Recap / Strong Bad Email E 209 Parenting

Airdate: April 1, 2022

Sender: Mike, Riverview FL

Strong Bad: And I can check my wha? And you can check your wha. If I can check my wha, then you can (rhythmic mumbling)

Expectant father "Mike Riverview for Life" asks Strong Bad for some parenting tips and suggestions.

Strong Bad: Don't sweat it, Mike. You're already on the right track by coming to me first. Instead of, ya know, like, your parents or a medical professional or any number of... non-email checking wrestlemen. And while I'm no dad meself, I actually do have some expertise on the subject. Turns out we all had to try out some child rearing in one of the nebulous... [disgusted] health classes...
[The screen dims and the words "health classes" are highlighted in a wobbly multicolored font while various ominous sounds play, before snapping back to normal.]
Strong Bad: ...that we for some reason allow Coach Z to teach us.

Coach Z prepares his potential parental units for keeping any potential offspring "alive/in a wi-fi hotspot" with R.H.B.s, "Real Human Babies" made from resealable storage bags filled with banana pudding.

Strong Bad: How is this slopsack anything like a real human baby?
Coach Z: Exaca like an R.H.B.! It's small, it's mushy, smells like plastic, and it's fulla yellow goop!

Coach Z also offers a prize to anyone who keeps their pudding-sack baby alive long enough (which doesn't include the King of Town, who slurps up his sack of pudding and bails) by offering them a plastic baggie of pistachio pudding, a prospect that excites Homestar enough to do his "One-Man Hubbub" routine and imitate an excited muttering crowd.

We are then treated to the parental duos (Strong Bad and The Cheat, Homestar and Marzipan, and Strong Sad and Strong Mad) exploring "the Ponders of Warenting":

• Strong Bad corrects The Cheat on his baby-holding technique (and scoops some of "Pud-Wad"'s brains back in)
• Strong Sad and Strong Mad practice changing diapers, but Strong Mad gets a little confused and makes an origami crane instead ("I FORGOT TO SCRIMSHAW LEFT!")
• Strong Bad and The Cheat take their RHB out to eat, but are quickly put off by the questionable 70s seating, 70s kids' menus, and 1770s toilets at the King of Town's restaurant "SteaKasTle".
• Marzipan gets fed up with Homestar's ranting about babies' supposed "inverse agricultural tendencies" and very calmly and gently calls him an idiot.
  Marzipan: [leaning towards Homestar] You have no idea what you're talking about, and I disagree with everything that comes out of your mouth, you lump of underbitten cluelessness.
  Homestar: Um, are you okay? It's like Mean-Say Marzipan's brain is coming out of Nice-Say Marzipan's face.
  Marzipan: [still oddly cheerful] Babies understand tone and body language, so it's very important that she doesn't know how much we hate each other until she's in college.
• Strong Sad catches Strong Mad sticking their baby in front of a tablet so Strong Mad could spend six hours playing games on a different tablet ("A DIFFERENT, MORE EXPENSIVE TABLET!").
• Homestar takes his RHB to the playground, where it gets in a brief altercation with Strong Bad's pudding-baby that the two agree is too adorable not to share over social media.
  Strong Bad: Oh, good call. That is adorable! [smiles] Look up here, sweetie! Can you wave?
  Homestar: Everybody say "The Cheat"!
  Strong Bad: The Cheat!
  [Homestar takes a picture]
  Strong Bad: ...Still gonna bad-mouth you online at the preschool forums.
  Homestar: Oh yeah, totally, totally.

Eventually, Coach Z congratulates his students on being mostly-prepared for parenthood, but Strong Bad wonders who's going to get the pistachio pudding since they all kept their RHBs alive. Turns out Coach Z decides to award it to himself.

Strong Bad: What why?!
Coach Z: [pulls out a severely aged, severely discolored bag of pudding] I've been keeping little Absorbine Junior here alive since I was your age! [nuzzles the bag] Ain't that right, Absorby?

Strong Bad sums up his tips for "Mike Morkleson" ("I don't know if that's your last name but you just seem like a real Morkleson.") in three main points:

Strong Bad: Number one: Babies are totally boring for the first nine months. Give to Grandma. Number two: Keep a drawer full of useless keys and TV remotes for some reason. And number three: That much ballyhooed "new baby smell" people are always talking about? [shouts] It just smells like crap! Babies just smell like crap! You just get used to it! Don't let 'em fool you! It's not a good smell! [raises fist] BABIES SMELL LIKE CRAAAAAAAP! [falls off of stool]
[The CGI Paper comes down]

---

Tropes:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Strong Mad's attempt to make a diaper for the "baby" is an origami crane. The last time we saw Strong Mad try to make origami, they all came out as crumpled balls of paper.
• Audience Murmurs: Parodied when Homestar produces a whole range of mutterings while serving as the "One-Man Hubbub".
• Black Comedy:
  • Right as Coach Z states the goal of his class is to keep a bag of banana pudding "alive" the longest, we hard cut to the King of Town drinking it with a straw.
    King of Town: [bag is emptied; leaves] Annnd I'm out.
  • invoked After instructing The Cheat on how to properly hold the bag (as he was previously holding it in his mouth, causing it to drip pudding onto the floor), Strong Bad proceeds to begin cleaning up the mess... by stating he's "[scooping its] brains back in. Like you would a real baby."
• The Cameo: One Easter Egg has Alex Hirsch appear on video. He gives voice direction to Homestar, who is in a recording booth as "The One-Man Hubbub".
• Companion Cube: Since the characters are expected to look after bags of pudding as a parenting exercise, they naturally treat the bags of pudding as though they were real babies. Notably, the scene at the playground has Homestar and Strong Bad acting like their bags of pudding are doing something adorable enough to take pictures of them, even though they're just sitting there doing nothing.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Strong Bad's disgusted reaction to Coach Z's "health class" echoes his reaction to Homestar's "bread sing-alongs" in "origins".
  • The SteaKastle scene features a cameo by the "Shut Up!" Lady.
  • Homestar is seen drinking some "hot jones" from "A Death Defying Decemberween"
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The King of Town's restaurant SteaKasTle has a high-chair from The '70s (which is made from a rusty bear trap) and a kids' menu also from the seventies that offers two options: steak or cigars.
• Egg Sitting: Coach Z's health class is tasked with looking after plastic zipper bags full of banana pudding, in lieu of the traditional eggs or flour sacks.
• Fake Interactivity: The game Strong Mad has his "baby" play compliments the player's actions even if the player is doing nothing. Which a bag of pudding would do.
• Happy Marriage Charade: In regards to their "baby", Marzipan openly tells Homestar they need to pretend they don't hate each other until it goes away to college.
• Insane Troll Logic: Homestar claims that young infants have "inverse agricultural tendencies", and watering plants in front of a baby might make them adverse to ever watering plants when they grow up.
• Origami Gag: Strong Sad and Strong Mad practice changing the diapers on their banana-pudding babies. Strong Sad makes a paper boat instead, while Strong Mad ends up with a paper crane and squashes the "baby" in the process.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • The email ends with Strong Bad going into a rant about how babies smell bad.
  • The last part of the stinger ends with an increasingly-annoyed Homestar trying to get Alex Hirsch's attention.
• Recycled Animation: To compensate for the Alex Hirsch cameo not being technically possible, the Flash version reuses animation from a short Twitter clip of Bubs hiding suspicious amounts of cash in the roof of his concession stand.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Strong Bad gets fed up with SteaKasTle's outdated family features and decides to eat at a marginally more family-friendly restaurant. Like a micro-brewery, or a craft distillery, or "a vape shop that also sells hot fries".
• Self-Deprecation: On Kickstarter, this email was announced with the Brothers Chaps poking fun at themselves for taking too long to make this email as it was intended as a backer reward.
  Fellow Keepers of Trogdor,
  It has been many years! Remember back in 2018 when one of the Stretch Goals in our campaign for Trogdor!! The Board Game was that we'd make a Strong Bad Email from a question submitted by our backers?
  No? Neither do most folks, prolly!
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: When everyone's banana pudding babies are still intact by the end of the week^note excluding the King of Town's, who ate his and left before the prize was announced, Coach Z awards the bag of pistachio pudding to himself, because he's got his own (badly-decomposed, but still sealed and intact) pudding-sack baby.
• Shout-Out:
  • The King of Town's SteaKasTle restaurant seems to be modeled after Steak and Ale, a now defunct restaurant chain that peaked during the 70s and 80s. Steak and Ale restaurants were known for their dimly lit Tudor-style decor, much like what SteaKasTle has.
  • In the Easter egg with Alex Hirsch, Homestar suddenly having a crew-cut while imitating a bailiff could be a nod to "Bull" Shannon from Night Court.
• Skewed Priorities: After Homestar's neglect causes his pudding bag to fall onto Strong Bad's at the playground, Strong Bad proceeds to tear him a new one... until Homestar decides to post a picture of their bags to the internet, which immediately steals Strong Bad's attention.
  Homestar: [aims his phone down] Oh, sorry. I gotta post this. This is just adorable!
  Strong Bad: [kneels down with Homestar] Oh, good call. That is adorable. [smiles] Look up here, sweetie! Can you wave?
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: The Cheat typically shows human-level intelligence, but in this cartoon he instinctively carries the pudding bag like a "Cheat-pup" by picking it up with his mouth, like how a cat would pick up its own kittens by the scruff. Strong Bad admonishes The Cheat for holding the "baby" in this manner, since it's causing the pudding to start spilling out of the bag.
• Spoof Aesop: In the end, Strong Bad concludes that there are three main points to parenting:
  "Number 1. Babies are totally boring for the first nine months. Give to Grandma. 2. Keep a drawer full of useless keys and TV remotes for some reason. And number 3. That much ballyhooed 'new baby smell' people are always talking about, it just smells like crap! Babies just smell like crap! You just get used to it!! Don't let 'em fool you! It's not a good smell! BABIES SMELL LIKE CRAAAAAAAP!"
• Spoonerism: The class is on "The Ponders of Warenting" rather than "The Wonders of Parenting". It eventually gets mangled further into "The Donders of Warranty" and "The Jodhpurs of Clarencing".
• Suddenly Shouting: Strong Bad does this as part of his Spoof Aesop at the end (see above).
• Take That!:
  • The email makes a couple of jabs towards parents who neglect their children in favor of letting them stare at an iPad screen all day. Strong Mad being the parent who does that.
  • It also jabs at parents who who neglect their children so they can stare at a screen all day, as Strong Mad and Homestar both do.
• Tranquil Fury: Marzipan calls out Homestar for his bizarre and idiotic parenting tips in a cheerful and level voice so as not to upset their "baby", and Homestar is confused to hear "Mean-Say Marzipan's brain coming out of Nice-Say Marzipan's face".

---

Singers: SteaKasTle! "We put two steaks in our name!"
Narrator: One is the word "steak"! The other is the letter T.

---

Narrator: Styles Upon Styles presents: The Dads at the Playground collection.
Strong Bad: I make waffles every Saturday, and leave the kitchen a huge mess.
Homestar: I talk about coaching lacrosse, and... coaching lacrosse.
Narrator: Vests! Sunglasses! ...That's pretty much it, really. These guys are pretty much one note.

---

(Cut to Homestar in a recording booth)
Homestar: (muttering, imitating a crowd) What did he say? I didn't hear! Sounds a little abnormal. He'll rue the day! I don't like that!
(Cut to Alex Hirsch on a video screen, standing in a pink-tinted room)
Alex: That was incredible, One-Man Hubbub! Nailed it again! Um, next we got a crowd, uh, fleeing a meteor. If you could sprinkle in a few old ladies.
Homestar: Okay.
Alex: Any time you're ready.
Homestar: Got it! (starts acting the role) Watch out! It's coming hither! Oh no, my house! I've gotta keep running in this direction! Look, Maudelaide, it's a twister! I thought he said it was a meteor! Well, either way, book club's been canceled!
Alex: (laughs) That's why you're the One-Man Hubbub! You're crackin' up everybody back here! Uh, next we got a courtroom, maybe scandalized murmur. For added difficulty, throw in a bailiff.
Homestar: (acting) Oh, I can't believe it's true! Did you hear?! I wonder what that's all about! Well I never! (mumbles unintelligbly) Your honor, did you eat my tuna sammich?
Alex: We got it, folks, we got it! You can't improve on perfection!
Homestar: Aw, thank you! ...Am I done?
Alex: Yeah, yeah, so, if we could take—
Homestar: Hello?
Alex: If we could take B, C, and F...
Homestar: Producer-Man? Excuse me?
Alex: (still not paying attention) Nah, not D. Not D.
Homestar: I can hear what you're saying.
Alex: That one was weird.
Homestar: It's really—
Alex: Popping P's.
Homestar: Unprofessional! I think your button's broken! (beat) Producer man! I'm fired!