"Kröd Mändoon: The Flaming Sword of Fire"
April 9, 10 p.m., Comedy Central

"Kröd Mändoon: The Flaming Sword of Fire" is being marketed as Comedy Central's "first foray into fantasy-comedy" (according to the network's Web site). It's very true about the first foray-ing. Fantasy-comedy is not as prevalent a sub-genre as one might expect, considering how hilarious fantasy fiction — with all its mythical creatures, archaic weaponry and earnest role-playing — actually is. Fantasy fiction hasn't really been abused, which is kind of weird. The entire genre leaves itself wide open, and these Kröd Mändoon people, with their "funny" umlauts, have plenty to work with.

But KM is fairly routine, by comedy-plot standards. (Also by fantasy-plot standards.) This is a Robin Hood-ish story that is completely caked in Mel Brooks-style comedy: It's sort of a cross between Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. The protagonist, Kröd, is a "freedom fighter" who's as vain as he is awkward; he's handsome and he wears brown leather and wrist warmers (or whatever those stupid things are) and looks like he only shaves once a week (perfect scruff to achieve optimum manliness while not appearing too ungroomed). He's backed by a misfit group of brutish and clumsily skilled sidekicks, including the only female in the show with a major part: an incredibly gorgeous woman in a very short skirt whose "weapon" is "sex." She and the Krödmeister are an "item," but boy is he upset when he finds out she's a Pagan nympho who's banged every dude she's encountered on this excursion thus far, and will soon willingly submit herself to a 300-man gangbang as part of some disturbing Pagan ritual (thankfully fictional — I looked it up on the Internet).

Moments like these in KM remind the Comedy Central viewer that mainstream comedy often needs to include things like 300-man gangbangs to keep the 12-year-old boys and their pervy, horny uncles tuned in. Now, a woman who is hot (and believe me, she is very, very, very fucking hot) and sleeps around despite her boyfriend's pleas for her to stop is hilarious and everything, but it's also so played out, dude. And it's gross. But so are fart jokes, and people love those, so I might not even know what I'm talking about.

Chancellor Dongalor (he's the villain), an infantile, effeminate, Sheriff-of-Nottingham type, wears goofy clothes, makes his soldiers tell him he was popular in high school (but — get this, haha — he wasn't actually popular in HS), and says a lot of things that make you think he's gay (lol).

And speaking of gay, there's a prison gay-love situation that horrifies Kröd and the gang in a way that seems pretty severe, especially when they also meet a man who is infamous for having sex with horses and react with much less of the fear and disgust they keep on hand for "the gay one," whose name is Bruce (of course) and wears short shorts (of course).

The humor is old, but not quite old school. More like middle school. It's sort of juvenile and cliche, much like those Scary Movie spoofs that come out every year and almost always show the scene in the trailer where the pretty girl takes a big, loud dump that blows the stall doors over or something. KM is kind of like that, which is disappointing. I mean, ironic umlauts are pretty promising. But this was just the first episode. Maybe it gets better and less homophobic, and hopefully they'll cut out some of the horse-rape stuff, because that's almost as gross as the Pagan gangbang.