Stingray Sam: Tiny Robots, Space Cowboys, and David Hyde Pierce

If you’re a fan of Cory McAbee’s sci-fi rock musical American
Astronaut (and if you’re not a fan of American Astronaut,
you probably haven’t seen American Astronaut), you probably
have a good idea of what to expect from Stingray Sam. McAbee
stars as the titular space cowboy, who gets yanked from his new career
as a lounge singer for one last job—to save a young girl from a
creepy celebrity named Fredward who wears a tight red rubber suit. With
the assistance of his partner in crime, the Quasar Kid (played with
cheerful big-dumb-sidekick equanimity by the mono-nomenclatured actor
Crugie), Sam will have to project himself into a tiny robot, survive a
climactic gunfight in the desert, and sing and dance.

Where Astronaut was practically operatic in scope,
Stingray Sam is very much framed as a children’s
entertainment—specifically an old-time Saturday morning serial.
Each episode opens with a theme song (full lyrics: “Stingray Sam is not
a hero/But he does do the things that folks don’t do that need to be
done/He’s got a bravery inside/That won’t let him run away/Will not let
him run”) and is narrated with enthusiastic, breathy gusto by David
Hyde Pierce (who also helpfully reminds the kiddies at the top of each
episode that the show is sponsored by Liberty Chewing Tobacco).

Stingray Sam‘s not as ambitious as Astronaut in
either its homespun special effects or its musical pedigree, but it’s
at least three times as affable. The precociously convoluted backstory
is spun out via gorgeous collages created by John Borruso. McAbee’s
charming self-deprecation has been polished to a shine here, bringing
the audience in on the joke in nearly every scene. By the time he and
the Quasar Kid sing a nonsense song in the second episode about cloning
(“Bob and Ringo had a son named Bingo/Zach and Deke had a son named
Zeke/Bill and Jeff had a son named Biff”), they’ve won the viewer’s
heart.