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conulyThe show is about a magical (they have a sciencey explanation, but c'mon, it's magic) diner (now a taco shop) that moves through time, space, and alternate dimensions every day and also has a pocket universe in its deep freezer that's full of snow and a pack of friendly wolves.
In season one we're introduced to The Ex, who turns out to be a magical (c'mon, it's absolutely magic) and godlike android who was created by Casper's ex-wife to track him down and make him feel bad about leaving her and then report back as to why he left her. (I think that this story actually answers that question pretty succinctly.) She overpowered her creation by accident and it ended up tracking down all the Caspers through all of the multiverse, including our crew of the Diner several times over, and really annoying everybody else in the process because talking to her means going through an argument with your most significant ex. But then she developed full sapience and now they've all forgiven her for the ongoing trauma and they're friends and she shows up now and again to help them out, cool.
In season three, they've all made up after a big fight they had which involved people being shoved into black holes and shit, and they're best friends again, and they even are super sympathetic to the antagonist for season three, a magical (seriously! it's all magic!) godlike being who accidentally created the very series of world-destroying disasters she was trying to prevent, and given that they only met her when she showed up and declared her intention to stop them from stopping her I kinda feel like they all should've been less surprised by that revelation, but this is beside the point. They ultimately resort to reasoning with her to get her to stop, and were only reluctant to try that because they weren't sure it'd work. In the process of making friends with Clementine they also take the time to feed enchiladas to some poor former linguistics grad student who worked as a security guard at a blacksite prison for people whose only crime was being secretly 700 years old (or not so secretly), and then gave her life advice and helped her get a new job.
Which brings me back to season two, with the Ted Empire. And I have two complaints.
First of all, the Ted Empire is banally evil, and has, among other things, been keeping earth down in order to provide free entertainment for the masses of the galaxies. Plus, they gouge the shit out of everybody who buys into their transportation network, though you almost can't blame them for that, their home ecosphere is trashed. Teds don't make choices, it's revealed that their entire society is run by algorithm. Now, our man Leif, who is both a brilliant mechanical engineer and also a brilliant computer engineer (which seems implausible, but he also lives in a magical diner, so what do I know?) has a code that would destroy their algorithm and bring it all crashing down, but he can't deploy it because people would starve! The entire system depends on the Teds and their infrastructure.
Except he could easily take down the Ted Empire first by releasing all the advanced tech on Earth that the Teds have been holding back due to fears that Earth + advanced tech would have the cultural clout to take them out and then by adapting his code, not to destroy the algorithm, but to modify it to make the Teds less assholeish. Honestly, he'd be doing them a favor. The Teds we've seen are not very happy. They don't even have parties. Why have an empire running three galaxies - or even one galaxy! - if you can't even have parties? (I think Leif is also sitting on some seriously advanced-for-space-aliens tech he could release to the wider universe if he wanted to. Sure, we can handwave that he hasn't done any of that yet due to self-loathing and a killer NDA, but - he was a petty criminal! And then he was employed/enslaved as a pirate! And now he lives in a magical diner! What're they really gonna do to him? Yeah, that's what I thought.)
Secondly, we have a representative Ted, who in theory was supposed to be interrogating Casper after he got himself captured by the Ted Empire but in actuality... honestly, I don't think his heart was in it. And he's pretty miserable, and while he's obviously a member of an oppressive empire, that's not by choice. But when his escape pod shows up at the Diner's door, they do not help him, they just shove him out again with the prison sentence to wander, like, who made them judge and jury here? No, not the magical diner, the answer is nobody. And it'd be less annoying if he'd been the worstest villain ever, but Casper spends a good deal of season 3 ragging on Leif for killing alternate-universe John Wilkes Booth, so. Yeah. They forgive everybody but this poor loser? He's a nobody! At least give him some tacos for the road!
Again, they'd be doing the entire Ted Empire a favor if they dismantle the damn thing, in every patch of the multiverse. But in the meantime, I feel like they could share their generous forgiveness very slightly more widely. I get why they didn't, genocide is the least of the Empire's crimes, but... honestly, if we're judging people for happening to live in immoral regimes then a little introspection is necessary.
But, as I said, I always do feel sympathetic to sad baddies.
Edit: Oh! Now I'm halfway through the last episode of the season, and we find out that here in the 150 years in the future of that alternate universe (it's alternate universes all the way down) the rest of the universe was prompted into an all-out war against the Ted Empire and it resulted in an uneasy draw + the isolation of Earth forever. "Oh, I can solve that by giving you this amazing future tech I got in the future!" Can you, Leif? Really, can you? Maybe next time you get back to your own time in what's probably not this screwed-up timeline you can just release that amazing future tech right here and now. And don't fucking go to war. Did I say go to war? War is stupid, except when it's not, but this time it's stupid. Going to war against the Ted Empire is a bad idea, millions dead. Take my advice and subvert their systems, co-opt their entire fucking agenda. Whose brilliant idea was it to go to war? Your ex? Or, um, I mean your alternate-universe's ex? Okay, well, it wasn't her brightest move ever, which is strange because she's usually a lot smarter than the rest of this cast.
I really give excellent advice. If people would only take it their lives would be much easier.
In season one we're introduced to The Ex, who turns out to be a magical (c'mon, it's absolutely magic) and godlike android who was created by Casper's ex-wife to track him down and make him feel bad about leaving her and then report back as to why he left her. (I think that this story actually answers that question pretty succinctly.) She overpowered her creation by accident and it ended up tracking down all the Caspers through all of the multiverse, including our crew of the Diner several times over, and really annoying everybody else in the process because talking to her means going through an argument with your most significant ex. But then she developed full sapience and now they've all forgiven her for the ongoing trauma and they're friends and she shows up now and again to help them out, cool.
In season three, they've all made up after a big fight they had which involved people being shoved into black holes and shit, and they're best friends again, and they even are super sympathetic to the antagonist for season three, a magical (seriously! it's all magic!) godlike being who accidentally created the very series of world-destroying disasters she was trying to prevent, and given that they only met her when she showed up and declared her intention to stop them from stopping her I kinda feel like they all should've been less surprised by that revelation, but this is beside the point. They ultimately resort to reasoning with her to get her to stop, and were only reluctant to try that because they weren't sure it'd work. In the process of making friends with Clementine they also take the time to feed enchiladas to some poor former linguistics grad student who worked as a security guard at a blacksite prison for people whose only crime was being secretly 700 years old (or not so secretly), and then gave her life advice and helped her get a new job.
Which brings me back to season two, with the Ted Empire. And I have two complaints.
First of all, the Ted Empire is banally evil, and has, among other things, been keeping earth down in order to provide free entertainment for the masses of the galaxies. Plus, they gouge the shit out of everybody who buys into their transportation network, though you almost can't blame them for that, their home ecosphere is trashed. Teds don't make choices, it's revealed that their entire society is run by algorithm. Now, our man Leif, who is both a brilliant mechanical engineer and also a brilliant computer engineer (which seems implausible, but he also lives in a magical diner, so what do I know?) has a code that would destroy their algorithm and bring it all crashing down, but he can't deploy it because people would starve! The entire system depends on the Teds and their infrastructure.
Except he could easily take down the Ted Empire first by releasing all the advanced tech on Earth that the Teds have been holding back due to fears that Earth + advanced tech would have the cultural clout to take them out and then by adapting his code, not to destroy the algorithm, but to modify it to make the Teds less assholeish. Honestly, he'd be doing them a favor. The Teds we've seen are not very happy. They don't even have parties. Why have an empire running three galaxies - or even one galaxy! - if you can't even have parties? (I think Leif is also sitting on some seriously advanced-for-space-aliens tech he could release to the wider universe if he wanted to. Sure, we can handwave that he hasn't done any of that yet due to self-loathing and a killer NDA, but - he was a petty criminal! And then he was employed/enslaved as a pirate! And now he lives in a magical diner! What're they really gonna do to him? Yeah, that's what I thought.)
Secondly, we have a representative Ted, who in theory was supposed to be interrogating Casper after he got himself captured by the Ted Empire but in actuality... honestly, I don't think his heart was in it. And he's pretty miserable, and while he's obviously a member of an oppressive empire, that's not by choice. But when his escape pod shows up at the Diner's door, they do not help him, they just shove him out again with the prison sentence to wander, like, who made them judge and jury here? No, not the magical diner, the answer is nobody. And it'd be less annoying if he'd been the worstest villain ever, but Casper spends a good deal of season 3 ragging on Leif for killing alternate-universe John Wilkes Booth, so. Yeah. They forgive everybody but this poor loser? He's a nobody! At least give him some tacos for the road!
Again, they'd be doing the entire Ted Empire a favor if they dismantle the damn thing, in every patch of the multiverse. But in the meantime, I feel like they could share their generous forgiveness very slightly more widely. I get why they didn't, genocide is the least of the Empire's crimes, but... honestly, if we're judging people for happening to live in immoral regimes then a little introspection is necessary.
But, as I said, I always do feel sympathetic to sad baddies.
Edit: Oh! Now I'm halfway through the last episode of the season, and we find out that here in the 150 years in the future of that alternate universe (it's alternate universes all the way down) the rest of the universe was prompted into an all-out war against the Ted Empire and it resulted in an uneasy draw + the isolation of Earth forever. "Oh, I can solve that by giving you this amazing future tech I got in the future!" Can you, Leif? Really, can you? Maybe next time you get back to your own time in what's probably not this screwed-up timeline you can just release that amazing future tech right here and now. And don't fucking go to war. Did I say go to war? War is stupid, except when it's not, but this time it's stupid. Going to war against the Ted Empire is a bad idea, millions dead. Take my advice and subvert their systems, co-opt their entire fucking agenda. Whose brilliant idea was it to go to war? Your ex? Or, um, I mean your alternate-universe's ex? Okay, well, it wasn't her brightest move ever, which is strange because she's usually a lot smarter than the rest of this cast.
I really give excellent advice. If people would only take it their lives would be much easier.
