IVORY BASTARDS

EPISODE GUIDE

This is by no means an official episode guide because none is known to exist that was put out by the producers or TMN. Most of this information comes from Edward K Ponto's definitive tome The Decline and Fall of Mexican Television and Why It Matters, which is sadly in its 17th year of being out of print. I have pieced together what's in Ponto's appendix, plus a few articles in some Mexican newspapers I had translated by some of the guys who worked on my mom's kitchen last year. So anyway, this is far from being the definitive episode guide, but as far as I can tell it's the only one out there.

NOTE: PLEASE do not bother contacting me for dubs or fansubs of these. As far as anyone knows, all episodes of every season of Ivory Bastards is considered LOST. That means aside from a few bits and pieces and some radio promos, no complete copies are known to exist. If you do have any information to the contrary, please email me!!!!!

SEASON ONE (June 1970-???)
Ivory Bastards contra la cuadrilla de ladrones
(Ivory Bastards vs The Gang of Burglars)




	Garlicmouth fights off members of a militant civil rights organization. (EPISODE A01)

Season 1 lasted only five episodes and was a compete disaster both with viewers and critics alike. It bore no resemblance at all to the seasons that followed and were it not for the notoriety of the seasons that would follow, it would probably be completely forgotten. The Ivory Bastards of season 1 (The Money-Lender, Garlicmouth, Spearman, and The Horny Spaniard) were crude ethnic stereotypes, and episodes were jam-packed with 'truly tasteless jokes' that poked fun at Jews, Italians, women, blacks, the handicapped, homosexuals, people who wear glasses, alcoholism, rape victims, stillborn babies, adult illiteracy, medical malpractice, Lou Gehrig's disease, the mentally retarded, even animals with missing limbs. The public failed to appreciate the grim, mean-spirited series, and it is a wonder Ivory Bastards ever evolved beyond this appalling phase.

EPISODE A01 "Pilot, Crash This Plane!" The Ivory Bastards are led by police to believe that the worldwide Jewish conspiracy is trying to turn Mexico into a dump. The IBs round up all of Mexico's Jews and Podiatrists (!) and are about to execute them when at the last minute, the Chief of Police comes out of a drug-induced coma and reveals it has all been an elaborate hoax.

EPISODE A02 "All For One and Blame For All" Spearman wakes up in prison with no recollection of how he got th≠ere. The other IBs try to break him out, but are duped into taking PCP, and spend the entire episode enduring violent hallucinations. Spearman is released on parole 18 months later.




	Maria, The Money-Lender's fiancee, discovers The Horny Spaniard trying on a pair of her panties (EPISODE A04)

EPISODE A03 "Damn the Forty Thousand Men Who Died Here" The IBs disrupt the funeral of a rival wrestler with drunken insults and catcalls.

EPISODE A04 "Not For All The Watermelon in Harlem" The Money-Lender gets engaged, but refuses to pay for the lavish wedding his fiancee's family demands. The Horny Spaniard steals The Money-Lender's bride with promises of a lavish lifestyle. The Money-Lender then rapes his former fiancee, who consequentially becomes pregnant, then destitute.

EPISODE A05 "One-Foot and Pregnant" Garlicmouth is deported to Sicily, where he gets involved with a local Mafia vendetta. The other IBs arrive to "help," but do little but follow him around laughing at his predicament.

SEASON TWO (September 1970-January 1971)
Ivory Bastards contra las mecanógrafos
(Ivory Bastards vs The Typing Pool)




	Funeral for the 1970s generation of Ivory Bastards. (EPISODE B01)

After the disastrous first season of Ivory Bastards, TMN contracted surrealist painter and filmmaker Victor Luis Chavez to retool the series and try to recoup their investment. He was given unprecedented creative freedom, and in return, Chavez guaranteed the reworked Ivory Bastards could be made profitable within 2 years. Chavez took the drastic measure of killing off the entire team in the opening episode, and starting with a new generation of Ivory Bastards thirty years hence. The tone of the series shifted from raunchy slapstick to a more contemporary angsty and druggy surrealism, and existentialist action. Set in the then-future of 2005, the new Ivory Bastards (Fango Electrico, Cancera, El Cojo Mente, and Dr Head) were hated and despised by the public, despite their commitment to saving the planet. Season 2 pitted the IBs against a plague of zombie secretaries in an ambiguous battle-of-the-sexes parable. The 12 episodes cemented the series' cult audience, and left critics sharply divided. La Jornada's Juan San Girard hailed the new season as "a clever allegory for male insecurity in the face of militant feminism," while El Norte's media column dismissed it as "same crap, new stink." Unfortunately too little episode information remains to assemble an episode guide for this season.

SEASON THREE (May-July 1971)
Ivory Bastards contra Ivory Bastards
(Ivory Bastards vs Themselves)




	El Cojo Mente (right) and Fango Electrico (left) watch Dr Head experience a nervous breakdown (EPISODE C02)

Perhaps emboldened by season 2's moderate success, Chavez's second season was by all accounts a self-indulgent mess. Heavily influenced by Jungian psychoanalysis theory, Season 3 followed a 10-episode arc with each Ivory Bastard confronting the more unpleasant aspects of themselves. Episodes featured long, introspective monologues and little of the trademark violence and humor that earned the series its moderate following. The 10 episodes that comprise season 3 are probably directly responsible for the series' demise.

EPISODE C01 "Chain Gang" Troubled by recent events, Fango Electrico enters therapy. His psychoanalyst secretly clones him and the other Ivory Bastards. When Fango Electrico learns this, he flies into a blind rage and accidentally kills the scientist, leaving the clones running amok.

EPISODE C02 "Double Trouble" El Cojo Mente finds his clone and the two run away to Acapulco together. A tender love story blossoms between El Cojo Mente and his clone, and they decide to get married. All is well, until a runaway bread truck hits and kills the ECM clone. El Cojo Mente vows vengeance against God himself.




	Dr Head feels the sting of rejection when his advances are spurned. (EPISODE C05)

EPISODE C03 "Hell's Orphans" The IBs discover a remote schoolhouse where child clones of themselves are being trained to take over the world. Cancera tries to escape with one of the Cancera clones, killing dozens of other child clones in the process.

EPISODE C04 "Head's Head" Episode-long therapy session with Dr Head.

EPISODE C05 "Vote the Hand That Feeds You" A clone of Dr Head runs for President of the United States of the Americas. Dr Head finds himself emersed in the cynical world of politics. the Dr Head clone is assassinated in a scene that eerily foretold the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.

EPISODE C06 "My Dinner With Danger" Episode-long scene where Fango Electrico dines with a clone of himself. Dim quips and "witty" wordplay abound.

EPISODE C07 "Rear Admiral" El Cojo Mente uncovers a secret plan to use a network of computers to control the minds of the populace. He destroys the computers by having sex with them.




	Fango Electrico waits for his comrades as they try to escape the repo man. (EPISODE C08)

EPISODE C08 "Brain Dump" Fango Electrico is taken to a hospital and brainwashed to believe he is a clone of himself. A later encounter with an actual clone degenerates from a fierce fistfight into a protracted chess game that lasts fully half the episode.

EPISODE C09 "Change Your Mind" Perhaps the most infamous episode of the season. The IBs are captured by a mad scientist who performs brain transplants on all of them, switching the brains of Fango Electrico and Cancera with those of El Cojo Mente and Dr Head and vice versa. Ends in an orgy.

EPISODE C10 "Have a Nice Trip" Drug-addled finale to the story arc jam-packed with hackneyed symbolism and anti-war diatribes. The IBs are brought before the dystopian "JusticeMaxx" court to answer for 'crimes against conformity'. A circus of top hats, unicycles, "jesters," fire juggling, folk tunes, and wigs that is not half as watchable as it sounds, believe me.

SEASON THREE (January-March 1972)
Ivory Bastards contra Hipnotismos Malvado
(Ivory Bastards vs The Evil Hypnotists)




	Ivory Bastards' rival, El Despiadado, the World's Most Famous Secret Agent.(EPISODE D03)

Ivory Bastards's ratings gradually declined over the course of season two, so under pressure from TMN, Chavez agreed to move the series back into a more mainstream action-adventure direction. Season three saw the introduction of a secret society of hypnotists, played by various journeyman wrestlers in black capes, many of whom at this point were well past their prime. In fact, legend has it old-time wrestler El Murciélago can be seen dying of a heart attack on camera in episode six! Of course, there is no way to verify this, and it is likely to be just another urban legend. Descriptions of only a few of the 10 episodes are available. If you can help me fill this out please contact me!

EPISODE D01 "The Gaze of Humunculus" The newly-elected president institutes a crackdown on genetic manipulation, drugs, astro-horticulture, pornography, atheism, shellfish, pong, book abuse, magick, international travel, and the "infra-web". In response, the International Brotherhood of the Hypnotic Arts begin attacking random commoners across the city. The president contacts the IBs to combat this menace.

EPISODE D02 "Eyes Closed, Sphincter Open" synopsis coming soon!




	Cancera apologises for an especially obscene phone call. (EPISODE D03)

EPISODE D03 "Rash of Ages" A mysterious outbreak of measles threatens to break down the fabric of society. The IBs decide to solve the problem with a 20-minute-long tag-team battle royale!

EPISODE D04 "Death's Little Friend" synopsis needed!

EPISODE D04 "Hangover Not Included" synopsis needed!

EPISODE D05 "Errors in Judgement" synopsis needed!

EPISODE D06 "Chocolate Factory" synopsis needed!

EPISODE D07 "Doorknob Heroics" synopsis needed!




	El Cojo Mente suspects someone has drugged his tea. (EPISODE D08)

EPISODE D08 "Man-Animal Cracked" The president is kidnapped by a gang of hypnotists. The IBs disagree on whether to bother attempting a rescue. Meanwhile, Dr Head stages his own suicide and posts video on the infra-web to see if anyone notices. The first trans-human (human-animal hybrid) makes a brief appearance, but succumbs to El Cojo Mente's "Three-Hole Punch"

EPISODE D09 "Heartless Swine in the Slaughterhouse of Truth" I've got to find out what this one's all about! Help if you can!

EPISODE D10 "Mildly Angry" synopsis needed!




	Script for what would have been episode E01 appeared on ebay in April 1999. It sold for $26.44 USD.

SEASON FOUR (unrealized)
Ivory Bastards contra Hippo-Men
(Ivory Bastards vs The Hippo Men)

Season three failed to revive Ivory Bastards's fortunes, and ratings continued to sag. Chavez was however commissioned to write another 12-episode season of Ivory Bastards, Ivory Bastards vs. The Hippomen: an epic and special-effects laiden journey into the world of genetic manipulation. Chavez managed to stongarm the episodes into pre-production, but the powers that be rejected the resulting scripts as too expensive to film. Ivory Bastards was taken out of the TMN shooting schedule, and was in danger of being cancelled for good. Scripts for the episodes are extremely rare, but do show up on ebay from time to time.

SEASON FIVE (December 1972-February 1973)
Ivory Bastards contra Extinción Humana
(Ivory Bastards vs Human Extinction)




	Trailer for forthcoming DVD release of episode F01. Read more about it on CinemaNational's website.

Following the surprise cancellation of the much-hyped tele-novela El Dorado Macho, TMN decided to revive Ivory Bastards for what would be the last time. Given a rushed production schedule and a shoestring budget, Chavez knew the writing was on the wall, and decided to go for broke. The result is a shocking (but by all accounts fascinating) mess of social satire, surrealism, slapstick, and mayhem. Ten half-hours of weirdness unprecedented in the history of Mexican television, and unlikely to ever be repeated.

EPISODE F01 "Fetal Matter" A government fetus goes missing and the president contacts the Ivory Bastards to recover it. They go up against the transhumans, human-animal hybrids created by pollution. Fango Electrico has bizarre hallucinations and Dr Head ends up in jail for not paying for his computer.

EPISODE F02 "Monster of the Week" One transhuman's path into adulthood is followed, intercut with the Ivory Bastards' continues attempts top find the fetus asn restore their reputation.

EPISODE F03 "God-ulator" The Ivory Bastards manage to recover the fetus, but find itis no longer a public concern, as the population has become transfixed with a supercomputer that has been set up to calculate the answer to the "ultimate question."

EPISODE F04 "Death Lays an Egg" The president offers the Ivory Bastards jobs protecting the supercomputer from transhumans. They bristle at the secuity guard positions, but take the assignment as their adventures have left them deep in debt. Cancera is killed by a disguised transhuman.

EPISODE F05 "The Strange Smell of Time" Dr Head invents a time machine that allows the IBs to travel forward in time. They enter it and move forward 1 year to the year 2007. The process takes a year. they emerge to find the world a slightly different place.

EPISODE F06 "Idiot's Holiday" "Comic relief" episode sees El Cojo Mente is finally "fired" by Fango Electrico for raping a policeman. El Cojo Mente travels to Bermuda, and gets a job as a lifeguard. All manner of hijinx ensue.

EPISODE F07 "Assholes of the Year" synopsis coming soon!

EPISODE F08 "Viva las Revelations" The supercomputer finally reaches the end of its calculations. The stars start going out and everyone thinks it's the end of the world. It turns out not to be, and everyone must deal with the consequences of having acted like it was.

EPISODE F09 "Super Sexy Hyper Go Time" All-star throw-down battle royale between the Ivory Bastards and the human-animal hybrids. An accident at a power plant has dire global consequences.

EPISODE F10 "The End" Outrageous final episode had newspaper men in an uproar. I'm not going to give this one away in case anyone ever finds a copy and releases it.

FEATURE FILM (completed 1980, unreleased)
Ivory Bastards contra El Mundo
(Ivory Bastards vs The World)

Infamous feature version that directly led to Chavez's murder. It apparently was meant to replace episodes F09 and F10 as a retcon version of the events that brought the series to a close. A synopsis based on a recently discovered script is coming soon.