Recap / Dr. Crafty Season 2 Month 1: Season 2 Premiere Month

Dr. Crafty Recap Index
Season:
Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4
Month:
#1: Season 2 Premiere Month | #2: Fakémon Month | #3: Nintendo Month
#4: Beach Month | #5: Fighting Month | #6: Yu-Gi-Oh Month
Bonus Content:
Season 2 Patreon Episodes | Season 2 Promotional Videos

Airing Range: 3/29/18 - 4/19/18

The post-Season 1 vacation is over, and Crafty and Nurse begin setting things up for Season 2. This month consists of Original Character commissions, but it is also notable for introducing Pepper the Octo-Chef and Messibelle the Slime Maid, themselves Dr. Crafty OCs who were promoted to official characters on the show. They co-lead Crafty's Chara-Cafe and Top Ten Tub, respectively. These spin-offs supplement the main show and even fit into the monthly themes themselves.

Tropes Applicable to the Month as a whole:

• Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the only Premiere Month whose art isn't entirely related to Dr. Crafty. Most of this month's contents are commission-related, which technically makes this month Season 2's Commission Month. Only "New Season, New Friends" touches upon the show itself, and it's also notably the only main show episode for the month in which the entire Crafty Crew up to that point appears. All main show episodes in succeeding Premiere Months make sure to include the spin-off hosts in their activities.
• Spinoff: Most notable about the Season 2 Premiere Month is its introduction of the show's first spin-offs: Crafty's Chara-Cafe and Crafty's Top Ten Tub, hosted by Pepper and Messibelle, respectively. Both shows are not only officially part of Dr. Crafty's grand canon, but they tie into the main show's monthly themes in their own ways. The Chara-Cafe involves theme-appropriate Patreon-voted OC concepts for Pepper and Crafty to design, while the Top Ten Tub involves theme-appropriate Top Ten Lists for Messi and Crafty to discuss.

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Main Show E27: "New Season, New Friends"

Air Date: 3/29/18

Fresh from their vacation, Nurse and Crafty create new promotional renders for themselves and some new coworkers, who Crafty introduces here.

Tropes Found in This Episode:

• Call-Back: After acknowledging the show's lack of a Fourth Wall in "Too Ghoul for School," Crafty prepared a brand new one sometime before the second season started. Messi accidentally slobbers all over it when she peers out at the viewers.
• Color Motif: To justify Pepper's inclusion in the staff, Crafty reveals that he prefers a green color scheme since it keeps things consistent on the show.
• Parental Substitute: Sometime before this episode, Crafty inexplicably created Messibelle out of soap and cleaning products. He feels obligated to take care of her, both out of goodwill and because he suspects that she would turn on him if he didn't. Nurse, still sore about having to deal with more co-workers, objects to the idea... until Messi starts hitting on her.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Nurse believes that Crafty hired Pepper as her replacement, given the superficial similarities between them (both are fat and green, and Crafty regards them as his "best girls," with Nurse being first and Pepper a close second). However, Crafty makes it abundantly clear that Pepper is merely an addition to the crew, being the Chara-Cafe's co-host. What's more, Pepper's personality makes her even more far-removed from Nurse, who still isn't thrilled to have her around by the episode's end.
• This Is Gonna Suck: At the end, Crafty and Nurse end up buried under a ton of mail. Both of them solemnly recognize what they all are: commission requests.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: An intermission screen appears when Crafty is first carried away by a stampede of Ugandan Knuckles. Appropriately enough, the screen is accompanied by Green Hill Zone's theme.

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Chara-Cafe E1: "Salt and Pepper"

Air Date: 3/29/18

Pepper, feeling more than awkward being shoved into the spotlight, introduces the Chara-Café's basic concept alongside Crafty, starting with a humanoid Saturn.

Tropes Found in This Episode:

• Accidental Misnaming: Crafty and Pepper accidentally call their first Chara-Cafe creation Jupiter, when the rings on the character's design were supposed to evoke the planet Saturn.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Crafty gives Pepper a big welcome with a spotlit introduction. After the lights return to normal, Pepper is grimacing for a split-second—she's not used to receiving so much attention.

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Top Ten Tub E1: "Original Characters"

Air Date: 3/29/18

Messibelle and Crafty kick off the Top Ten Tub with a list of their favorite original character designs, and Messi can barely contain her excitement over some of them.

This episode's list contains the following:

• 10. Amber, by SuperSonicGX
• 9. MAC: Project Knight Tank, by Thearashi
• 8. Watermystic
• 7. Bokcutter
• 6. Emma, the Flareon gijinka, by Chronellian
• 5. Houndoom gijinka, by DarkSilvania
• 4. Heartzmd
• 3. Cascade Hellsing
• 2. Blue Paint Sea
• 1. ZoeStanleyArts

Tropes Found in This Episode:

• Early-Installment Weirdness: Because the tradition of introducing fan characters for the show during Premiere Months wouldn't start until Season 3's "Crafty Fan Characters," this list contains a general selection of original characters. This is a consequence of the Season 2 Premiere Month also functioning as Season 2's Commission Month. All subsequent original character countdowns after this one take place in dedicated Commission Months.
• The Tease: Messi enthusiastically greets the audience who came to watch her spin-off's first episode, and she quickly presses up against the camera to flirt with a woman offscreen.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: After Messibelle loses control and starts going sex-crazy over the #1 entry, an intermission screen from The Simpsons appears as Crafty gets Messi under control.

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Main Show E28: "Pros and Comms"

Air Date: 4/6/18

Crafty starts wading through the mountain of commissions he received in the last episode. The handful he chose for this episode all deal with character interactions between commissioners' OCs and the Crafty Crew.

Tropes Found in This Episode:

• Bail Equals Freedom: Nurse gets arrested after starting a Cute Monster Girl revolt, so Crafty has to use his commission money to pay for her bail.
• Negative Continuity: The episode contains the first pieces in which Dr. Crafty characters interact with others outside of the cast. Crafty explains that such commissions are deemed non-canon, with the Crafty Crewmates depicted being "stunt doubles" of sorts. This allows the show's canon to remain unaffected, aside from a few jokes about the depicted interactions.
• Robot Maid: Maidbot makes her understated debut here in a commission. The very sight of Maidbot being drawn onscreen leads Messibelle to mistakenly believe she was being replaced.
• Rule of Three: Nurse tries to revive Crafty after he faints. The first two tries don't work, but he gets up on the third try when Nurse tells him someone pledged a large amount of money to his Patreon.
• invoked Stunt Double: Crafty explains that depictions of the show's characters in commissions are body doubles that just happen to share their likenesses and names, referred to as "non-canon clones".

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Main Show E29: "A Well-Slimed Machine"

Air Date: 4/12/18

Crafty continues completing the commissions on his backlog, this time with a focus on OCs independent from the Crafty Crew. He and Nurse discuss the characters' design histories and the design philosophies put into practice within them. Cascade-Hellsing and TheArashi.

Tropes Found in This Episode:

• Absurd Phobia: Ever since Messibelle became part of the Crew, Crafty's fear of slimes became rather complicated. He discusses this moral conundrum openly with Nurse in two conversations.
  • In the first conversation, Crafty justifies both his fear of slime creatures and his reasons for keeping Messi around. In doing so, Blobby hears the Crewmates indirectly talk about him and drops by to intimidate them.
    Nurse: Well, in any case, I’d say you almost seem to be getting over your fear of slime creatures. I mean, you keep Messi around, don’t you?
    Crafty: Well... Messibelle is different. I couldn’t possibly throw her outside—or very bad things would happen.
    [There’s a cut to some footage showing the phone booth death scene from The Blob (1988). The footage returns to Crafty and Nurse.]
    Nurse: I’d imagine that sexy outfit you dressed her up in helps, too.
    Crafty: It helps that she doesn’t look like... him.
    [Blobby himself appears, snarls at the duo, then promptly vanishes. Crafty and Nurse look mortified.]
    Nurse: O-OKAY! Maybe we need to take a break and talk about something else?!
    Crafty: YES. PLEEAASE!
  • After they first talk about Blobby, Nurse reappears wearing giant googly eyes to evoke Blobby and prank Crafty, who screams in response. They then discuss the possibility of him conquering his fear, and he admits to making some progress.
    [Crafty arrives onscreen alone. Confused, he looks around expectantly for Nurse, who suddenly comes up behind him with Blobby-like googly eyes.]
    Crafty: WAHHHHH!!!! You can't just do that!!
    [Nurse removes the googly eyes.]
    Nurse: *Chuckles*... Okay, sorry. That was really mean. It's just Mr. Blobby! You have to get over your fear sooner or later!
    Crafty: You say 'Mr. Blobby,' I say complete and utter googly-eyed a-blob-ination! ... But, in all honesty, I dare say recent circumstances have convinced me that slime girls aren't so bad after all!
    Nurse: What's up with that, anyway? You like drawing slime, but you're afraid of slime?
    Crafty: Well... Let me put it this way: Seeing a lion in a zoo is fun. Being inside the enclosure and having the same lion tear into your soft belly with its livid, yellow fangs and pulling your intestines free while you scream bloody murder and scramble on the shattered limbs to escape, slipping on the fetid, greasy, brown contents of your stomach and bowels that have been spilled like the exploded can of soup all over the floor... Is not fun.
    [Nurse barely holds back the urge to vomit]
    Nurse: ... O-okay... I think I need help after that.
    Crafty: That makes two of us.
    Nurse: *Chuckles*... Good thing I have a PhD in psychology.
• Interrupting Meme: Crafty introduces himself as "Interrupting Crafty" and subsequently interrupts Nurse's introduction. Needless to say, after already having been cut off a few times prior to this episode, she doesn't take it well.
• Lame Pun Reaction: This episode features a joke so bad that the zombie writer who put it in was actively punished for it. After a disclaimer appears explaining as much, Junkrat chases the offender across the screen.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: After being punished for writing a bad joke, the writer responsible gets his revenge on Crafty by tricking him into saying something embarrassing. After saying the entire line out loud, Crafty demands to know who wrote that line of dialogue. Impressively, the writer manages to sneak in the line even as he's still being chased by Junkrat.

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Main Show E30: "Monty Python and the Holy Grail War"

Air Date: 4/19/18

Nurse and Crafty tackle a Fate: Grand Order commission during a Monty Python-like adventure, complete with encounters with a funny-sounding Ruler and other FGO characters. The commissioner of this episode is Beigepaladin.

Tropes Found in This Episode:

• Giant Foot of Stomping: A Monty Python foot crushes the video when the art segment begins, resulting in some of the footage being lost.
• Holy Grail: It wouldn't be a Monty Python and the Holy Grail parody if there wasn't a grail to find. To Nurse's dismay, the "grail" turns out to be just a plastic drinking cup from a long-ended party.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Crafty thought the Indiana Jones movie with the Holy Grail as the MacGuffin was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but as Nurse points out, the grail was actually from The Last Crusade.
• Vocal Dissonance: The depiction of Jeanne d'Arc parodies the French soldiers from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so hearing her speak in a John Cleese-esque voice is both appropriate and somewhat jarring.

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