I thought the dystopia at the beginning was great. "Honey, where are my pants?" is intentionally shallow, stupid humor for the masses who mindlessly build the city and tear it down every day, achieving nothing, singing about how everything is awesome. But the main character accidentally sees behind the curtain and can no longer exist in that society so he departs on this journey. Your criticisms of the plot, themes and humor are correct insofar as it was a bunch of stuff with no coherent structure, though that in itself was kind of a theme. But most of it landed for me. "It's just business" is a classic 80s movie pun, even if you don't know it's a quote. Good cop/bad cop? The other guy that the protag is competing with is *Batman*
Perhaps you have to accept the framing that the lego world is real, a sort of jungian collective unconscious realm that interacts with ours.
I thought the dystopia at the beginning was great. "Honey, where are my pants?" is intentionally shallow, stupid humor for the masses who mindlessly build the city and tear it down every day, achieving nothing, singing about how everything is awesome. But the main character accidentally sees behind the curtain and can no longer exist in that society so he departs on this journey. Your criticisms of the plot, themes and humor are correct insofar as it was a bunch of stuff with no coherent structure, though that in itself was kind of a theme. But most of it landed for me. "It's just business" is a classic 80s movie pun, even if you don't know it's a quote. Good cop/bad cop? The other guy that the protag is competing with is *Batman*
Perhaps you have to accept the framing that the lego world is real, a sort of jungian collective unconscious realm that interacts with ours.
Thank you for the Babble on Babylon series! Listened and enjoyed all of it!