First published 8.24.08
Oh, man. This blog takes some context to understand. I’m not sure how to cut it down without taking out too much. Let’s go with this: here are the things you need to know about Franks and Beans 2012 so you can understand this Franks and Beans 2008 blog:
– This was written after a fairly long break between website updates. Anyone who knows us know realizes that I always update my websites in a reasonable period of time (cough).
– We decided to make 24 episode “season” instead of 13. That’s really immaterial in general, though.
– Mark Moncheck would comment on every one of our episodes when they were uploaded to the Funny or Die website. Now, we only wish he would comment. C’mon, Mark.
– Rick Rolls aren’t as funny as they used to be.
– I often wrote (and, well, write) without a clear end in mind, and so these things can go on and on and on well beyond the point of interest for anyone in existence. One day I’ll realize that the Internet doesn’t give you more, uh, Internet points for writing more words. Perhaps I’ll even take my advice at some point. Not likely though! Enjoy this blog, Earth!
SCENE: A bleak and desolate landscape, where the sun beats down mercilessly on the desert sand. The light shines overwhelmingly, bleaching an already preserved skeleton of an unfortunate steer. Overhead, two similarly emaciated buzzards circle nervously in the clear, hot, bright, blue sky. The sand seems to stretch on forever, uninterrupted except for the large boulders strewn haphazardly over the area and a few patches of withered and browned grass.
Off in the faraway distance, the figure of a man reaches the apex of a small hill, feeling as insignificant as he looks as he staggers forward toward some unseen goal. We advance to the wispy visage, a shadow of his former self. His shirt is tied around his head in a sense of futility; the sun treats him no less harshly. His sunken eyes are bleak and his lips are as parched and cracked as the earth around him. He ambles on, making no sound, simply mouthing the words to an indistinguishable phrase. His arms hang dead at his side; his feet, covered in worn-through soles, drag through the grainy sand.
But then, on the horizon, something catches the man’s view. He stops in his tracks and lifts his head. Was he seeing something? Perhaps he had been in this situation a hundred times before – distracted by a mirage or a flicker of cruel imagination. A trick of light? Another nothing to compliment all the other nothings? But no – there it was again.
The man stands straighter than perhaps he has in all of his life. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words devolve into a raspy unintelligence. He clears his throat once, and again, and again, and he reaches up with his newly living hands to touch his face – a face into which hope now flows once more.
Walking forward with a purpose as never before, the man begins to speak, first barely an inaudible whisper, but soon he is shouting at the top of his lungs: “It’s back! Franks and Beans is back!”
END SCENE
And after weeks of waiting, Franks and Beans is back with a (theoretically) highly anticipated season two. (WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!?) Our first episode of this new undertaking is none other than “Sandwich,” named after one of the basic food groups.
Having returned to southwestern Pennsylvania after a lengthy hiatus, Larry and I got right to work and managed to punch out five episodes of Franks and Beans, the first of which is on display before you. It’s a short episode, one without much plot and really only one joke, but an appropriate one, I think. It calls back previous shorts such as “The Change” and “You’ll Never See It Coming”, and it continues a theme of quick, timing-based jokes that I think are so underrated. The pause between “Is that my sandwich?” and the inevitable “…no” really determines if this works or fails, in my opinion, and I think that we hit it pretty well this time around.
How obvious is the joke from the beginning or the episode? I don’t think that’s really an issue here, as the timing is probably more important. But not knowing what Larry is looking for until I magically appear on the armchair does hold with it some risks. When I think back to it, there probably should have been a shot of me sitting down with the sandwich after Larry walks into the room and before he asks his question, but hindsight and a limited list of filmed takes keeps us honest this way. At any rate, our almost comical sandwich, complete with olive and toothpick (Larry’s idea) shows up and probably steals the show. It was a good sandwich, and I had to keep from eating parts of it during filming.
This episode is significant probably more so than any plot point in that it introduces a new character, and this more than anything else precipitated the episode’s production order. Mark Moncheck (who also comments on, like, EVERY episode as username hardcoremarkie18) was gracious enough to fill in as an extra character in several of our upcoming episodes, and I wanted to first introduce him in our loving homage to the Rick Roll.
In this scene, I wanted Mark to seemingly come out of nowhere, making viewers say “wait…who is this guy?!”, and airing another episode with him in it first would have really taken some of the humor out of that…even if I’m the only one who might find that funny. Filming this batch of episodes actually served as the first time I’ve ever met Mark, who had to leave soon afterwards in order to fulfill his obsessive haircut fixation, and I have to say that it was a real treat to meet someone who uses the phrase “Mustache Buddy” in his everyday language. There now arises the challenge of giving him a proper character name for the inevitable IMDB entry (HOW DO I GET THAT LISTED?! COME ON, INTERNETS!!). It will probably have to be Hardcore Mark: not very original on my part, but it just seems to fit.
Back to our previously mentioned Rick Roll – this internet sensation continues to astound me. Well, honestly, the internet as a whole is a rather fascinating contraption, but you get what I mean. Why anyone would choose Rick Astley to prank their friends is beyond me, but I can at least appreciate the humor. Before this inevitably fades away into cultural yesteryear, Larry and I both agreed that we’d have to do something with it, and we wanted to sooner rather than later. Having us all dance on screen was something of a last resort, but really – what else were we supposed to do? It was worth it just to get a little extra mileage out of our ever-expanding collection of “NO!” endings.
Franks and Beans 