Dear Dave Review

You know what I love about Red Dwarf is great plots with character development, all while laughing my tits off. So this episode delivered everything I want from a Red Dwarf episode…  oh wait no it didn’t, but it did deliver lots of laughs and that is why I watch comedy, isn’t it?

 

It was very sketch show-esqe episode of Red Dwarf, which is one of my criticisms of Series VIII, but this worked just because the jokes were, well, funnier. So the ‘plots’ well we had Lister finding out he was a father, Lister in a love triangle in with vending machines, Rimmer trying to prove that he been a good reason not to work for the last 3,000,000 years to the JMC computer, Kryten moving toilet rolls and Cat needing a shit.

 

Positives

• Despite the opening scene going on too long, Lister and Kryten talking about the human race like an ex was pretty funny and got over the loneliness of Lister predicament.
• The vending machines were good too, with hardly anyone to talk too; you would talk to anything with an artificial intelligence.
• Rimmer’s subbuteo stretching was a great bit, as well as his Jacobean chat up lines later on.
• The Cat again was brilliant, the charades scene was over long, but that made it even funnier. The back references to the old episodes were a lovely touch. Oh, Cat’s pink suit was amazing.

 

I want this suit

• Fuck it, Cat in the ‘don’t think about it’ scene was again brilliant and the joke about the finger wetting machine working overtime was an absolute woofer. Despite only having a few scenes he stole the show with two of them.

Negatives

• The JMC onboard computer, it feels like the JMC is a company that is still an operating company. The scene explaining that Rimmer needs to prove he has been guilty of gross dereliction of duty, it just seems like the JMC onboard computer has just been quickly written in to use as a cheap antagonist.
• The whole ‘budget’ plot line was weird, why does Red Dwarf have budgets anymore now the crew is gone.
• Slag! I am not offended by the word slag or the context it was used in.  It doesn’t seem to out of character for Lister, he is a working class slob after all and his has used game machines to have sex with jailbait ball girls (ok she wasn’t jailbait, she was 17). I would have liked more stuff about Lister dealing with the fact that he was going to be a father, it would have validated the use of Slag, with her cheating on him and the child not being his.

I don’t know it was just too much of a sketch show for Red Dwarf, but the jokes were funny and for that reason it gets a decent score.

 

6/10