cliffhangers

Strong Bad Email #158

watch ← trading cards retirement →

"This dinner party is top dollar!"

Strong Bad resolves three cliffhangers, and is then confronted by "sweet lady irony".

Cast (in order of appearance): Strong Bad/Space Captainface, Homsar, The King of Town, Coach Z, Bubs/The Thnikkaman, The Cheat/Strap Coopmore, Strong Mad, Strong Sad, Homestar Runner

Places: Computer Room, A Cliff, Coach Z's Locker Room, Inside The Proud Anselmo, Strong Sad's Room, Bubs' Concession Stand (Easter egg), The Office (Easter egg)

Computer: Lappy 486

Date: Monday, September 18, 2006

Running Time: 3:22

Page Title: Lappy 486

DVD: strongbad_email.exe Disc Five

Transcript

STRONG BAD: {singing} Oooh, it's a e-email, money, money, money. Oooh-ooh. Shut up. {brings up email}

subject: cliffhangers

Dear Strong Bad,
Resolve all the cliffhangers please.

Thanks,
Jake

{Strong Bad reads "Jake" as "Little Jakey Pleasenthanks".}

STRONG BAD: {typing} Hmmmmm. The cliffhangers, eh? I never really thought to call them that, but I guess that is what they are. Yeah, Why not? {gets up, accompanied by The Geddup Noise}

{Cut to a face of a cliff. Homsar and the King of Town are both hanging from separate ropes, which are attached to the top of the cliff.}

HOMSAR: This dinner party is top dollar!

{As he says this, Homsar's hat floats around him in a perfect circle. Strong Bad is seen walking up to the edge of the cliff. Zoom in on him.}

STRONG BAD: All right, cliffhangers. Prepare to be resolved!

{Strong Bad takes out a big knife and slices both the ropes, causing the King of Town and Homsar to fall out of the shot.}

STRONG BAD: Oh, and I brought you some snacks.

{Strong Bad tosses some paper bags labeled "Hom" and "Kot" down the cliff.}

KING OF TOWN: {echoing} You're a good friend, Strong Bad!

{Strong Bad leaves. Cut back to Strong Bad's computer room. Strong Bad sits back down, and the screen has already been cleared.}

STRONG BAD: All right, all right. I know what you really mean, Jakesy. So, you say you want a resolution, huh?

{Static away to the words "Cliffhanger #1" on a dark grey screen. Then, cut to the Locker Room. The Thnikkaman is crammed into a locker, bound with ropes. Coach Z is facing him.}

COACH Z: And now, Thnikkaman, at long last, the world will discover your secret, sorcret identity!

{Cut to a closeup of Coach Z's face.}

COACH Z: Thereby rendering you useless as a Thnikkaman!

{Cut back to the original view of the locker room.}

THE THNIKKAMAN: I'll render you toothless!

COACH Z: Now, give me them cool shades!

{Coach Z swipes at the Thnikkaman's "cool shades". Just as he's about to take them off, the frame freezes. Coach Z's arm is blurred. Zoom in, and the dramatic sound effect (dun, dun, duuun) is heard. The screen fades, and "Resolution" appears over the top in yellow text. This goes away, and the scene comes back to Coach Z and The Thnikkaman—Coach Z misses the glasses and falls on his face.}

THE THNIKKAMAN: Yeah, shut up, Coach.

{The Thnikkaman jumps out of the locker on top of Coach Z, and walks off the left of screen. The usual singers chime in, the words flying across the screen in waves.}

SINGERS: You missed unmasking the Thnikkaman!!! {slight pause} Because you have really bad hand-eye coordination!!!

COACH Z: Enough already, I get it! My secret sorcret has been revereled.

{The words "Cliffhanger #2" appear. Cut to Strong Bad in his Space Captainface outfit inside a cardboard spaceship, talking on a cardboard cell phone, with a little paper umbrella as an antenna.}

STRONG BAD: Yeah I know, Lita Ford... but I'm in orbit, baby! Look, I'll call you back when I'm not—

{Cut to The Cheat, dressed as Strap, who plays an alarm sound effect on the CD player, and turns a lamp with a red bulb on and off.}

STRONG BAD: Strap! Collision alarm! Bring it up on screen!

{Strong Mad takes away the piece of cardboard representing the screen, revealing a circular silhouette hanging from a piece of string, and holds up a sign reading "Malmsteen's Comet".}

STRONG BAD: We're on a collision course with Malmsteen's Comet! Full power to the forward humbuckers!

THE CHEAT: {anxious The Cheat noises}

{The Cheat points to a screen drawn on the cardboard that reads "The forward humbuckers have never worked!". ("never" is in red.)}

STRONG BAD: Humbuckers are offline? Then strap in, Strap, and prepare for ramming speed! If this is the end, then we can at least make it awesome for the people in...

{Strong Bad looks out a side window labeled "the view" at a desktop globe of the Earth.}

STRONG BAD: ...Greenland.

{The Cheat plays a rockets firing sound on the CD player, and the ship starts shaking.}

STRONG BAD: Oooohhhh... Shooooooo....

{Everything freezes, and the same dramatic sound effect plays.}

ANNOUNCER: Will Cap and Strap make it out of this one?

{Cut to the silhouetted comet, with a question mark overlaid, Strong Mad holds up a sign reading "Tune in NEXTime...".}

ANNOUNCER: Tune in next—

STRONG BAD: Nope, none of that, just get to resolving.

ANNOUNCER: Okay!

{Up comes the "Resolution" screen, then cut to Strong Bad and The Cheat holding on to each other as the ship shakes around them.}

STRONG BAD: This is it, Strap!

{The shaking stops, the rocket sound dies away, and the "comet" comes out of the silhouette, revealing it to actually be a moldy cantaloupe, with the label "grodalated cantaloupe".}

STRONG BAD: Wait a minute... that's no comet! We've wandered into the Forgotten Produce belt of Tablature 5!

{The cantaloupe is joined by a bunch of overripe bananas and an overripe avocado.}

STRONG BAD: It's guacamole and banana bread time, Strap!

{Some upbeat music plays, and Strong Bad and The Cheat dance to it.}

{The words "Cliffhanger #3" appear. Strong Sad and Homestar are standing around a table.}

STRONG SAD: Look, you can tell me.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: I can't!

STRONG SAD: Oh, come on, what is it?

HOMESTAR RUNNER: I'm... pregnant!

{Slow zoom in on Homestar, and the same dramatic sound is heard, in a lower tone. Up comes the "Resolution" screen.}

STRONG SAD: No... no, you're Homestar. Runner. The male.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Oohhhh, phew. Thought I was a pregnant woman for a second there.

STRONG SAD: Yeah... uh... I think I'd like my money back now.

{Cut through static to Strong Bad walking back to the computer desk.}

STRONG BAD: And there you go, Jakenstein. All the cliffhangers have been re—Aah!

{The Lappy isn't on the desk; it has been replaced by a ransom note, which reads "i got your Lappy", and has a red-splattered comma key from the keyboard.}

STRONG BAD: My computer's been Lappy-napped! And they cut off her little toe! {falls to his knees} Oh, sweet lady irony! Why do you mock me?

{The dramatic sound (dun, dun, duuun) is heard. The Paper comes down, reading "Tune in next time for the cliff hanging conclusion!!"}

Easter Eggs

Little Jakey Pleasenthanks

• Click on Jake to see a book called "Little Jakey Pleasenthanks" by Crazy Prof. Sportsinterviews.
• Click on the electrical outlet at the end to see a scene with Coach Z and Bubs at the concession stand:

COACH Z: Nah, I bet if you take away them cool shades and rip that "TH" {pronounced as the "th" in "three"} off his chest, underneath, you'd find a thin green man with a big ol' "Z" hanging from his—

BUBS: {glares at Coach Z} Coach, are you accusing yourself of being the Thnikkaman?!

COACH Z: Yeah, I, uh— no! I, wuh, da, rumble-dumble sports team?!

• Click on the ransom note at the end to see an extra scene in the office with Homestar and Strong Bad.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Yeah, yeah, you know who I think done it? Homestar Runner. Think about it, think about it. He's got the history, he's got the motive...

STRONG BAD: Homestar, are you admitting that you stole my computer?

HOMESTAR RUNNER: What? No! I was just making watercooler conversation, trying to sound up with the times, uh, um, sports team? {Strong Bad looks down, dejected}

Fun Facts

Explanations

• An actual cliffhanger is a plot device used at the end of a movie or TV show where the story comes to an abrupt end without resolving some key issues, so that if the viewer wants to know how the story ends, they will have to tune in to the next episode, or watch the next movie. The term comes from old movie serials which often ended with the heroes in imminent danger, including literally plummeting over or dangling over a cliff, urging the audience to return the next week to see how they make it out alive.
• A humbucker is a type of guitar pick-up that uses two coils.
• Tablature is a specialized type of sheet music for stringed instruments, such as guitar.
• Homestar's line, "I'm pregnant", with a close up is a spoof of stereotypical soap operas in which an episode would end with such a cliffhanger.
• Guacamole and banana bread are uses for over-ripe avocados and bananas (respectively). The avocado's skin was dark green (almost black), and the edges of its flesh were browning, both signs of being over-ripe. In addition, the bananas were extremely bruised, also signs of over-ripeness. Thematically, they fit in with the over-ripe, near-rotted cantaloupe that was the comet.

Trivia

• This email was sent by wiki user Cessna Man!.
• The floppy disk container reads "cake walk".
• Below "the view" in the cardboard spaceship, there is a switch. Both positions of the switch are labeled "off".
• Homestar's and Strong Bad's shirts in the Easter egg read "Just Disks" and "Data Boys" respectively.
• When Strong Bad tosses the lunch bags, Homsar's says "Hom" and the King of Town's says "Kot".

Remarks

• The Thnikkaman already took his shades off in monument without his secret identity being revealed.
• In the final scene, the comma key is perfectly flat, as though it's part of the paper.

Goofs

• Strong Bad unnecessarily capitalized "Why" in "Yeah, Why not?"

Glitches

Strap in, Strap!

• During most of the cardboard spaceship scene, the green ground is slightly cut off on the left side of the screen, so that a strip of white is visible along the black edge of the frame.
• During Cliffhanger #3, when the camera zooms in on Homestar, part of his head protrudes past his shirt on his left side.

Inside References

• Strong Bad first appeared as Space Captainface in space program.
• When The Thnikkaman waddles away, he makes Homsar's walking noise.
• The sticker on the cantaloupe says "grodalated", a neologism that first appeared in bedtime story.
• This email marks another spoken reference to "Cool Shades."
• This email contains blood.
• Strong Bad wields a Big Knife in this email, which he gets from nowhere.
• A cantaloupe also appears as Doreauxgard in lackey.
• Strong Sad's stressing of Homestar's first and last name separately is similar to Homestar's introduction in his character video.
• This is the second time Strong Bad has anthropomorphized an abstract concept as a "sweet lady", the first being "sweet lady freedom" in Strong Bad is in Jail Cartoon.
• The announcer in the Space Captainface cliffhanger was first heard in the email fingers.
• Strong Bad and Homestar are wearing the free polo shirts they got from various software companies, as they did in other days.
• The globe outside the cardboard box is from the email pizzaz and possibly Experimental Film.
• Homestar fearing he is a pregnant woman is another instance of gender confusion.

Real-World References

• Malmsteen's Comet is a reference to Swedish guitar player Yngwie Malmsteen and Ace Frehley, lead guitarist for Kiss, and his band Frehley's Comet.
• The bloody comma key on the ransom note that Strong Bad calls a "little toe" refers to the movie The Big Lebowski, in which a ransom note appears for a kidnapped woman along with a severed little toe.
• The cover of Little Jakey Pleasenthanks (by Crazy Prof. Sportsinterviews) is drawn in the style of Dr. Seuss.
• "So you say you want a resolution, huh?" is a reference to the famous opening line "You say you want a revolution" from the song "Revolution" by The Beatles.
• The left-hand "screen" picture in the cardboard spaceship and center "eye" when Strap Coopmore is on screen are from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• The right-hand "screen" picture in the cardboard spaceship is a picture of a Thrynn from Starflight, a 1986 Electronic Arts computer game.
• Lita Ford is a female glam rocker who became popular in the '80s.
• The Announcer in the second cliffhanger, also heard in fingers and alternate universe, is a reference to the original Batman TV series.
• Greenland is a very large and sparsely populated island in northern North America, almost completely covered in ice. It is officially a dependent territory of Denmark, but also has an autonomous government.
• The ending of the space cliffhanger—a quick joke followed by the characters dancing to disco music—is reminiscent of the '60s and '70s skit show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, where gogo dancers would end various sketches. Incidentally, in the appeal for the Strong Badian space program, Strong Bad specifically asks for 1960s type girls to cheer on the mission.
• "Prepare for ramming speed!" is an oft-used, nearly cliché order given in naval and science fiction stories (such as that said by Commander Worf in one of the opening scenes of Star Trek: First Contact).

Fast Forward

• The kidnap caper continued the following 2 weeks in Lappynapped! and retirement.
• This email would not be "answered" until the end of retirement, when Strong Bad told Jake that all the cliffhangers had been "for-reallysolved."
• The suspenseful music would also be used in retirement.
  • Part of it would be used in looking old.
• Homestar would later try to steal the Lappy in bike thief.
• The Lappy goes missing again in SBCG4AP Tutorial.

DVD Version

• The DVD version features creators' commentary. To access it, switch the DVD player's audio language selection while watching.

Commentary Transcript

(Commentary by: Mike Chapman, Matt Chapman, Ryan Sterritt)

RYAN: It's the three of us together.

MIKE: Yeah! Money, money, money!

MATT: {overlapping} Just old times! I gotta... Remember that time I put Ryan in a full nelson for the whole commentary?

RYAN: Yeah, I did.

MATT: In this one, we're gonna have our arms around him—

MIKE: We're just gonna put our—put our arms around Ryan!

RYAN: Comfortable.

MATT: So this was something we've been wantin' to do, uh, uh, two emails with a through line.

MIKE: Yeah.

MATT: That are connected, but we never really done that before.

MATT: It's true. And then we kind of did... uh, ended up sort of doing three emails, really.

MATT: Yeah, 'cause the resolution was so dang long!

MIKE: {laughing} Yeah...

RYAN: Two parts.

{Pause as Strong Bad leaves the cliff}

MATT: Um... so, you know... that cliff, um, has never shown up before, seemingly. It might be the spooky cliff... from Halloween. I'm gonna—I'm gonna be sure that it shows up again.

MIKE: All right.

MATT: Just like I was with the island.

MIKE: Yeah, you brought that back.

MATT: That's come back a few times.

MIKE: Yeah.

MATT: {as Coach Z swipes his hand towards the Thnikkaman's cool shades} Oh! So this is ridiculous, because the Thnikkaman always takes his shades off to tell you to shut up, kid!

MIKE: Just chalk that one up to not knowing; I just didn't know that.

RYAN: Didn't check the Wiki.

MATT: Yeah.

{The Thnikkaman's singers sing the first line}

MATT: Wait for it...

{The Thnikkaman's singers sing the second line}

MIKE: Okay, so we just took our arms, uh, off of Ryan. Ryan, you're a free man!

RYAN: I am.

MIKE: We didn't make it through the whole commentary.

RYAN: {overlapping} I was being pushed down.

MIKE: {as the Space Captainface scene begins} So I liked the continuation of Strong Ba—er, Space Captainface just talking about guitar...

{Matt and Ryan speak inaudibly}

MIKE: It's a through line, an undercurrent, a subtext, if you will. Malmsteen's Comet. Comment. Malmsteen's Commentary. We should get Yngwie in here to do the commentary!

RYAN: Those {inaudible}

MATT: Satriani? I'm looking at a picture of Yngwie Malmsteen right now. So do you think with this new Fantastic Four movie with the Silver Surfer in it coming out, you think—

{Mike imitates guitar riffs}

MATT: You think Joe Satriani will get more popular? {unintelligible}

RYAN: I heard he did the soundtrack.

MATT: That looks pretty bad, by the way.

MIKE: What?

MATT: The Silver Surfer.

MIKE: Yeah. I... uh... well, they made a sticker for the grodalated cantaloupe. Somebody was selling grodalated cantaloupe. That's terrible.

{Pause as Strong Bad and The Cheat dance to the vibrant music at the end of the Space Captainface scene}

MATT: That's a pretty good song.

{Longer pause, ending with the suspenseful music playing after Homestar worries to Strong Sad that he is pregnant}

MATT: Uh... we have talks to say?

MIKE: I have a talk.

MATT: Do—do some more.

{Pause}

MIKE: {hastily} Strong Sad sits at that table a lot, gosh darn it!

MATT: It's in his room, isn't it? In his dark purple room?

MIKE: It's in his purple room, yeah. I—He's usually doing something.

MATT: Yeah, he's not doing anything.

MIKE: He's got nothing. He doesn't even have peas that he's staring at. Oh, is Strong Bad really tiny? Look at how huge his desk is!

MATT: Possibly.

RYAN: {about the Lappy's "little toe"} That's disgusting.

MIKE: The bloody—

{Unintelligible}

MATT: The Lappy is like alive!

MIKE: Yeah, 'cause Strong Bad's head is about where it was now when he's kneeling down.

RYAN: Yeah.

MATT: Yeah.

MIKE: It's angled up.

Fun Facts

• The commentary during which Matt put Ryan in a "full nelson" was specifically that for portrait.
• The "spooky cliff from Halloween" is specifically from Halloween Potion-ma-jig.
• The new Fantastic Four movie with the Silver Surfer that Matt makes reference to is Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which would be released on June 15, 2007, a little over a week after this DVD was released.
• Joe Satriani is an American guitarist and former guitar instructor. He once released an album called "Surfing with the Alien" which had the Silver Surfer, mentioned above, on the cover, hence the reference.

External Links

• watch "cliffhangers"
• watch "cliffhangers" on the old Flash site
• view the Flash file for "cliffhangers"
• forum thread re: "cliffhangers"