Crapfully yours - The early transitional period of SBEmail

Today we get to start out with an email that acts as a sort of mascot for the early SBEmail era. (I’d consider the first 30 or so to be the “early” ones, which are a lot more basic than the more recent ones, though there are of course still some gems to be found.) I plan on getting through a lot of these today, so instead of building it up any further, let’s just prepare ourselves for the legendary tape-leg.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail19.html

Honestly, I don’t completely hate this one. It’s one of those “so bad, it’s good” sort of things. And making out and the basics are way worse in my opinion. This one is at least self-aware of its badness, as you can tell with Strong Bad’s comment at the end, which I think kind of validates the entire thing. Like I’ve said before, a good portion of these early emails are answered in a pretty direct way, and are not really meant to go beyond that at all. They’re just funny replies to stupid emails, with the occasional cutaway gag. Now as time goes on, the cutaways become the main focus, and sometimes the direction that a SBEmail will take is completely irrelevant to the original email received. But for right now, we’re sticking with this short and simple style of humor. And if you like that, then you’ll probably love spring cleaning.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail20.html

I can kind of relate to Strong Bad here. When checking my comments or private messages on Youtube, sometimes I hope that I get stupid stuff just so I don’t feel the need to reply to them. Which isn’t to say that getting an actual well-thought out message is a bad thing, but a lot of times I’ll get something, not know how to reply to it, and then I’ll put it off and eventually forget about it, which makes me look rude for ignoring it.

Overall, I’d call this one repetitive, but enjoyable. I can’t say any one of these emails is that great on its own (though the “crap” one was kinda funny, and I like the reference to tape-leg being pathetic), but having them all in a row like this worked out pretty well. I do like the “DELETED!” running gag, and it will definitely be seen outside of this email in the future. There’s just a simple pleasure that comes from the loud BRAAAAP noise, and I’ve somehow come to take it for granted and not think about how weird it would be if a computer actually did that. I just like how Strong Bad asked for some “good ones” at the end of the last email, and these completely failed to deliver. So does the next one, as a matter of fact. It’s the incredibly generically titled cartoon.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail21.html

The best part of this one is definitely the “moral” learned from it, which I try to apply to life far more often than necessary, even when it’s completely irrelevant. Other than that, the only other thing I feel as though I must point out is the closing of this email. "crapful, geroge" is really funny to me for some reason, as is Strong Bad's pronunciation of the name. But yeah, there’s really not a whole lot else to say here. It’s not a bad email by any means, but it’s somewhat forgettable. Later on, there will be several other SBEmails that could also probably use this title (crazy cartoon, best thing, the facts, and for kids all come to mind), and this is definitely the weakest of the bunch, but it’s also the oldest of the bunch, so this is not surprising.

The only other thing I could really say about this one is to point out the irony that most of these early SBEmails have featured Strong Bad as the only character, and they still came out pretty good. They didn’t have him doing commentary over it though, so there is a difference. I’m trying to think of cartoons I’ve seen with only one character throughout the whole thing, and usually they don’t turn out particularly good. If it’s just someone talking about something else, like what SBEmails do, then it’s fine. But if it’s watching a day in the life of some person without any interaction with others, then yeah, it’s probably going to be pretty boring. Alright, now prepare yourselves for some weirdness in this next one. It’s simply called sb_email 22.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail22.html

Technically I’m breaking chronological order by showing this one right now, but bollocks to that. This one is called “The Lost Email” by the page title not just because of the joke involved, but because it actually is a lost episode of sorts. No, there never was a version of this where Strong Bad makes fun of the British, what you’re seeing is the full cartoon. But it’s the lost episode because #22 was accidentally skipped over in the original run of SBEmails, and this one was actually made after #40. The idea of making the email about something that would have gotten it banned is simply part of the joke. I’m sure most of you didn’t think it actually got banned, but hey, just being thorough here.

I feel like this is almost more of a bonus episode than one of the normal run of SBEmails, mainly because of its extremely short runtime and abrupt ending. Now, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is more to this after the newspaper shows up. Click on “press conference” at the end to see an additional scene, and then you can click on the papers for an additional Easter egg. I can’t say I’ve ever found this one to be particularly funny (though the “screw all y’all” was a great statement, I have to give it credit for that), and I’m not British, so I can’t even pretend to be offended by this, so yeah. That’s pretty much my synopsis of this email. It has its place in the site’s history, yes, and it’s a nice little jab at actual banned episodes (which are often banned for stupid reasons, like the Family Guy episode that was allegedly anti-Semitic even though it really wasn’t), but it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. The next one, on the other hand, kind of is, at least in my opinion. So going back to the original upload order, here’s little animal.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail23.html

You know, as simple as this one is, I like it. The best thing about it, of course, is the incredibly silly chase scene at the end. All the elements come together perfectly here. Strong Bad’s expression, the music, and the absolutely awful looping animation in the background just fit together into something that I can’t help but laugh at. I don’t think it’s really a reference to anything in particular, just old cartoons in general. Not an OLD cartoon (if you want to see that, then click Strong Bad’s head during the chase, and say hello to Strong Man and The Sneak), but yeah, you know what I mean. This is just a highly exaggerated version of it, and I love it.

I’d try to say something else about this email, but this is another really short one, and there’s just not enough substance to commentate on. I do like the comedic timing on both of the kicks, and the futility of Strong Bad’s situation once Graw Mad shows up. Yes, I’m going to call him Graw Mad, you can’t stop me. But as I cannot stress enough, I am not a professor of comedy, and I have no place to critique it, all I can give is my own opinion. And my opinion is that this email is incredibly simplistic and kind of stupid, but funny. And next, we have an email about swearing. Kind of. Very classy. Whatever. the bird.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail24.html

Groan. So far, I’ve tried to come up with at least one positive comment about every toon (“tried” being the key word), but I’m not even going to bother with this one. It seems rather out of place when compared to the rest of the family-friendly humor on the website, and the only real joke is that none of the characters have fingers (or hands, or arms, as the case may be) so we can’t see them actually doing anything. But that doesn’t make it funny, at least not to me. I could mention that this email takes place outside (and is the only email to do so for the entire duration), but that’s pretty obvious and not all that interesting. Oh, and Pom Pom peeks out from under The Paper at the end. I guess that made me smile.

The one other thing I will bring up is the stupidity of this concept in real life. I understand that flipping someone off is the equivalent of swearing, but I don’t understand why the media feels the need to blur it out. With actual cursing, I understand the need to do it. It’s so offensive language can be cut out of the audio when played for a general audience, and so kids don’t pick up on the language. But here, it’s a finger. If they blurred out the whole hand to avoid having kids do it to each other all the time, that would be one thing, but usually they just blur out just the one finger. It’s not like there’s anything to hide there, it’s just stupid. But whatever, I’ve given this way too much thought. Why couldn’t this one have gotten banned for content instead of sb_email 22? Oh well. Let’s just cleanse our palettes with super powers.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail25.html

Here we have what I consider a good example of a “transitional period” SBEmail. These past few have been slowly shifting away from the “reply to a stupid or poorly thought out email” style, to the “respond to a fan’s question with a cut-away scene” style. There’s been some like this before, of course, but this is a nice round number, and it does feel more like a more current SBEmail than some of the previous ones. It’s still a bit on the short side, but it did its job well.

Strong Bad’s power here is never seen again, for the record. It would have been nice to see it come back once in a while just as an in-joke or bit of continuity, but I suppose there’s not much else you can do with it. Homestar and Coach Z are definitely the highlight of this one though. I like scenes like this where you’re hearing the second half of a conversation. Maybe it’s just because you can bring them up in real life and have it make no sense at all, but it never made sense in the first place, so it’s slightly less stupid than your average out-of-context statement. Ok, maybe that’s a bad reason, but I’m sticking to it. Alright, just one more for today, let’s finish up with CGNU.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail26.html

I certainly hope most people know what this is referring to. I remember these stupid commercials airing constantly back in the day. Not sure if they still do or not, but here’s an example of one just in case you want a comparison. This email pretty much relies on you being familiar with those, otherwise the joke is mostly lost. Just in case you haven’t seen them, they pretty much ALWAYS have “TV/VCR repair” somewhere in there, and always end with “or get your degree”. The art test thing at the end is actually from a different type of commercial, but one that also used to air pretty frequently around the same time.

But yeah, the reference to those old commercials is pretty much the one thing this email is leaning on for comedy. Some of the subjects were pretty funny too (I like “cutting ones” and “sending me a dollar”), but I imagine that some of the effect would be lost if you’re not sure what it’s referring to. All in all, I wouldn’t consider this one of the best emails, and I probably wouldn’t list it in my top 5 from the first 40, but it’s still pretty solid overall.

Alright, well that’ll do it for right now. I know I’ve still gotta go back and look at the crappy 2000 material that I skipped over, and I’ll be getting to that pretty soon. But next time I do still want to do some more SBEmails, because I have a specific stopping place in mind. I hope people aren’t getting too sick of these. If you’re like me and would rather watch the standard toons than these short, simplistic ones, then don’t worry, we’re almost out of the woods. I guess you could say that Strong Bad will stop simply answering emails and being funny without some sort of gimmick. And some people may miss those days. But I’m not really one of them, so bring on the gimmicks. We may be in for some explosive surprises.