Xena Saves the World, Part the Second

So, when I first mentioned that Vampire Bats was going to be appearing on CBS, I thought that Lucy Lawless had been typecast into roles as women who are trying to stop flying creatures from destroying the earth. When I looked to see that CBS has finally put up some promotional material for the special, I learn that it’s even worse. Vampire Bats is actually a sequel, of sorts, to Locusts, which madeyoulaugh and I recapped earlier this year. She’s left the horrible world of the USDA where she was just moments away from right after she discovered that they wanted her to head up a task force that was to prepare for the country in case millions of frogs fell out of the sky after listening to Frank Mackey or the crab people decide to invade. Our heroine, Maddy Rierdon lest you should forget, has moved with her husband and two daughters to Louisiana to become a teacher. But she can never escape the horror that is about to envelope her. Are you scared yet? Are you at least laughing or drunk? OK! Let’s get started!9:00
The announcer, uh, announces that “It’s feeding time!” if that doesn’t get you excited enough to miss a rerun of Desperate Housewives, I don’t know what will.

9:01
Beautiful Tate University. Lush campus, coeds in bikinis playing slip and slide on frat row. OK Les, you win. AGAIN.

9:02
A girl and two of her guy friends walk past the Greek houses. They don’t drink and are modest about their bodies. I wonder if they will somehow save the day while the hedonous fraternity and sorority types succumb to the deadly bats.

9:03
After cutting across the cemetery, the kids are invited to an underground rave, by a guy…passing out flyers to an underground rave. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of making it underground?

9:04
“The party is in the middle of nowhere, that’s what makes it underground,” explains Low Rent Freddie Prinze Jr. He, his sidekick, and the girl the guy inviting them to the party wanted to have sex with make it to an old house and buy cups for “Planter’s Punch”, which we just saw was spiked moments earlier.

9:05
Freddie comes on to Eden, and even though the drugs are working, she isn’t dumb enough to sleep with him in the middle of the bayou. In the background, sidekick boy spins around like an autistic kid in a planetarium

9:05:30
Sidekick is lost and alone, and his vintage East German military fatigues aren’t helping him. This movie is either anti-drugs or pro-buddy system, I can’t decide which.

9:07
Uh, oh, some electronica is playing. It’s feeding time!

9:08
Dr. Xena, who is now Dr. Momma Xena has two kids, a minivan, and is too cheap for air conditioning. Xena Nipple Count: 0.

9:08:30
The help is in Guatemala? Filming Survivor? No, sick aunt. What is Dr. Momma Xena going to do with the kids?

9:09
Dr. Momma Xena’s sister in-law is Brett Butler. Could she be here for…comic relief? This movie has everything!

9:11
Blonde girl in pink top asks Mr. Dr. Xena if he is seeing anybody. When he says he is married, she replies “How unfortunate.” Clearly not as unfortunate as the untimely death your minor speaking role just foreshadowed.

9:12
Dr. Xena takes attendance. Jason Ortiz is missing. but he didn’t miss a class last semester. Oh that’s right, last semester he avoided the underground raves that took place near vampire bat breeding grounds.

9:13
We meet local law enforcement that is inspecting the case of dead deer in a wildlife preserve. If I didn’t know better, I would say that it was locusts.

9:15
Brett Butler hates a dirty house. By the way, if the house is so dirty, what does the maid do all day? The kids are too young to request quesadillas.

9:16
Law enforcement guy burns the carcasses of a dead deer. Is he trying to cover something up? I wonder if he’ll confess to the whole thing only after he is dying because of a bat attack.

9:16:30
Craig Ferguson as a drunken Irish fisherman. Dual forces of comic relief. What will Les thing of next?

9:17
They find Jason Ortiz (the sidekick) dead and beaten up, but there is almost no blood. hmmmm.

9:18
OK, Craig Ferguson is dead. Brett, it’s all up to you now.

9:22
Back in class, Eden explains to the rest of her classmates what a hypoxic zone is. The size of her brain is only matched by the size of her breasts.

9:23
Aaron and Eden(Jason Ortiz’s friends) are taken out of the class by Police. Dr. Momma Xena dismisses her class and follows them to the station, because that biology PhD is so much better than a public defender.

9:24
Dr. Momma Xena meets Mayor Poelkher (pronounced poh-ker). Poelkher? I hardly know her!

9:25
Motherhood has really calmed down Dr. Momma Xena’s nipples. Xena nipple count: 0.

9:25
The sheriff plays a message from Eden to a friend saying she was really messed up, and something happened to Jason. You can hear Aaron in the background saying they have to go before somebody finds them. Anti-drug message count: 2. When on ecstasy, you may admit to murders that you didn’t commit.

9:28
Lawyer Dr. Momma Xena vows to help the kids anyway that she ca and listens to their side of the story. Anti-drug message count: 3. “It was the punch, it was spiked with something” “I’ll never try that again”.

9:30
Searching for a place to throw a party, three college guys explore an underground steam tunnel and find a room with “sick” acoustics. Who cares about he bat droppings? that won’t be a problem.

9:32
Mr. Dr. Momma Xena – “I thought that after the locusts thing, we were through with life or death situations” Well, it probably would have been over with after locusts, but I guess Lucy Lawless needed to put in a new pool, and who can pass up good made for TV disaster movie money?

9:38
Two more bodies are found drained of blood, but the sheriff won’t release Aaron and Eden. What’s it going to take for him to realize that these deaths aren’t ritualistic murder, but the work of ravenous, bloodthirsty mammals. Another bunch of kids dead at a college rave party?

9:40
Dr. Momma Xena notices bat shit on the bodies. Unfortunately, the mayor refuses to warn the general population about the problem on their hands because they might go bat shit and cause a panic. Subtle moves like this add to the brilliance of the art form.

9:42
Girl returns home drunk, and her sorority sisters have to take her to bed. She manages to strip down to a cute pair of bra and panties before falling asleep on her bed. Unfortunately, that just leaves more space for the bats to feed. Looks like she won’t be asking Mr. Dr. Momma Xena about his availability any time soon. Drunken coed murdered by bat count: 1. Foreshadowed death count: 1.

9:43
Tate faculty party on river boat, killer bats under the dock. Chances the bat problem will explode in the next 10 minutes? 100%. Chances that you can resist Dr. Momma Xena in a little black dress? 0.

9:47
The organizers of the rave party high-five in celebration. Anti-drug message count: 4. Ecstasy will cause you to prematurely congratulate yourself on the success of a party, even if it will eventually turn into a bloody massacre.

9:52
The bats strike the faculty riverboat party and the underground rave party simultaneously. If only people had listened to the warning signs and didn’t scapegoat two poor kids for a series of ritualistic blood-draining murders, we could have avoided this whole mess.

9:57
Anti drug message count: 5. In the event of an attempted vampire bat massacre, you will be too stoned to escape, and all of that hard-earned money will go to waste. Pro drug message count: 1. Your role as a drug dealer won’t prevent people from leaving flowers and teddy bears on your grave.

9:58
The mayor holds a press conference. “Everything is under control” he assures us, but we know nothing is going to be under control until he admits to Dr. Momma Xena that he was wrong and needs her help. In other news, how did the bats only kill one person? I thought this movie was supposed to be scary. Right now, the only deaths have been people on ecstasy.

10:00
Dr. Momma Xena says that we must study bats to understand them and says that something environmental is causing the problem. Jimmy Bob park ranger wants to poison them. Something tells me that any solution with poison will be only temporary, but the solution that relies on science will eventually solve the problem.

10:03
Dr. Momma Xena tells her class that they must solve the vampire bat problem because we really need to understand the bats to stop them from coming back. Meanwhile, in Mr. Dr. Momma Xena’s class, we learn that Rebecca, the girl who hit on her professor and likes to sleep in her underwear didn’t die. Looks like those bats aren’t so badass after all. Foreshadowed death count: 0.

10:03:15
Never mind. Rebecca starts foaming at the mouth and falls over dead. Foreshadowed death count: 1.

10:04
Brett Butler sees the mayor making a payoff to shady local waste management official. So, it’s our own garbage that is causing these bats to go crazy? Why couldn’t it be global warming? All those people driving hybrids don’t have enough reasons to think they are better than everybody else. Why not give them one more?

10:07
Dr. Momma Xena plans to use a goat for bait. More importantly, it looks like her students have decided to help her out. “If we can go to war, we can help find some stupid bats” Sure, but can you find a stylish, yet functional kerchief to look good while doing it? That’s what makes you an adult. Also, what happened to Mr. Dr. Momma Xena in a time like this?

10:08
Preppy kid asks if the goat is going to be hurt. Well, possibly, but not as much as when the local sheriff gets drunk and lonely and the next issue of Barnard Orgy quarterly is still months away.

10:09
We find out Dr. Momma Xena has a broom in her car. Chances said broom will save her later in the movie 80%.

10:19
The county coroner has been studying the carcasses of dead animals killed by bats. Somehow, all of these animals have benzene in them, presumably given to them by the bats. But since there are strict guidelines to the disposal of such volatile products, how could they ever come in contact with it in the wild. I wonder if there is any local politician receiving kickbacks that we can blame this on?

10:22
Dr. Momma Xena, husband, and students find out that the local waste facility is dumping toxins into the water. During collection of waste samples, security catches them in the act. Xena and crew make a run for it. Quick, use the broom! The broom!

10:28
Xena accompanies park ranger to secret bat lair in an old plantation building. all of the bats are dead. School newspaper headline: “Bat Crisis Averted”. Byline reads “Producers unsure of what to do with remaining 30 minutes of TV special” Also of note, editorial titled “Perhaps we should have studied the bats more before killing them,”. Lastly, there is the opinion piece titled “I hope nobody dies as a result of us feeling like we killed all of the bats:

10:30
Apparently, Rebecca didn’t die of rabies. She is now back to hitting on Mr. Xena in class, and sleeping in her footie pajamas.

10:31
Dr. Momma Xena’s students are alone, feeding the bats, but they are also bored. Luckily, she has a boom box in her lab, and the kids have more techno. Everybody starts dancing except for one overcautious kid, and he’s just worried because he doesn’t have a broom.

10:32
Two students head to the house of an Economics professor who is on sabbatical. They intend to make out, but I wonder if anything else has taken up residence while the professor was away. Like killer bats perhaps?

10:33
Another hot chick in her underwear. I wonder if she’ll also be attacked by bats?

10:34
Anti-promiscuity message count: 1. Your raging hormones might distract you from noticing the hundreds of killer bats that might be living nearby. Instead of getting Chlamydia, you’ll get rabies – and watch your boyfriend die a horrible death being eaten to death by bats.

10:36
Xena Nipple Count: 0. Also, Brett Butler, not so funny in this movie.

10:38
Dr. Momma Xena students have made a discovery. The bats are attracted to a certain noise. Looks like she’ll need some speakers of giant locust bug zapper proportions. Xena nipple count: still 0.

10: 39
The mayor sees Brett Butler with Dr. Momma Xena’s kids. She makes jokes about poisoning the town, he kidnaps her.

10:46
Park ranger has found another lair. It’s that old church in the cemetery. When he meets with Dr. Momma Xena and the sheriff to formulate a plan, they put their heads together for the “final solution”. It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work…

10:48
Wait, where is Bret Butler and the kids? Mr. and Dr. Momma Xena track them down to the mayor’s office. The mayor isn’t corrupt and it was he who was doing the investigation into the illegal dumping of waste. The man he was seen with was a whistleblower. Apparently, the executives have been paying off a local official. Now who could have influence over what the EPA had to say about the area. OK, I give up. This is hard. I wish that they had given us a hint of a cover up sometime earlier in the episode so I wouldn’t be in such suspense…

10:51
Dr. Momma Xena must go into the steam tunnels to find park ranger guy. This is unfortunate because these are the same tunnels that they are planning to herd the bats into in order to kill them. I hope he cooperates.

10:52
Dr. Momma Xena realizes that park ranger is the one being paid off when he makes a strange comment about negligible amounts of hyrdrochlorobenzine in the water, and he realizes that she knows that he has done. Better handcuff her to a pole in the steam tunnel. If the bats don’t kill you, the heat will.

10:53
The bats are entering the steam tunnel!

10:54
They’re releasing the steam to kill the bats! What will Dr. Momma Xena do to get away?

10:54
Park Ranger is about to get away, but Dr. Momma Xena still has her broom, and knocks him over. Whenever he tries to get up, she hits him again. Pro gun control message count: 1. Why use a gun, when a broom will do just fine?

10:56
With the help of her trusty broom, Dr. Momma Xena escapes the steam tunnels. but we have to turn off the steam! Park ranger dude will be burned alive!

10:56:30
Eh, oh well, at least we got the bats too. The Xenas kiss. Everybody else is safe.

10:57
The Xenas enjoy some margaritas poolside outside their new home. Brett Butler and the mayor are now an item. But will Dr. Momma Xena ever get that horrible sound out of her head? It’s the sound of a vampire bat feeding on its prey. The sound of another innocent life being taken away from us. The sound of…YES! the movie is over. Sweet!

Well, there you have it. A not so horrifying tale of some killer bats. Once again, it was human malfeasance that caused the problem, and it was science that solved it. Happy Halloween from TVgasm. We hope you find something actually scary to watch tonight, or at least take the time for some constructive vandalism.