Mike K reviews Broken Records

[froodle]

This episode has a nice subversion of the typical “rock music corrupting the youth of today” message, and one that is fairly brave to slip into a family show (which might be why it was the last one aired despite clearly belonging earlier in the season): Marshall gets one-off character Tod, whose unemployed father frequently verbally abuses, into heavy metal band Pitbull Surfers. Tod starts listening to their music obsessively, dressing and acting differently, and more importantly, standing up to his father. However, aside from Tod ultimately not being that good at being a rebel, there’s a further twist I’m not revealing, though I’ll say the ultimate message is that parents who are blaming pop culture for changes in their kids’ behavior should also consider the messages they’re sending to their children themselves.


Side notes:

I’m not certain whether the name Pitbull Surfers is supposed to reference The Butthole Surfers, or just the “two random nouns” school of band names in general. The music definitely sounds too hair metal-ish if they are supposed to parody The Butthole Surfers. On the other hand, they at least sound like a band that could have been around in 1991, as that style of music was somewhat waning in popularity, but not entirely gone.

Syndi gets what could be considered her first actual subplot here - well what would have been the first were this episode aired in the right order. It’s a fairly funny one dealing with her tagging along with the police as a reporter, and while it isn’t really important to the main story, the two arcs do kind of link up near the end.

My favorite random background character is the tuba player who shows up at the accident scene and starts punctuating dialogue with his notes.