12.28
I have to apologize for my lack of updates during the past three weeks. My ever-busy schedule is to blame, but here we go for this week’s entry.
Dexter’s Laboratory:
“Dee Dee’s Room”
Oh man, here we go.
At last, Dexter’s greatest invention has been completed- sliced bread! Except the boy genius/blunder loses his breakthrough, only to have his knife become trapped in the room of his big sister.
In hopes of avoiding the peril of cooties, Dexter takes a lot of precautionary steps to make sure he doesn’t get cooties when he enters her room, but there’s only so much Dexter is able to accomplish before he gets into trouble.
We see Dexter attempt to escape the wicked cootie monsters and survive the overload of Dee Dee’s stuffed animals as he fights for his life to obtain what is his and leave in one piece. Yet Dex doesn’t come out unscathed.
The episode is a tribute to Frank Coppola’s epic Apocalypse Now, which itself was an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which makes this a rather literary short of Dexter’s Lab. It’s also a great one, full of necessary atmosphere typically missing in the show. While the story is played for laughs, the terror in Dexter’s eyes is completely palpable, as is the beating of his heart and the heavy breathing the brilliant Christine Cavanaugh was able to portray into the character.
The short does lose a point or two for odd pacing, however. It ran by way too fast for me to write about properly, and a repeat viewing or two had to be accomplished before I could successfully update this entry. Feeling brief and fresh is a positive thing, but here it almost felt like I could’ve blinked and missed most of the cartoon, which is problematic. But even then, it’s hard to not appreciate such a clever tribute.
“Huntor”
Well then.
This Monkey short gets straight to it, with a group of alien bounty hunters beaming down into Dexter’s Lab, even taking a musical cue from the dungeon levels of Super Mario Bros.
It turns out they’re looking for a monkey, and not just any monkey. The catch? Our main primeape is playing switch-around with Dee Dee, and it takes a little before the hunters are able to capture their real target.
Monkey is taken to the lair of this week’s titular villain, the powerful man-tiger Huntor. His shtick is that he has hunted the world’s most dangerous game (including Wolverine!), but one trophy that has eluded him has been a monkey. Who hunts monkeys though, really?
But now it’s time for Huntor and Monkey to fight, or rather for Monkey to survive the hunt. Either way, it results in a jungle fight scene that takes a couple of cues too many from Predator. You know that Monkey wins, but I bet you wouldn’t expect the ending to then steal from Deliverance, would you?
I’m not sure if I’ve taken a chance to write about how the mileage on one joke cartoons varies, but I’d take those over no joke cartoons any day, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that is precisely what Monkey is, a series of no-joke cartoons. You can tell that Tartakovsky was planning for bigger and better things in the world of action cartoons, and Dial M for Monkey was but a teaser, one that unfortunately forgets to be exciting or funny the majority of the time. Samurai Jack and Clone Wars sure couldn’t come any sooner.
“The Big Sister”
And here we go, the last of the three Dexter’s Lab pilots to air on the show.
And this one starts of with the entrance to the lab as seen in the ending credits of the first season, as we enter to see Dexter’s greatest work completed- a batch of chocolate chip cookies.
Except these aren’t any ordinary cookies, because it’s not like Dexter, boy genius would make ordinary cookies, right? These are enhanced cookies that Dexter made to give to his lab rats to test results on. Dee Dee doesn’t seem to care about this, and sneaks her way to snack on a cookie, which as a result, turns her into a giant version of the girl moron.
Dee Dee, being the person she is, wrecks havoc upon the town and releases a pandemic so big, even president Clinton begs for help. After seeing the president’s plea on television, Dexter realizes that it’s up to him to save the day, and takes matter into his own hands.
This episode introduces us to the classic mecha Dexter bot, a staple that gets a fair amount of mileage over the course of the show. Dexter needs it to take over Dee Dee, except that she gets too lucky to succumb to Dexter’s heroics. Eventually Dexter tricks Dee Dee, and saves the day. Kinda.
Not a bad episode, and a bit of the end of the old guard. As usual, Monkey was the weak point, but the two Dexter shorts were pretty strong, with “Dee Dee’s Room” in particular being a classic. The pacing of the show changes a bit next week, with a particular change that I can’t wait for.
The ending of the third short is a bit expected, but its execution very much makes for a highlight regardless.
Johnny Bravo:
“Blarney Buddies”
So we recently had a Christmas episode, but that doesn’t mean we also can’t have a St. Patrick’s Day episode of Johnny Bravo.
Johnny’s in Ireland for whatever reason this week, picking four leaf clovers in hopes of finding out if she loves him, or loves him not. Who? Your guess is as good as mine.
After pissing off a tour guide, Johnny gets slammed over to a pot of gold, and among pieces of gold and junk like that, finds a tour book. Johnny then reads up on the Blarney Stone. A kiss from it will grant whoever kisses the stone whatever they want, which obviously intrigues Johnny. So much so, that when a leprechaun shows up, Johnny doesn’t seem to care.
Until he learns the name of the leprechaun- Blarney Stone. Even though he’s clearly a guy, Johnny is now on the pursuit of kissing the leprechaun, which leads into a cartoony chase for the rest of the episode. Does Johnny get to make his wish to become more appealing to chicks? Remember what show this is, and you’ll receive your answer.
This isn’t an especially great short. There’s a good joke or two, including a funny little reference to Wizard of Oz, but it peaks a little early, and leaves me wondering how better the short would have been if it stuck to Johnny dicking around Ireland instead of making a generic hunt for a leprechaun.
There really isn’t much more to say about this one, other than it’s forgettable overall, especially compared to some of the episodes I’ve reviewed before and will later.
“Over the Hump!”
Another story, another goal. This week, Johnny signs up for the French Foreign Legion in hopes of meeting chicks. That’s a new one.
Anyway, this leads Johnny into the Sahara Desert alongside a talking purple camel (a talking animal, haven’t seen THAT in JB before), and the two are put into a game show asking for their competence to survive and save themselves in the desert, almost like The Hunger Games meets The Price is Right.
I… wish I had more to say about this short, but there’s really nothing much else to it. It’s another episode where Johnny leaves Aaron City and/or when he interacts with a talking animal, and there’s been a surprising amount of these so far. It’s also light on jokes and even lighter on originality, which just makes this a lame short.
That said, please make sure to never let Johnny drive your car.
“Johnny Meets Farrah Fawcett”
Okay, seriously, when did this show take place? Johnny Bravo is so far off with its pop culture references sometimes. It is a bit of the show’s charm, but wow does it feel weird.
Like here, an episode dedicated to the now-late Farrah Fawcett, which acts like it was still the 70’s. Johnny goes out to get the new hair moisture licensed by the former Charlie’s Angel, but instead runs into Lil Suzy, who begs him to go to her birthday. Being way too cool to go to a little girl’s party, Johnny turns her down and gets kicked off the RSVP list.
This isn’t a big deal, until he finds out that Miss Fawcett herself is Suzy’s cousin, and a proud guest of the party. Now it’s up to Johnny to sneak his way into the party he’s been kicked out of. The crazy part is that Johnny has no idea just how heavy-guarded her party is.
This one is more in the vein of season 1 JB at its best. While a lot of the story revolves on Johnny getting thwarted at his every attempt to obtain his prize, but there’s some good gags of rejection at Johnny’s expense, while Fawcett herself has a classic line or two herself. While some of the adult humor present in this short will get trimmed down as the show goes along, this formula thankfully also gets cut down from appearing as frequently.
This short is also noteworthy in having a prototype of what would eventually become Carl, Johnny’s reluctant nerdy best friend (both guys would be reluctant to be friends with one or the other as the show goes on), who would appear in the next season. You’ll know what I mean when you see him.
Weak week, although the last short saved it. Even then, there are better “Johnny Bravo Meets _____” stories to be found. And I’ll just say that one of them is so good, you’ll see the guest star return a couple of times.
This week’s movie is entitled SHUT YER MOUTH!!!, and is also this week’s highlight. It came from the second short too, which is a tad surprising.
The Powerpuff Girls:
“Telephonies”
I’ll just say right now that I totally loved this one as a kid. I remember it being totally juvenile, which is probably why I loved it so much. Let’s see how it holds up.
Well, one thing’s for sure, this is a surprisingly one-joked cartoon for Powerpuff Girls. The concept literally just consists of the Ganggreen Gang making prank phone calls among the citizens of Townsville, most of all, the girls.
The catch is that the Gang fools the Mayor into leaving his post, and use his Powerpuff Hotline to convince the girls into believing that other villains are attacking Townsville, which leads into disastrous results.
And that’s pretty much it. I think I found this one so funny because the first time I saw it, when it originally aired, I was just discovering the wonderful world of prank calling. The first part with the Gang calling random people is still kind of funny, but it loses steam when they make their way into the office, since that’s really all there is to the short. Really, there just isn’t much to talk about with simple-gagged cartoons like this one. Either the jokes work or they don’t. Here, they kind of do, but not well enough.
But to stick to the positives, it’s a hoot to see the Professor during the short. Even better is to get the first time the day is saved by someone other than the girls. But I won’t spoil who does.
“Tough Love”
This one is a little different, however.
Tired of seeing the girls be adored by all of Townsville, Him decides to change everything, just cause. He unleashes a gas upon Townsville, which now makes the entirety of its citizens hate the Powerpuff Girls, including Ms. Keane, the Mayor and Miss Bellum, and even Professor U. Hell, even the narrator can’t stand ‘em.
This goes out-right crazy, as Townsville teams up to destroy the girls. Him just stands there and laughs as Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup lose their admiration. Will the girls be able to fight the citizens and save themselves? You’d be surprised.
What surprises me even more about this short, though, is how dull it is and what little I have to say about it. The show has plenty of strong emotional moments among its laughs, and you would expect a story like this to be proof of that, but nope. This short fails to be funny or dramatic entirely, which is a sight to behold.
And makes for a weak episode. “Telephonies” doesn’t hold up as well as I’d like for it to have, but it’s still the better short here. Oh well.
Big Billy fails at a prank call for this week’s highlight. Poor guy.
Ed, Edd n’ Eddy:
“An Ed Too Many”
For some reason, I remember this short not air that much for a brief period of time. The following story would appear more frequently on Cartoon Network, but there was a span of time of a year or two when as much as I’d watch the show, this short wouldn’t show up at all.
In a bit of theme recurrence from “Blarney Buddies”, this episode starts off with the Ed’s searching for a four-leaf clover. Just before Eddy finally finds his clover, they find a rare, exotic flower, which Double D ends up giving to Sarah, just as he and his buddies plan their next big idea- make a pizza at Eddy’s house. Don’t forget this gesture.
Because honestly, I could just watch an entire short of the Eds making a pizza. The three guys have developed as characters and in their chemistry well enough at this point to make such an endeavor work, and the brief bit of teaming up they do here proves that. Talk about comedic bliss, like the rest of the show.
Eventually, Sarah makes her way into the episode, as she takes Double D’s random gesture a bit more romantically than he did. That, or she remembered that creepy bit of exchange in “The Ed Touchables”, and decides to return the favor, and goes all crazy on her.
Sarah’s newfound affection for Double D puts jimmy into a funk, which leads into an uncontrollable anger, attacking random things as he sees fit, while also proving just how weak the guy is. Not like that’ll stop him from exacting his vengeance, though.
The rest of the episode consists of Ed and Eddy trying to solve this crazy dilemma by restoring balance among the Cul-De-Sac and earn their day back. Compared to a lot of other shorts I reviewed this week, this is a laugh riot with a nice soft center.
It also makes me hungry for pizza, even though I literally just ate a more appealing Italian meal as I write this article (chicken parm>all). If a piece of fiction makes you hungry by just implying the taste of a piece of food, you know it does a good job in appealing to you.
“Ed-n-Seek”
I’ve seen this short so many times that I was able to make a storybook out of it in my first grade class nearly verbatim. And I got an A for it. And did I mention that I was in first grade when the show and this episode in particular first aired?
This one starts off in Ed’s house, with the boys playing the best sport ever, couch fishing!!!! They don’t find anything, but they do end up catch Johnny and Plank play hide-n-seek, and catch Sarah inside a vase. Only on this show.
They go outside to see a full game being played all over the neighborhood. The Ed’s beg the gang to let them join in. They kids relent, on the condition that they’re it. This would be fine, if the kids didn’t sneak over to the home free tree whenever they get a chance to.
The Ed’s decide to pull the tree off and put it on a wagon, along with a pair of thermal goggles, as they go hunting for the kids. Their hunt goes well, except for one little hitch, and that hitch goes by the name of Jimmy.
But the Ed’s do catch him, and now it’s their turn to hide, in a hiding spot so good, they need to shelter themselves with a lifetime supply of food to share. Or supply of food to last for minutes, when you factor in Ed’s appetite.
However, egos cause this empire to collapse, and the Ed’s need to find a new hiding space from Jimmy, which works until the ending, which concludes with a wallop. And thankfully is full of great gags from beginning to end.
Good short. Both of them. I think I prefer “Ed-n-Seek”, for nostalgia’s sake, but these are both among the best of the week.
The Kanker’s token appearance in the second short makes for a memorable highlight, especially since they don’t drag it down at all.
Overall:
Meh week. Ed, Edd n’ Eddy was the most entertaining show as a whole, but my favorite short is still “Dee Dee’s Room”. It’s always a shame to see quality programming go downhill so rapidly, even if it’s just for one episode. Hopefully things will change, and I’ll be reminded more of why I love these shows so much in the very near future.