Title: Never Stop Blowing Up
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Players: Ally Beardsley (they/them) as Russell Feeld (he/him) / Jennifer Drips (she/her). Ify Nwadiwe (he/him) as Wendell Morris (he/him) / Vic Ethanol (he/him). Isabella ‘Izzy’ Roland (she/her) as Paula Donvalson (nee Buocadifuoco) (she/her) / Jack Manhattan (he/him). Rekha Shankar (she/her) as Usha Rao (she/her) / G13 (he/him). Alex Song-Xiao (they/them) as Liv Skyler (she/her) / Kingston (he/him). Jacob Wysocki (he/him) as Andy ‘Dang’ Litefoot (he/him) / Greg Stocks (he/him).
Streaming Service: Dropout

If you missed it, catch our review for the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth episodes.

We jump right into the thick of it in this week’s episode! Though our Awesome Action Heroes split up, they’ve all managed to get themselves into trouble with Wendell racing to stop snipers from taking out Lucy Santangelo as Russell and Paula face off with Nitro while Liv and Dang head into an Adrenanoxinil Plutonium Sulfate-fueled dog fight.

In true Vic Ethanol fashion, Wendell flipped his car to protect Lucy before doing donuts around her car to knock off the motorcyclists attempting to kill Jack Manhattan’s ex-wife. Impressing even his stoic action alter, Wendell goes big, smoking out as a distraction before launching himself through his windshield and then Lucy’s to protect her.

Unfortunately, Ify reached too high, and the dice deny him. Stuck in Lucy’s windshield, Wendell fights against the raging district attorney. The dice repeatedly slap down his every attempt to turn the tides. Brennan throws Ify a bone, sending him flying and crashing back into the Santangelo House.

Izzy’s dice follow the suit, leaving Paula stumbling in her attempts to save Jack Manhattan’s son. Nitro uses Johnny against Paula, flinging him around like nunchucks. Lucy launches Wendell at Russell.

People as weapon, dice failures galore — this episode had such a painful start. With a season as crazy as this one, it’s difficult to tell when we’ve gone off the deep end, but a lawyer spitting literal venom into a femme fatale’s eyes was not on my action film bingo board.

With so many losses stacking up, Wendell grabs the Adrenanoxinil Plutonium Sulfate, downing it. As he takes control of the situation, the dice do a complete 180, blowing up multiple times and activating a new special ability which the players purchased that doubles their tokens if they manage to blow up twice in a row. While they take out Nitro, sniper targets land on Johnny, and Paula launches herself forward as a human shield.

Bullets riddle Jack Manhattan’s body. Horrified, Lucy watches as her still legal husband protects their son. Paula reaches her third injury level – the Adrenaline Level. Izzy gains ten Turbo Tokens. One more level of injury will be death, but in this penultimate injury level, adrenaline keeps our action hero going.

Through the sliding glass door, two snipers with a cannon shoot at Jack Manhattan as Paula goes a bit crazy in the aftermath after taking so many bullets; however, I’m not sure what’s Brennan’s excuse to have a pair of snipers, geared and everything, go full pirate, but the subgenres of Never Stop Blowing Up have gone into overdrive.

Are these two snipers crazier than Lucy’s upper cut and kicks which landed Wendell back in the house? Is this pushing the line more than Dang’s nuclear space car? Does the fact that Paula catches the cannonball change the answers? Who can say. All I know is that when the DM joins in the mayhem, all predictions go out the window.

Flexing, Jack launches the bullets from him, killing all the snipers and launching the cannonball at one of the airplanes, blowing it up.

The group makes their escape, but Wendell’s MacGuffin is missing.

In a bloody arena on the other side of the city, Liv and Dang prepare to fight to the death. Rich folks jeer, casting bets mockingly, but our dastardly duo goes full throttle into the chaos with Dang tossing back the Adrenanoxinil Plutonium Sulfate only to spit half into Liv’s mouth. A roll of the dice has the action impressing one of the judges, but in a fight to the death with murderous, roid-raging Chow Chows, it’s unclear why judges matter.

Clicking his heels together, Dang pops out a knife. Jacob Wysocki has shown time and time again that he knows his genre, but he underestimated the strength of Brennan’s Yes-Anding abilities. The murder hounds tap out, subbing in two men in Party City masks. One has a broad sword. The other has a grenade studded whip.

Never one to be outdone, Jacob activates a laser on the end of his knife. This ends poorly, but Liv as Kingskin lunges at the man with the grenade whip, grappling him and using him as the whip’s handle. A broad sword to the back can’t stop the hulking mob boss.

While Liv rises into her own as Kingskin, Dang fumbles, crumbling in on himself and disassociating. Up until this moment, he had mastered the genre, but even with his tools and gadgets, Dang finds himself unable to channel Greg Stocks, his super spy action avatar. Completely shutting down, he puts them both in danger.

As one super spy stumbles, another pushes ahead. Haldwell knocks out a man and replaces him. Usha attacks him, but when she fails to hack G13’s brain, she realizes that her action alter ego has already started to hack her. G13 wants to go full Neo, possibly even looking to use Usha to get out of the action world. An incredible roll with multiple explosions leads Usha to discovering Haldwell has a bag containing his own ring finger, but she leaves it, going for the badge instead before throwing him.

Rushing into the arena, Usha sets off feedback, causing the dogs to go berserk. The sound draws Dang back into his body, but his eyes go straight for an escape; however, he goes into a crazy mash instead, managing to get Liv’s MacGuffin back.

FBI comes in hot, raiding the arena. Usha fails a hot check, and Liv only manages to take out two of the agents using the grenade whip. Analyzing the situation, Dang makes his escape to keep Liv’s MacGuffin safe.

Highlights

There’s pure chaos, and then there’s Brennan absolutely letting lose with the only actual dogs in a dog fight tapping out. That would’ve been hilarious enough. Our favorite DM goes a step further, sending the Chow Chows out in large sunglasses, fedoras, and trench coats as a hologram of them getting into a car and crashing to a wall distracts from their escape.

If we ever needed the contrast in Ally’s and Brennan’s character design style to be simplified, the naming of Snowball and Belvedere underscores their different comedic preferences.

Final Score (5 out of 5 Stars)

This episode was absolute madness. Some of it aligned with the extremes of action films like the Adrenaline Level of injury as numerous action heroes have walked away from events that should’ve put them neatly in their graves, so Paula’s human shield maneuver and subsequent survival wasn’t surprising. Catching cannonballs, dogs tagging out, and grenade whips toed the line, but even they have their place in action-comedies and even more recent life-action remakes of originally animated stories.

However, Rekha’s reveal went above and beyond. G13 is a hacker, so why wouldn’t he try to hack his way out of his video world if he had the wherewithal to recognize the programming of his own condition? As an enemy from within, G13 hacking Usha opens up numerous possibilities for how things might play out going forward, especially as the rest of the players know about the hacking, but their characters don’t.

We’re just over halfway, and with four more episodes to go, we have plenty of time for more twists. If you have any predictions, tropes or parody cameos, let us know in the comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Dimension 20

The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network

The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord. 

New episodes of The Boss Rush Podcast release every Monday morning on YouTube and all major podcast applications like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Patreon supporters gain one week early access. 

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