peg down. Now, me being me, I’m more interested in the review of Ask Palpatine, which was:

If you didn’t like the Star Wars movies, I would advise you to skip over Ask Palpatine. For everyone else, this show is surprisingly funny; it features Emperor Palpatine in puppet form answering “viewer questions” about either the Star Wars movies, or the previous episodes of the show itself. Questions answered include, “Why did you build a flaw into the Death Star?”, “Are there any Jedi tricks to sway the ladies?”,  and “If you can read our minds, why do we have to send you emails?”

When I say that I find the show “surprisingly funny,” I mean that I had extremely low expectations. The entire series is a one camera interview with Palpatine, who isn’t an interesting looking character, and the voice acting is amateurish, but as I watched more and more episodes, the show started to grow on me a little bit. Make no mistake- if I had stumbled across an episode in my spare time, I probably wouldn’t have taken a second glance. Having been forced to watch all the episodes, I can see why some people find it funny. It’s cheap, but it looks like the creators have fun making it, and it has a small but loyal following (about 3,000-5,000 people), plus the occasional breakout episode garnering over 30,000 views. On such a small budget, that’s all a YouTube show can really ask for. It’s a show that only works on the internet; if you like Star Wars, or middle-school humor, this series is worth checking out.

Firstly, they’re not “questions.” They’re questions, sent in by real viewers. I’ve not made a single question up, though Palpatine did intentionally misinterpret one fairly recently. Secondly, I will argue against the point about the voice acting being amateurish. Certainly I can do a much more polished voice, and I can, as a point of fact, muster a much more authentic-sounding Palpatine voice, but I made the conscious decision to have this Palpatine sound different from the movie Palpatine. Part of that is owing to the fact that the character changes over time, and part is owing to my idea that the way Palpatine speaks in the movies is the put-on, and our Palpatine is letting his guard down, and showing you how he really sounds. (I realize how plaintive that might sound)

The reason I’m mentioning this review isn’t to prop myself up, or defend myself against perceived slights, though; it’s because of Mr. Sharma’s closing paragraph, which is:

I can’t help but wonder why none of these puppet shows seemed to be able to knock their comedy out of the park for more than one episode. Part of it seems to be the medium itself; in the up close viewing style of the internet, it seems pointless to watch a video of a puppet. Crank Yankers relied much more on audio, and celebrity guests, both of which helped it become successful. However, when a puppet show has to create its own story, it seldom works out. I had the same problem with Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America, another outrageously disgusting and juvenile puppet project. These shows could probably take a leaf out of Family Guy’s book, and use juvenile humor to make a larger, more intellectual joke. Until then, they are going to remain on the fringe of web video.

I notice that these shows are all talking-to-the-camera shows, which is perhaps revealing. Now, Apollo’s Pad is fully scripted (as P-Dash News is, I think), but in format and structure, they’re all close on the character, with the character talking directly to the audience. How does this relate to his question about shows being able to knock it out of the park? It seems pretty simple:

These shows are all one-note.

I say that as a fan of most of them, but without any illusions about them. Ask Palpatine is fun and funny, it’s enjoyable to make, but it’s one-note. You watch an episode, you see the gag — “Palpatine answers questions” — and you get it. That first episode where it clicks will be the funniest, probably, and you’ll move on. Likewise for the others. I think for many people, you’ll be laughing at the concept, rather than the specific execution. Watching P-Dash News, for example, I chuckled at the idea of 50 Cent acting as a Fire Safety Expert, but that’s about as far as it went for me.

There are plenty of shows out there with greater depth, though off the top of my head, aside from dotBoom (which seemed to start with a one-noted-ness, with the puppets being vulgar, but had a whole bunch of other stuff to keep people interested) all I’m thinking of immediately is Jigsaw, which is a terrific little show. I think that dotBoom is still one of, if not the most narratively complex puppet shows online, though shows like Apollo’s Pad have kicked our butts in terms of budget by a fair margin. In terms of the storytelling, though, we went for more than they’re going.

So why more simple shows than complex? Because Simple is much, much easier. The effort to make Palpatine is miniscule compared to the effort to make dotBoom. Palpatine is improvised, and recorded and edited in just a couple hours. An episode of dotBoom took weeks from start to finish, in many cases. Hell, our season 1 finale was about 40 minutes, and had a LOT of stuff in it. The editing alone, simple as it was, took me a couple weeks. Palpatine is something I do when I’ve got a free evening.

I’m not quite sure about Mr. Sharma’s point puppet shows failing when they create their own story. Does he imagine that this is a problem unique to puppetry? It’s FAR easier to parody something than to create something to parody. That’s not exactly news. Also, I’m confused as to his assertion that with the “up close viewing style of the internet, it seems pointless to watch a video of a puppet.” What does that mean, exactly? Is it pointless to view any video online? Does Mr. Sharma have an issue taking puppets seriously as avatars? Perhaps he’s one of the apparent many who “watch” video when doing other things, and only really look occasionally, listening the rest of the time. By that standard, sure, you might as well remove the puppets. But by that standard, you might as well not have video at all, and deliver everything in audio. (I doubt that’s something he’s in support of, and it speaks to a larger issue I have with viewing habits online)

Also, Mr. Sharma, Team America was disgusting and juvenile? Did you happen to see the film? Yes, the puppet sex scene was gross, as was the vomiting scene, but that seemed, to me at least, to be the point. They’re puppets, yet they’re having sex. But how can they be having sex when they don’t have the bodyparts for it? How could anyone object to it and force them to edit the scene down (as did happen)? That movie, as much of what Messrs Parker and Stone produces, are incredibly thoughtful, with a large number of very salient points to be made. That they soften the message in the trappings that they do, to make it more pallatible to a larger number of people shouldn’t be a mark against them. And that they do so without dumbing the message down should earn them further kudos. And to Mr. Sharma’s last point: if the way to avoid being on the fringes of web video is to emulate Family Guy, then I, for one, am happy to remain on said fringes. Family Guy tells intellectual jokes? They tell a series of unrelated gags, adopting the posture of something making a larger point, without making it. Where a show with depth would make its point, Family Guy simply repeats the joke again and again, or offers a startling unoriginal and unfunny “You suck!”

To this last point, I’m not exaggerating. If you watch the show, you’ll see a character or situation that has obviously earned the scorn of the writing staff, and instead of delivering any kind of thoughtful, intellectual comment, or joke of any kind, one of the characters will turn to them and insult them. That isn’t a “larger, more intellectual joke,” that’s running out of ideas.