Tuesday, September 23, 2014

What's Rambo Doing on His Day Off? #11


A herd of elk is grazing peacefully in an idyllic field. Suddenly, in the distance! It's John Rambo in his attack jeep! Driving at them like a madman! The elk, panicked, run away while he chases them at high speed. After what appears to be several miles, they run straight into a tiny cage. The door is shut by a ranger from the forestry service. Rambo pulls up and they congratulate each other on getting the elk population under control.


As seen in Rambo: The Force of Freedom episode 17: The Doomsday Machine.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Murder She Wrote Recaps: S2E4: School for Scandal


What looks to be a simple painting accident at a small private college turns out to be something more heinous, despite the English department chair's protestations that murder "only happens at state universities." Jessica solves the crime in time to give a commencement speech, but not before being flashed at least twice by the prime suspect, an uninhibited romance novelist.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Let's Talk About Rambo: Episode 16: Exercise in Terror

Oh no! SAVAGE has taken a group of schoolchildren hostage inside the Statue of Liberty!

Rambo is working on the roof of his cabin when he gets called to action. The thing that's great about recent episodes of this show, however, is that we get to see not only what Rambo's doing on his days off, but also what Turbo and KAT are up to!

Turbo is driving a Formula 1 car in the desert. And KAT is winning prize after prize at the shooting gallery at the fair––just mowing down those scrolling ducks with an expressionless, dead-eyed look on her face. KAT's leisure activities always seem to involve highly violent activities. I think it's a psychological response to being sidelined all the time by Rambo during their missions.

So, after collecting his team, what does Rambo do? He makes them stand on a NYC pier and watch him while he stealthily scubas up to the Statue of Liberty and climbs up the outside of it with suction cups. He manages to climb all the way up to the head, where Gripper is holding the hostages, but Sgt. Havoc spots him from a helicopter and shoots at him, knocking him from his perch! Rambo falls all the way down to one of the statue's arms.

He is unhurt.

Then, in one of the most Rambo moves ever, he throws a rope around the helicopters blades and by sheer determination and strength, stops them from spinning. No leverage at all. Just standing on the arm of the Statue of Liberty. 

"Don't worry, kids, you were only being held hostage by Gripper."
The scheme is foiled. BUT! Days (or minutes?) later, SAVAGE announces they have a new group of hostages at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Seemed like a good scheme, why not try it again, just in a different country?

Also, we learn their motives: They're asking for a $50 million ransom with which they want to start up the International School for Terrorism. Which they presumably all want to attend themselves, since they're so terrible at it. Also, I'm sorry, SAVAGE, but $50 million might seem like a lot, but it's not going to get you very far. I don't think you could even build a contemporary school building for that in this day and age.

So Rambo rides up to the top of the tower by hanging from the bottom of the open-air elevator. When he gets to the top, in the most un-Rambo move ever, he gets knocked out immediately and tied up to the bottom of the elevator while the bad guys send it back to floor one! Gotta give them credit for the poetic nature of the death trap.

But it only takes like five floors before Rambo, with his bare hands, rips up the ropes that are holding him. He climbs back up and the bad guys parachute away after activating the time bomb, which Rambo stops by shooting an arrow into the timer, preventing it from ticking up to its last second. Apparently the bomb was running off of some kind of egg timer. This is the kind of thing they teach you not to do in Terrorism School, I'm guessing.

They track down SAVAGE to their newest base, in the Middle Eastern city of "Baghdiniad." There they destroy the base, with Rambo and Turbo showing affinity for low-tech weapons, using a bow and arrow and a boomerang, respectively.

KAT, though? She dual wields SMGs and just peppers the entire base with bullets.

I'm starting to worry about KAT.
Mission complete.