Rhett and Link's Buddy System Review: Rolling On Turds / The Magic is Real

"Why don't you go smack a ball into someone's net with your little stick?" "And why don't you go skate uphill 'cuz, it's, hard..."

Buddy System is interesting in that, in spite of having an overarching narrative, it never feels like it does. There's only a few episodes that really buckle down on telling the show's story, and even then, it's always second to some zany adventure; the story thus forms a nice undercurrent to connect the duo's adventures together while allowing them to inhibit their own little space.

Basically, Rhett and Link know their strengths, and they know better; that's why episodes like "Rolling On Turds" work so well.

In fact, it's very vaguely rooted in the show's narrative at all. What it boils down to is a display of the direct results of Link's phone being missing and the sheer damage it can cause, in this case with the two being torn apart into separate rollerskating and rollerblading cults and forced against one another through any wide variety of turd analogies.

It's hilariously extreme and absurd, which the episode immediately points out by jump-cutting from Rhett's initial reluctance to him pledging his undying allegiance to the art of rollerskating, getting branded, and drinking the blood of the fallen. Link, meanwhile, can barely stumble through an area code, and the leader of his group gives up on the rest of the ceremony - another fun character dichotomy, mind you.

The whole episode is built on dichotomies, really, though the interesting thing is that both sides are consistently one and the same. The point of the episode, more often that not, is to poke fun at the artificiality of that which separates its characters - on one level, Rhett and Link are unphased and fundamentally the same in spite of their forced classifications, but even further, the rollerbladers and rollerskaters they associate with are practically one and the same in their grudges and mannerisms.

That's where "Roller Unity," the episode's song, ties in so perfectly. It's the first song so far that actually ties into its episode's narrative in a compelling way, virtually serving as a deus ex machina, a resolving force to the central conflict, and a dang catchy one at that. It's all analogies before quickly melting into a broader, casual supremacy undertones, and it's a perfectly weird twist. The whole episode borders on a spoof of religious conflict anyway, so jokingly rendering everyone else as a scapegoat (and viciously targeting ice skaters) is the perfect, condescending topper.

With the main crux fulfilled, the episode spends the last few minutes returning the show back to where it matters, with Rhett deciding to call Aimee and negotiate over their channel being stolen (which happens in the middle of the episode but which I neglected to mention). Realistically, though, it sets up the events of the next episode, "Magic is Real."

That episode, by the way, in spite of being as detached from the show's overarching plot as "Rolling on Turds," doesn't work nearly as well. I don't know what there is to pinpoint, but it's an episode that at once feels slow but insanely fast, a symptom of aimlessly meandering without really having anything it's trying to get across. At the very least, it has a lot of nice beats.

While I don't think handing over a bulk of the episode to Maxwell was the best idea - he's a fun utility player, but he lacks Rhett and Link's charisma to really pull his material through - it's always nice to see the supporting cast get some time to shine. His encounter with the Vice Chairman Magician, however, is the episode at its most show-stealing, with Chris Parnell's character repeatedly digressing in regards to him potentially being a vampire; in the act of trying to dissociate, he only wounds up all the more cryptic and suspect.

Other than that, the episode also has the song "Power Nap" in it, which wounds up as the only thing in the episode that really has any purpose, though even there, it's a loose end. It's a shockingly catchy tune that doesn't really need to exist, especially considering how much it feels like it was birthed out of the necessity to fill up time.

Coincidentally, the song epitomizes the entirety of the episode - fun to watch, but instantly dispensable and lacking any real purpose. I mean, the point is that Rhett and Link sleep through the meeting they set up in the previous episode, and all it does is give them incentive to go "soul searching" for the sake of the next installment. If it wasn't mediocre outright, it struggled to really justify its existence as anything more than filler.

Quotes and Notes:
-"Fresh blades, homeslice." "Thanks, I got 'em at a yard sale." "Word. Where's that." "Umm... somebody's yard?"
-"'Round here, we don't talk that way, alright? We got a motto. Show 'em, Pearl." "'Keep Roller Skating Even If Your [sic] Old.' Catchy."
-This is very minor, but I wish more episodes of Buddy System were shot vibrantly and in the daytime; the show has surprisingly nice direction, but "Rolling Turds" is the only one that really shines in its color use, and I like it a lot more because of it.
-The Sacripet is the sort of perfectly weird and confusingly violent aside that makes me glad YouTube allocated their money towards people who knew how to use it.
-Watching Link awkwardly pantomime tying his rollerblades (they were velcro) was probably the best visual of the episode.
-Shonda perpetually ignoring the fact that Rhett's father wasn't in fact dead, and using that as a repeated basis for his induction was a nice touch. Same goes Rhett's unsurprising reluctance, which immediately jumpcuts to him pledging his undying alliance to rollerskating.
-I can't be the only one who thinks that YouTuber cameos are really, really dumb, right? The whole cameo sequence didn't add much and kind of took away from the intensity of the episode's little story arc, bringing everything to a screeching halt.
-Having Aimee be marginally interested in Link (and having him feed into it with some casual interplay) is a nice little strand of continuity from "You Ding, I Ding." ("Magic is Real" also made a nice call-back when Maxwell asks about the ding-off, which implies that it's some normal, everyday event in the Rhett and Link universe, a touch that I always enjoy in shows.)
-"Fellas, it's been real. I'm Audi. 5000."
-"You got 24 hours. Or call in the next 15 minutes a-" "...and what?" "Sorry, it's just an old habit."
-Maxwell's assistant is a baffling but delightful aside, taking the form of a wide-eyed woman that can only communicate through horrific banshee cries. Watching her sit blank-faced through the episode was great.
-In spite of the position of his title, all that Maxwell is really granted is the permission to practice magic in Guam. How specific...

Final Grade: A/B-. "Rolling On Turds" is a shining example of how Buddy System works at its best, taking advantage of its looseness to dive as joyously into left field as possible with spectacular results. "Magic is Real," on the other hand, struggles to really do anything at all, feeling both forgettable at face value and in the grand scheme of things. If it wasn't a complete bomb, it doesn't offer any real incentive to come back to it, which is perhaps even worse.

For the last Buddy System reviews of "Super Special Secret Bike" and "You Ding, I Ding," CLICK HERE.