If at first you don't succeed...
Despite being one of the most brutal and bloody projects Genndy Tartakovsky has ever worked on, Primal (2019) still manages to have a few moments of genuine levity.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
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General:
- How does Genndy Tartakovsky thank ASIFA Hollywood for his Annie Awards when he wins twice? He does his acceptance speech while taking a shower.
Season 1
"Spear and Fang"
- Only one brief moment of adorable laughs was, when Fang's two hatchlings approach and comfort Spear. They begin yanking on his hair playfully, all before the Mood Whiplash.
- While the duo battle the alpha of the horned tyrannosaurs, Spear gets trapped within its jaws and it seemed like he was "eaten". A brief pause occurs, and its mouth suddenly opens to reveal that Spear has his lance jammed into the roof of its mouth. After it sways its head around to shake him off it attempted to use its tongue to get him out.
- Right after that, Spear jumps out of its mouth and charges forth with a Battle Cry, as Fang watches him doing the aforementioned charge and immediately follows suit as she joins him by roaring. The scene itself is simultaneously awesome and rather humorous as it seems like Spear's determination has likely stirred into Fang as they avenge their respective families.
"River of Snakes"
- The episode starts with Spear and Fang competing for each other's hunts. When Fang ends up eating every legitimate kill that Spear manages to score, he sits on a log annoyed and hungry and starts eating a large bug... only for Fang to start pushing her snout in Spear's personal space like a dog trying to eat its owner's food.
- In the next scene, he very obviously has an upset stomach and goes behind some bushes to relieve himself. Clearly that bug didn't agree with him.
- Spear starts swatting away flies, only to realize that Fang defecated next to him. It's almost as big as he is.
- Just as the flash flood is starting and Spear and Fang are running away from the water, a random snake flies through the air past them, to Spear's confusion. Another one flies in and ends up looped around Spear's head. It hisses at him and is clearly about to attack when Spear grabs it and tosses it aside as if he's saying, "Nope, don't have time for this!"
- At the end, after a near death experience with the titular river of snakes, Fang freaks out when she sees a tiny snake coming to her and Spear's campfire. Spear immediately and unceremoniously stabs it in the head in a way that screams, "Hell no, we are not going through this again."
"A Cold Death"
- When Spear makes a sled and harness out of the parts of mammoth, he gives the tusk harness for Fang to pull. Fang only turns her back as if to say "I ain't no sled dog", leaving Spear to do the heavy lugging.
- Spear tears off some of the mammoth's fur and covers himself for warmth, but then Fang basically shoves him out of the way and starts eating. In her head she was probably thinking: "Move it! I haven't had a thing to eat! I'm starving!"
- Another small comical moment is when Fang is feasting on the mammoth's carcass, she stops eating for a few seconds only to have a tiny smear of blood on her lips and it looks like she's wearing lipstick.
- Fang appears to get lost in the blizzard and runs around, finally roaring for help. But as she does, it turns out that Spear was only next to her.
- When Spear and Fang are eating the dead mammoth Spear gives Fang a piece of the wooly hide to keep her warm. Fang responds with a confused look and takes a bite out of the mammoth and smacks Spear over the head with it before simply letting the furry hide fall off her. Just shut up and eat, you dumb ape.
"Terror Under the Blood Moon"
- Fang tries to climb a mountain in order to help Spear, who was captured by bat-creatures. Unfortunately, it's too sheer for her, and we get a montage of Fang repeatedly jumping on the mountain face and sliding down like a cat clawing through the curtains. It's a classic slapstick bit, made all the more funny by how brutal and violent the rest of the episode is.
- When Fang wants to trick the bats into carrying her up to the spider's lair, she pretends to be dead. The way she sticks her tongue out to sell it is a funny little touch.
- After Spear rescues Fang by killing the giant spider they suddenly hear the giant bats flying from miles away. After looking into the distance to see an army of them returning to their lair, both of them stare at each other for a few seconds as they're possibly thinking: "Now what?"
- As Spear and Fang are battling the massive flock of bats across the savanna, one of the bats manage to swoop down and grab Spear off of Fang's back, but what makes this moment comical is the look on Fang's bemused expression as she turns her head around whilst looking up to see Spear missing that basically says "Oh come on! I just got him back!"
- While awesome to see, Spear is basically using most of the airborne bats as platforms by leaping from one bat to another. Fang, who's on the ground, is seen to be examining what Spear is doing with a hint of curiosity. When some of the bats fly towards her she jumps and just stomps on them, almost as if she's either trying to copy Spear or mainly doing her own version on how to kill the bats herself.
- Imagine how this unfolds from the perspective of the caveman/monkey/primitive man who held onto Spear's spear.note And at the end of that night, that one caveman has a comically unbelievable story to tell about how a Terror swept through their lands under the blood moon, just to wipe out two separate packs of predators!
"Rage of the Apemen"
- During the lake scene, Fang freaks out when she sees a tiny earthworm, since it reminds her of snakes, which terrify her due to the events of Episode 2. When Spear realizes she's afraid of the worm, he casually eats it, and gives a sarcastic "triumphant roar" afterwards. "Huzzah. I have slain the ferocious earthworm. You're SAFE now." What really sells it though is the fact Fang still refuses to come anywhere near him, instead choosing to sleep on the rocky outcrop over the much softer sand.
- Fang accidentally provokes a swarm of butterflies at the lake. They're still attacking her as the scene cuts back to Spear.
- Spear brings a pile of fish for the two to eat. Spear admires the scenery while eating, when he looks back down, the whole pile of fish is gone, and Fang has a sheepish look on her face. Almost apologetic. "Sorry, I couldn't help myself."
- And right after that, Spear sees Fang snoozing innocently in the sunlight, and gets a slightly sadistic smirk on his face. He's clearly planning to play a practical joke on her, possibly sneaking up behind her and splashing her, or startling her with a caveman yawp. Things quickly go to hell before he can do that, but it would have been funny.
- Despite how dark it is, what Spear does to the Gorilla Champion is also somewhat amusing. Especially since the ape champion absolutely deserved it.
- Spear discovering he doesn't have to hunt the fish in the lagoon, they just swim right into his hand.
"Scent of Prey"
- After Spear kills a swarm of large arthropods that menaced him and Fang, he makes a fire and nonchalantly cooks the critters. One cannot afford to be a picky eater in this world. The way he feeds them to Fang, who eats them in little nibblets, is also rather amusing.
- Spear finally creates something sturdy for Fang to lie on but trying to physically move her is the more straining task when he tried to shove her heavy body with all of his might. One scene shows him rapidly moving his legs as he's doing his best to get her onto the stretcher, but quickly tires himself out.
- As Spear is traveling with the still injured Fang, the one wild dog who kept eyeing him from far away sees him again and actually follows him. Spear takes notice of this but he basically ignores it... only to see a couple more of the wild dogs who're just outright stalking him. After ceaseless amount of walking he finally locates a cave for Fang to rest in, but the wild dogs are still following suit and as soon as they continue to approach closer to the cave, Spear rushes out to scare them away by yelling at them. It's almost as if he's an old man shooing away nosy children by screaming "get off my lawn!"
"Plague of Madness"
- Prior to being bitten, the sauropod spends a good few seconds just staring utterly perplexed at the infected hadrosaur as it runs mindlessly in circles around the former's feet. It's worth a bit of a chuckle.
- While the scene of the infected Argentinosaurus vomiting blood was indeed disgustingly morbid, there's some shades of Black Comedy within it. There are two other members of the herd from the other side of the lake, who're just standing there watching (and not even remotely moving to be exact) and the other one who's not too far away from the sick one turns to see what is happening. With the way how he's seeing it, his expression alone looks like as if he's thinking: "What the hell dude?! We drink from there!"
- When the first chase begins, Spear's face as he's running seemed a little comical to look at, whereas Fang herself didn't even look frightened when she's running with him.
- At the start of the second chase scene, it's the other way around. The expression on Fang's face is downright funny on its own, note and with the way how she's angled, it looks like she's tip-toeing very fast instead of running while Spear looks rather calm, while he's swinging his arms in an odd way as if he's punching and sprinting at the same time. While that's happening, the diseased Argentinosaurus is seen slowly coming into frame, as its head is continuously bobbing up and down that can kind of mitigate the terrifying factor emanating from the scene itself where it looks almost completely Narm.
- A bit of black humor—after Spear's Catapult Nightmare, he slowly looks over the lip of the cliff down at the poisoned/diseased sauropod. Right after, Fang also looks slowly over the edge of the cliff, with an expression identical to Spear's.
- When Spear and Fang are hiding out in the cave from the zombified-sauropod, Spear looks down into the ravine to check out the infected dinosaur. When Fang comes out, Spear makes to leave, and he and Fang are then shown basically talking to each other, almost as if they're arguing about to do until they both just leave the cave to sneak past the sauropod as quietly as possible. At one point, while walking down to the bottom of the ravine, Spear accidentally knocks a rock down to the where the sauropod is sleeping (or is at least in some kind of dormant state). It first seems like that the noise will wake up the zombie-dinosaur, but it doesn't, which cause Spear to make a face at Fang that basically says, "See? We'll be fine as long as we're quiet."
"Coven of the Damned"
- While investigating the Coven's glowing green pyre, Spear climbs a tree to see it better... but not before propping his spear against Fang's head, almost as if saying "hold this for a moment, please". Fang's complete non-reaction makes it even funnier.
- The Head Witch hands one of the newborn infants to Lula and becomes instantly attached. One of the witches approach her and she responds with loud screeching. Another one tries to come to her baby and screams at her it's almost as if she's "telling" them "Nobody touches my baby! Only I can hold her and no one else!" To make this even slightly more funnier, her yelling wakes up and scares her baby that she's protecting, making it cry as a result.
- Lula begins painting symbols all over Spear's body but looks behind herself to see the other witches being with their own children. One of them snarls at her as she's clutching her baby as she's angrily walking away.
"Slave of the Scorpion"
- At the beginning of the episode, Spear harpoons a big fish and is visibly proud of it... until Fang nearby catches a fish several times bigger. This is followed by Spear throwing his catch into the water while Fang gulfs hers down in one go.
- Spear runs after a fleeing Mira and, after seeing how frightened she is, just stays crouched to show he isn't a threat. And just when Mira was starting to calm down, Fang pops out of the bushes roaring at her as loud as she could and sends Mira off running again. Spear is not amused.
- After Mira is done cooking herself a stew, she offers Spear a piece of meat to taste... only for Fang, attracted by the smell, to dive in between them and nonchalantly steal the meat, shaking off Spear as he angrily and desperately tries to pry her mouth open to get it back. She runs aside and eats the piece with visible pleasure, before adopting a hilarious begging look. She even makes a clear "Mmmm" sound! Amused, Mira gives a pouty Spear some more cooked meat, but it proves to be too spicy for our caveman and he goes back to his raw meal, while in background Fang steals the second piece as well.
- The funnier part is the implication that a fussy tyrannosaur has a more refined sense of palette than a neanderthal.
- Doubles as a heartwarming moment, but Spear using Fang's massive toothy jaws as a power tool to remove Mira's slave collar is something straight out of The Flintstones.
- Right after this, Mira tells them her name in gratitude... and Spear and Fang just stare at her blankly. The second time she says to clarify, they just leave. There was even harmonious music that stopped playing before she speaks, selling how little language means to them.
- The dumbfounded reactions Spear and Fang have to Mira shooting an oviraptorosaur they were failing to catch with a bow.
- Mira watches Spear as he feasts on the dinosaur she killed. With his mouth full of meat, Spear gives her the most hilariously dorky smile, almost like a child enjoying a treat. Mira is amused.
Season 2
"Sea of Despair"
- When Spear begins chopping down trees to make a raft, Fang just stares at him, bewildered. When she finally figures out what he's doing, she slowly heads over to the trees and starts knocking them down as well, with a clear air of, "Oh, this is what we're doing now? Ugh, fine." If a T-Rex were capable of rolling its eyes and sighing with exasperation, Fang would have.
- When the duo finally begin their journey out at sea, we get a brief montage of them surfing through the current with epic background music...which then switches over to a quiet, far less dramatic shot of the raft just floating over the water, barely moving.
- When Spear can't find any food, he half crawls back on the raft only to be confronted by Fang roaring in his face. This quickly devolves into their having a shouting match where it's not hard to imagine the message being "who's fault is it we're in this situation in the first place!"
- There's one moment in the episode during the storm right after Spear and Fang create their own archelon umbrella for their raft, there's a sound effect of water dripping while the screen pans over to the left where it's Spear taking a piss into the ocean but the most hilarious is after he's finished, the way how he's pulling up his loincloth almost looked like he was zipping up his fly.
"Shadow of Fate"
- The Druidess who heals Spear doesn't use language either, so their interactions are just them yelling wordlessly at each other. While smacking his injured shoulder with a plant, she meets his roar of annoyance with an equally annoyed roar. They pretty much have a conversation: "Stop it, that hurts!" "This MUST be done, endure it!"
- Red pleads with Fang to have some berries with him by demonstrating some kind of jovial hopping dance. And it works. It could also even be a mating dance.
- Very much Black Comedy, but when Spear and Fang meet again during Fang and Red's attack on the Celtic village, Fang drops the half-eaten tribesman like a dog that just got caught stealing food from the dinner table.
- Even more darkly hilarious is Fang's Oh, Crap! expression itself. It certainly signifies the best non-verbal variation of "Umm.. This isn't what it looks like!" given the situation that has occurred.
"Dawn of Man"
- While clearly heartwarming, Spear is very embarassed in trying to imitate Mira's moon ritual to the point an owl catching him at it is enough to make him storm off.
- Spear's very awkward "Uuuuuh...Mira?" when he enters the slave hut is hilarious.
"The Red Mist"
- Fang making her typically roaring entrance to the battle...the badassery of which is (somewhat) undermined when the roof she's standing on collapses under her weight.
"The Primal Theory"
- At the very end of the episode, having witnessed Lord Darlington brutally kill the Madman with a sharpened stick, both men battered and bruised and completely drenched in blood, Charles lets out an elated "And there you have it!" while pointing excitedly at Darlington, completely ignoring his heavily-wounded shoulder over his theory about humans reverting to a more savage stage of their development when forced to fight for survival having been proven correct. Darlington's Thousand-Yard Stare serves as the capper to it all, sitting somewhere between My God, What Have I Done? and You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!.
- The madman playing peek-a-boo with Blakely's unconscious body so the other men won't shoot him, complete with a musical string as he raises and lowers the body. Funny the first time, by the third time he does it it's hilarious. Especially with the Madman's shit-eating grin. It's something that, sheer horror aside, wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Looney Tunes.
- The Madman's facial expression as he boxes with Lord Darlington, at first he sadistically grins, then he gets punched consecutively in the face and look in disbelief before getting punched again and getting indignant at as his nose bleeds before just screaming in annoyance. Then as he grabs Darlington the Lord implores to Charles why he isn't helping.Darlington: (Getting strangled by the Madman) For God's sake, help me, man!
Charles: (Realizes that Darlington is losing) Oh! Of course! You were doing so well for a moment, there!
"Vidarr"
- Very much in the realm of unintentionally funny but after Eldar squared up to Fang and Mira with a look of steely determination, it's hard not to laugh when we come back to him a few moments later screaming and running for his life as Fang is beating the tar out of him.
- Spear, badass caveman murder machine, turning into the prehistoric equivalent of a Panicky Expectant Father when he realizes Fang is about to lay eggs.
- Spear tries to touch Fang's eggs, and she promptly knocks him on his ass. Friend or not, she's still a wild animal and as ornery as an eagle hen on the nest. The WTF?? look Spear gives Mira - and the smirk she gives him back - is priceless.
- Whilst his father's reactions and grief makes it overall tragic and depressing, there's a tiny glimmer of Black Comedy to be found in Eldar's death. His father takes a brutal landing straight through several trees and survived his own fall, and Spear knocks Eldar off his flying mount right over a flowing river implying that he'll have a much softer landing... then he instead lands on a massive protruding boulder in the water and gets a fatal impact instead. It's almost like a twisted version of a Hope Spot when the 'safer' fall turns out to be the fatal one.
"The Colossaeus, Part I"
- Mira wants to go home, but there's the obvious complication of Fang's eggs. She and Spear start trying to draw Fang away from the nest to sneak the eggs onto the boat. Thing is Fang ain't dumb and figures out immediately what they're up to. What follows is her demonstrating she's two steps ahead of them multiple times, eventually just smacking Spear across the head with her tail with the implied "Dumbass!" very clear. When Mira finally gets one into the boat and can show Fang the makeshift nest, she looks utterly exasperated with an expression of "you could have just started with that", grabs the other two eggs and drops them in the boat.
- During the fight against the Babylonian empire, Fang notices the Egyptian invaders trying to bring down the gate with a battering ram. She takes the end in her mouth and smashes through the gate in one blow as if saying, “You guys are taking too long! This is how it’s done!” Also you can see the Egyptians being dragged along when Fang runs with the ram.
- It has been pointed out that, as intimidating as it is, the empowered Viking Chieftain's appearance and moveset are reminiscent of a video game boss.
"The Colossaeus, Part II"
- There's a bit of Black Comedy to the montage near the beginning of Spear, Fang, and Kamau helping the Egyptians conquer various civilizations. It plays out like a "Groundhog Day" Loop with the exact same series of animations (a war general yelling, then Spear and Fang charging into battle and engaging some archers in melee, then Kamau effortlessly punching soldiers into the air left and right, then Egyptians making off in a carriage with the plunder while the trio trudge behind them absolutely bristling with arrows), with only the aesthetics of the civilizations changing each time.
- One scene involves Spear, Fang, and Kamau having steaks given to them by one of the Egyptian warriors in their respective cells, and right after he tosses a steak to Kamau, Fang becomes hostile as she viciously growls at him, which causes the man to fearfully throw out more and more steaks by the second. While his face isn't shown you can tell that he's highly terrified by not wanting to get killed or possibly eaten by the aggressive tyrannosaur.
- "Okay! Okay! Look you can have more of them, I'm just doing my job!"
- Mira's expression when the blonde slave girl rings the bells to alert the guards just screams You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!. She runs over to the girl and punches her in the face.
- The Egyptian Queen does rather well against Spear until he sees that Mira, Kamau's daughter, and the eggs are in trouble. He proceeds to stomp her to the ground so he can use her as a springboard to tackle a gaggle of soldiers who were trying to intercept his companions.
"The Colossaeus, Part III"
- Amal's epic battle against the spider, complete with jitter cam. Mundane made awesome at its finest.
- Fang's hatchlings devouring an injured Egyptian soldier, after curiously observing her mother do the same. You can almost hear the "hmm, that looks fun!" thought go through their heads before they gleefully start chomping.
- Later on, Fang's hatchlings play fighting, only to accidentally knock each other over.
- The main gang happily reunites with each other, but the moment gets ruined when the Egyptian Queen's body smashes through the surface of the boat and lands right in front of them. The looks of wide-eyed shock on Spear's and Mira's faces are priceless. Especially when they look through the hole on the roof that Ima's body made and see Kamau looking down on them, the latter having a blank expression on his face that almost says something like "Whoops, my bad, didn't see you guys there".
- In a twist of Black Comedy, there's also the wall-eyed expression of the Egyptian queen's corpse, driving home that this is the most undignified death for such a dangerous and regal villain. There's also the delightful implication that, given she landed on a boat with three hungry dinosaurs on board, her carcass is unlikely to be anything more than "dinner".
"Echoes of Eternity"
- Fang's male baby is very excited about swimming in the ocean. The whole sequence is both hilarious and heartwarming.Male T. rex baby:*roars enthusiastically and jumps in - sinking like a stone. Fang pulls him out and deposits him next to his sister.*Male T. rex baby:*gets up, roars even louder, and jumps in - sinking like a stone again. Fang pulls him out and plops him on his back.*Male T. rex baby:*rolls over, roars still louder, and jumps in, starting to sink - only to see his sister calmly thero-paddling over his head. After a little experimentation, he's paddling too.*
- Mira's people are minding their own business...when a baby T. rex sticks it head in their door, roars and toddles off. As they stare bemused, they get a neanderthal and a fully grown T.rex calmly staring at them. Their response, throw their hands up and run away screaming about a devil!
- Later, the tribe's army arrives to challenge Spear and Fang. They even bring a dog with them to bark at one of Fang's hatchlings, who roars right back.
- Spear's disgruntled look as the tribesmen surround him and Fang implies "oh no, not this again".
- When Mira shows Spear an empty cave of his own he can stay in, Fang doesn't hesitiate to go right in there with him- knocking down the entire back wall while she's at it!
