An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective, Part 9

Although season four was, by far, the best season of the Epic Rap Battles of History, that is not to say it was all downhill from there.  Even though there were battles in season five that I would just as soon forget, there were still many that were of the same quality as that which came before.  If anything, season five was proof that season four was not a fluke.

 

 

Deadpool vs. Boba Fett

Best line: “Ooh, what’s that?  A missile backpack?  Well, I guess you’ll be alright if a fucking bird attacks!”
Runner up: “Maybe I’ll write a letter and mail it in your face.”

So this was covered last week, but I just want to say that despite the fact that Boba Fett was barely a presence in the cinematic franchise back when this battle was made, this battle contains a lot of substance with very little filler.  Deadpool must have Native American heritage, because he used every piece of the Boba Fett we had as of 2015.

Despite the fatigue with which I talked about Hitler vs. Vader in the past, I would probably enjoy seeing a second showdown between Deadpool and Boba Fett, especially now that there’ve been two seasons of The Mandalorian and a third is on the way, as well as a new series focused on Boba Fett.  For someone who was inconsequential to how Return of the Jedi ended up playing out and who barely spoke in The Empire Strikes Back, it seems the modern Star Wars franchise is finally doing right by the character who was once intended to be even greater a threat than Darth Vader.

 

 

J. R. R. Tolkien vs. George R. R. Martin

Best line: “We all know the world is full of chance and anarchy, so yes it’s true to life for characters to die randomly, but news flash: the genre’s called fantasy!  It’s meant to be unrealistic, you myopic manatee!”
Runner up: “It’s hard for me to tale criticism on clothes from a dude who sends a raven to say hi to his toes.”

I’m beginning to think the only really good season premiere was the one from season four.  They hit it out of the park when they had the Ghostbusters and the Mythbusters battle each other, and it set the stage for the greatest season the Epic Rap Battles ever had.  Season five begins with a battle that sounds good on paper but which feels more ordinary than it should’ve.  This isn’t the only season five battle that feels this way, either.  Someone must’ve thought, “Hmm, there are two titans of fantasy who have R. R. in their name, let’s have them rap battle!”

To be fair, as was the case with the Ghostbusters vs. the Mythbusters, this can be a legitimate way to come up with battles.  I just never got the sense that this battle is as epic as what came before.  I also still haven’t seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies and I was unimpressed with the two seasons of Game of Thrones that I’ve watched so far.  Considering the deep disappointment I’ve heard fans express about season 8, if I’m already not liking the show, imagine how much I’ll hate the final season.

 

Gordon Ramsay vs. Julia Child

Best line: “Oh, please.  Your defeat’s guaranteed.  Concede.  I’ve got this in the bag, Sous Vide!”
Runner up: “You scream at women, but the fits that you’re pitching make you the pissiest bitch in the kitchen!”
Oh, I’m so glad you spent this time with me: “Now eat a dick!  Bon appetit!”

Several months ago, I was looking up cooking tutorials on YouTube, specifically how professional chefs prepare stir-fry.  Mostly, I wanted to be sure I didn’t undercook my meat.  Food poisoning seems to be a common thing where I live, considering my co-workers have often phoned in sick because of it.  Do people not cook food up here?  Is that something that’s only a part of the culture of warmer climates?  Or am I just surrounded by werewolves and they haven’t revealed themselves to me?  Is that how raw food actually interacts with them?  Are they fine in wolf form, but as soon as they change back, any leftover raw food in their stomachs end up reacting badly with their human digestive system?  If that’s the case, then that seems like a really nasty side effect to being a werewolf.  I feel very sorry for them.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen to me, so I looked up how to make stir-fry on-line because I wanted to try it and I got some pretty good advice from several different sources, but I noticed that most of the videos I watched assumed people already knew how to toss a wok.  I later found that there are separate tutorials for proper wok technique, but I didn’t realize at the time.  I was just looking for quick cooking tutorials since it was late at night, I had just arrived home from a closing shift at work, I was incredibly hungry and had purposely purchased ingredients ahead of time intended for a stir-fry because I wanted to try making one.

Of all the videos I watched that night, the only chef who took the time in the middle of the video to teach how to toss a wok was Gordon Ramsay.  It turns out that the guy with a reputation as an asshole on television is still an excellent teacher of cooking techniques.  He described tossing a wok as if you were operating a shovel, and it’s an apt comparison, considering the motions involved.

I don’t know how much of his reputation is accurate, considering a lot of the people who have actually met him have nothing but good things to say about him.  The asshole that we all see on television is one of the most extreme examples we have of reality television being purposely cut in such a way as to try to rewrite reality.  Television reporters may get an unearned reputation for distorting the truth by creatively editing a filmed interview, but reality television is inherently a creatively edited medium.

As an example, Love It or List It is a show where homeowners decide at the end whether to keep their remodeled home or sell it on the market, but the homeowners aren’t in control over what actually shows on television: they film both the love it and list it endings to their episode and it’s just as much a surprise to them how the episode ends as it is to the audience watching, and rarely reflects the actual decision they made in reality.

But reality shows of every genre are edited very deceptively.  In the United States, Gordon Ramsay is being portrayed as a man who belittles everyone in the kitchen and who has very few kind things to say, but I think it’s an episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares that comes closest to showing him for who he really is.

As with every episode, he heard about a restaurant that was struggling and showed up to help.  Most of the time, it’s the food that’s the problem, but at Momma Cherri’s Soul Food Shack, the food was excellent.  Instead, it was mainly a problem with promotion.  People just didn’t know the restaurant was there.  Gordon Ramsay went above and beyond to help her out and, although the restaurant did ultimately shut down years after the show aired, here we saw him at his best, helping out the little guy and trying to turn the fortunes of a business around.

 

 

Frederick Douglass vs. Thomas Jefferson

Best line: “I celebrate December 6th, 1865, the day the 13th damn amendment was ratified and I ceased to be an alien to your unalienable rights, and ‘we the people’ stopped meaning ‘we the people who are white’.”
Runner up: “This ain’t Louisiana, man.  I ain’t buying it.  You talk about freedom, but you ain’t applying shit.”

Oscillation is a word which means a movement, back and forth, between two equally opposite positions.  The first half of season five is one such example.  Battles alternated between being great and being not great.  This was one of the not great ones.

Do you remember way back in season one, when the Easter Bunny faced Genghis Khan, and was put on the defensive in the second verse?  Here, Thomas Jefferson doesn’t seem to put a lot of effort into his side of the battle, bragging about his own accomplishments (while acting the hypocrite by calling out Frederick Douglass for writing three books about himself… you do know what the word ‘autobiography’ means, Jefferson?) in his first verse, then trying to defend himself in his second.  All of the fire came from Douglass, calling out the former President for all the various ways his actions fell short of the words he’s famous for using to describe the slave trade.  So in all, this is half a good rap battle, but then I suppose it’s hard to write a battle where you want to be respectful to the history of a man like Frederick Douglass and still try to come up with ways to criticize him.

Maybe Thomas Jefferson should’ve rap battled George III.  At the time this battle was released, there hadn’t been a true United Kingdom vs. United States battle, although George Washington did battle the poster boy of Scotland, William Wallace, and other battles existed that put one or more Americans vs. one or more of the British.  This oversight actually would get rectified later on in season five but for now, it feels like a wasted opportunity.

 

 

James Bond vs. Austin Powers

Best line: “Basil Exposition told me this would be boring, but Jesus man, even my mojo’s snoring!”
Runner up: “Spell my name: the ladies wanna B on D.  Any sex appeal you might have is beyond me.”

Here’s an interesting trivia question for you: who is the only singer to have provided a theme song to both a James Bond movie and an Austin Powers movie?

a) Beyoncé
b) Tom Jones
c) Madonna
d) Britney Spears

I’ll provide the answer next week.

 

 

Bruce Banner vs. Bruce Jenner

Best line: “I hear you’re good at running, you’re just like the Flash.  Especially in the 100 meter ditch your wife dash.”
Runner up: “That painted face don’t give you class, just one more thing Bruce do for cash!”

James Bond vs. Austin Powers is amazing, truly one of the best battles of all time.  This one, though, feels like they tried but there just isn’t enough there.  It’s another one that makes sense on paper.  Two people who were born Bruce and who transformed into someone else: Banner into Hulk and Jenner into Caitlyn.  This battle is proof why picking opponents based on their names doesn’t always work (as if we needed more proof after the R. R. battle at the start of the season).

That said, there are battles that prove that this isn’t an absolute rule.  As I mentioned before, the Ghostbusters vs. the Mythbusters is another brilliant battle.  There’s one more battle in season five whose opponents are chosen based on their names, and I’ll get to that one next week.

Also next week, I’ll discuss the time there were five participants in a rap battle and it didn’t end in a mess.