John Lindal’s Blog

The X’s

January 11, 2006 on 3:24 pm | In TV | No Comments

Since basic cable only costs us $4 — above the price of broadband — I occasionally go slumming when I’m too braindead to do anything else. Over Christmas, I caught a couple of episodes of the new cartoon The X’s on Nickelodeon. I found it pretty funny, since I enjoy satirical silliness.

The basic premise is to laugh at the antics of the family. Dad is the leader, Mom is the hand-to-hand combat expert, the daughter Tuesday — a nod to Friday on The Adams Family, I think — is the weapons expert, and the son is the technical genius. They’re all either normal or nuts, depending on how you look at it. They are perfectly normal as super secret agents go, but they fit into the real world about as well as a square peg fits in a circular hole. They don’t even know how to keep the house clean or do laundry — which makes for wonderful fun when the son uploads a “harmless” patch to the central computer, causing it to crash, just before a sanitation inspection.

Of course, every secret agent needs an arch-nemesis. In the case of the X’s, however, this is a token-arch-nemesis, since the focus of the show is the family’s wackiness. He still gets plenty of good lines, however, like:

This is the best secret lair ever! It has a Pit of Doom (points to his right)…a shark tank (points to his left)…and spinning blades of death (points to the ceiling).

Uh, sir, those are ceiling fans.

Oh, uh, well I’m sure we can find something evil to do with them…

In one episode, Mom arranges a slumber party for Tuesday — by paying three randomly chosen girls from school, no less. They are (1) the Goth who enjoys contemplating the meaninglessness of the universe, (2) the ditz who states her interest to be lip gloss, and (3) the nerd who wears Princess Leia cinnamon buns and eagerly demonstrates her talent at intergalactic yodeling. Chaos ensues when the X’s blast off into orbit — in their house, shaped like an X — to blow up their token-arch-nemesis’ new space base. Tuesday must keep the girls distracted while the others blast away and dodge return fire. At one point, she turns on the “TV” so she can also monitor the progress of the battle. The nerd becomes suspicious because, “I’ve seen every science fiction movie ever made, and this isn’t one of them!”

As I said, well worth watching if you enjoy satirical silliness.