Boldly Going
Space… Pretty cool, right?
A lot of people certainly seem to think so. I personally think it’s a neat thing to think about, but I wouldn’t ever want to live there.
And why would you? It is a hostile place, there’s literally no air and you could die at any moment. I see the appeal, don’t get me wrong, but let’s just think about the logistics for like a minute.
Anyway, this week’s episode was about acceptance of people that are different than you.
Much like the previous week, there are a lot of real world events that could be tied to this theme, and once again I’m not going to focus too much on that, because there are dozens of other people speaking much more eloquently on these topics and nothing I could say is any different or better than what those people are saying. Go listen to the smart people, not me.
The third episode of VeggieTales is titled "Are You My Neighbor?" and I gotta say, I was a little lukewarm on it. For the first half, at least. That’s by no means a fault of the show, it’s the fault of me being a full adult deciding to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on a show meant for children, but I digress.
Act One is a retelling of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A classic. Everybody either knows it or they know the phrase “good Samaritan” without knowing the historical context. There is no third option, everyone falls into either of those categories.
A such, I’m not going to spend a lot of time telling you all what it’s about. There are two cities that don’t like each other, a traveler from one city is beaten and mugged on the road, he is found but not helped by two different people from his city, a and a citizen from the other city (the titular good Samaritan) helps him, in spite of him being different. That’s the bare bones of it, I’m oversimplifying it and took out a lot of the historical context.
In this version, the two cities are called Flibber-o-loo and Jibber-de-Lot. The citizens of Flibber-o-loo everyone wears shoes on their head and in Jibber-de-Lot everyone wears pots. Those are the two main differences from the original story. Larry (from Flibber-o-loo) gets robbed by recurring antagonists the Scallions (who I just realized now are “rapscallions.” Pretty good.) and thrown into a hole. Archibald Asparagus, playing the mayor of Flibber-o-loo, finds him ignores him, claiming to be busy, as does a doctor.
Later, Junior, from Jibber-de-Lot, finds Larry and helps him out of the hole and brings him to the aforementioned doctor. Mayor Archibald sees this act of kindness and ends the disagreement between the two cities. Pretty standard stuff.
I will say, the whole thing is told in rhyme, and it’s very well done and catchy.
Act Two is where things really pick up, because it’s a very fun Star Trek pastiche. Now, I don’t consider myself a Star Trek fan, but I’ve always appreciated it for what it is, and when a parody or homage to it is done well I always have myself a nice little chuckle.
The story begins very similarly to the one from just two episodes ago, with Junior and his dad - who is named Mike - discussing who Junior is inviting to his upcoming birthday party. His dad asks if he is going to invite the new kid, Fernando, and Junior says he isn’t going to because he thinks he’s weird. His dad tells him that he should think about inviting Fernando anyway, but doesn’t press the issue.
Moments later, a very tiny space shuttle comes in through Junior’s bedroom window. A beam of light flashes out of it and Bob and Larry appear (full-size) and introduce themselves. Junior then turns to the camera and says “Wow, deja vu.” and it’s very funny. If you recall, a similar thing happened at the beginning of the first episode.
They tell Junior that their ship, the USS ApplePies (a very good joke) has lost power and is in the path of a meteor and they need Junior’s help. They shrink Junior down and bring him to the ship, where the ship’s engineer Scooter, a Scottish carrot, is trying to fix the ship. There are also two gourds, Jimmy and Jerry, singing “Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis” from the film Meet Me in St. Louis. Jimmy and Jerry are the two newest crew members and they are, in a word, strange. Not strange in any sort of negative way, just mildly eccentric, the same way that people who choose to openly sing showtunes usually are. Not that I would know anything about that.
Emmy-winning character Scooter then comes in and announces that the meteor is a giant popcorn ball. Junior suggests sending the Gourds to eat the meteor before it can make impact. (Oh yeah, at one point it’s mentioned that the Gourds are very hungry guys) They’re sent out in a shuttle and absolutely devour the popcorn meteor and save everyone. Tragically, that part happens offscreen, and while I fully understand why, it would’ve been fun to see.
Junior returns home and tells his dad that he’s going to invite Fernando to his party, because he now knows that being weird or different isn’t always a bad thing.
For the food portion this week, I felt the need to redeem myself after last week’s debacle. Luckily, the show offered me an absolute layup in the form of the USS ApplePies. I decided to make a vegetable pot pie, as an homage to this show’s homage.
I’d never made a pot pie before, but I still found it fairly simple. I sort of cobbled together the recipe from a couple various recipes I found online, Frankenstein-ing it together for my own nefarious purposes.
The main vegetables I used for the filling were carrot, onion, asparagus, and butternut squash. I was worried the squash wouldn’t be good because it’s out of season, but it tasted fine. I was going to add peas, which I had bought specifically for this, but then somehow forgot to add them in. I hesitate to admit this openly because I know for a fact that not adding peas to a pot pie is a cardinal sin in some states.
As for the pie crust, I had three options: I could do it the hard way, the easy way, or the Janeway. Ultimately I chose the easy way and used store-bought pie crusts because I don’t have enough counterspace to make a pie dough from scratch, and I don’t even know what the Janeway would be because I’ve only ever seen one episode of Voyager and she wasn’t heavily featured.
In spite of the missing peas and the premade crust, it turned out pretty great, especially with it being a first attempt.
Honestly, I wish I had something more funny to say at this point, but really the net result of this week is that I made a decent pot pie.
Obviously there’s room for improvement. As you can see in the photo it’s not the most visually appealing thing. I could have tried to make the crust a bit more even, but with it being premade I only had so much to work with. The bottom layer of crust was soggy, I’m sure there’s something I could have done about that, but ultimately it didn’t really matter. And, as I said, I forgot to add the peas.
Overall, I give it a Seven (out) of Nine.