Review:
Pure Pwnage Teh TV Show: Episode Six

106: The Day the LAN Centre Stood Still

‘Not playing games is one thing, but I ain’t giving up my other hobbies… hey, baby, what’s going on?’ – Tyrell

Another cracking episode? At this rate, Pure Pwnage will become the most consistently entertaining show on the air at the moment, a reputation it thoroughly deserves.

Following on from Doug getting arrested from accidentally mugging an old lady, he’s been banned from gaming for six weeks. Seeing Jeremy and Tyrell completely fail to help out their friend, October steps in and sets up a competition to see who can go just twenty four hours without playing a single game. Naturally, this all ends in disaster as Jeremy and Doug accidentally discover the joys of vandalism.

Like the previous episode, this one is driven by the characters. While other, lesser, comedies on TV simply have their protagonist given a chance by a boss or by a girl they like, Pure Pwnage lets the characters create the comedy and run amok in the story. This creates a simply brilliant ‘chain of events’ storyline that spirals beautifully out of control with very little fuss.

Doug’s arc in the episode is possibly the most hilarious, seeing him desperate to enjoy himself but with no idea how to go about doing it, simply standing outside the Mouse and Pad and peering in like a stalker in a locker room. It’s both very funny and completely plausible that he takes his gaming ban so seriously, with occasional fantasy sequences expertly laced in with no halting the flow of the episode – quite an achievement.

There’s also the really quite brilliant insight into Simon’s character. Up until now, he’s just been a less-racist clone of the original show’s fan-loved character Dave, but in this episode he finally gets a tiny bit of depth, with a few marvelously funny scenes and a resolution that creates the appearance that he’s less of a store owner and more of a drug dealer. It’s a fantastically nice idea that really works.