In which I lampshade the hell out of my own plot and make extras look sort of like popular fictional characters for some reason. I'm not entirely sure why. It sorta makes sense given the goal of highlighting the ridiculousness of it all, but a scientist who looks a bit like Jay Sherman from The Critic? Jay was (mostly) smart! How does he highlight my point?

Granted, Jay probably wouldn't do too well as a scientist, so it sort of makes sense? Odds are good I just liked The Critic, however. The other two nods are to The Simpsons and Dilbert. I used to really like Dilbert, mostly because I was dreading my potential career trajectory and I found it oddly comforting. I feel less of a connection to it now, and haven't read it in years. I assuming Dilbert's manager has learned nothing in that time.

As for The Critic, I think it was a good show that could have become great given some nurturing and a slightly bigger budget (reused animation was somewhat common and hurt the delivery of some of the jokes). Network politics kept that from happening, however, so it gets to exist in a perpetual state of "what might have been" on DVD.

In any case, it's probably worth noting that they were all working for a company that was basically mad science for hire and trying to create assassins. Yipes.