Subscribe!The Brothers Flub (1999)
Originally posted on 21 March 2026First episode title: Wrestlemaniacs / Bard Brain
How familiar with the show am I?: I'd never heard of it before.
The Brothers Flub is about two alien brothers named Fraz and Guapo who work for an interstellar package delivery company, getting into all kinds of silly adventures in the course of their job. Yes, I know you're thinking of Futurama, but this show came first, just about.
The main characters to be concerned about here are:
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Fraz Flub, the older brother with cyan skin, who is more intelligent and more irritable
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Guapo Flub, the younger brother with blue skin, who is a bit of an idiot and more cheerful
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Tarara Boomdeyay, their boss, a green woman with a short temper
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The Hoog, their spaceship which seems to also be alive, having what looks like a mouth at the front
This episode has two segments, the first one being "Wrestlemaniacs". The employees of the delivery company argue over what to watch on TV until they end up on what Guapo wants to see: trans-dimensional wrestling on planet Wrestlevania. Tarara Boomdeyay interrupts them to show them their next assignment - to deliver wrestler Mr Krunch to Wrestlevania! Guapo is excited. On the way, the violent Mr Krunch shows off some of his moves on Fraz, who manages to stop him by getting him to examine why he felt so violent, which it turns out is because he used to get bullied for his large size as a child. Mr Krunch turns nice (and starts using his real name, Gerald) but still wants to get back at Mongo, the boy who bullied him the most.
When they get to the planet, the wrestling promoter Don Clang is annoyed to find out that Gerald no longer wants to wrestle, and demands that the brothers find a replacement for him for today's match. So when the match is about to start, Fraz introduces "The Masked Guapo". His opponent is "The Masked Steamer", a vegetable-loving wrestler. He wipes the floor with Guapo with steam-themed moves like flattening him with a steamroller. Fraz tries to convince Gerald to substitute for Guapo, but he insists he can't. Fraz jumps in in Guapo's place instead and manages to take off the Steamer's mask, revealing that he is Mongo! Mr Krunch's rage is activated and he jumps in to defeat the Steamer.
The other segment is "Bard Brain", in which the brothers have to make a delivery to Hip City, a land of beatniks where they kill you if they decide you're uncool. On the way, Guapo demonstrates how cool he is by singing loudly, which gives Fraz a headache - Guapo looks through the Hoog's first-aid kit to find a "headache relief ray", which, after he uses it on Fraz, he finds out provides relief by shrinking the brain. The now dumbed-down Fraz starts babbling random words constantly. When they get to Hip City, they almost get killed until Fraz's babbling gets interpreted as poetry and saves them.
Fraz's "poetry" becomes so popular that he starts being booked to perform it to huge crowds, being declared the best poet of all time, despite having no idea what is happening. The brothers get a palace built for them and anything Guapo can ask for, but he gradually gets sick of not having his brother the way he's supposed to be and looks for a way to cure him. He tries a few ways but eventually the solution turns out to be to summon the Hoog and have it give Fraz an electric shock. Fraz returns to his senses having no idea what's going on, just when Hip Daddy, the leader of the city, arrives asking to hear some of Fraz's poetry. He fails to produce anything and they get threatened, and things get much worse when Guapo tries singing, so the brothers flee the planet.
When they're fighting over the TV at the start, Fraz's preferred TV show is "Poetry Catapult", where people read out their poetry while sitting in a seat that then ejects them. It reminds me of the red chair on The Graham Norton Show!
The reason why the TV gets stuck on the wrestling is because the remote gets eaten by some kind of monkey-like alien pet (or baby?) they have, named Gordon, who looks like he has a vacuum cleaner for a tail.
We don't get to see very much of Tarara Boomdeyay in this particular episode, so we only get the sense of how bossy and unfair she is. She rides around on a kind of motor scooter thing with a big mouth on the front, just like the Hoog.
I could tell the wrestler must be Mr Krunch rather than Crunch because he has a big K on his outfit. He's very much an idiot, trying to wrestle his own foot on the ship before he starts fighting Fraz instead. Speaking of which, this nervous quote from Fraz is great:
Fraz: Hey, haha, yeah, that was great, having every bone in my body broken and twisted.
Mr Krunch already seems like a bit of a little kid even before reverting to Gerald, at which point he essentially becomes a baby (except whenever he talks about Mongo).
The boxing promoter Don Clang has a weird-shaped head which I initially mistook for some kind of flower, but as you might guess from the name, it's actually meant to be a bell - he shakes his own head to start the matches!
Guapo already looks like such a weird alien-y thing normally, and in his Masked Guapo outfit he's even odder. I love this smug strut he does as he enters the stadium for his match.
The Masked Steamer's black mask makes him look like an executioner, which is of course the impression we're supposed to get. It's "steamer" as in what you use to steam vegetables, which it seems he can do with just his breath.
This is one great quote that Fraz says to Guapo during a brief respite in the wrestling match:
Fraz: I checked our insurance. The Steamer can break up to fourteen and a half bones.
When Fraz is considering intervening in the match, he sees little versions of himself that are clearly meant to be "angel" and "devil" on the shoulder types, but their outfits don't quite match the stereotypes. The red one wears a spacesuit and the bright one is in some kind of Ancient Greek outfit?
In the second segment, Guapo uses the catchphrase "Bejabbers!" a couple of times. This would later be the catchphrase of Dave the Barbarian, a cartoon from 2004 - and sure enough, Dave the Barbarian's creator Doug Langdale wrote this particular segment!
There's a bit of an inconsistency between the two segments - Fraz is implied to dislike poetry when they first discuss Hip City, saying that he doesn't want to have any fun, despite his interest in Poetry Catapult last time.
Fraz's crazy babbling is exactly the sort of humour I was into when I was in the age demographic for this sort of show. I still can't always resist it even now.
His biggest poetry performance is shown to be in a massive stadium that looks like a sports match should be played in it. I'm not sure how the cheering crowd can hear him without any visible microphone, though!
When the brothers are in their palace getting anything they want, Guapo asks for a TV set fried in walrus fat, which is immediately provided. That phrase could almost be one of Fraz's non sequitur poems in itself!
Guapo attempts to restore Fraz's intelligence by opening up his head and messing with his brain directly. Because I don't know anything further about his physiology, I don't know whether the fact that his head can be unscrewed is because of something part-robotic about him, or just a typical random gag.
At multiple times in the segment, Guapo tries to prove himself cool using his "Cool Hat", a pink top hat with clapping hands that he operates by pulling a string. This culminates in using it to beat Fraz up in an attempt to entertain Hip Daddy, which almost works until he adds singing to the mix. It's such a silly, funny thing for that to be someone's idea of a cool hat.
When Hip Daddy arrives right after Fraz gets his memory back and Guapo has just hurriedly explained the situation to him:
Fraz: Oh, is that all? So, in other words... WE'RE DOOMED!!!
What I can't tell is whether the brothers actually successfully made their delivery in among all this. Perhaps it's redundant after all this.
On the way back in the Hoog, Guapo remarks about how Fraz is as intelligent as he's always been again, and then Fraz presses the eject button on the control panel, not knowing what it means, sending him flying out of the ship. Yes... intelligence is relative.
This was quite an entertaining show! I definitely want to check out more of it. The brothers themselves are just the right balance for a comedic duo.
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