November 7, 2006 - Oftentimes on Robot Chicken a show can mostly be filled with average skits then have one or two good sketches that help to make the episode pretty good. This was the case with "Lust for Puppets," with most of the smaller sketches being average, but having two really good segments to make the episode good. And to make thing even better they bookmarked these skits so that the show started off good and ended great… leaving us forgetting about the mediocre middle section.

The sketches for this week featured: A cheerleader with a secret; Montezuma getting his revenge (in a couple of skits); Calvin being treated for his delusions of a talking tiger named Hobbes; Daniel from the Karate Kid getting kicked hard; a clown funeral; a cell phone prank mishap; Cameron Diaz dealing with those who wronged her after finding out she was going to die; Frankenstein finally settling down; a mouse suicide bomber; and Mario and Luigi happening upon Vice City (from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City). As mentioned most of these were pretty average and worth a chuckle, but the Calvin & Hobbes and Mario and Luigi sketches were great. And with two longer sketches taking up most of the time on the episode, it made up for the average middle portion.

Easily the best of all these sketches was Mario and Luigi in Vice City. It simply answers the question of what happens when you take a beloved children's videogame character and put them into a renowned adult-oriented videogame setting: chaos. Poor Mario and Luigi were out for a ride on their go cart when they came to a fork in the road and decided to take the road leading right into Vice City - where they have to deal with unbreakable bricks, real turtles, prostitutes, psychedelic mushrooms, and deadly bullets. And in the end both Mario and Luigi are shot down in true GTA fashion by the cops after reaching a high enough criminal level - due to killing a turtle, fleeing from the cops, picking up a prostitute, buying drugs, hitting civilians in a car, and firing at the police. On top of this hilarious take on the Super Mario Bros., the show ended with Yoshi coming to the same fork in the road as Mario and instead deciding to go left… into the zombie-infested town of Raccoon City (looking reminiscent to Resident Evil 2 for those videogame fans out there).

So all in all this may not have been a completely solid episode, but the high points were good enough to lift the episode past being average. As we have said in the past it is passable to have show like this one where a couple great sketches carry the whole show, but we would prefer it if we could get a combination of quality short and long skits. But as long as segments like Mario and Luigi keep being produced, you won't hear us complaining.