Pale Force
Pale Force is a series of short animations starring Jim Gaffigan on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The animation is done by New Yorker cartoonist Paul Noth and the music is composed by Patrick Noth.
Summary
Jim Gaffigan and Conan O’Brien are a crime-fighting duo with the “superpower” of paleness. They can also shoot lasers out of their nipples. They fight criminals such as Lady Bronze (“voiced by Eartha Kitt”) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (who looks like Gaffigan). While there are a multitude of characters in the animations, all the voice acting is done by Gaffigan. While Gaffigan is drawn as a muscular, tall man, O’Brien is scrawny and always crying and saying lines such as “Jim, help me!”. In addition to the actual animation, Each segment consists of both a real world talking segment between Gaffigan and Conan O’Brien. Most of the dialogue between the two consists of Gaffigan trying to explain to O’Brien that his character is pivotal in the show. O’Brien frequently complains about how wimpy and incompetent his character is. One of Gaffigan’s retorts to this was “if it’s not true to life, people won’t believe it.”
Episode 1
The first episode of Pale Force opens with two robbers stealing a diamond. Jim and Conan shine their chests at the robbers and blind them with whiteness. Later, Lady Bronze, the main villain in the series, captures Conan and Jim comes to save him. It is ended on a cliffhanger with Lady Bronze saying “Jim don’t kill me, I love you,” to which he responds “You don’t love me, you love crime.”
Episode 2
Jim introduces this episode as how Conan joined Pale Force. It starts with Conan watching Pale Man, which is a show only starring Jim and has a different theme song. Conan then leaves his house and is bullied by children about half of his size. Jim then saves Conan and teaches him to use his pale power. Jim presents him to the Legion Of Pale (name reminiscent to the Legion of Doom), with members such as Ron Howard, The White Stripes, Larry Bird, Nicole Kidman, Santa Clause, Sir Elton John, Chris Matthews, The State of Utah, a polar bear, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg (who is not actually pale but makes a quip about Conan). Lady Bronze captures the duo later in the episode, and Conan saves them by breaking the machinery they are tied to through urination.
Episode 3
In this episode Philip Seymour Hoffman seeks revenge on Jim for having to live in his shadow. He decides to use his “acting powers” to imitate Jim and give him a bad reputation. After Hoffman successfully touts about town drinking alcohol and doing other questionable activities dressed as Jim, it is necessary for Jim to be presented in front of the Legion of Pale, where he is banished to the shade cave. At the cave, Hoffman (dressed as Jim) is about to blow up the cave when Conan comes out, thoroughly confused. Jim comes out of the cave, and Conan, now with a revolver in his hand, must decide which one is the imposter and which is the real Jim. They go back and forth saying “facts” about Conan that are generally very wimpy attributes such as “you have ambiguous genitalia.” Jim saves the day because Conan’s gun is made of chocolate.
Theme Song Lyrics
- Pale Force!
- Fighting crime with Jim and Conan,
- And their spooky bloodless skin,
- Extraordinary valor,
- Matched with freakish power.
- It’s a guarantee they’ll win!
- They’ll stun you hard and make you a cripple
- They’re shooting lasers from out of their nipples
- They’re giving us a much safer nation
- Their eerie lack of skin pigmentation
- Is filling bad guys up with remorse
- It’s Pale Force!