Spy Groove

I feel as though this blog has become a bit comics-heavy. Comics are the things I'm least nerdy about, believe it or not, and the more I write about them the more I fear that some portly gentleman dressed as a wizard at his computer will swoop in and harangue me about how what I've said is a completely illegitimate point, as any moron would find in Uncanny X-Men volume 6, issues 7-10 and 22. So let's take a break with some cartoons and get back to the con later.

I managed to catch a couple episodes of Spy Groove when it aired on MTV back in 2000. They only showed six out of the thirteen episodes produced, and it got canceled pretty quickly and forgotten about. Normally when I talk about a TV show I'd link the intro, but I can't seem to find the stupid thing on the internet right now; I know it's been posted before which I suppose illustrates how unloved yet zealously defended for copyright reasons this thing is. But enjoy these grainy screenshots!

Anyway, I recently got my hands on the first twelve episodes. Like Get Smart and Inspector Gadget before it, Spy Groove is rigidly formulaic but keeps it interesting through the strength of the writing. There's a cold open of the villain of the week scheming, then it goes to Agent Number One and Agent Number Two hamfistedly hitting on Mac, "one part urban cocktail waitress, two parts Lady Godiva, and a dash of cayenne pepper," at the Maxi Bar. There they get contacted by Helena Troy and sent off to an exotic locale on a mission. The agents do they spy thang and infiltrate the scene, unravel the evil plan, team up with and/or get betrayed by hot babes, and use zany gadgets to take down the bad guy. Helena and her assistant Carlo show up at the end to pick up the prisoner, and the agents do an improv bit over the credits.

The art style is colorful, cheesecakey, and fun, but unfortunately the characters only move when they absolutely have to. It's mostly a talking heads kind of show, but the dialogue is snappy and clever which makes up for it--sort of. Maybe it's just me, but I could only get through one or two episodes in a sitting. It's really a shame they didn't have more of a budget, because the few fully animated sequences look great.

Like Daria, most of the background music consists of samples from songs, which I expect puts it in the same category of licensing nightmare. Combined that with its relative obscurity (MTV no longer even maintains a web page about the show) and you're basically looking at no DVD release ever.