The Tiera Chulla Hotel. AKA, The Tarantula: a resident hotel off the side of a dusty desert road. Living here is Echo Johnson, an oddball freelance tattoo artist, and general mellow kind of guy. Echo has a plethora of stories about the other off-kilter residents of the hotel. Like struggling sci-fi writer Lucas, Fat Best Friend Booty and tough-as-nails single mom, Bess. Echo shares these stories with various passersby, tattoo recipients, or anyone willing to listen. Whether these stories have a point is up to the listener, but for Echo, it's just another day at the Tarantula.
Cancelled after just one season, the entire series is available on TBS.Com
The show provides examples of the following tropes:
- All Bikers are Hells Angels: The Shitmen are an over the top parody of outlaw motorcycle gangs.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Echo is a bit of an odd guy. But his sick tattooing skills are without debate.
- Comfort Food: For Echo, it's the cheap macaroni salad from a local Greasy Spoon. As he explains to Booty, he was in an alcoholic pit of nihilism after his divorce. And the salad always made his day just a tiny bit better. After his Bungled Suicide, it seems to be Booty's now too.
- Cool Car: Starman, Lucas' vintage convertible. Getting a ride in it is considered quite a treat.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Echo has been through the rough stuff. Homelessness, divorce and losing his infant daughter to cystic fibrosis.
- Drowning My Sorrows: When Seesaw's actual owner takes him back in the season 1 finale, Echo goes on a complete bender.
- Giftedly Bad: From what little we see of his writing, it's fairly obvious Lucas is this.
- Grief-Induced Split: Echo reveals in the final episode that he lost his infant daughter to cystic fibrosis, causing him and his wife Jean to divorce.
- Love at First Sight: As revealed in "Macaroni Salad", this is what brought Booty to the Tarantula. Naturally, it goes poorly.
- Mushroom Samba: When Echo and Booty go looking for gigantic, trippy dream inducing mushrooms, they go on a heck of a trip when they touch it. And turns out the entire episode is a latent samba, with Echo telling this story to his dog while he draws on him with lipstick.
- Stylistic Suck: "Your TV Doesn't Love You", the opening theme. It's Echo singing in his trademark raspy voice about how your television doesn't love you due to it being a machine, but he does since he's a living, breathing human being.
- Team Mom: Bess frequently occupies this role, in her own abrasive, tough-talking way.
- Wretched Hive: Weird River. A shantytown in a nearby river culvert, populated by a plethora of homeless dregs and criminals.
