How About That Thing?

So yeah, a month ago, they released a sequel to Goodburger. At this point, I’m not even annoyed anymore. It’s the 2020s: if it’s original and has nothing to do with someone’s nostalgia, then nobody wants to see it. Prove me wrong, but that seems to be the attitude these days. And it’s kind of depressing how I grew up, and all of this stuff is still here. It’s like coming home to the town you grew up in, only to find that the only thing that really changed is all the oil dried up, or all the coal got mined, and now the town is dying a slow and agonizing death. But hey, remember that comic shop we used to frequent when we were nine? IT’S STILL THERE! It’s owned by a different guy, and all the comic books suck now, but NOSTALGIA!

That’s usually where my mind goes when I hear about another franchize from the 80s or the 90s getting dug up. However, Goodburger 2 is different. Primarily because after getting my heavy sigh, and quiet declaration of “fucking really?” out of my system, I got to thinking:

“Damn, I haven’t thought about Goodburger in ages!”

And so, as my puggle slept on my lap, and Pluto TV moved on to the next commercial, I found myself thinking back on the Goodburger that started it all: the sketch from the Nickelodeon sketch comedy All That.

All That was basically Saturday Night Live or MADtv for kids. It was half an hour long, it had a live audience, and it had sketches that varied in hilarity. You had classics like Goodburger, Vital Information for Your Everyday Life with Lori Beth Denberg, Cooking with Randy and Mandy, and of course, my personal favorite, REPAIR MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN MAN! While it did have a few duds in the time I watched, a lot of them wouldn’t come till later seasons, when most of the people I liked weren’t involved in the show anymore.

But the one sketch that stands out the most to me, hands down, was Ear Boy.

Yes, Ear Boy. A sketch about a kid who has really big ears. And… Well… That’s pretty much it.

Well, actually, I tell a lie. The thing that made it truly memorable was the fact he had a friend who always gave him advice. And, as he often pointed out in the sketch, his friend’s ears were just as big as his. Who was this big-earred friend of his, you ask? None other than this guy.

This, for the uninitiated, is Ross Perot. Perhaps you’ve heard the name before. Most likely by talking heads on MSNBC who dragged his name through the mud for supposedly being the precursor to the Trump presidency. In reality, the man was a centrist candidate who ran as an independent in 1992, and as part of the reform party in 1996. He was probably the most successful third party candidate in recent history… Although that’s really not saying as much as you think. Really, by virtue of getting invited to the debate stage in the first place, he’s already done better than most.

A children’s sketch comedy show is probably the last place you’d expect to see a Ross Perot reference, let alone a frequent character . All the while, they just expected the audience to get the joke. I mean yeah, Perot was a much bigger name in the 90s than any other point in time, but even then, that was pretty gutsy.

Obviously, the real Ross Perot never appeared on the show. Instead, they got one of the other cast members to play him. And who did they get? Well… Actually, I’m drawing a blank on their name at the moment, but the person portraying Perot in all of the Ear Boy sketches was a little girl.

To this very day, I can’t decide if that’s hilarious, or a punch in the balls. I can appreciate a good satire as much as the next guy, but the people who wrote this sketch knew they were writing for children, right? Call me crazy, but the last thing I was interested in back in the 90s was who was running for president. Hell, I probably couldn’t even spell president, much less determine who I wanted to be president.

In fact, I wouldn’t really get to know Ross Perot and his platform until over a decade later. The man was no longer involved in politics, and The Reform Party he worked so hard to build basically fell apart by the time I started reading up on the guy, but I ended up reading about him all the same. And, if I’m being entirely honest, I think that was what eventually influenced me to vote third party in just about every election I’ve taken part in. And yes, that includes the ones where I was supposed to vote democrat or risk dooming the world. Which, if Twitter is anything to go by, is basically every election ever. Seriously, I could make a joke about how the democrats, and even the republicans love that whole “a vote for X is a vote for Y” bullshit mantra… But I’m already dancing on the razor’s edge as it is with all this political talk.

I guess I could probably talk a lot more about the Ear Boy sketches, but what’s to talk about? Ear Boy has a dilemma, he seeks help from Ross Perot, Ross Perot gives him a weird response that doesn’t make sense till the end of the sketch, and it’s hilarious because… He has big ears? I guess?

Not going to lie, Ear Boy was never one of my favorite sketches. I didn’t exactly hate the sketch or anything, but let’s face it, the character of Ross Perot pretty much stole the show. It’s probably the only reason anybody remembers this sketch even existed in the first place. Without it, I’d say it’d be a pretty forgettable spot filler that you’d sit through, and hope for an Ishboo sketch, or a Detective Dan sketch, or something funnier. Barring that, it seems like the kind of thing the writers of The Critic would’ve used to satirize how comedically bankrupt SNL is. Right up there with The Incredibly Sweaty Guy.

Oh well. They all can’t be winners, I guess.

I suppose the take away from all of this is that Goodburger 2 got me to reflect on how I managed to end up a third party loving, fringe lunatic supporting individual whose actions on election day serve to piss off the entirety of Twitter. Or X. Or whatever Emer decided to call it now. Rabbit holes are fun.