| Dream Machine | |
|---|---|
| Season 1, Episode 8 | |
| Air date | November 23, 2008 |
| Written by | Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, others (see Production Credits) |
| Directed by | Christy Karacas |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous Mr. Grumpy-Pants |
Next Time-Police Part 1 |
Dream Machine is the eighth episode of the first season of Superjail!, and aired on November 23, 2008. Although intended and aired as the eighth in the series, it was actually the third episode to be produced.
Storyline[]
Pre-Credits Sequence[]
Jacknife enters a strip club called "Dreamland". He eyes one of the women on stage, grabs a beer, and sits at a table in front of her. He attempts to reach for her butt and take the money out of her thong, but her stripper pole suddenly starts to shake. It morphs into Jailbot, who throws the strippers aside and grabs ahold of Jacknife. Jailbot pantses Jacknife, then throws him against the stripper poles. Jailbot grabs a pile of debris (including money and busted wood) and shoves it into Jacknife's rectum, then drags him off.
Main Story[]
The Warden and Alice sit at a table in a ballroom, ready to eat dinner. Jared brings over the wine and Alice tastes it, with focus shown on her mucus-filled nose. Jailbot slams their dinner on the table, which is revealed to be an alarm.
The Warden bolts up in bed, and finds the other staff members surrounding him. Jared informs him that the inmates are attacking. The alarm opens up to show a surveillance camera, and Warden gets a glimpse of a group of inmates rushing with knives. The Warden is frustrated that the inmates had to interrupt his fantasy, but the inmates immediately burst into his room and start smashing Jailbot. Two other inmates slit Jared's throat. Alice tries to hold the inmates off with a chair, but is grabbed and stabbed multiple times. The inmates then grab the Warden and set upon him, leaving his head impaled on a stick.
The Warden wakes up again in fright, and realizes that the previous scenario was only another dream. He rouses the other staff members from their sleep and gives them the order to report to the conference room. The Warden slides into the room from a pole in the ceiling, and speaks of his nightmare, first mentioning the dinner fantasy and then the inmates' riot. Alice is unamused that the Warden woke them up because of a bad dream, while the Warden insists it had to be a premonition. He believes that he'll be able to figure out their plan by monitoring their dreams. Jared wonders how he would be able to, but the Warden reveals his "Dream Machine", a giant three-tier organ with a TV screen and many pipes. The pipes shoot through the tunnels, as the Warden explains that the Dream Machine will show him the dreams of every inmate, so he can "destroy" the ones planning for his death. The Warden turns on the machine and starts to play, siphoning the dreams of various inmates. He then finds himself in the dream world, and floats through a part with his umbrella. A bunch of inmates fall past him, and he realizes that he's entered a "falling dream".
The next dream world is abstract painting filled with stairs. The Warden walks up a flight of the stairs and enters a room. He finds a woman with snakes for eyes, a bunch of ants circling a fried egg, and an inmate trying to put a lightbulb into the ceiling (with the ceiling having a face and a tongue). The Warden gets annoyed and slams the door. In the next dream room, an inmate sits with his family at a Thanksgiving dinner, but starts to attack his mother with a carving knife. A syringe bursts through the wall and takes the Warden into a dream world where inmates race atop the drugs of their choice, and where images of drugs, sex, and weapons float by. The Warden wonders who could be planning the riot, then sees Jared drifting by him on a cloud. He snaps back to reality, and sees Jared fast asleep in his chair. Jared is slapped awake, and the Warden screams for the staff to get out. The Twins run through the hallway, chasing after a pair of hoops, and wonder how someone could sleep when they're having so much fun.
Back at the Dream Machine, the Warden then wonders if it's a staff member planning to betray him. He then hooks the pipes up to their heads, and starts to tap into their dreams. He finds himself in Jared's fantasy first, and peers in to witness a tall, more confident-sounding Jared at a desk. A short, big-headed version of the Warden enters the office and is scolded by Jared, who then starts to make out with him. The actual Warden slams the door in disgust, and leaps into a toilet, which takes him to a live-action sequence of a lake. He spots a CGI version of himself as a father, seated in a fishing boat with his son, who has green display lights for a face like Jailbot. Warden realizes it can't be Jailbot, since he isn't programmed for revenge. He's suddenly yanked out of that dream world by a man in S&M gear, and thrust into a pile of naked men. Alice sits at the top of the pile, scantily-clad and wearing jewels and a metal chain bra. She grabs a Warden-like fly out of the air and throws it to the bottom of the pile. The sequence then shifts to a baby Warden hatching out of a fly egg, and two flies eating his body. He then realizes that the staff must be dreaming about him. Back in reality, the Warden comes to the conclusion that they're dreaming about him to throw him off. He plays the machine, his paranoia increasing further with the belief that everyone's against him.
Jared calls Alice's name, and she snaps to attention. She believes that the Warden has been searching her dreams, to which Jared agrees. He points out the sluggishness of all the prisoners. An inmate unknowingly saws off his own fingers, while two others are afraid to sleep due to the Warden invading their dreams. In a nearby playground, both of the Twins hang by their legs from a jungle gym. They decide that they'll give the Warden "a taste of his own medicine" and teleport to his desk, one sitting in the chair while the other sits on the edge. They turn on the sleeping gas button, sending gas throughout the prison. The paranoid Warden sits at the Dream Machine, now having grown a beard and his hair looking disheveled. The sleeping gas forms into the shape of a monster and taps him on the shoulder, but the Warden believes it's Jared and tells it to go away. The monster then punches him, and is sucked into his nostrils. The Warden finds himself back in the ballroom from his first dream, and panics, wondering who's now playing the organ. The Twins sit at the Dream Machine, grinning and slamming on the keys. Jailbot delivers Alice and Warden their dinner, which turns out to be Warden's head with an apple in his mouth. The head spits out the apple and snarls, turning into a lion, an alligator, and a wolf, then back to the Warden. The Warden asks what is going on, but finds his crotch morphing into Jared's face. Jared tells the Warden that his paranoia has made him go mad with dream power, and is killing them all.
The dream Alice's body then rots, as she groans that she needs beauty sleep. The ballroom then dissolves to reveal that the Warden is surrounded by all of the inmates, now in his dream world. Alice and Jared stand with them, Jared stating that he gave them no choice. The Warden knocks over his table and dream Alice in a rage, and grows to an enormous size. He starts throwing fireballs at inmates and burning them up. Jared wonders what they'll do, but the voices of the Twins remind the crowd that anything is possible in their dreams. One inmate morphs into a Rambo-like figure, while another turns his body into a tank and another turns their hands into mallets. Gary turns into a warrior, with his bird becoming big enough to carry him. Jacknife conjures a beautiful woman and runs off with her. The transformed inmates march toward the Warden, who doubts the dream army can defeat him. He unleashes a swarm of giant bats that bear his face, which carry off and devour a few inmates, though other inmates manage to kill the bats. The Warden then sends miniature copies of himself and other creatures, including demonic heads and Warden-cats. A cat lunges at Jared, but he morphs his moustache into a pair of arms and swings it, before tossing it away.
One of the inmates grows to fight off the giant Warden, but is incinerated by his fire-breath. The demonic Warden heads surround Alice, who makes her boobs grow super-large and long to pummel them with. Jean rides a motorcycle version of Paul towards the Warden, and fires bullets from his eyes at him. The Warden brings his foot down on the two, crushing them to a splatter. The other inmates panic as the Warden stomps on the ground and causes it to split. A bunch are sent falling and get impaled on spikes. However, they manage to will a spiked monster into existence (with their bodies still impaled on it) to rise up and fight the Warden. The monster fires spikes at the Warden, one breaking a lens of his glasses and penetrating his eye as it travels into a rainbow void.
The Twins play the Dream Machine even faster, causing reality to rupture around them and the Warden's demonic creatures to be unleashed. The dream pipes disconnects from an inmate, leaving him as a shriveled husk. Other inmates run in fear throughout the hall as they're killed by the demons, while Alice chases after a pair to hit them with her breasts. Jared winds up chased by a giant knife. The Warden, having his mind drained by the machine, winds up vomiting profusely around himself. More demons are unleashed from the machine before it explodes, sending the Twins flying backwards and causing everything to fade to white.
In a live action sequence, a bald, bearded man in a purple suit and strange glasses wakes up on a sidewalk. He brushes the dirt off of himself and walks away. In the background, a poster of the Warden can be seen, with the phrase: WE'RE WATCHING YOU.
Character Appearances[]
Production Credits[]
- Created by: Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, Ben Gruber
- Director: Christy Karacas
- Writers: Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, Aaron Augenblick, Chris Burns, M. Wartella
- Animation Production: Augenblick Studios
- Animation Direction: Aaron Augenblick
- Animation: Chris Burns, Chris Conforti, Chester Knebel, Kristofer Wollinger
- Animation Assistance: Lizzi Akana, Edmond Hawkins III, Gene Lee, Henry Thurlow
- Character Layout: Fran Krause, Hal Lee, Tom Marsan, Neil Swaab, Aaron Augenblick
- Background Layout: Elliot Byrne, George Fort, Jeremy Jusay, Will Krause
- Storyboards: Jesse Schmaal, Christy Karacas
- Editing (FX): Stephen Warbrick
- Additional Editing: John Philpot
- Music: Bradford Reed
- ound Design: Britt Meyers, Ian Stynes (Great City Productions)
- Sound Effects Editor: Abigail Savage
- Audio Mix: Britt Meyers
- Interns: Jake Armstrong, Luis Cerritos, Fernando Chan, George Conkin, Elyssa DiGiovanni, Maya Edelmann, Jennifer Lee, Kat Morris, Dan Mountain, Iona Alexandra Nistor, Michael Ricca, Kamron Robinson, Aleth Romanillos, David Sheahan, Felicia Spano, James Sugrue, Harold Teitelman, Paul Villeco
- Production Coordinator: Vanessa Riegel
- Producer: Ollie Green
- Executive Producers: Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, Ben Gruber, Aaron Augenblick
- Story Consultants: Dave Hughes, Nick Weidenfeld
- Creative Consultant: John Lee, Jon Glaser
- Special Thanks: Chuck Collins, Tim Harrington, Peter Karacas, Jackie Linge, Ian Stynes
- Live Action Cinematography: Andy Reuland
- Executive Producers for Williams Street: Keith Crofford, Nick Weidenfeld
- Opening Theme: "Comin' Home", written and performed by Cheeseburger, recorded by Rob Laakso and Max Sternberg (courtesy of Kemando Records)
Voice Cast[]
- The Warden: David Wain
- Alice, Jacknife: Christy Karacas (uncredited)
- Jared: Teddy Cohn
- The Twins: Richard Mather
- Various inmates: Chris McCulloch
Trivia[]
- The first episode to feature live-action sequences. The live-action version of the Warden was played by Tim Harrington, the lead singer of Les Savy Fav, an indie rock band based in New York City. He would reprise the Warden role in Cheeseburger's music video for Comin' Home.
- In the playground sequence with the Twins, both were mistakenly voiced the same (Mather using the Twin 1 pitch for both).
- The Warden's Dream Machine and his helmet were inspired by the '50s Dr. Seuss film, "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T".
- As this episode was produced third, Jon Glaser was still around to help pen the script.