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Space Janitors, on The Escapist / YouTube / Geek & Sundry
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Caution: spoilers

This sci-fi comedy premiered on Geek & Sundry in November 2012. (I guess the first season was on another website, The Escapist, before that, but this is the only one I've watched it on. The second and third seasons were made for Geek & Sundry, though.) The show seems to barely avoid copyright infringement, though it's pretty clearly based on Star Wars. (So if you're a fan of the movie Clerks, you should definitely enjoy this; though I must add, any sci-fi movie or show can be parodied, to some extent.) The main characters include a couple of janitors who work on an Imperial space station, Darby Richards and Mike Chet. Darby has high hopes of becoming more than just a janitor, and actually taking part in the war against the Rebellion. Mike is more content to remain in his janitorial job. Meanwhile, they're part of social group 417 (friends are assigned by computer, rather than choosing each other themselves). The other two members of the group are a computer psychologist (she programs sentient computers) named Edith Kingpin, and a sentient android named LN6-K (or simply "Elle"). Elle apparently ended a romantic relationship with Darby shortly prior to the start of the series. Also, there are lots of clone troopers, but the main one we see is Dennis 4862, who hangs out with the gang fairly often (in spite of not being an official member of the social group). We'll occasionally see other characters, but those are the most important ones. At least in season one.

Um... I should mention that Darby learns something shocking about himself at the end of season one, which becomes important to at least some episodes of season two, but at this point I don't want to spoil what that is (I will spoil it in the next paragraph, though). But I must mention that the rebels attacked the space station at the end of season one, but everyone managed to escape before it was blown up. Though androids like Elle just downloaded their memories (like in Battlestar Galactica). So she's not in season two, as a new body is being built for her. Meanwhile, everyone else starts working on a new station, which is identical to the old one. And an officer named Emily Roarke joins social group 417.

Well, I'm not spoiling any specifics of what happens in season two, but to explain season three, I'll need to spoil that thing that Darby learned in season one. There is a leader among the Rebellion named Gul de Sac, who is a fish guy (kind of like Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars, but more puppety). And Darby learns that Gul de Sac is actually his father. (Darby had been given a complete body transplant, to look human, unbeknownst to him.) So, throughout the second season, Darby was trying to hide this fact from everyone, for fear that they'd think he was a Rebel spy. But in the third season, Darby, Mike, Edith, Elle, and Dennis have all joined the Rebellion. How this came about is never explained. But Roarke is determined to find her traitorous friends, as she is still loyal to the Empire. However, we don't see much of her this season. Mainly it's just the core group of friends, being their usual oddball selves, on a Hoth-like planet where the Rebels have a secret base. There will be an all-out battle between the Rebels and the Empire at the end of the season, during which Darby learns another shocking fact about his father. By the end, it seems clear that Darby and his friends don't belong with either the Empire or the Rebellion, so they take off on their own, on a small Dragonfly-class ship. (There are, of course, various plot developments throughout the season that I'm not spoiling, some of which I may have to spoil in the future.)

Anyway, the show is pretty amusing, and I hope to see more adventures of the group. There's talk of a Space Janitors movie (which I expect would be released online, like the series). So, we'll see what happens.


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