Recap / Guess the Build: Skizz Ep. 3

1 Following

Data:

• Release date: May 27th, 2024
• Theme: Pet ownership gone wrong
• Link to episode: Here

Tropes found in this episode include:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Invoked and lampshaded. Skizz's initial prompt is "Pet Penguin Pooping on Popcorn".
  Skizz: You gotta do alliteration; it makes things funnier.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Zig-Zagging Trope. All of the animals built in the episode lack genitalia, but in Jimmy's build chain, Skizz ends up giving the cat a visible butthole (using a button) and waits how long it takes for everyone else to notice it during the build reveals.
• Artistic License – Marine Biology: Several in Joel's build chain:
  • Joel's initial build has a person's pet piranha break free from its leash in a public swimming pool to try to eat the other visitors. Unfortunately, that is far from how piranhas work: they are fairly small fish and not the size of a person, and any attacks on humans are rarely fatal. No wonder the chain is almost immediately reinterpreted to be about a Threatening Shark.
  • Gem eventually points out that sharks are usually quite nice and don't really eat humans, contrary to what she's instructed to build.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: A couple in Skizz's build chain:
  • Since Skizz built his penguin to be somehow floating above the popcorn it's pooping over, several people point out that penguins are flightless birds in real life.
    Gem: I knew what it was, but I was mad about it!
  • Skizz's bizarre penguin markings and body proportions aside, both he and Jimmy build the penguin's excrement to be brown. Grian, having a background in biology in real life, attempts to set the record straight by making the penguin's excrement grey-white when it's his turn in the build chain.^note However, since he specifically models the penguin on either an emperor penguin or a king penguin, he may be wrong as well, as emperor penguins seem to produce reddish brown excrement, while little data has been disclosed on what king penguin excrement looks like. In real life, though, penguin excrement can range from white to pink/reddish, depending on their diet.
• Bird-Poop Gag: Skizz's build chain revolves around someone's pet penguin doing its business where it shouldn't.
• Cartoon Creature: In Grian's build chain, Skizz is tasked with building a "horrible monster" of a goldfish mutant and ends up building what looks like an orange frog with fangs, to which Gem questions what species that's even supposed to be. Justified, however, considering it's only ever described to be a "monster".
• Dog Walks You: Jimmy's initial prompt is a dog walking a person, but in the sense of the dog being the owner and the person being put on a leash.
• Don't Try This at Home: Considering the episode's theme of pet ownership, Gem has left several disclaimers for the viewers throughout the episode: not to let their pet rabbits chew on wires, not to take a penguin home to keep it as a pet, and not to keep sharks as pets either.
• Extreme Omnivore: Gem's build chain revolves around real-life anecdotes of someone's pet rabbit chewing on their computer wires. Later interpretations turn the rabbit into a mouse.
• Flat "What": Despite not being known for his building skills, Skizz is baffled by Impulse's extremely simplified build of a shark attack.
  Skizz: Dude, what.
  Impulse: Nailed it, right?
  Skizz: Did this take you all five minutes? I– For real, there's like, seven blocks here.
• Flawless Victory: Save for some minor wording changes due to dialectal differences and grammar, Impulse's build chain of a dog Putting the Pee in Pool is perfectly preserved.
• Funny Animal: In Jimmy's build chain, the dog/cat is reinterpreted to be an anthropomorphic, bipedal animal in the first two builds.
• Human Pet: Jimmy's build chain involves a person being the pet of a dog (or cat).invoked
• Mutants: Played for Horror in Grian's build chain, which starts off with someone's pet goldfish "mutating" into a huge monster with claws and fangs and trying to kill its owner.
• Piranha Problem: Joel's build chain starts off with someone's pet piranha breaking loose from its leash in a public pool and threatening to eat a hapless visitor. Due to Artistic License – Marine Biology, it's soon reinterpreted as a Threatening Shark.
• Putting the Pee in Pool: The premise of Impulse's build chain is someone's dog taking a tinkle in the swimming pool.
  Jimmy: I know exactly what this is, and that is disgusting.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the second round, Skizz remarks at one point that he built the monster the pet goldfish was supposed to mutate into to resemble Q*bert.
  • In the build reveals, several people comment on Skizz's tendency to build humans that more closely resemble the Thumb-Thumbs from Spy Kids.
• Threatening Shark: Joel's build chain quickly goes from a Piranha Problem to a shark being on the loose and eating people. Gem's take on the build even has her go out of her way to add plenty of redstone blocks as blood and gore.
• Toilet Humour: Three of the six build chains have involved animal or human waste products, one way or another. Several people eventually the ubiquity of the subject in the episode.
  • Multiple in Jimmy's build chain:
    • In Jimmy's initial build, since he has a little spare time left, he decides to make it look as though the Human Pet has dropped a few deuces during their walk. Joel is so disgusted by this that he derails the build chain to make the scenario less generic.
      Joel: BUT WHY IS THERE POO?!
    • Defied in Grian's take on the build, who reinterprets build-Jimmy having "had an accident" to be an injury rather than something far less hygienic.
      Grian: I wasn't gonna get involved with the pee-pee and the poo-poo!
    • At the end of the chain, Skizz goes out of his way to subvert Animals Lack Attributes by giving the cat a visible butthole.
  • Impulse's build chain is themed around a dog Putting the Pee in Pool.
  • Skizz's build chain involves a Bird-Poop Gag courtesy of someone's pet penguin.
• Viewer Species Confusion: In-universe; given the episode being themed around animals, something is bound to go wrong.
  • In Gem's build chain, Jimmy inexplicably reinterprets her rabbit to be a mouse, despite the rabbit clearly having long ears and a fluffy tail.
  • In Jimmy's build chain, Joel reinterprets the unnamed Funny Animal dog in Jimmy's build to be Norman, Jimmy's real-life pet cat. Later interpretations along the build chain all follow suit in depicting the "pet" to be a cat.
  • Joel's build chain rapidly derails from a Piranha Problem to a Threatening Shark being on the loose.