[8.2/10] I just love the boldness of this one. It takes chutzpah to do a clip show in just your second episode, and the risk pays off in spades. This presages *Community*’s “”Paradigms of Human Memory” in style, with loony gags, cultural references and mash-ups, and a dada-ist bent that serves *Clerks* well. The fact that star *Batman: The Animated Series* scribe Paul Dini was a part of this one is an added bonus. Despite all that praise, it’s worth noting that for all its creativity, the episode features: casual slut-shaming, casual racism, casual xenophobia, and casual use of the f-slur, which can take you out of the fun. I wouldn’t push back at anyone who got to some of those gags and tapped out. You don’t feel any hate behind the humor. Bits like Randal becoming a wife to a Japanese businessman is played for absurdity, and an Indian customer wondering why clerks don’t speak Hindu turns the typical prejudice on its head in a clever way. But they still play on bad cultural stereotypes (see also, the consistent “Asian design major” comments in the *Clerks* movie). And after the seeming epiphanies of *Chasing Amy*, and hell, even *Clerks* itself, watching Kevin Smith and company go back to shallow “haha, she’s a ho” gags is a bit disappointing. Still, if you're able to compartmentalize that, the rest of the episode is an absolute hoot. The gag a minute shtick works well with Smith’s brand of humor, turned up to eleven in a cartoon setting. The episode finds just about every angle on this, and each one is a delight. The ridiculousness of Dante and Randal managing to get themselves locked in places over and over again tickled my funny bone. The self-aware flashbacks to the series first episode, because, you know, it’s all there’s been, is amusing at a conceptual level. And I just love the *Rashomon*-style ludicrousness of Randal’s recollections framing him as a genteel intellectual with Dante as a braying moron. Apart from the bits that are specific to Dante and Randal, this also works as a proto-*BoJack* style bit of formal audacity mixed with a wide-ranging sitcom spoof. The flashbacks to things that never happen parodies the way sitcoms would go to more and more outlandish extremes as they ran out of stories, or would feature literal “jump the shark” moments, or would feature cheesy celebrity cameos. *Clerks*’ fractured rendition of these things lets the creative team have their cake and eat it too. And apart from the spoofing of specific sitcom tropes, the clip show device allows *Clerks* to go off on its own loony flights of fancy, with uproarious pop culture mash-ups (good lord, *Flintstone’s List* is a dark but hilarious joke), and outrageous situations. Overall, this is an early victory for *Clerks*. It has some unfortunate artifacts of its time, but if you can set those aside, what’s left is pure, imaginative, pop culture-skewering, dadaist gold.