The Fancy Party
The Fancy Party begins on a planet surrounded by ships.
We zoom in to the banquet room where an uncomfortable, formally dressed Hater sits amongst a bunch of villains — Emperor Awesome, and a bunch of heretofore unseen villains across from an extremely old, wrinkled, and sickly woman: Queen Entozoa. She announces that she’s gathered them all for a reason — she’s dying and wants to choose an heir to inherit her thousand year empire. One of the villains makes a weaselly quip about how she can’t possibly be older than 400. The queen waits a second before having the unnamed villain dragged off for his remark, which she considers desperate. She announces she DESPISES desperation. There are pink beams and screams behind the doors.
The door flies open and Wander arrives, with Sylvia, apologizing for being late, chiding her that she said they wouldn’t know anybody. Hater gapes in astonishment as the queen not only greets Wander warmly but invites him to sit right beside her. Sylvia settles in and begins eating everything in sight, pausing only to shoot Emperor Awesome down when he tries to hit on her. The Queen chatters happily about how Wander is the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy, ignoring Hater pointing out that this is only so because Hater himself declared him so. Hater prepares to attack, but Peepers tackles him and drags him off to the restroom, where he reminds Hater that he can’t destroy anyone at a fancy dinner party. It’s extremely rude, and the Queen is a stickler for manners.
After an uncomfortable moment with the inexplicable BLACK CUBE, they return to the party with Peepers having promised to handle Wander, leaving Hater to just be the perfect gentleman in order to win over the queen. Wander is complimenting the queen on her evil castle, all sincerity, and the queen is delighted. Hater attempts to interject himself into the conversation, only to be scolded for sucking up. Dinner is served, and while Hater has to recite a mnemonic to remember his fancy flatware, Wander doesn’t bother, eating with his hands instead. The queen is charmed by Wander’s devil-may-care attitude. Hater begins to show his temper, but Peepers intervenes, seeking to blast Wander under the table. Sylvia snatches him with her tail and smashes him against the underside of the table.
Hater attempts to be entertaining with an anecdote, but Wander incessantly interrupts to ask “why”, so Hater loses his temper — again. Cue the crickets at the outburst, immediately upstaged by Wander balancing a spoon on his nose to the amusement of all.
Hater is firing up for another rage outburst, only to be interrupted by the servants announcing dancing. Wander takes off for the restroom. Peepers, who was in there treating Sylvia-related injuries, blasts the door to weld it shut. Hater takes his chance, and serenades the queen, who begins to warm up to him. As she begins to tell him she’d like to choose him as the heir, Wander returns, outfits the fancy musicians with fun instruments and has them whip out a ragtime number.
Peepers tries again for Wander, but Sylvia is there again, and forces him to stare at the BLACK CUBE. While Peepers is having his soul sucked out by the The Dark, Hater cuts in again, but his dancing is too energetic, whipping the ancient alien queen around the room with unsettling bone-cracking noises. He is convinced he’s doing well until he sees the other villains staring aghast. Desperate to save the moment, he kisses the queen.
She pushes away, disgusted: “What are you doing? I’m one thousand years old!” Still desperate, Hater makes the mistake the first villain made — he cheesily tells the queen she can’t be older than 400. The queen is enraged by yet another display of weakness. She declares the party over, and says she’s made her choice; the other villains begin to file out. Hater is dragged off, protesting that if Wander inherits, he’ll use the power for good rather than evil.
Wander is innocently unaware of what he’s about to inherit, but before anyone can explain, the servants and guards are all blown in with the door on an evil green explosion. Hater has had it: he storms back in explaining he’s not the perfect gentleman, and when he wants something he takes it. He hovers above the queen and demands she bequeath him her power.
To his surprise, she says “Okay.” While Hater is gaping in astonishment, the queen reveals her true self: an alien parasite that has been inhabiting the queen and who now needs a new host. Hater tries to back off, but the parasite inhabits him.
Wander, all this time unaware that he was competing with the villains, sees Hater trying to force the intruder from his body and takes it as Hater choking on something from the banquet table. He gives Hater the Heimlich maneuver, which forces the parasite from Hater’s body and launches it across the room. The other villains all dive away, and the evil parasite ends up in a finger sandwich Sylvia was holding. Recognizing it as evil, she backs away and runs. Hater snatches up Peepers and runs as well. Wander cheerfully says “Heckuva party” to Hater, and Orbbles off with Sylvia. The Hatecraft takes off as well.
Emperor Awesome puts the mack on the now-sentient sandwich, only to get blasted for his efforts. The parasite, livid that it’s now in a sandwich for a millennium, swears vengeance.
Tropes appearing in "The Fancy Party"
- All There in the Manual:
- The Kremulons are the two slimy drooly aliens down the table from Hater and Awesome — their names appear in the closed captioning.
- Also named in the closed captions is the BLACK CUBE, whose name is always spelled in all caps.
- An Aesop: The goal you wish to achieve might not turn out what you expected it to be.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Hater really wanted to be in Queen Entozoa's good graces so he could inherit her empire and her army. But later, when he gets just that, it's revealed that Queen Entozoa will only bestow these things to her chosen inheritor so she can inhabit their body!
- Big Red Devil: The first villain that gets dragged off (identified as Kragthar in a later episode) is a large alien with red skin and horns.
- Body Surf: Turns out to be the whole purpose of the party.
- Chirping Crickets: Cricket chirps are heard in response to one of Queen Entozoa's guests trying to compliment her by saying she doesn't look any older than 400 as well as Lord Hater's story about a planet he destroyed that derails into a rant on his distaste for the color purple.
- Compliment Backfire: When one of the villains tries to flatter Queen Entozoa by saying she "doesn't look a year over 400", she has him dragged off for such a blatant and desperate attempt at buttering her up.
- Cut a Slice, Take the Rest: Sylvia grabs one of the small sandwiches from a plate before devouring the remaining sandwiches on it.
- Early-Bird Cameo: During The Stinger in the credits, the song "Little Black Cube of Darkness" is heard on the Black Cube's car radio before its appearance in the Black Cube's episode in season two.
- Evil Old Folks: Queen Entozoa. She's a thousand years old by the time the episode begins, although it's entirely possible the entity controlling her is much older.
- Faux Affably Evil: Queen Entozoa absolutely loathes anyone she considers to be weak and can be very critical, but she dotes on Wander and treats him very hospitably compared to her other guests. Although this is A: Because she's impressed at him being the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy (but wanted only by Lord Hater), and B: She was originally going to possess him for a thousand years before Lord Hater stepped his game up.
- Hater himself is this for most of the episode while pretending to be "the ultimate gentleman."
- Forceful Kiss: Hater panics and plants one on Queen Entozoa after his attempt at copying Wander's dance moves fails.
- Foreshadowing: Queen Entozoa rejects potential inheritors who she sees as weak. This is because she is looking for a new, strong body to possess.
- Freaky Friday Sabotage: Unintentionally, Wander's Heimlich maneuver purged the parasite from possessing Hater, and it lands on a sandwich Sylvia is eating. Thus born Sourdough The Evil Sandwich, and it's obviously pissed that it's forced to be a sandwich for the next thousand years.Sourdough: YOU STUCK ME IN A SANDWICH FOR THE NEXT ONE THOUSAND YEARS?!
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Played with. While we know from hearing her tell us there's a 1000 year old empire, the Queen seems like a weak, feeble, rather dotty old woman who dotes on Wander. Her true self is much more disturbing once revealed.
- Gratuitous Latin: The BLACK CUBE speaks only in Latin when it speaks at all.
- Jabba Table Manners: Inverted. Hater has to consult a mnemonic to remember the proper fork of many to use. Wander inspects them for a second or two, then uses his fingers as a fork, appalling all the villains.
- Jaw Drop: Hater's jaw literally falls off after seeing Wander arrive.
- Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: Sylvia threatens to introduce any troublemakers to "Lady Haymaker and the Duchess of Whaling".
- Never Say "Die": Peepers says "destroy" instead of "kill", but the Queen announces she's dying in so many words.
- No More for Me: After stuffing her face with finger sandwiches through most of the episode, Sylvia decides she's had enough after Queen Entozoa possesses the sandwich she's holding.
- No Name Given: The entity that was controlling Queen Enotozoa isn't given an actual name, it only goes by the names of the bodies it controls.
- Really 700 Years Old: Queen Entozoa is 1000 years old.
- The body they inhabited grew to be over a thousand years (since possessing the vessel), but the Body Surfer themself is probably much older.
- Save the Villain: Wander saves Hater from being possessed.
- Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear: Queen Entozoa gets stuck in the body of a sandwich.
- Ship Tease: Awesome develops a crush on Sylvia.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Wander is somehow not present during the Queen's big reveal.
- Shout-Out/Affectionate Parody: "Hater and the Queen" is a direct riff on the titular song from Beauty and the Beast.
- Sinister Geometry: One of the guests is a floating black cube named...BLACK CUBE that speaks in blackened Latin that distorts the environment and appears to have a negative effect on listeners looking directly at it. It's pretty disturbing to say the least and its voice makes Peepers pupil hideously dilate to cover his entire head.
- Theme Tune:
- Commander Peepers gets his usual riff when he seals Wander in the bathroom.
- Emperor Awesome has variations on his tune. When he puts the move on Sylvia, the riff goes "Let's get Awesome!" When she shoots him down, it changes to "Not so Awesome".
- The Reveal: The entire purpose of the party was to find a suitable new host for the queen, and use him as his pawn for the next 1000 years. Lord Hater is understandably shocked.
- Too Dumb to Live: Wander is completely oblivious that the whole purpose of the dinner party was for the spectral spirit to find a new host for the next millennia. Imagine what would've happened if Wander experienced this...
- On minor detail, Wander is oblivious that Peepers is under the table, ready to shoot him to death. Fortunately, Sylvia stops him in the nick of time.
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Hater and Peepers' irises shrink to nothing in horrified astonishment as Wander shows up.
- Wham Line: "I will enjoy inhabiting your body so much better than this old hag's!"
The Tourist
Wander gets a little over-competitive when he meets Trudy Traveler, a fellow space tourist who's seen more of the universe than he has.
Tropes
- An Aesop: Traveling is not for competing against one another, it's about enjoying it with your friends.
- Alternatively, don't lose sight that you follow your passion because you enjoy it, not because you're better at it than anyone else.
- Traveling is pointless if you don't take time to appreciate what you're seeing.
- Big "WHAT?!":Hotel Bellhop: Enjoy your stay!Sylvia: We will!(Wander zips out of the elevator into a hotel room, before quickly returning)Wander: We did!Sylvia: We WHAT?!
- Cheaters Never Prosper: It’s revealed in the final scene Trudi is actually one of dozen clone beings of her kind, which is why she saw all those planets at once, and one of them admits she cheated and Wander is the actual winner.
- Dramatic Irony: Trudi is angered Wander never followed her, unaware that he quit upon realizing he became competitive.
- Evil Old Folks: Trudi Traveler doesn't make much of an effort to hide her less than pleasant personality.
- Affably Evil: While she’s by no means evil, she did enjoy winding Wander up for the sake of competition. A pretty Cool Old Lady otherwise.
- Foreshadowing:
- Trudi saying she saw 40 planets at once during the time of Wander and Sylvia's travels to the five events actually foreshadows her existence as a clone being, as there's no way one can see that many places in just a short time.
- Also Trudi shrugging silently when Wander talks to Sylvia about her travels at the beginning actually hints that she's not that much of a traveler like he is.
- Graceful Loser: At least one of them is.
- Jerkass Realization: After dashing away during the star formation, Wander finally realizes how competitive he's become and returns to Sylvia at Ziziks.
- Me's a Crowd: Turns out there's dozens of Trudy's. Hence how she saw so many places so quick.
- Mood Whiplash: After Wander sees over fourty planets:Trudi: (firmly) You're a worthy opponent, Wander, seems we are now...even.(pause)Trudi: (angry) I DON'T DO EVEN!
- My God, What Have I Done?: It's after Trudi dashes away from the star formation that makes Wander realize he has become competitive.Wander: I've been doing this all wrong!
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Wander's laid-back personality changes as he desperately strives to keep up with Trudi. He even leaves Sylvia behind at one point, which would normally be unthinkable for him.
- Rewatch Bonus: Once you see the ending where Trudi is revealed to have clones, you now know why she saw so many places from the start.
- Ringer Ploy: See Me's a Crowd above. Inverted, because the ringers are messing with the hero, rather than the hero enlisting the ringers to mess with the bad guy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Sylvia refuses to follow Wander the last time Trudi challenges her. Later Wander himself decides to quit the race and go back to Sylvia after realizing his competitive attitude.
- Stock Audio Clip: Every time Wander shouts "Done!", the exact, same recording is used.
- Sweetheart Sipping: A platonic example. Sylvia orders one Flavarian Float with two straws for her and Wander to share. After putting up with Wander competing with Trudy as the best explorer, she gets a float with a single straw before Wander shows up to make amends with her.
- Wham Line: "Did you find him yet, Trudi?"
- Wham Shot: Trudi is revealed to have clones, explaining why she saw so many planets in the first place.
- Worthy Opponent: Trudy calls Wander this.
