ROX #17: J&B Give Thanx

J: This episode is not the finest in the J&B on the Rox series. In fact, it could be the most embarrassing. Oh, there are a few moments of clever repartee, a little bit of Bloomington contextualization that reminds us of the place and time in which the episode was made.

But there are shortcomings galore herein.

Conceptually, the show is lacking. It's basically just us hosts sitting in our new attic, yammering about what we're thankful for.

J: “I'm thankful that we live in a free country; for our civil liberties, the right to vote...”

B: “I'm thankful that I haven't gotten busted yet this year.”

And so on, in exceedingly choppy fashion, intercut with random snippets of video of our Bloomington surroundings overlaid by a stolen segment of music from the Beastie Boys. Fascinating.

There are numerous drinx here, which, if you're mixing along, might make the show tolerable.... [More...]

W. Owen: This is a very rare case: the one and only ROX episode that I flat-out hate.

In fact, total ROX fanboy though I am, I didn't even care to bother having it on tape till it showed up on CATS one night and I just let the VCR keep recording, more out of an anal and obsessive sense of completeness than any actual desire to see it again.

Mainly, my intense dislike for this one stems from the fact that it's the first one where Our Funky Young Media Icons discover that Beastie Boys riff that they would tack onto the end of later episodes (usually followed by a symphonic BWOMP BWOMMMMP!!, unless the CATS deck cuts off the show a split-second prematurely). It works really well in all those later ones, but it's used endlessly and well past the ad nauseum stage here.

Most of the rest of the show is just plain dull, and doesn't come close to making up for hearing that annoying riff... [More...]