The Backstreet Boys’ Commanding Officer Dresses Them Down After the Catastrophic Battle in Their “Larger Than Life” Music Video

(Click here for a refresher on the tragic events of the “Larger Than Life” video.)

I won’t sugarcoat it, boys: I’m incensed. We pulled you out of cryosleep after a millennium because we’d heard that, back in AD 1999, you’d conquered the Chartz—an evil alien race that’s declared war on humanity here in the year 3000. But nothing I saw during the attack on our space station yesterday suggests you’re capable of conquering anything other than my patience.

“Larger Than Life” is a catchy tune, fellas, I’ll give you that. But that little earworm won’t save us from the literal earworms the Chartz want to implant in our skulls.

Nick, you seem to think this is all a big joke, so let’s start with you. I tasked you with guiding an elite force of top-of-the-line, self-piloted mechs, each of which weighs four tons and costs eight billion credits. And what did you do? You taught ’em to dance, son. Had them popping and locking like they were on Soul Train 3000. You think that’s cute, having those killing machines do the robot? I’m amazed, and frankly disappointed, that none of them lasered your friggin’ head off.

Brian, what in God’s name were you thinking hoverboarding through our access tunnels like a teenage mutant ninja goddamned turtle from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3000, the reboot? I expect that type of foolishness from a clown like Nick, but you’re supposed to be leading these boys from the backstreets to the front lines. We’re at war, son. Why are you batting around a racquetball with a sweetie from the holodeck? She’s not your girlfriend, Brian—hell, she’s not even real. Next time, do us all a favor and hoverboard out the nearest airlock.

AJ, I have no spacely idea how you wound up in the station’s trash compactor or why you thought it was a good idea to hook up the trash tubes to your suit. But given the overwhelming odor radiating from your person, and the Chartz’s extraordinary olfactory senses, I’d wager you led the enemy straight to us. You’ve got blood on your hands, boy, and garbage in your arteries. All so you could cosplay as Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 3000, a bold reimagining of the iconic hero that I’ve been shopping around to studios. I’ve got the script back in my quarters if you know anyone who might want to read it. Point being: you stink to high heavens, and you got a lot of people killed.

Howie D, you have severe radiation poisoning. That’s what happens when you bump and grind inside the warp core with a hallucinatory dance partner for seven hours. I don’t know how you’re standing right now, but your skin is starting to bubble, and one of your eyeballs just fell out. If I were you, I’d go back to cryosleep and pray you wake up after they’ve developed a cure for what you’ve got. ’Cause we sure as shit don’t have one.

Finally, Kevin. Your heart was in the right place, which is more than I can say for your mustache. But you swiveled around in that gunner’s chair and got your grubby handprints all over the cockpit like an unsupervised child. More importantly, you shot down fifty of our ships. The Chartz were cloaked, son. You and those fangirls—who chloroformed four actual officers and commandeered their guns—massacred your own forces, costing us the battle and likely the war. Folks are already calling it “BSB Day.”

I don’t even want to know how much time you all spent choreographing that climactic dance sequence, which you abandoned your posts to execute while shields were down and life support was failing. Have you no shame? No souls?

You know what’s larger than life, boys? Genocide. Survival. Having to tell a wife and a daughter that Daddy’s not coming home, because a bunch of thousand-year-old singers from Orlando wanted to play soldier.

Needless to say, you’re all being court-martialed. Humanity’s only hope now is unfreezing Britney Spears. Something tells me that gal’s got some fight in her.