Review: "Zapp Brannigan: Home for the Holidays"

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Gulliver63
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Review: "Zapp Brannigan: Home for the Holidays"

Post by Gulliver63 » Wed Dec 25, 2013 12:40 pm

I did something this year that I tried to do four years ago and never got it done; I wrote a holiday piece. Since nothing has ever been said about Zapp Brannigan's family or upbringing, I decided to give everyone a look inside the Brannigan Compound for a holiday celebration. Tiny parts of this were actually taken from that holiday idea from four years ago, but I think that this is a far better story. I originally *gag* had a musical number written for that story, but I never could find it. The language gag for the female android was taken from a comic strip I did over ten years ago. I struggled a bit over where to locate Zapp's family, as it almost became Groton, Connecticut, but I settled on the Wilmington, Delaware area. And thanks go out again to Robert Stewart at work for adding a few interesting tidbits. It was fun to weave a few touching stories in with the politically incorrect zaniness that we all know is Zapp Brannigan. So, grab some eggnog, curl up around the fire and get ready to meet Zapp Brannigan's family. And quit sighing, for God sake...
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Re: Review: "Zapp Brannigan: Home for the Holidays"

Post by c_nordlander » Thu Dec 26, 2013 11:11 pm

Typoes: "he's probably having the time of his life" on page 1 is missing capitalisation on the first word; "or did you just forget." should have a question mark; "You're ordeal" should be "Your"; "servant's quarters" should be "servants' quarters".

This is good! I always felt that it would have been funny to see more of Zapp's family and background on the show, and his being from a rich and privileged family feels like it would be canon. The plot is pretty standard sitcom material, but develops nicely, and I like
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at the end. Nice chance for Leela to shine. The epilogue is sweet and in character, and the scene with Bender right at the end is pretty hilarious.

The jokes are very good: my particular favourite is the dialogue at the end of Chapter 1, but pretty much all the jokes made me laugh out loud. (I also liked Zapp's fanfiction-writing brother-in-law.) The writing is good as well: nothing flashy, but an all-around well-written story. Good art, of course.

Everyone is in character, which is a good feat seeing how many of the characters have a spot in this. Especially Fry felt perfect. I felt that Kif was a bit disrespectful towards Zapp at the start, but heck, it's not as if the guy doesn't deserve it. And seeing Kif bossing Zapp around was just awesome. Coruthersby is a funny new character, and Eudora Brannigan got quite a bit of development.
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I don't have an awful lot to nitpick with this. Like I said, the plot has been done before, and there was nothing really surprising about the way it developed, other than possibly
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Also, while the jokes are genuinely great, there could have been more of them.

One nitpick is that when Leela is contacting the Nimbus, it's not clear whether the person responding is Zapp or Kif. (It becomes clear a bit into the conversation, but for a while I was assuming that it was Kif and was wondering why Leela was being so rude to him.)

So yeah: good jokes, good characterisation, and a bit of emotional depth for Zapp of all people. A-
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Re: Review: "Zapp Brannigan: Home for the Holidays"

Post by Gulliver63 » Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:14 am

Thanks! I had a lot of fun writing this; it's always interesting coming up with lots of head-canon where there isn't much info in the show. If I had to nitpick myself, it was the fact that Zapp sort of disappeared for a while near the end. I've got lots of goodies I threw into this one. Kif's line of "If you are here at 1101, you are wrong," is a very common expression on an army post. Robert Stewart came up with the thump-signal, again something that army troops would use in the field. The one thing I could not do at any cost was to
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"We are today's creatures, locked in tomorrow's double feature..."
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