So I’ve pretty firmly covered the premise/concept of The Mighty Boosh in my reviews of the first and second seasons, but in case you missed those, I’ll go over it again quickly. The Mighty Boosh is a surreal British comedy by Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, that features absurd plots, wacky and zany characters and a unique and vibrant art style combined with a variety of musical elements such as electro, heavy metal, funk, and rap.
Okay, Let’s move onto the actual review. Remember you can also check out my reviews of season 1 and 2 of The Mighty Boosh by clicking here and here respectively.
Episode 1 (Eels)
Here we have another brilliant episode, like I can’t think of a single thing wrong with it and it has ‘The Hitcher’ in it, arguably the best character in the series. Anyways this episode has Naboo and Bollo going away on a Stag Party for the head Shaman, Dennis. While he’s gone that heaves Howard and Vince in charge of Nabootique, have I mentioned how much I like that name by the way. Anyway after Vince makes fun of Howard’s salesmanship the pair engage in a sales contest to see who’s best, Howard selling his bizarre collection of drab elbow patches and Vince is selling to locations of celebrities he’s tagged with a nifty new device called the Celebrity Radar or ‘Celebradar’. Vince makes a killing as expected, making 3000 euros whereas Howard doesn’t sell anything and gets sexual propositioned by a transvestite called Eleanor. While Vince is out trying to tag Pete Neon, an indie celeb that everyone was asking him for, Howard is paid a visit by The Hitcher. He urinates in Howard’s face, then tells him he loves him. He sings one of the best songs in Mighty Boosh history, called Eels surprisingly. And scares Howard into paying him 1000 euros in protection money. Vince returns and Howard tells him what’s happened, we aren’t left bored though, they show us a game of pong while Howard goes over things we’ve already seen. Turns out Vince spent the money he’d earned on a ring with a Mexican ant encased in amber on it. So to get the money to pay the Hitcher they concoct a plan to get money from Eleanor in exchange for Howard pretending to prostitute himself, the plan was that after Howard got the money upfront Vince would mug him and they’d have the money without having to do anything. However Vince got distracted tagging Pete Neon the indie celeb he failed to tag earlier. Its implied instead that Howard went through with whatever sexual acts 1000 euros buy you. The Hitcher turns up to collect his money but decides to kill the pair anyway, but before he can Eleanor turns up and shoots him. She leaves and shortly afterwards ‘The Hitcher’ wakes up, the bullet having been stopped by a bulletproof elbow patch he stole from Howard earlier. Having come close to death his outlook has changed and he feels sad about being out of date and redundant but to console him Howard and Vince sing an electro version of the eels song from earlier to show him how the past and the present/future can go together. I think I’ll give this episode a 5/5.
Episode 2 (Journey to the Centre of the Punk)
Another of my personal favourites, this episode sees Vince adopting yet another trend, this time he’s a punk. Howard finally gets a rare Jazz record called Voodoo Scat by Howlin’ Jimmy Jefferson that he’s been saving for years to buy. Both of these things come together when Vince’s new Punk mates drop by and pressure him into destroying Howard’s prized Jazz record, he decides to do this by biting into the record, and swallowing a piece of it. This was no ordinary record though, we are told via a brilliantly animated little sequence that it was the last record made by Howlin’ Jimmy before he died of a swamp fever and that a drop of his blood is mixed in with the record. This drop of blood infected Vince with a rogue Jazz cell, Vince seems fine until he starts breaking into scat while performing with his new punk band terminal Margaret. Vince is taken back to Nabootique where Howard and his old, blind Jazz friend Lester Corncrake agree to be shrunk down to the microscopic level and travel inside Vince via submarine to find and kill the Jazz cell. It takes a while, and they are held up by Vince’s immune system but they reach the brain and where Howard talks to Vince’s brain cell, read just one singular brain cell. Howard can’t convince the brain cell of the threat so he just leads the Jazz cell away and they catch it, but Howard doesn’t kill it because he believes mistakenly that the Jazz cell is his family. Vince cries out the submarine just in time as it and the inhabitants return to full size. The Jazz cell is now big and even more dangerous, but Lester stabs him with a safety pin and the jazz cell runs off crying. This episode more than earns a 5/5.
Episode 3 (The Power of the Crimp)
This episode has Vince arrive late to work and he’s acting all depressed and moody, enough so that Howard asks if he’s got his script instead. As it turns out Vince was seeing a Doctor because someone was copying him, the guy who’s copying him is called Lance Dior and he’s determined to steal everything that makes Vince unique. Howard tries to console him by giving him a supposedly unique headdress and by telling him that ‘it’s what’s inside that counts’ they even sung a song about it. He doesn’t keep that tune for long after Lance Dior comes in with another big accessory, a freaky northern Jazz guy called Harold Boom because as it turns out the biggest thing you need to be Vince is to have your own version of Howard. Together Lance and Howard form a music group called The Flighty Zeus, a clear copy of The Mighty Boosh. Quickly Lance and Harold become bigger and better than the original, they even steal the Boosh’s slot at The Velvet Onion club. Howard and Vince are just about ready to give in, they decide to give it one more go with the one thing that makes them unique, their crimping. However when they turn up they find The Flighty Zeus performing a crimp, however after seeing The Flighty Zeus copies of Naboo and Bollo the Boosh boys decide to go for something crazy and unheard off, a four way crimp. They succeed after another awesome musical number and the Zeus crew leave in shame. This episode is good and earns a 4/5.
Episode 4 (The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox)
Like Eels and Nanageddon this is another episode that was always playing on BBC 3 but it really good so it was never a bad thing. This episode has Vince cleaning out a massive tower of bin bags that he threw out in the back alley behind Nabootique. If only things were that easy though because when he starts to move the bags he finds an urban fox called The Crack Fox who seems fairly unstable but otherwise fairly harmless, he tricks Vince into letting him into the shop where he knocks Vince out with a foul fart and steals a pint of a very powerful potion from Naboo’s private stock, called Shaman Juice. When Naboo and Bollo return he is furious and asks who’s responsible, not wanting to take the blame he passes the buck to Howard, angry Naboo fires Howard. Because of his irresponsibility and for putting Shaman secrets on the bottle, Naboo is imprisoned and is scheduled to be executed. To save Naboo, Vince goes to find Howard who’s taken up a job as a bin man and together they track the Crack Fox to the sewers where he’s activated the Shaman Juice and taken some and how has supernatural powers. The Crack Fox ends up fighting with a drunk homeless man Vince helped earlier in the episode, once the Crack Fox took care of the Homeless man he chases Howard and Vince through the sewers until he gets tricked into a bin lorry and crushed to death. The boys rescue Naboo at the last minute and then the Board of Shamans celebrate by taking a lot of drugs. This episode is probably a 3/5.
Episode 5 (Party)
This episode is Vince’s party, oh and I think it was Howard’s birthday as well. Howard doesn’t want to have a party, instead he wants to have a depressing evening in with his Jazz mates but after Vince pays one of his female friends to come in and chat Howard up and feign an interest in his Jazz and stationary and Jazz themed stationery he changes his mind. Vince then gets to work inviting all of his trendy mates none of whom know or care who Howard is. Lester Corncrake, Howard’s mate turns up really early and gives Howard a man corset for their birthday and throughout the night, he and Howard keep upsetting the cool vibe Vince is going for. Eventually Howard and Vince and a few other party-goers head down to the shop to play spin the bottle, but the game is broken up by Naboo when Howard breaks a bottle. When chastising them he makes Howard reveal he’s still a virgin which embarrasses him and puts him further at odds with all the young women at the party so he decided he might as well be gay. He doesn’t have to wait long for his opportunity because Vince in an effort to ward off being beheaded by the head Shaman who’s under the impression Vince got off with his wife kisses Howard. Touched at having his first kiss he decides he loves Vince and in the commotion the pair fall off the roof, but fortunately land on Howard’s birthday bouncy castle. The girl who showed interest in Howard earlier shows up and Howard immediately decides he doesn’t love Vince after all, Vince seems almost heartbroken until his own girl turns up. The episode ends with the entire party singing and bouncing on the bouncy castle. I can’t help but think that this episode would have been perfect as a finale just because of the ending but still the next episode is brilliant so I’ll let it go. I think I’ll give this episode a 4/5.
Episode 6 (The Chokes)
This episode has Vince putting on an event at The Velvet Onion called Vince Noir’s Electro Circus, which of course lets him dress up and do what he does best…namely look nice and put on a performance. Vince doesn’t just want to put on the event though he wants to be in it, and he managed the first step, he got Naboo and Bollo to take out a member of a band that he wanted to be in so that he could take his place. Vince then speaks to the rest of ‘The Black Tubes’ and they’re fine with him being in the band but they have a strict thin legs policy and his legs are just a bit too muscular, must have been all that football. So it’s Vince’s mission to fit into a pair of drainpipe trousers before the big night, Howard planned to stay in on the night in question and watch a movie marathon of his favourite director Danish art-house director, Jurgen Haabermaaster. However once he finds out that Jurgen is going to be at the event to see an acting crab called ‘Sammy the Crab’ he tries to get on the bill so he can show Jurgen his acting chops and get a part in one of his arthouse films. Vince agrees to let Howard perform but as soon as the pressure is on Howard’s secret is revealed, he suffers from an extreme form of stage fright called ‘The Chokes’ he goes to drink his sorrows away, disappointed that he “just can’t act” when he runs into an Montgomery Flange, an actor passed his prime. Flange makes Howard engage in an acting montage at his secret woodland acting training area and pushes Howard until he snaps, and then claims he’s ready and now a real actor. He then takes the Chokes from Howard, allowing him to act without freezing up. Meanwhile at Vince’s electro circus the Black Tubes give Sammy Booze not realising that he’s apparently a violent alcohol who goes crazy, he then kills one of the support acts ‘The Blue McEnroes’ now with Sammy gone Vince lets Howard go on stage and his powerful screaming impresses everyone. Vince also goes on stage, managing to fit into his trousers, but the tight squeeze pushed all the weight to his head and he topples over. The episode finishes with the group watching TV and Howard having returned from working with Jurgen, they see on TV that Sammy replaced Vince as a member of The Black Tubes and they watch Howard’s commercial where he plays ‘The Angry Crab of Trapped Wind’ And laugh. This was a decent ending to The Mighty Boosh, although as I said I feel like episode 5 would have worked better for an ending, but either way this was a good episode and earns a 3/5.
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