Grimsburg: "Murder on the Splurt Express"

Grimsburg: "Murder on the Splurt Express." Season 1, episode 6 (17 March 2024). Fox Entertainment, Gizmotech Industries, The Jackal Group (production) / Fox-TV (Fox animation).[1] As of March 2024, streaming on Hulu and Prime Video.

More or less official summary: "A murder mystery party becomes all too real for the Grimsburg PD when the wealthy, eccentric host is killed. During the investigation, Flute finds himself threatened by Stan’s detective skills, Summers tries flirting with Wynona and Kang and Pentos form an unexpected bond" (IMDb and elsewhere, link at note above). Characters (rather wittily) identified here.[2]

With comic glances at Steampunk and Dieselpunk,[3], significant for this wiki for a mansion that turns into a train (for the parody of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS)[4] and for trains in SF film, for which see the works in the Clockworks2 wiki listed here.[5]

When the mansion/train pulls out, we get a quick shot of the full train. Moving from viewer-right to left, the very front is a locomotive in classic, so to speak, Art Deco, followed by a part of the mansion suggesting part of a 19th-c. riverboat suitable for fancy travel down the Mississippi, with three steam whistles on top, which we see and hear.[6] Near the end of the episode, there're a distance-shot and another of the train/mansion moving through Grimsburg. [7] The rest of the mansion/train looks like a U.S. antebellum plantation mansion (i.e., before the U.S. Civil War), done in Art Deco — although the reference in the episode's dialog is to the Wayne Manor in Batman.[8] 

Waitresses (sic) at the party are robotic Betty Boops.[9]

One of the host's more exotic possessions is the creature from THE SHAPE OF WATER, complete with tank; when the creature is discovered, there is a secondary allusion to ARRIVAL with the touching of hands (with a human left hand in "Murder on the Splurt," right in ARRIVAL), touching at the wall of the tank.[10]

RDE, finishing, 18/19Mar24