The Bottom Line
Pros
- Great animation.
Cons
- Not funny.
- Boring.
- Too heavy-handed.
Description
- An animated show set in space on the Sci Fi channel.
- Chode, the purple captain, voiced by Stephen Root (King of the Hill.)
- Six, the sexy android, voiced by Gina Gershon (Palmetto.)
- Gus, Chode's robot slave, voiced by Maurice LaMarche (Futurama.)
- T'Nuk, the three-breasted pilot, voiced by Gayle Garfinkle.
- Whip, Chode's slacker nephew, voiced by Rick Jones.
- Spaceship Bob, the A.I. brain of the ship, voiced by "Stuttering" John Melendez.
- Darph Bobo, the villain, voiced by Terrence Scammell.
- Creators Chuck Austen and Chris Moeller.
- Head writers Lanier Laney & Terry Sweeney (Saturday Night Live, MadTV.)
Guide Review - 'Tripping the Rift'
First, let me catch you up on the premise of Tripping the Rift. According to Scifi.com's web site (which is more fun that the show itself,) the show is "the continuing comic saga of five misfits who live, work and play on the starship Jupiter 42, which is controlled by a neurotic A.I. known as Spaceship Bob." I think they use the word "comic" loosely.
The characters are pretty over-the-top. The worst is the blatantly, un-funny grab for attention known as Six. The show's site describes her as "the hottest, sexiest and most advanced android ever created. Designed to have more sex than a dorm full of college freshmen, her programming enables her to fake more than 2,000 types of orgasms in over 600 languages." Are thirteen year-olds running the show? Nope. But it sure seems like it.
I was just so bored. I kept waiting to be intrigued by a character. I kept waiting for something to be funny enough for me to keep watching. And I kept waiting to understand what the hell they were all talking about.
I also kept waiting for the adult humor to be funny. South Park has racy content, but it's always clever. Such humor on South Park is not used out of context or as a tool for attention, like it is here. Bender on Futurama is rude, but witty. On Tripping the Rift, everyone is just rude.
