Tuesday, December 14, 2010

K9 - "The Fall of the House of Gryffen"

Even ghost kids can't resist booping a dog's nose.
Spoiler Level: High

It's a dark and stormy night.  Starkey manages to beat a robot dog with a computer brain at chess, but that's because the robot dog is partnered with Darius.  Suddenly, a loud noise rings out, and Professor Gryffen sends Starkey to investigate.  He's rather surprised when Starkey returns alive.  (Oh waitaminute, that last bit was us MST3K-ing.)

The storm has somehow triggered the Space/Time Manipulator, which has allowed ghosts to enter the house, which take on the forms of Professor Gryffen's family to try and sway him over so they can suck up everyone's life forces and stay in our world.  At least that seems to be what's going on.

On the plus side, I'm glad to see the show following up on Professor Gryffen's family.  It's the character's main motivation, after all, so I'm glad it's not being pushed to the side.  And K9 gets in a few witty lines when he feels he's being ignored.

On the negative side, the whole "I'm so glad to see my family again that my brain has been addled to the point where I can't tell and/or don't care that they're not normal" approach, and the clichéd resolution of Jorjie, Darius and Starkey pleading "But Professor Gryffen,we're your family too, snap out of it!" wasn't very interesting.

Overall, this episode is an improvement over the previous one ("Fear Itself"), but not by much.  Rich and I discussed it afterwards and pretty much agreed that if K9 wasn't in it, this show would have lost us by now.  But I like K9, and I like how he's portrayed in this show, so I'm sticking with it.

1 comment:

greatplaidmoose said...

Yep sticking with it because I love K-9! I agree with your assessment of the episode completely.