Bad Day on the Moon (Cartoon episode)

“Bad Day on the Moon”
Animated series episode
	; "Pretty breathtaking, huh?"
Episode #	04
Original airdate	October 18, 1997
The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police
"Max's Big Day"	"They Came From Down There"

Bad Day on the Moon is the 4th episode in the series The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police.

Synopsis

Sam and Max are called to the moon to sort out a problem between the two dominant species.

In-Depth Synopsis

The episode starts with Sam and Max idling at the office until the phone suddenly rings. After their usual roughhouse struggle to answer the phone first, Sam relays their call to action from the Commissioner to Max. He describes the case vaguely with "There's bad, bad trouble at the Moon, Max!" They pack their bags and prepare for take off in their Desoto.

Smashing the "Big Red Launch Button", they explode to the Moon where they take in the sights with their "penny conscious Moon gear", which consists of a paper bag over the head. When Max finds out that he may suffocate because he failed to bring a spare, he takes his chances by ripping his helmet off. After realizing that they can breathe perfectly well without them, he rips off Sam's as well.

As they travel down a highway to Moontown by foot, they run into a moon buggy with a Gorilla in the passenger seat and "Donkey Man" in the driver's. Sam and Max hitches a ride with the two suspicious characters, who have mistaken them for someone else. After Sam's insightful deduction that zebras do not have hands and so cannot drive moon buggies, he advises Max to stay cool until they find out more about the unusual individuals.

It becomes clear when they stop at a convenience store and the two passengers pull out moon guns and start making demands to the shopkeeper. Finding that the situation is in need of their Freelance Policing, Sam and Max quickly take down the hoodlums off-screen. The shopkeeper, still with his arms in the air and in shock, is grateful for the strangers' intervention and insists that they meet the Mayor.

So the shopkeeper shows them the way, while Max repeatedly reminds him that he can put his hands down now all the way there, and leaves them at the doors of a temple-like building. Inside, they meet the large disembodied head of the Mayor. He thinks that Sam and Max will be able to "resolve a certain pest problem" on the dark side of the moon. They take the case and make their way there by taking the back door.

The dark side of the moon looks like a gigantic dark kitchen where giant Moon Roaches go about their business. Sam and Max wander into a roach "earth parallel development" of a coffee shop. As they look around, they are suddenly horrified when a roach scoops up a spoonful of abducted rats and dumps them into its' coffee. Sam comments that he is having a hard time watching this, and Max, misunderstanding, turns on the lights. The roach spots them and they dash a retreat back to Moontown. As Sam is sighing with relief that he managed to barely escape before the roach turned on an electric fence, he realizes that Max was too slow and is now nothing more than a gooey scalp with ears. Sam pulls out his spare paper bag from his inside coat pocket and puts Max's remains inside.

Sam is then seen at a bus stop bench, upset about his little pal and wondering what to do now. Then he hears Max's voice calling him. He looks around but doesn't see him until Max explains that he is inside Sam somehow. Uncomfortable with just talking to his hand, Sam places the scalp and draws eyes and a mouth on his hand to make it look more like Max.

In a stroke of luck, the Mayor drives up in his limo and Sam asks for help for Max. The Mayor directs them to his Minister of Science. The Minister hooks them up to a machine, with Max into a fishbowl and Sam with a helmet. As the rat makes all the preparations of regeneration, Sam starts up an conversation with Max about an idea that dawned on him while he was "hauling [Max's] remains around in that oily paper bag". Before he could go into detail, the machine boots on and the process of making Max a new body begins.

Later on, Sam and Max make it back to Earth. The Moon Roaches and Earth have made an agreement that the Roaches are able to eat as much garbage the Earth has, presumably in exchange for leaving the Moon Rats alone. Sam watches the parade from the top of their apartment's rooftop as Max, uninterested in the celebration on The Street, chases around a pigeon in his brand-new body.

It seems like a happy ending until Sam and Max go back to their office. Waiting in the darkness, an "itty-bitty earth roach" lies in wait to shoot them when they walk through the door. Sam tries to talk to the roach, but it is too discontent with the unfairness that foreigners get benefits first before the citizens. Max, clearly not listening or caring about the Roach's spiel, steps on it. Sam is a bit disappointed with Max's solution to their problem, but drops the subject when he notices Max isn't paying attention to him either. Sam unwinds at his desk by pulling out his banjo and singing about their adventure on the Moon. This greatly displeases Max and he launches the banjo out the window by his teeth. Sam ends the episode commenting on Max's violent display with "You crack me up, little buddy."

Characters

Max

Sam

The Commissioner

The Rat Mayor

The Rat Shopkeeper

The "Henderson kid"

The "Henderson kid"'s partner in crime

The "Itty-bitty Earth Roach"

Mistakes

When Sam and Max enter the roach coffee shop, the waitress is pouring coffee into a cup, but it actually goes behind the cup instead of inside it. This is most likely because the pouring coffee and the cup are on two different cells.
In the scene where the "Itty-bitty Earth Roach" is aiming a Thompson sub machine gun as Sam is opening the door, the door's painted signage is missing "EL" in FREELANCE.

Notes

This episode is a fairly faithful adaptation of the original Sam & Max comic of the same name.
The intro short does not relate to the episode, though also occurred at the start of the comic version of Bad Day on the Moon.
The way they get the Desoto to the Moon is different from the comics, probably to keep children from sticking hundreds of matches down a car's tail pipe.
Although the Henderson kid's demand for "Elvis-shaped decanters" as they hold up the convenience store was kept, the mention of whiskey was removed. However, there is a partially covered poster in the background that says "More Beer" while Sam is talking to the Shopkeeper.
Max's line after yelling at the Shopkeeper to put his hands down was changed.
Sam and Max's conversation is cut short when Max is being regenerated, possibly to avoid making Sam seem obsessed with how great a soup stock Max would make, and language issues.

References

Sam's line "One of those, points of light, you see, in the sky, at night" is a clear reference to the way William Shatner played Captain Kirk on Star Trek. The background music is also reminiscent of Star Trek.
The poster in the Roach's world, "Big Roach is Watching", is a play on "Big Brother is Watching" from the book 1984.