The main page for Time Squad notes that the ending line of "Ex Marks the Spot"—the famous "Tonight, you're sleeping on the sofa!"—seems incongruous because "no prior episode [save for "Old Timers' Squad"] established that Buck and Larry shared a bed." I wrote on the discussion page that Larry must have intended to share a bed with Tuddrussel that night, but eventually decided against it since he was angry at him for (unintentionally) toying with his emotions. But then I remembered the episode's beginning, in which Larry was unusually happy and even smiling constantly while he did chores for Tuddrussel's benefit. Otto's suspicious inquiries implied that Larry had been acting in this fashion for a while, and the reply, "Oh, you'll understand when you're older," indicated that Larry was attempting to hide something from Otto. Now, Otto bore witness to Lewis and Clark's domestic troubles; he was already well aware that gay couples existed. He wouldn't need to be "shielded" from something as innocuous as a same-sex relationship, especially since he'd already seen one. Larry must have been concealing something more than love. And after that, I remembered "Larry Upgrade", in which Tuddrussel complained about Larry not following his exact orders. So I realized that Larry had started obeying the mandates of his original programming, as opposed to being defiant and sarcastic, because he wanted to get something out of it. Larry was giving Tuddrussel what he wanted, so Tuddrussel was giving Larry what he wanted. Hence, the line at the episode's end. —Dioschorium
Probably a typical Did You Just Have Sex? reaction I can agree with. It can be both actually. Maybe Larry wanted something from Tuddrussel, but also that isn't the first time that Larry tries to please Tuddrussel. He already did such as "Larry Upgrade" or "Forget the Alamo". I think there were genuine feelings there.
Ah but you are forgetting that Otto is a huge history whiz and already knew a ton about Lewis and Clark. He should already known that Lewis and Clark were accompanied by a Native American woman named Sacajawea during the expedition but in the Lewis and Clark episode, Sacajawea is never seen or mentioned at all. Also, Otto should know that after the expedition, Clark married a woman named Julia Hancock and had 5 kids with her in real life. Otto should know that Clark is straight, meaning that he shouldn’t know that gay couples existed which justifies his puzzled look towards Larry in ex marks the spot.
The episode involving Sigmund Freud did seem a little out of character for him to go around hypnotising people until you realise that Freud did study and practice hypnotism early in his career.
Considering this is a show that is literally made for the purpose of historical inaccuracy, it doesn't really matter.
Speaking of historical almost-accuracies, Al Capone. The episode that had him and his gang work as clowns entertaining children seems ridiculous, up until you remember that the real life Capone had a soft spot for children.
What exactly does Tuddrussell get out of his relationship with Larry, when it seems like he spends the majority of his time being irritated at him and ordering him around? In multiple episodes, Tuddrussell is shown to have a borderline orgasmic reaction to guns and gun-like gadgets (which was passed to Larry when he handled one of Tuddrussell's guns in "Hate and Let Hate"), even ogling pictures of them as if they were Playboy centerfolds (cf. "Kubla Khan't"). His relationship with Larry makes so much sense once you realize that he's basically shown to have a machine fetish. Larry, of course, having an equally apparent preference for humans, it's only natural (er...) that they'd find each other desirable.
That would explain why Tuddrussell always tells Larry to "act like a robot." It's not because Tuddrussell is embarrassed over Larry not acting manly (though it can be taken as such); it's to indulge in a hidden fetish. However, it doesn't really explain why he was horrified and disgusted to the point of vomiting in "Day of the Larrys" when he encountered all the Larry clones (including the shirtless cowboy clone who rather blatantly flirted with him).
In "Blackbeard, Warm Heart", Larry complains about Tuddrussell polluting outer space. Yet, in the pilot episode, one of the aspects that made it so important to avoid timeline changes was that there was no more pollution. A continuity error? Not necessarily. When you consider how much Tuddrussell takes important stuff from the past like David's slingshot, George Washington's fake teeth, Davy Crockett's hat, Isaac Newton's apple, Otto, Ivan the Terrible, etc., it's possible that he has already changed the future without knowing it.
By the year 100 million AD, the world is united under one government. Makes a lot of sense when you consider, by that point in the future, Earth's landmasses will be much closer together.
The admittedly rather ridiculous level of Artistic License – History that this show displays actually makes sense upon reflection. In the Cold Open for "Napoleon The Conquered", Larry explains that in this show's universe time itself is like rope, unravelling after an unspecified number of centuries, causing historical events to play out differently than in, for lack of a better wording, "the original history". This means that the Time Squads are effectively Clock Roaches charged with "Enforcing the past to protect the future" from a massive pile-up of time paradoces and Time Crashes.
While the show glosses over the unpleasant parts of history by necessity, going into exactly WHY Ivan The Terrible was called that or the brutal realities of pirate life wouldnt make for a very funny show, some episodes have a VERY disturbing aspect - The trio are basically tasked with sending many of the people they're sent to correct to their deaths. They HAVE to get the defenders of the Alamo butchered by the Mexican army and make sure Amelia Earhart dies at sea, because thats what history says happened. Seriously, Otto, an 8 year old boy, has to make sure the people he befriends get horribly killed. Or make sure they kill someone else, like with Sitting Bull. Also, as thisConcession demonstrates, not all crucial things people have to do are pleasant...
You also wonder if Time Squad ever had to correct other known mass-murdering tyrants like Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan.
Considering they had to correct the likes of Blackbeard and Kubla Khan? Actually yes they have. They had to Ensure Napoleon Bonaparte decimated all those places he did in history to Get around his nagging wife. So it is VERY LIKELY Otto, an 8 year old, has blood on his hands…
"Hate and Let Hate" from season two has a pretty heavy one: Just how long did Larry and Tuddrussel not notice that Otto — an eight-year-old boy whom the two have treated like a son — was left on the island? It could be safely assumed that maybe Otto was left for a few hours (minutes in the viewer's eyes) — until Tuddrussel (who trapped himself on Larry's side of the satellite) moaned that he hadn't a decent meal in days. What's worse is that Larry, possibly the only other character on the satellite who's an Only Sane Man (when he's not being a Camp GayDeadpan Snarker) and possesses some semblance of common sense, didn't notice that Otto was missing, not even when he accidentally shot at the picture of Tuddrussel, himself, and Otto in Tuddrussel's phaser room.
The Tuddrussel, Otto, and Larry interactions are a good bit more disturbing if you consider that they are very much like a family unit, with Larry and Tuddrussel as the parents who hate each other and are so close to divorcing and Otto as the child who keeps them together. Throughout the series we see that the two allow him to go into outer space unsupervised to play while they fight, bicker over their methods of raising him, and take him into dangerous situations. That "Hate and Let Hate" episode could easily be seen as a kid being severely neglected because the parents are too wrapped up in a fight.
The fact that the nun who ran Otto's previous home at the orphanage literally used her wards for cheap child labor, like working in a coal mine and cleaning windows on the Empire State Building?! (with one of the kids falling to his doom as seen in "Orphan Substitute") This took place in the United States in the 21st century where somebody at one point should have called the authorities or at least denied her to use her kids that way. She even had a whip ready to eagerly use on them in one episode and threatened to starve them all if one of them dropped a piece of government cheese as they carried it back to the bus. This was while in Washington D.C. mind you, where security is everywhere and is sure as heck likely to have seen her, but probably didn't even bother with her.
Speaking of the orphanage, on "Orphan Substitute," Otto's scrapbook of his life at the orphanage has a picture of said orphanage with the words, "My first home" and an arrow pointing to the photo (keep in mind that Otto is eight years old, even though "Love at First Flight" began with Otto celebrating his ninth birthday). Has Otto been at that orphanage all his life, and if so, what kind of abuse did Sister Thornley put him through? And what happened to Otto's parents? Did they really die and leave him an orphan, or did they abandon him or give him up for adoption when Otto was too young to remember what his parents look like (notice how he never talks about them)?
I think the pictures in Otto's scrap book speaks for itself on what Sister Thornley put him though, take a look at this picture from Orphan Substitute,[1] you see that Otto has some marks on his back. Let's try to imagine where those came from, shall we? With Sister Thornley in the background with what appears to be a whip it's probably not hard to figure it out. This part from the episode goes by so quickly that you don't catch it right away. Now a few cartoons that have been made in the past have portrayed this type of sadistic punishment, ( the Dexter's Laboratory tv movie Ego Trip comes to mind.) But the thing is, that example does not leave one to their imagination. In Otto's case, it's a jarringly subtle nod to how messed up his life really was. So putting these images together along with the above mentioned moment where she uses a whip to threaten the kids, notice at the end of that same episode while trying to find Otto, she was carrying a ruler. Now, if Tuddrussel and Larry didn't show up right then before she got to him, would she have used that on him?
It's not a question of would she, but rather how hard would she have used it on him.
So thinking about how in Time Squad people get taken out of their own time periods, Tuddrussel and Larry have a problem with taking people out of their times for different reasons; Otto because they needed him (and Otto couldn't handle living in the orphanage), Dr. Freud was sent to 1776 to tell the Americans the British were coming because Paul Revere had a crippling fear of horses, Tuddrussell sneaked Ivan the Terrible back on the satellite as a pet, and "Repeat Offender" revealed that Tuddrussell installed a prison for historical figures who don't want to pursue their destinies (like Gandhi and Blackbeard). But how much can time handle? On "Napoleon The Conquered," Larry explained how the unraveling of time affects everything ("Let’s say that because of this instability in the past, the dodo bird never becomes extinct, and because of this, a young Henry Ford is attacked by one of these filthy creatures. He is so traumatized by the experience that he never invents the auto assembly line, or the Model T. Without this primitive automobile as a jumping-off point, we in the future are suddenly without our fancy solar-powered hover cars.") Ok in that logic, what if someone was to be taken out of existence? Because in a way, that's what they're doing when they take people out of their time, like Otto. What if he was supposed to do something important when he grew up? Or what if he was supposed to have kids himself and along down the line someone does something important, but that destiny was interfered when he was taken in by the Time Squad unit. And just taking anybody could be potentially hazardous in that sense, just think, if you’re directly related to someone famous, you and your whole family line from that one point could have never happened to begin with.
That kind of draws on another puzzling thought when you think about it, like why they have to travel in time to make sure history stays accurate in the first place. Sure, if there weren't that, there wouldn't be a show, but it still makes one wonder if the very discovery of time travel and trying to fix what would be considered negative events caused a whiplash effect, and vast deviants from their actual selves. Time Squad might have been made to right the wrongs of the first time travelers.
According to the show, history is like a rope, and as it grows, it unravels gradually.
My guess is that time works in a kind of ripple effect in this universe, when a timeline change occurs it doesn't happen immediately, and will only become permanent if not corrected within a certain amount of time. Thus, a person can be removed from their place in history temporarily, like Freud for the Paul Revere stand-in, and the fact that Mahatma Gandhi and Blackbeard are locked up on the satellite for repeat offenses. It's also possible that people like Otto who remains in the future are meant to be there, because otherwise, the historical inaccuracy alarm would notice their absence.
The fact that Edgar Allan Poe being a cheerful and optimistic individual is considered to be wrong enough for the Time Squad to intervene just so he becomes depressed and miserable like he was in real life, literally changing his life for the worse opens up a whole can of worms for any possible error in history, like any infamous dictator renowned for their body count being a normal person or even a heroic champion of human rights, causing the Time Squad to "fix" history for the worse.
That's even brought up in the Alfred Nobel episode, albeit mostly glossed over with a joke; Otto has to tell Jack The Ripper, Lizzie Borden, Rasputin and Black Bart to remain evil after accidentally encouraging them to do a Heel–Face Turn with Nobel. While the latter four weren't actually as evil as pop culture makes them out to be, Jack the Ripper was! And it doesn't matter, because Time Squad have to keep everyone on their historical path, even mass murderers and genocidal dictators, because if they don't, all of time will be destroyed by paradoxes!
While is established in the show that even small deviations cause by the Time Squad can have huge repercussion such as swatting a fly, the fact that nothing ever happened after they took in Otto is telling on just how little his life would have mattered even if they hadn't taken him. Yes, even flies would have more of an impact on the timeline than he would ever be able to.
To loop it around to Fridge Horror, what if Otto, an intelligent boy who would undoubtedly grow up to at least be involved in something significant or at least had descendants who would, originally had something horrible happen to him? What if Otto didn't leave a mark on history even having descendants that the historical inaccuracy alarm would pick up because Otto was killed like some of the other orphans were being put to work by the sadistic Sister Thornley, driven insane from the abuse or otherwise had his potential crippled, or worst of all even killed himself after having enough of the years of abuse?
Concession demonstrates, not all crucial things people have to do are pleasant...
