Danger 5: Episode 1 - "I Danced for Hitler"

Holy shit.

Danger 5 is a TV show. It’s an Australian-produced TV show (apparently developed by the creators of Italian Spiderman, whatever the hell that is). And that’s really the best I can do. There came a point during Episode 1 (“I Danced for Hitler”) where I started to wonder: what the tits is going on? If you strip Danger 5 to its barest essentials, you have a show about a team of powerful, international secret agents battling against Hitler in the 1960’s. Misadventures and various shenanigans ensue. That’s really giving the story more emphasis than it deserves. I don’t think I’ve adequately covered how unbelievably weird and random Danger 5 is, so I’ll describe the opening sequence as fluidly as I possibly can: a trio of French revolutionary girls watch as Nazi zeppelins steal the Eiffel Tower using one of those retriever claws you find in a Claw Machine. One of the girls kills herself for no apparent reason, and then two Nazis and their talking dog storm the hideout and gun down the remaining two French girls. The dog is their commander, by the way, second only to Hitler himself.

This all happens in the span of a minute. In the following scene, at the Danger 5 HQ, the redheaded British agent, Tucker, plays a chess match against a talking Beckoning Cat (maneki-neko) and loses. Danger 5’s colonel has an eagle for a head. And we still have twenty-three minutes to go.

The narrative in “I Danced for Hitler” involves Danger 5’s efforts to stop the Nazis from taking the Statue of Liberty (and, of course, kill Hitler in the meantime). Today happens to be Hitler’s birthday, and the man who orchestrated the thefts of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower (along with dozens of other monuments from across the globe) happens to be none other than Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda. Why did he steal all these monuments, you ask? To turn them all into a statue of Hitler, as a nifty birthday present. A big shootout occurs, Hitler manages to escape death by jumping out of a window, and Danger 5 returns home using the Statue of Liberty as a space shuttle. Also, this happens.

If the phrase "A bear playing piano at Hitler's birthday party" doesn't get you at least mildly interested, you are dead inside.

It’s quite a ravaging experience, honestly. It is bizarre, surreal, and absolutely random. In spite of its twenty-four minutes (an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force contains the same amount of lunacy and absurdity in half that time), Danger 5’s first episode has a creative energy that never, ever flags. The appeal of this show is ultimately subjective. Although that could be said for anything, it’s especially true for something as clinically insane as Danger 5. You either get it, or you don’t get it. The people that get it like this show quite a bit (hence why it was renewed for a second series), and the people that don’t get it? Well, it wasn’t made for them in the first place.

Danger 5 is a perfect example of the shotgun method of comedy. A mass of jokes and gags are thrown at the audience in the hopes that they’ll all work. If Joke A wasn’t very funny, don’t worry, Joke B is coming up in a few milliseconds. There’s enough comedy in Danger 5 to fill about fifty Adam Sandler films (and Danger 5 happens to be funnier than all of them); the wickedly fast timing doesn’t exactly hurt. The pacing does hurt Danger 5 at times; “I Danced for Hitler” veers from inspired to charming to mediocre and then all the way back again, without any kind of discernible pause. The random suicide gag gets funnier each and every time they use it; the bar scene near the beginning is highly amusing. And there is, of course, the eagle-headed colonel.

There’s not much else to say here that I haven’t already said. The cast is surprisingly strong and effective – everyone is amazing in their roles, be it the straight-laced Tucker, the All-American manly man Jackson, the sexual Ilsa, the French-Spanish-Italian-Zimbabwean fun-lover Pierre, or the hapless Claire. The interpretation of Hitler brings to mind the Hitler from Kung Fury (an amazing, 80’s-inspired half-hour film made by David Sandberg), albeit a little more licentious and less concerned with kung fu. The editing and production is fairly slick and charmingly low-key, and the ending theme is kinda nice; I like the organ.

And that’s really all I can say. It is funny, but it is also exhausting. This was a little long at twenty-four minutes (fifteen would have been perfect), and it makes me wonder if the coming episodes will be able to keep up that same kind of quality without becoming shrill and repetitive. Time will tell.