Spin It! (A Talespin Retrospective)

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes


XVIII. “Her Chance to Dream”

Baloo, once again ignoring his delivery deadlines to party it up at Louie’s, has his evening unexpectedly interrupted when Louie becomes "host to a ghost," a specter unleashed from a sea chest hidden in one of the wrecked ships out of which Louie’s place was built. The ghost quickly routs Louie’s customers, and a panicked Louie and Baloo flee to the offices of Higher for Hire, where Rebecca refuses to credit their story and assumes that it’s simply another excuse for Baloo’s tardiness. When the three return to Louie’s island, to pick up the cargo which Baloo left behind in his panic, they encounter one Captain William Stansbury, a dignified gentleman of nautical aspect; Baloo and Louie take an instant dislike to the mysterious stranger, but a mutual attachment quickly develops between Becky and the Captain, who seems intrigued by meeting a woman who owns her own “ship of the air” (i.e., the Sea Duck); ultimately, we learn that Stansbury possesses an aerial ship of an entirely different kind, and that he wants Becky to join him on that ship.

 
Written by Libby Hinson, with Karl Geurs as editor, “Her Chance to Dream” is arguably the best of Hinson’s generally excellent episodes. “Old Man and the Sea Duck” and “Jolly Molly Christmas” are its closest rivals, but neither of those cut quite as deeply, on an emotional level, as “Dream” does. I was stunned by it the first time I saw it, as it completely defied my expectations at every turn, and I appreciate it more and more each time I see it. I naturally assumed, when I began watching the episode for the first time, that the haunting of Louie’s place was some kind of Scooby-Doo scheme intended to drive him off of his island; I would have been surprised enough by the ghost turning out to be a real one, but then Hinson took the episode to yet another level. Instead of a battle with a menacing spook, culminating in the triumphant defeat of the menace, we get an encounter with a sympathetic ghost—but not the sort of benign ghostly encounter where the mortal characters find the ghost merely interesting, pitiable, or charming; this brush with the supernatural has real impact on our protagonists, particularly Rebecca, and leads to a climactic conflict centered on truly fundamental things--life, death, and love.

“Dream” is structured beautifully, with several themes and plotting threads being gradually introduced, carefully woven together, and finally converging seamlessly at the climax. Baloo’s neglect of his cargo-hauling deadline, and Becky’s harried fielding of calls from irate customers, isn’t just there to provide a basis for a comedic conflict between the two; it helps to highlight the day-to-day demands and frustrations of Becky’s life, and to give us an understanding of why she is drawn to the dream of leaving everything behind to sail the skies without a care. Similarly, Molly’s appearance early in the episode isn’t just there for the sake of a couple of cute jokes; it’s crucial to the story, in that it sets up Rebecca’s climactic realization that she cannot simply abandon her earthly life and must relinquish her dream.
 

Humor is another of the threads carefully woven throughout the episode; serious though the overarching themes of “Dream” are, Hinson provides plenty of verbal and visual comedy, first in Baloo and Louie’s Lou-Costello-like reactions to the ghost and then in their fumbling attempts to defeat the ghost despite his considerable supernatural powers. This too serves a narrative purpose beyond mere momentary laughs; the duo’s noisy antics form a counterpoint to the grave, dignified, and genteelly romantic demeanor of Stansbury, making it easy for us to see how Rebecca would be drawn to the gentlemanly Captain after having spent so much time putting up with the well-meaning but frequently loutish Baloo and Louie.



The episode’s humorous aspects also serve to make the climactic scene all the more dramatic in its contrast and unexpectedness; Hinson temporarily relaxes the tension with the comical-magical transformation of Baloo and Louie’s clothing into 19th-century sailor duds and with Louie’s excited efforts to read a spell that will banish the ghost—and then shifts gears to deliver a powerful emotional punch, with Becky first maintaining that she wants to stay with Stansbury and “be happy,” then receiving a tangible reminder of Molly, which leads her to renounce her dream by tearfully but decisively finishing the spell herself. What makes this scene even more effective is the fact that Stansbury expresses his understanding of Rebecca’s decision, instead of reacting like a thwarted villain; the wording of the spell (“Take to the heavens, illusionary ships, forever and always to sail the skies; now part from this world, on wings to arrive”) also suggests that this is really a release that frees Stansbury from what Tolkien called the “circles of the world,” a release that Becky cannot share in.


Becky’s reading of the spell, and Stansbury’s acceptance of the same, makes the climactic action not the rescue of the heroine from a designing bogeyman, but rather the sad but necessary parting of two sympathetic characters who have both realized that they cannot be together any more. To Hinson’s enormous credit, she does not try to dispel the tragic tone of the climactic scene with an insincere comedic fadeout; instead, she shows us Becky reuniting with Molly, and then closes out the episode on a quiet and bittersweet note, as Becky starts to tell Molly the story of her encounter with Stansbury, disguising it as a fairy tale.

Even the title of the episode feels tied into the story, unlike many of the more random puns and plays on words repeatedly used on the Disney Afternoon. It riffs on Hamlet’s “perchance to dream,” a line from the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy—which is about longing to leave behind worldly cares and griefs by embracing death. Hinson’s script isn’t anywhere near as explicitly dark as that soliloquy, of course, but the idea of the temptation to escape the frustrations of life by going to sleep forever (here symbolized by joining a ghost in an endless dream world) pervades the episode; Baloo’s earnest exhortation to Becky to “think of your life” during the climactic scene underlines the point that Becky would indeed be embracing death by staying with Stansbury.


The eerie and haunting visuals of the episode (the shadowy nooks and crannies of Louie’s abandoned establishment, the weird romantic dreamscape in which Becky wanders with the Captain and, especially, the ghost ship which provides the vessel for the climactic action) effectively complement the writing. The voice work is also excellent, with Sally Struthers getting a chance to go beyond her usual comically exasperated voice for Rebecca and convey real emotional conflict in the finale, and with multi-talented Disney veteran Peter Renaday (who provided voices not only in numerous Disney cartoons but also in many Disney records and even theme park rides) providing a resonant and compelling vocal performance as Captain Stansbury.

“Her Chance to Dream” is one of the premiere examples of how Talespin at its best could transcend its kid’s-show status and deliver episodes beyond the emotional or dramatic reach of Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, or Darkwing Duck, with stories that have as much, if not more, meaning to adults as to children. There’s enough action, color, and humor in ”Dream” to keep a child entertained, but the central themes—the never-ending stress and grind of life in the commercial/professional rat race that dominates our world; the dream of abandoning it forever, no matter the cost; the family ties and responsibilities that make such a dream impossible—are ones that would have much deeper resonance with adults than with children. I know that I would not have had anywhere near the reaction to this episode as a kid that I have as an adult; the finale brings a lump to my throat every time I see it. As I said in my preview note in the prior entry, Libby Hinson turned out a masterpiece here.


Up next: "Molly Coddled"

[Matilda]

The sympathetic sea-captain ghost who is a romantic interest for the living woman: definitely brings the 1947 movie "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" to mind. The plot doesn't have any other significant similarities. The widowed Lucy Muir does have a daughter, but there's no invitation for Lucy to join the ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg on a supernatural journey. Though they fall in love with one another, he removes himself from her life in order for her to find a living partner (she thinks she does find someone, but he's married and a jerk, which she fortunately discovers). However, the romantic ending is that when Lucy dies many years later, her spirit is met by the ghost captain, and the two walk off together into the mist.

So, not a rip-off or a remake by any means, but I still gotta think that the image of the sea-captain ghost as romantic lead echoes "Mrs. Muir."

[djnyr]

I've never seen The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, but I was aware of its basic plot, and I probably should have cited it as a very likely influence on "Her Chance to Dream." In addition to the similarities you point out, Peter Renaday (who was actually Cajun, but could do pretty much every accent in the book) gives Stansbury a British-sounding accent; Rex Harrison, the ghost of Ghost and Mrs. Muir, was of course British too.

Edit: Looking at the Wikipedia summary for Ghost and Mrs. Muir, I observe several more substantial points of resemblance to "Her Chance to Dream"; apparently Rex Harrison's ghost wants his old house to be inhabited by retired sailors and has scared away other tenants--this seems to be echoed in Stansbury's remark about Louie's place: "You call this an eating establishment? Looks to me like you've ruined a perfectly good sailing ship." Also, it appears that Harrison at one point convinces Gene Tierney's Mrs. Muir that her experiences with him have been a dream; in "Her Chance to Dream", as her interactions with Stansbury become more strange and unearthly, Rebecca convinces herself that she's in a pleasant dream before being forced to acknowledge the reality of her "dream" at the climax. 

None of this diminishes Hinson's accomplishment with this episode, of course; borrowing of story ideas is a good old tradition going back at least to Shakespeare, and it's what you do with the borrowings that counts; if anything, I'm even more impressed that Hinson chose to take a fantasy-romance-drama like Ghost and Mrs. Muir as the inspiration for an episode of a comedy-adventure cartoon show, and that she did such a good job tailoring that inspiration to the show's existing characters (I'm also impressed with editor Geurs and supervising producer Jymn Magon for letting her go ahead with such an unusual plot in a Disney funny-animal show).  While on the subject, I remember Don Rosa mentioning that he took inspiration from Ghost and Mrs. Muir as well, for the final scene of "The Billionaire of Dismal Downs"--which, incidentally, took me completely by surprise and had a sobering but uplifting effect on me as a child, not unlike the way in which as "Her Chance to Dream" affected me as an adult.   

[Matilda]

I totally agree with your last paragraph. The use of the image of the romantic sea-captain ghost from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir in no way takes away from the artistic accomplishment of the episode. It would if it seemed to be pasted in, but the plot and characters are all brought together so that the story develops believably out of the Cape Suzette setting. As you say, all the more impressive that Hinson did this--and was allowed to do this--in a Disney Afternoon comedy adventure show! It definitely gives Becky's character depth beneath the patterns of her everyday interactions. Like she's a real person or something!

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

Between a family move, a separate move of my own, and the start of a new job, I’ve been away from Cape Suzette much longer than I wanted to be. Hopefully, I’ll be able to update this thread a little more frequently going forward. Although it won’t entirely make up for the lost time, here is a double-episode post.

XIX. “Molly Coddled”

A slick crook named Covington double-crosses his partners in crime and makes off with a small wooden statue which holds the key to a treasure, then hides it inside the Sea Duck while being chased by his irate ex-associates along the Cape Suzette waterfront. In order to recover his prize, Covington visits Higher for Hire posing as a cultured gentleman-about-town, making a strong favorable impression on Rebecca. However, he encounters an obstacle in Molly, who finds the statue before he can get his hands on it, dubs it “Cara,” and adds it to her collection of dolls. That’s only the beginning of Covington’s problems with Molly, however; he subjects the charmed and unsuspecting Becky to a whirlwind courtship in order to provide cover for his attempts to snatch Cara, but Molly is determined to make sure that “Creepy” (as she dubs Covington) doesn’t get Cara or her mommy, and sabotages him at every turn. When Covington’s former partners re-enter the picture, he deflects their ire at him by convincing them to snatch Molly and exchange her for Cara, but the indefatigable little girl proves too much for the criminals to handle.



Written by Alan Burnett and Eric Lewald, and edited by Bruce Talkington, “Molly Coddled” is a light-hearted and enjoyable showcase for Molly. The episode touches on a weighty real-life problem—the conflict that can arise when a single parent begins a romantic relationship but the child doesn’t take kindly to the new adult in his or her life—but does so very lightly; Molly’s displeased reaction to Becky’s burgeoning romance with Covington is kept almost entirely on a comedic level, with Molly subjecting Covington to inventive pranks and Becky reacting with earnest reprimands that have absolutely no effect on Molly’s continuing bedevilment of the con artist. The emotional intensity of “Mommy for a Day” is absent here, although the scene in Molly’s bedroom a third of the way through, with Becky gently trying to explain to Molly that Covington is “special” to her, and Molly attempting to conciliate her mom without actually saying anything positive about Covington, is a nice quiet and emotionally believable moment of mother-daughter interaction. Molly’s maneuver for ending this conversation--promising that her dolls will try to learn to like Covington, but carefully omitting any promise that she will do so—also rings very true emotionally; in my experience, children often use odd little reservations and technicalities like this, to avoid conflict or to convince themselves they are not really being disobedient.



The scene described above is a good example of how the writers manage to make Molly the central protagonist of the episode while keeping her believably childish. Even though Burnett and Lewald both become best-known for their work on animated superheroes (Lewald as story editor on the fondly-remembered X-Men animated series, and Burnett in multiple production capacities on Warner Brothers’ numerous DC animated shows), the duo do a good job of structuring their story around an entirely non-superpowered little girl, allowing her to act as the prime catalyst of the action without ever making her seem mature beyond her years or freakishly strong (unlike the New Webby of New Ducktales). Her determined opposition to Covington takes believably childish form—sulky resentment, mischevious pranks (both of which are entertainingly exhibited during a funny montage sequence), shin-kicking, indignant verbal threats (“Just wait till I tell my mommy!”), and energetic running, climbing, ducking and hiding; she ultimately defeats him through sheer persistence more than anything else (“Don’t six-year-olds ever get tired?” Covington laments).
 

Burnett and Lewald do make a nod to superheroes, however--through Molly’s fascination with the “Danger Woman” radio show, which was first seen in “It Came from Beneath the Sea Duck” and is highlighted again here, with Molly alternately pretending to be Danger Woman or invoking the superheroine’s example as she deals with Covington. Amusingly, Molly’s colander-and-towel getup, which she wears when pretending to be Danger Woman, apparently approximates the heroine’s “official” costume closely enough for Becky to be able to tell the police (when describing the missing Molly) that she’s “dressed like Danger Woman.” I would have to conclude from this that “Danger Woman” has a helmet and cloak, which probably make her look more genuinely Grecian than her real-world counterpart Wonder Woman does.


Becky and Baloo take a back seat to Molly here, but are both well-characterized; Becky’s attraction to the dapper and smooth-talking Covington is very much in keeping with character traits seen in other episodes—her suppressed romantic streak and her resulting tendency to be deceived by impressive appearances; her devotion to Molly is also effectively highlighted, with Becky somberly renouncing her prior interest in “romance and adventure” as soon as it appears her daughter is in danger, and summarily telling off Covington when he reveals his true colors. Baloo’s own reaction to Covington is also very much in character—he initially groans over Covington’s high-flown flattery of Becky, then warms towards him when the con artist starts praising the Sea Duck and Baloo’s flying skill, then gets suspicious again later when Covington is overdoing his self-sacrificial pose in another attempt to get his hands on the wooden doll. Kit has little to do, but does share one funny scene with Baloo in which the two are hurriedly and furtively preparing for Becky’s inspection of the Higher for Hire offices.


Covington himself is amusingly voiced by Jim Cummings, who gives the character a British accent and entertainingly veers between Ronald-Colman-ish jauntiness, unctuous condescension, histrionic faux-nobility, and harried exasperation. He plays the character smoothly enough in the first half to make it credible that he could deceive the adult characters, then becomes more broadly hysterical as Covington’s schemes go awry. His on-again-off-again associates are given gruff, down-to-earth thuggish voices (by Ron Feinberg and Jerry Houser) which provide good contrast to Covington’s slickness; the respective species of the three crooks (Covington is a panther, while the other two are badgers) also serves to emphasize the slickness of the one and the roughness of the others, in a good example of how Talespin regularly used anthropomorphism as a good shortcut for establishing personalities.


The lost treasure which furnishes the machinery for the episode’s plot is pretty underdeveloped, with the origins of “Cara” and the treasure cave to which she provides the key going entirely unexplained; the cave and its lava beds do provide nice visuals for the episode finale, however--although “Skull Island”, where the cave is located, is so visually imposing that I would prefer that it had been saved for a full-fledged treasure-hunt episode instead of being treated as a throwaway.


“Molly Coddled” may not be a full-fledged treasure-hunt episode—but it is an enjoyable episode nonetheless, and demonstrates the Talespin writers’ general aptitude for handling child characters, more so than either old or new Ducktales. Molly is neither too cute nor too bratty, and is not too precocious either, which keeps her innocent but pugnacious battle against Covington from ever seeming cloying or obnoxious, and instead makes it entertaining to watch.

XX. “On a Wing and a Bear”

Baloo discovers that he has let his pilot’s license expire; he expects to be able to renew it without difficulty, but to do so he has to pass a flying examination. To his dismay, the examiner is Ralph Throgmorton, a precise and fussy official who was once Baloo’s driving instructor during the bear’s teenage years, and whose rigid, alphabet-based system of testing made Baloo so nervous that he flunked his driving test. Throgmorton’s testing system for flying has the same rigidity and the same disastrous effect on Baloo. Having flunked the flying test, Baloo seeks other employment, but keeps running afoul of Throgmorton, and the instructor’s equally precise and fussy granddaughter, in new lines of work. In the meantime, the price of gas is skyrocketing in Cape Suzette, as Don Karnage’s repeated hijacks of Shere Khan’s oil tankers have caused Khan to pass his losses off onto the consumers, among them Higher for Hire. During a last-ditch attempt to convince Throgmorton to give him another chance, Baloo stumbles onto the pirates’ hideout and, as a result of the subsequent daring escape, is able to resolve the fuel crisis, restore his own self-confidence, and even win the respect of Throgmorton.

 
Written and edited by Ken Koonce and David Weimers, “On a Wing and a Bear” is easily the best of that talented but erratic duo’s contributions to Talespin. Their other episodes—“The Time Bandit”, “Bearly Alive”, and “A Baloo Switcheroo” (not yet reviewed) were all based around familiar high-concept comedy gimmicks (a day is dropped from the calendar through chicanery; the main character mistakenly thinks he’s dying; two regular characters swap bodies) which could have been used with any set of characters—and which, in fact, were all used in episodes of other Disney Afternoon shows. The central storyline of “Wing” is less gimmicky and much more closely tied to the personalities of the Talespin characters—especially Baloo, who receives his best showcase since “From Here to Machinery,” over the course of a character arc which nicely demonstrates his characteristic flaws and strengths. He begins the episode in his usual cheerful and careless frame of mind--trying to sweet-talk his way out of a ticket, then cockily insisting it’ll be a breeze to get his license reinstated—only to have his confidence gradually sapped as he tries to make good in new lines of work, only for his comedic but frustrating encounters with the Throgmorton family to lose him job after job. As he starts to sink into excessive self-loathing (the recurring flip side of his usual cockiness), Kit, Becky and Louie help him relive past triumphs and encourage him to take one more shot at regaining his license, leading to the finale in which his white-knuckle, seemingly risky, but carefully calculated flying saves the day (in a nicely animated nighttime dogfight over the ocean), and allows him to triumph over the pirates and over Throgmorton’s by-the-book punctiliousness.
 


Koonce and Weimers, in “Wing,” manage to entirely avoid one of their frequent flaws—i.e., aggressively driving home a banal or obvious “moral,” as in “Duck to the Future” or “Down and Out in Duckburg.” The implicit moral of “Wing”—i.e., that the ability to improvise based on real-life experience is more important than rigid adherence to theoretical formulae—is never once stated in the dialogue; Koonce and Weimers instead let the characters’ actions make this point, unaided by heavy-handed verbiage. Admittedly, Throgmorton’s alphabetized instructional system, and his obsessive adherence to it even when being chased by pirates, is cartoonish enough that it could be called heavy-handed itself—but I would classify this as acceptable satire based on exaggeration of a recognizable real-life type, rather than unbelievable caricature; I have some actual personal experience of two different driving instructors who were nearly as rigid, fussy, confusing, and condescending, albeit without the alphabetizing.  Making Throgmorton a capybara is, incidentally, an inspired visual choice--he's small and rodent-like enough to immediately convey peskiness and pettiness, but portly enough to also convey dignified pomposity.  Ken Sansom, the voice of Rabbit in innumerable Pooh television cartoons, gives "Throggie" a snappish and precise voice to match his personality and appearance. 


Koonce and Weimers still engage in some of their characteristic overdone gaggery; the references to the “Doggie Lama” and “maraschino cherry bombs” during the otherwise nicely-animated flashbacks to Baloo’s past feats smack a little too much of the writers laughing up their sleeves, and the final visual gag is too Looney-Tunes-ish to be a comfortable fit with the more grounded Talespin world.  The pair of in-joke references to the "Bear Necessities" are more subtle and more appropriate, though the gag really didn't need to be repeated.  Koonce and Weimers’ off-the-wall tendencies, however, suit them well in handling the deranged Don Karnage—who makes his first appearance here since “From Here to Machinery,” and has a highly amusing and very much in-character bit of business in which, on a sheer egotistical whim, he insists on receiving an ordinary conspiratorial message in the form of a singing telegram (“I deserve the best!”) and bodily threatens the messenger into giving him the telegram he wants (“But I don’t sing… it doesn’t rhyme!” “I think that you do, and I think that it will!”)


Shere Khan also makes his first appearance since “Machinery,” and comes closer to being a conventional villain here than in most other episodes—in that we quickly learn he’s artificially creating his own oil shortage, thus justifying his exorbitant price hikes, by paying Karnage to hijack his tankers. This one-time team-up of two characters (Khan and Karnage) who are typically at odds isn’t fully exploited by Koonce and Weimers (we never even see them interact), but I’m thankful that it wasn’t used again, since having Khan regularly hire Karnage as a henchman (as in a number of the French comic-book adaptations of the show) would have diminished both Khan’s moral ambiguity and Karnage’s swashbuckling egoism. Happily, however, since Khan’s purely villainous side was not overexposed on the show, its exhibition in “Wing” makes him seem more ambiguous, not less. Koonce and Weimers (perhaps unintentionally) also give him a good character moment in which he feigns outrage over Karnage’s hijacks, commiserates with an irate Becky over her complaints about his fuel prices, and expresses sympathy for her resulting economic plight, all with uncharacteristic emotional warmth—only to quickly reveal, after Becky has left, that his display of sympathetic outrage was all faked. We’re left with the impression that Khan has such control of his emotions that it’s not possible for him to indulge in a genuine emotional outburst; there is cool calculation behind even his apparent warmth.


Becky also has some good character beats, both in her confrontation with Khan—in which she goes from blazing indignation to subdued resignation in the face of Khan’s faux-sympathetic declamations—and in her initially acrimonious but subsequently understanding interactions with Baloo; she chews him out vehemently for letting his license lapse, but then enthusiastically spearheads a “pepper-upper party” in an attempt to build up the despairing pilot’s self-confidence. Kit, Louie, and Wildcat’s contributions to the party are also very much in character, with the first two enthusiastically and knowingly reminding Baloo of past glories, while Wildcat, off-center as always, amiably but obliviously starts recounting a more embarrassing past exploit (this reminder of the aforesaid past exploit, however, proves the key to Baloo’s triumph at the end).


The basic structure of “Wing and a Bear” is not dissimilar to the fall-and-rise arc of another of Koonce and Weimers’ best efforts, the Ducktales episode “Hero for Hire.” However, the finale of “Wing” improves on that of “Hero” (excellent episode though it was), since Launchpad in the latter triumphed in large part through the bungling of his adversaries, while Baloo in the former wins out through his own wits and skill. Both episodes bear witness (no pun intended) that Koonce and Weimers could turn out quality work when they chose.

Up Next: The Thembrians come to Cape Suzette in “The Golden Sprocket of Friendship.”

[aldwayne]

It also helps that Khan's villainy in the episode isn't really all that over-the-top. He's using the air pirates by having them do things they'd do anyway to benefit himself/his company in exchange for him/his minion apparently paying them off. He's slick enough to avoid doing anything that would obviously incriminate him and send him to life in hard prison rather than a vacation in rich man's prison (which frankly is rather realistic when you consider how rather few mega rich men and major men in office have been legit arrested for criminal behavior rather than their patsies or proxies or goons).

[Matilda]

Just here to say that I love your description of Covington's voice! Also, I agree that the Talespin folks did a much better job of depicting a child realistically than did either DuckTales crew.

[djnyr]

Well, my once-a-week ambition for this thread is starting to look more like once-a-month now, but I will try to make up in quantity what I lack in frequency.  Three episodes this time!

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXI. “The Golden Sprocket of Friendship”

Cape Suzette is hosting the Friendship Festival, a sort of World’s Fair attended by delegations from many countries, and Baloo, with Kit’s help, is trying pick up some extra cash by selling hot dogs to the festival attendees. One of those attendees is Colonel Spigot, who is on a goodwill mission to present the Golden Sprocket, a Thembrian national award, to the people of Cape Suzette. Becky, meanwhile, wants Baloo to stop moonlighting long enough to deliver a piano to a Higher for Hire client, while Trader Moe and his Goons want to steal the Sprocket, and Sergeant Dunder just wants a chance to sample Cape Suzette hot dogs. All of these plots, plans, and preoccupations soon intersect, and quickly become entangled.


“Golden Sprocket of Friendship,” edited by Mark Zaslove, is the first of four Talespin episodes written by Stephen Sustarsic, who began as a live-action sitcom writer in the 1980s before coming to specialize mainly in animated television. Sustarsic’s Talespin offerings were all good, but notably divergent in tone and subject matter, ranging from a darkly humorous character study to a straightforward action-adventure caper to an action saga with supernatural overtones to an out-and-out comedy. “Sprocket” is the comedy among the four, and it’s an energetic, amusing, and deftly-plotted one. The episode is filled with entertaining visual and verbal gags, from the opening scene (the walrus Mayor of Cape Suzette trying to practice a speech while dodging a construction crew), to the climactic chase--one of those entertaining quick-cut comic action scenes more frequently seen in theatrical animation than in TV, with everyone pursuing and repeatedly ambushing each other as a coveted object rapidly changes hands. In between, there are many other funny moments, from the running gag with the unfortunate moose tourist to the darkly humorous revelation of the Thembrian penalty for losing an important award to Spigot's desperate attempt at stand-up comedy ("Ah...you've heard this one before?") 

 
 

There are also several nods to Laurel and Hardy’s films throughout the episode, with the troublesome piano evoking The Music Box and the recurring mistaken-identity confusion (arising from the identical hot-dog-themed mascot-style costumes worn by Baloo, Kit, and Dunder on one hand, and Trader Moe and the Goons on the other) calling to mind the L&H feature Our Relations. Sustarsic, and the animators, engage in a more direct homage in the penultimate scene, with an exasperated Baloo engaging in the finger-drumming that was one of Ollie’s recurring mannerisms. Speaking of the animators, while they support and enhance the script for the most part (particularly in the climactic chase), there appears to have been a disconnect between them and the writers regarding the abovementioned hot-dog mascot costumes; the characters talk as if all of the costumes conceal the wearers’ faces, but only one of them, a mustard-bottle getup worn by both Dunder and the gorilla Goon, is actually drawn in this fashion. Admittedly, the mustard bottle is the only costume involved in a mix-up actually essential to the plot—but the visual depiction of the other costumes undermines a couple of good gags which have first Spigot and then Becky mistaking Trader Moe for Kit; it’s hard to see how either of them could really make this mistake (unless this is just an example of the long-standing Disney tradition of characters being deceived by flimsy disguises).


The humor in “Sprocket” isn’t all slapstick and mistaken identity; a lot of the laughs derive from character humor as well. Sustarsic achieves excellent results by putting some of the regular and recurring characters into new combinations, and letting their established personalities take things from there. Baloo interacts with Spigot and Dunder on more or less equal terms (rather than encountering them on their home turf or backed by military muscle) for the first time in the series, and the interaction goes about as one would expect, based on what we’ve seen of each character in prior episodes: Baloo first plays on Dunder’s weakness for hot dogs and his pliable, eternal-follower personality in order to get the piano job done quickly, then realizes (with some prodding from Kit) that he’s gotten Dunder into serious trouble by contributing to the loss of the Sprocket, then (again with Kit’s aid) tries to get the sergeant out of the jam by playing on Spigot’s dread of the High Marshal and forging a temporary alliance to recover the Sprocket from Moe and his Goons. It’s fun to see Baloo, Kit, Dunder, and Spigot working, however fleetingly, as a team, and it’s impressive that Sustarsic was able to bring them into such this unusual juxtaposition in a way that feels completely true to their various natures.



Trader Moe (who, as in his first appearance, is not actually named) and the Goons are less prominently featured, but are also very much in character, with the Goons’ extreme slow-wittedness lending itself well to the mistaken-identity confusion that jumpstarts the plot. The Goons’ trademark echoing dialogue is also used to good effect, and, as in “Time Waits for No Bear” is delivered with perfect comic timing by Jim Cummings and Chuck McCann ("We're gonna steal it." "Yes, steal." "Yeah, we won't pay"). Becky has even less screen time, but is swept up in the climactic chase (taking a wild ride on the hot dog cart) and caps said chase with a sardonic and amusingly understated punch line.

The pervasive tone of “Sprocket” is so consistently humorous that the episode’s moral (friends don’t take advantage of friends, and even someone from behind the Thembrian iron curtain can be a friend) slides down painlessly, with Baloo first feigning friendship with Dunder for his own ends but ultimately repenting and befriending the sergeant for real. Sentimentality is avoided here partly by the fact that, while Baloo forms an actual friendship with Dunder, Spigot remains his usual selfish and egotistical self; the episode doesn’t unrealistically try to pretend that all Thembrians are perfectly swell guys. Besides, Dunder was always a likable character, despite being on the Thembrian side, and his friendship with Baloo feels like a natural outgrowth of his established personality, not just a one-time trait to point the moral. Interestingly, this trait was retained in subsequent episodes; while, in earlier Thembrian outings, Dunder had no direct interactions with the Cape Suzette crew at all, his friendship with Kit and Baloo was a significant part of more than one of the good sergeant’s later appearances.



“Sprocket” ranks high among the show’s out-and-out comedies; unlike some of the humor in such episodes as “Bearly Alive” or “The Bigger They Are, the Harder they Oink,” its absurdity never feels as if it’s been contrivedly pulled in from left field to make things wackier; wildly comic as the finale is, it comes off as the entirely logical outcome of the character-specific plots, plans and preoccupations set up at the outset of the episode.

XXII. “War of the Weirds”

Baloo wants a vacation, but Rebecca, fed up with his laziness and the constant prevarications that he always tries to use to justify taking time off, flatly forbids him. Inspired by “Space Riders,” Kit’s favorite comic book and radio show, Baloo then decides to launch a truly outrageous lie--pretending that he has been chosen by a Dr. Gesundheit (really Wildcat) to fly the Sea Duck to Mars (really the camping destination Lake Flaccid). Becky sees through the deception immediately, but plays along in order to set Baloo up for a bigger fall. She quickly intrudes on his lakeside vacation by requesting, via radio, that he bring back plenty of specimens of Martian flora and fauna; Baloo initially panics, but then feigns an attack by unfriendly Martians in order to provide an excuse for failing to comply with Rebecca’s request. Unfortunately, his elaborate radio message faking the attack is intercepted by the paranoid Colonel Grogg, of Army Intelligence, who heads for the lake with weaponry to tow to fight off what he believes to be a Martian assault on Earth. Becky eventually has to join forces with Baloo in faking a full-fledged Martian invasion in order to drive off the unhinged Grogg and keep the Higher for Hire crew out of trouble with the authorities.


Written by Len Uhley and edited by Karl Geurs, both of whom have some excellent prior episodes to their credit (including “From Here to Machinery” for Uhley and “Time Waits for No Bear” for Geurs), “War of the Weirds” represents something of an off day for both men. Although it ultimately proves entertaining as a whole, it’s built on a rather shaky foundation—in that it rests on what TV critics have called “idiot plotting,” i.e., a plot which only works if a character behaves in an uncharacteristically stupid fashion. Here, it’s not out of character for Baloo to come up with his cockamamie Mars-voyage scheme; we’ve seen him concoct some pretty far-out con jobs before. However, having him confidently recruit Wildcat to play rocket scientist Dr. Gesundheit for Becky’s benefit, instead of roping in an unfamiliar face to assist him as he did with Broadcast Sally in “Time Bandit,” simply makes him look too dumb. We, the audience, can tell that Becky will see through the charade right away, and of course she does; it’s never a good idea to have a character’s plan be thwarted by a flaw so obvious that the audience can see it coming a mile off. It would have been better to have Baloo at least try to recruit an alternative “scientist” before falling back on Wildcat, or, at the least, for Kit to point out the flaw in the plan and Baloo acknowledge it was a risky and unlikely-to-succeed ploy before going forward with it, then being pleasantly surprised by Becky's seeming acceptance of the ploy.


Obviously, the writers’ reason for having Baloo recruit Wildcat for his scheme is simply because they thought it would be funny to see the goofball mechanic attempt to pose as a foreign savant—and it is very funny, particularly when Wildcat keeps forgetting what kind of accent he’s supposed to have and, later, when he’s confusedly trying to figure out whether he’s supposed to keep up the impersonation or not. However, I prefer writers to contrive a story that logically achieves the funny result, rather than simply fudging a plot in order to produce a funny situation. My father would always become irritated, when watching McHale’s Navy, by the way in which McHale’s crew invariably assigned the key role in their schemes to the bungling Ensign Parker, who could be counted on to goof things up; the real reason for this, of course, was because that show’s writers and producers wanted to showcase the comic genius of Tim Conway, who played Parker, but there was rarely any believable in-story reason for the crew, supposedly accomplished con artists, to put their trust in Parker. The same holds true for the use of Wildcat here.



Once the idiot-plot contrivance has got things underway, however, the episode becomes good fun; the retro-futuristic faux-conversion of the Sea Duck into a spacecraft (“the Space Duck”) is an amusing visual, and the faked radio report of the Martian invasion (an obvious allusion to Orson Welles’ famous 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast) is creative and energetic, while the climactic Martian “attack” (involving fireworks, a witch-doctor mask, and guacamole, among other things) is even more energetically creative. Baloo and Becky’s interactions also become rather more interesting as the episode proceeds.  As mentioned, Becky, rather than simply explode Baloo’s trip-to-Mars story, plays along with the story in order to bedevil Baloo by demanding Martian specimens; this is later mirrored when Baloo, even though after he knows that Becky is aware the Martian trip is a fraud, chooses to flummox her by faking an invasion, rather than simply owning up to his prevarication. This escalation battle of absurd pretenses is reminiscent of the famous Groucho/Harpo mirror scene in Duck Soup; each person realizes that the other is pulling an obvious trick on them, but feels that it would somehow be against the rules of the game to simply confront the other—requiring both of them to keep on trying to one-up each other while staying within an absurd framework. This dynamic takes the balance of the episode beyond the idiot plotting of the early scenes and into the realm of the intentionally (and amusingly) absurd instead, with Kit serving as an entertaining common-sense chorus (“You’re both nuts”) in the same way that the Nephews would have functioned if this plot involved Donald and Scrooge instead. If the early scenes had been handled with the same level of acknowledged absurdity, rather than having Baloo unironically enthusing about the brilliance of his plan, they’d have worked much better.

 
Colonel Grogg, a scrawny, wild-eyed, trigger-happy military poodle, is also very much in the absurdist tradition, in this case the blackly comic absurdism of many Cold War satires. The character is more than a little over-the-top, but since he’s supposed to be essentially a more youthful and exuberant version of General Jack D. Ripper, being over-the-top is appropriate. Michael Bell, later the voice of Quackerjack on Darkwing Duck, delivers a suitably nutty, and entertaining, performance as the Colonel, alternating between maniacal glee, overstated clenched-teeth grimness, childish petulance, and sheer panic. He’s a sufficiently overbearing and ridiculous figure to keep us from feeling sorry for him when Baloo and Becky team up to hoodwink him and make him look crazy in front of his commander; given his dangerous antics, their deception practically feels like self-defense on their part. Having Baloo and Becky work together to fool someone else also puts a nice capper on their attempts to fool each other throughout most of the episode, and it’s particularly enjoyable to watch Becky drop her no-nonsense manner to indulge in all-out melodramatics for Grogg’s benefit.  Sally Struthers has a lot of fun with these melodramatics, as well as with Becky's string of dryly sarcastic remarks in the earlier portion of the episode, while Ed Gilbert gets to show his considerable vocal range when Baloo is impersonating the Martians, first over the radio and then in person.   
 

Visuals, voice work, and the sense of escalating absurdity make “War of the Weirds” pretty amusing overall, but the contrived clumsiness with which the writers launch their story makes it hard to ever quite forget that they’re calculatedly trying to be as amusing as possible, and as a result the episode never quite achieves the unstrained feel of the best comedies (animated or live action).




XXIII. “Whistlestop Jackson, Legend”

The swashbuckling old-time flyer Whistlestop Jackson, “greatest aviator of his day and hero to millions” (including Baloo), joins Higher for Hire as vice-president of the company, generating a rush of publicity and an inflow of new clients for a delighted Rebecca. Baloo is initially delighted as well, but becomes disappointed in his childhood idol when Jackson’s dashingly careless disregard of the intricacies of modern aircraft nearly wrecks both pilots and the Sea Duck; adding insult to injury, Jackson allows Becky to assume that the near-disaster was caused by Baloo. Baloo’s frustration with Jackson, however, is nothing to that of Shere Khan, who holds a grudge against the old barnstormer for beating him out of a mail contract many years ago, and who is determined to make sure that Jackson and Higher for Hire don’t deprive him of a new business opportunity, a fireworks monopoly in the nation of Klopstokia.


Written by Carter Crocker and edited by Bruce Talkington, “Whistlestop Jackson” is an example of quintessential Talespin, a surefooted combination of rousing action, character study, and humor that the other Disney Afternoon shows rarely pulled off but which the Talespin crew delivered again and again. The nuanced depiction of Jackson is the key to the episode’s success; Crocker demonstrates the ways in which Jackson fails to live up to his idealized reputation, while also allowing him to show the genuinely heroic qualities which earned that reputation in the first place. The character is depicted as a rather egotistical but exuberantly good-natured daredevil who’s got plenty of courage, talent, and charisma, but who has grown too accustomed to carelessly coasting along on his reputation, and who is unrealistically trying to ignore the fact that time has passed him by.
 

Jackson’s eventual acknowledgement, after being downed by Khan’s men, that he knows it’s really time for him to fade away, is genuinely poignant, and his subsequent rally (at Baloo’s urging) for one last aerial battle leads to one of the show’s most stirring climactic action scenes, with Jackson and Baloo dogfighting with Khan’s pilots while making a spectacular delivery of a load of fireworks in the skies above Klopstokia, to the accompaniment of the great Talespin aerial flight/fight theme.  Jackson’s subsequent farewell, after the battle is concluded, leavens the exhilaration of the action scene with a touch of bittersweetness; the bittersweet note (as in “Her Chance to Dream”) is even allowed to have the last word, with Jackson flying off into the sunset with a final careless laugh. The character design and animation of Jackson (as an unusually trim and dashing-looking bear, with a perpetual toothy smile) complements the character writing, and Hamilton Camp delivers an excellent vocal performance in the role, displaying plenty of boisterous braggadocio but also using a slight crack in his voice to signal the character’s advancing age, and conveying a jaunty dignity in Jackson’s moments of self-reflection.

 
 

Not only is Jackson a well-drawn character himself; the regular characters’ reactions to him are also well-drawn. Rebecca is pleased with him from a practical perspective (as his mere presence boosts Higher for Hire’s bottom line), and also respects his reputation so much that (true to her frequent form of putting her trust in impressive or romantic figures), she immediately assumes that Baloo is to blame for Jackson’s own reckless flying at the episode’s midpoint. Baloo is filled with childlike hero-worship and enthusiasm when Jackson first joins Higher for Hire, but his pride in his own aviation skill comes to the fore and makes him angry, for a time, with his erstwhile hero when Jackson’s recklessness threatens the Sea Duck and makes Baloo himself look like a bad pilot.  Shere Khan’s reaction is the most interesting and revealing of all; for the first and only time in the show, we see Khan harboring a personal emotion, albeit a negative one. His brooding dislike of Jackson, unusual as it is for him, feels completely believable: a cold, precise, calculating businessman like Khan would not be likely to forget it if a jovially careless type like Jackson managed to best him in a business deal, despite Khan’s superior abilities, by relying on personal charm and a big reputation.



As mentioned, there’s lots of humor in “Whistlestop Jackson, Legend” to go along with the action and characterization, including Jackson’s own flamboyant heroic posturing, the wild antics of the Sea Duck (with Jackson at the helm) in Cape Suzette’s harbor, Khan’s maintaining of rigid stoicism even when showered with exploding fireworks, and Baloo’s attempt to put Jackson on the spot by elaborately faking an injury. There are also a couple of nice unexpected in-jokes for fans (like me) of W. C. Fields’ movies, the first in the name of the country whose fireworks monopoly is being sought by Khan and Becky—Klopstokia, from Million Dollar Legs—and the second in the name of the Klopstokian government official whom Khan cuts an under-the-table deal with: Mr. LaFong, a moniker which comes from It’s a Gift. The sepia-toned newsreel sequence used to introduce Jackson was also probably intended as a classic-film reference—not to Fields this time, but to Citizen Kane.

Presenting a heroic character as comic and fallible, but allowing him to be a full-fledged hero as well, is always a tricky chore, and has become something of a lost art in the post-Simpsons world of cartoon cynicism and Flanderization; New Ducktales, my favorite punching bag, provides plenty of samples of characters being treated either as Designated Heroes (with designated flaws that are obviously not considered actual flaws by the writers--cf. that show's version of Scrooge and Webby) or Designated Idiots (who remain firmly pigeonholed as idiotic even when allowed a nominal heroic moment--cf. that show's versions of Launchpad and Kit). “Whistlestop Jackson” is a strong example of how Talespin regularly avoided that trap; with Jackson (as with Baloo and Becky throughout the show) the writers succeed admirably in depicting a protagonist who can be stupid and thoughtless at some times and quick-thinking and heroic at others—just like a real person.



Up Next: "A Baloo Switcheroo"

[juicymcduck]

“Whistlestop Jackson, Legend” is easily my favorite episode in the whole series. I’m not exactly sure why,* but it made a strong impression on me as a child — despite the most irritating verbal tic the French dub gave to Jackson. I remember my grandfather taping it for me on TV, and I still know most of the (French) dialogues by heart after so many years.

*I assume I just had reached the same conclusions as you, djnyr, although I couldn't put them into words at the time.

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXIV. “A Baloo Switcheroo”

An archeologist named Professor O’Bowens has chartered the Sea Duck to search for a valuable artifact known as the Idol of the Spirit Switcher. He finds it, but Don Karnage is seeking the ancient treasure as well, and O’Bowens is forced to hand the idol off to Baloo and Kit for safe transport while he attempts to decoy the air pirates. The professor warns Baloo and Kit not to look at the idol during a thunderstorm, but when a storm hits the Sea Duck on the way back to Cape Suzette, both bears inadvertently eyeball the artifact—and the idol lives up to its name, magically swapping their souls into each other’s bodies; Kit must now compete in an air race while Baloo must try out for track and field at Kit’s school. While they struggle to complete unfamiliar tasks inside unfamiliar bodies, Don Karnage plots another attempt to steal the idol—an attempt which goes awry and leads to another soul swap, between Karnage and Becky. Both swaps will remain permanent if not reversed before sundown, but a thunderstorm is needed for the reversal, and there’s not a cloud in sight.


Written and edited by Ken Koonce and David Weimers, with Alan Burnett also receiving a writing credit, “Baloo Switcheroo” is obviously inspired by the 1976 Disney feature Freaky Friday; most of the Disney Afternoon shows did at least one riff on this theme (c.f. Darkwing Duck’s “Trading Faces”, Gummi Bears’ “If I Were You,” and Rescue Rangers’ “Fly in the Ointment”---although that one also owed something to The Fly). Of course, the body-swap comedy-fantasy story is much older than Freaky Friday, and goes back at least as far as the popular 1882 British novel Vice Versa, by “F. Anstey” (Thomas Anstey Guthrie), which was very popular with Victorian schoolboys--due doubtlessly in part to its central theme of a complacent father, after admonishing his son to treasure his schooldays, being forcibly reminded, after swapping bodies with his son, of just how hard the life of a Victorian schoolboy could be.

Freaky Friday, P.G. Wodehouse’s 1930s body-swap comic novel Laughing Gas, and most other Vice Versa successors also touch to varying degrees on Anstey’s theme of gaining first-hand experience of another person’s problems and coming to a better understanding of those problems. Koonce, Weimers and Burnett give a nod to this tradition, but (as so often with Koonce and Weimers’ efforts at pointing morals), it’s rather half-hearted. There’s some bickering at the beginning between Baloo and Kit, with Baloo being dismissive of track and field (“Adults have bigger sports to play”) and Kit maintaining that “anyone can fly,” which sets up each character for their comic falls after the swap, when they attempt these activities—but this debate comes off as too obviously contrived for the purposes of this episode only; we’ve never seen Kit involved in school sports before (and never will again), and the sports are obviously included only because they allow for physical and visual comedy. Baloo competing in an air race feels a lot less contrived than the track-and-field subplot, and Kit’s enthusiasm at getting a chance to fly in the race instead and his overconfidence at the controls both feel in-character—but  also slightly off-kilter; the Kit shown in other episodes such as “Stormy Weather” or the later “Flight School Confidential” is more likely to believe that he, personally, was a great flyer, not to carelessly assume that “anyone” could fly. As is so often the case with Koonce and Weimers, you get the feeling that they prefer to shape the characters to fit a familiar formula, rather than shape the formula to fit the characters. With just a little tweaking, they could have set up a Vice Versa lessons-learned scenario that would have delved a little deeper into Baloo and Kit’s personalities and their relationship; instead of the one-shot gimmick of the track-and-field exercises, they could have had Baloo struggle with the mathematical ramifications of navigating a plane and realize how much he takes his young navigator for granted, while having Kit realize that, despite his eagerness to become a pilot, he needs a lot more experience to be as skilled in that department as Baloo is. These lessons would have resonated more effectively than the anodyne “flying is hard” and “track and field takes skill” points we’re left with.

 
All that said, Koonce and Weimers at least don't beat their generic morals into the ground; in fact, they effectively abandon them for sheer all-out wackiness as the episode progresses.  Instead of relying on the Baloo-Kit swap for their sole source of humor, they “plus” the gag (to quote comedy screenwriter Samuel Raphaelson) by orchestrating a second swap between two even more disparate characters, Rebecca and Don Karnage, and thereby creating an atmosphere of mounting insanity. Here as well, however, Koonce and Weimers don’t mine their situation as effectively as they could have; it’s fun to watch Karnage become more and more outraged as Dump Truck and Mad Dog hold him prisoner, attempt to flirt with him, and refuse to realize who he really is, while Becky’s disbelieving exasperation in reaction to her situation is amusing too--but it would have been hilarious if we had seen Rebecca actually trying to impersonate Karnage in front of his men, with the down-to-earth Becky trying grudgingly to ape the pirate’s over-theatricality (Koonce and Weimers milked a similar situation for excellent effect in the Magica-posing-as-Beakley scenes in “Send in the Clones” on Ducktales). With the idol in the pirates’ possession during the finale, there was an obvious opportunity for Becky to engage in such a charade in order to recover it, but this opportunity is allowed to slide.
 

The actual finale is still entertaining, though--a comedic but suspenseful sequence with our heroes trying desperately to create a thunderstorm through cloud-seeding while battling the air pirates and coping with the divide between their customary bodies and their customary skills. The ticking-clock device of the swaps threatening to become permanent lends nervous tension to the sequence, complemented by the visuals of the building thunderclouds. However, Koonce and Weimers being Koonce and Weimers, they can’t resist a slight undermining of the supposed irreversibility of the swaps by leaving two additional characters—who we know will be back to normal in their next appearance—stuck in each other’s bodies for the fadeout joke.

  
All this carping makes it sound as if I hated “Switcheroo,” but that’s not the case at all; it’s a well-structured farce that may miss most of its chances to actually explore the regular characters’ personalities, and which passes up a few seemingly surefire chances for humor, but which still delivers plenty of good laughs at a fast clip—from Baloo’s efforts to fly a heavy plane from inside a twelve-year-old’s body (“Uh-oh, mini-muscles!”) to the confused initial conversation between the swapped Baloo and Kit and the perplexed Becky (“I didn’t want to tell ya, but inside [Baloo’s] head is the mind of a child.” “Kit, you shouldn’t say things like that—even if it is true”), to Karnage’s outraged rantings when accosted by his henchmen (“Girly? What girly? Take your hands off me and slap yourself!”) The visual running gag with the unfortunate billboard painter during the air race is entertaining, too, as is the opening Raiders of the Lost Ark riff with the booby-trapped temple.  More verbal and visual humor derives from the swapped characters retaining their true voices, which has a funny effect, particularly when the animators modify the characters' usual body language to match their new voices--although this necessitates some suspension of disbelief in order to accept the fact that the other characters don't catch on to the switches (Becky convinces herself that her ears must be acting up, while Dump Truck and Don Karnage are apparently just too dumb to notice that a "skirt" is talking with their captain's voice).   

Professor O’Bowens, the  major guest character, is amusingly designed and voiced (by Patrick Pinney); he's a gangly simian scientist who dresses like Indiana Jones but whose attempts at swashbuckling posturing always quickly give way to timid nervousness. Kit's gruff grizzly-bear track coach and cocky young bear-cub rival are well-designed too, even if, as aforementioned, the track-and-field theme feels rather out of left field.  Wiley Pole, who played a larger part in “Bad Reflection on You” has a non-speaking cameo during the air race.


Koonce and Weimers would serve as story editors on several subsequent Talespin outings, but “Switcheroo” was their last screenplay for the show. It has more of a sense of real stakes than “Bearly Alive,” and its reliance on simple, out-and-out magic to set up its plot avoids the contrived plot machinery used to jumpstart both “Alive” and “Bandit,” but it’s nowhere near as good as their “Wing and a Bear,” where the emphasis really was more on character than on situation. “Switcheroo,” unlike “Wing,” remains firmly situation-driven, although the situation in question is a tried-and-true source of humor, and certainly doesn’t fail to amuse.

Up Next: "The Balooest of the Bluebloods" 

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXV. “The Balooest of the Bluebloods”

A lawyer arrives at Higher for Hire to inform a surprised and delighted Baloo that the bear is the long-lost heir to the barony of Bruinwald--and is now fabulously wealthy. The delighted Baloo immediately gives up the workaday grind, much to the dismay of the suddenly pilotless Becky, and takes up residence in the Von Bruinwald family castle. However, the family servants, Hans and Helga, soon inform him that the family wealth comes with a family curse: the previous twelve Barons have died in sudden and grisly ways, and, as the thirteenth Baron Von Bruinwald, he is now the target of the same curse that brought about their unexpected demises.


Written by Libby Hinson and edited by Karl Geurs, “Balooest of the Blueboods” is easily the least memorable of Hinson’s Talespin episodes; it’s not a bad outing by any means, but in comparison to Hinson's scripts for “Her Chance to Dream,” “Mommy for a Day,” “Old Man and the Sea Duck,” and “Jolly Molly Christmas,” it’s pretty weak tea, relying on knockabout farce and tongue-in-cheek old-dark-house scares instead of strong characterization or deep emotion. It appears that Hinson’s original script did devote some space to Rebecca finding it hard to replace Baloo and realizing that she had been taking him too much for granted.  This could have been a good character-based subplot, but it was dropped somewhere during the editing process, and the finished episode doesn’t bother to explore the potential ramifications of Baloo’s departure from Higher for Hire and instead simply uses said departure to jumpstart the comic-spooky antics at the Von Bruinwald castle.

A handwritten note on the first revision of the “Bluebloods” script apparently reads as follows: “Missed the whole point—lotsa business, often awkward, no plot or emotions.” Gregory Weagle, to whom I am indebted for this information (see the acknowledgements at the end of this post) speculates that this notation was by showrunner Jymn Magon, but it could just as easily have been by editor Geurs—or even by Hinson herself, complaining that her intended character touches have been lost in the revision process. Ultimately, the only “point” to the finished version of the story is the old Sword of Damocles/town mouse and country mouse moral: a life of luxury dominated by fear is inferior to a simpler but less fearful life—although even this point is more or less obscured by slapstick and humorous scares.


Hinson, however, does close the episode with a too-brief vignette that makes the generic point in an understated, character-specific way, and which--like her work in her best episodes--has a nicely authentic feel to it; we get a pleasant glimpse of Baloo and Becky enjoying a quiet late meal of hamburgers and fries in Becky’s kitchen apartment, while bantering genially in mock-upper-crust accents. I can envisage this scene being used to close out a more “plot and emotions”-focused episode, one in which Baloo and Becky have experienced moments of self-knowledge and realized that they need both each other and Higher for Hire. “Bluebloods” is not that that episode, however; the characters are too busy with running, chasing and wisecracking—all the “business” referenced in the handwritten note—to have any time for arriving at such realizations. Stephen Sustarsic, in the later episode “Save the Tiger,” would explore—to excellent effect—much of the ground that’s left untrodden in “Bluebloods,” using Baloo’s receipt of a different financial windfall to examine both his character and Becky’s, as well as Khan’s.


“Lotsa business” may be all that “Bluebloods,” has to offer, but that business is executed with panache; Baloo, and (later) Becky’s misadventures in the Von Bruinwald castle are—like all cartoon old-dark-house stories—somewhat reminiscent of Scooby-Doo, but they’re much more visually impressive, with Walt Disney Japan providing energetic character animation and some good shadowy, thunder-and-lightning effects. The episode is also paced much faster than Original Ducktales’ Scooby-influenced episodes like “Hotel Strangeduck” or “Back Out in the Outback,” and, unlike them, doesn’t make the mistake of overemphasizing its “mystery;” Hans and Helga, the culprits behind the “curse” on the Von Bruinwalds, behave suspiciously almost from their first appearance, and are unmasked well before the finale. This was well-advised; when you put the emphasis of a 22-minute cartoon on the ostensibly logical unravelling of a mystery, you’re more likely to encumber the too-brief story with needless red herrings and leave several plot holes that can’t be knitted up within the short running time (“Strangeduck,” for example, is full of both). Instead, the emphasis in “Bluebloods” is not placed on the riddle of the perpetrators’ identity but on their insanely baroque murder attempts (such as Cupid statutes shooting arrows, a kitchen equipped with self-flinging cutlery and a giant firepit, and a shark in the castle’s indoor swimming pool). The good guys’ efforts to evade these murder attempts become complementarily crazy as well, with Baloo ultimately faking his death and Becky invoking the Disney phony-disguise tradition to pose as an undertaker (using a name--Kadiddlehopper--and a comedic voice that both allude to Red Skelton). A lot of this humor, though pretty funny, is more in the wackier vein of Darkwing Duck than the typical Talespin episode (particularly the booby-trapped kitchen sequence, which was partially repurposed for Darkwing's pilot episode). 
 
 
More humor derives from Becky’s initial skepticism as to Baloo’s claim that he's been "cursed"; in the tradition of Abbott and Costello’s scary comedies, there are several bits with Baloo narrowly escaping menaces but being unable, after the fact, to convince Becky of their existence. Hinson and Geurs wisely avoid overusing this gag, however, and let Rebecca realize what’s going on refreshingly soon after her arrival at the castle. Wildcat is also on hand, but contributes nothing more than an amusing but rather pointless running gag (repeatedly wandering around the castle in a vain search for the bathroom) with a rather predictable payoff (he’s still wandering at the very end); it would have been better to “plus” the gag by having him wander on stage to assist Baloo and Becky at a key moment, then wander off again. Hinson’s original script had Molly, rather than Wildcat, accompanying Becky to the castle; given her success in handling that character in other episodes, I’d think that Hinson would have done something more interesting with her than using her for an equivalent running gag.

Stanley Jones’ dry British-deadpan voice for Hans (a badger) is amusing, while, as the more gleefully murderous Helga (either a possum or a rodent of some kind--with a peg-leg), Joan Gerber gets to cut loose entertainingly with an exuberant, maniacal, German-accented delivery, much more flamboyant than her proper Mrs. Beakley or even her more colorful Glittering Goldie. Ed Gilbert provides the only other guest voice in the episode, the supercilious avian lawyer Featheridge, using a stuffy and high-pitched voice entirely unlike his regular voice work for Baloo. No wonder Baloo's jocular mimicry of Featheridge in the closing scene sounds so spot-on.  


In previous episodes (“Her Chance to Dream”) and in episodes yet to be reviewed (“Old Man and the Sea Duck”), Libby Hinson was able to take what appeared at first glance to be standard cartoon plots and move them in entirely unexpected directions, but there are no surprises of this kind in “Bluebloods.” It’s a perfectly fine cartoon comedy-chiller, but that’s all it is.

Acknowledgements: I haven’t mentioned Gregory Weagle, blogger and Talespin fanatic, much in this series of retrospectives, mainly because it’s difficult to know how to describe his work without appearing ungracious. I find his “rant” style of summarizing episodes to be frustrating and almost unreadable, while his take on various characters and plots are frequently inexplicable, his habit of extrapolating “facts” from random message-board speculations makes him a frequently unreliable source, and his critical judgments on individual Disney Afternoon episodes regularly make me scratch my head (for example, he loathes “Duck in the Iron Mask,” one of Original Ducktales’ best episodes, but is full of praise for much weaker episodes like “Duckman of Aquatraz”). However, frustrating and questionable though much of his work is, he has assembled a good deal of information on the production history of Talespin. He has even obtained copies of some of Libby Hinson’s draft scripts, which I where I got the information about the handwritten notation, described above--but I wish he had reproduced scans online, rather than making it necessary to sift through his “rants” in order to glean information. Anyway, his updated “Bluebloods” rant is linked below:

cloudkicker.50webs.com/RantShack/TS/TS20.html

While on the subject of Weagle and “Bluebloods,” I should note that this episode is the source of the fanon name of “Baloo Von Bruinwald XIII” for Baloo, which has been spread assiduously around the Internet by Weagle and which was picked up by New Ducktales (via Wikipedia, I suspect). As with a lot of fanon, there’s nothing in the episode to support this; people can easily inherit property and even (in old Europe) titles from relatives with a different surname—and anyway, Baloo would not be so surprised by his legacy if he already knew that his last name was Von Bruinwald. Baloo’s surname in another episode (“Bad Reflection on You”) is given as “Bear,” which fits him a lot better and makes a lot more sense. I mention this admittedly minor issue mainly because it allows me to grumble at two pet peeves of mine: overenthusiastic fans who write ostensibly factual articles that treat their self-created canon as "official," and careless corporate “creators” who rely on Google searches to research the IP they’re mining.

Up Next: "Vowel Play." 

[Matilda]

Interesting to know that Darkwing's booby-trapped kitchen had a prehistory in this episode!

[djnyr]

Yes, it's interesting to trace the cross-pollination between Disney Afternoon shows; as we'll see when we come to the Talespin pilot, "Plunder and Lightning," it also contains several ideas that were reworked into "Darkly Dawns the Duck," while doing some borrowing itself from the Rescue Rangers pilot, "To the Rescue." In regard to the kitchen gag specifically, I'd say "Darkly Dawns" definitely took it to the next level; having Baloo attacked by toasters, flame jets, cutlery, etc. is an amusing visual gag, but having Darkwing inflict similar dangers on himself as part of his daily breakfast routine is not only amusing but a funny commentary on his character.

[paddywhack]

I was inspired today to rewatch Don Rosa’s two TaleSpin episodes, and came across this thread afterwards. I wholeheartedly agree that, despite Rosa’s own comments, “Ice” feels very much more Barks/Rosa than the relatively sitcomish and oddly-plotted “It Came from Beneath the Sea Duck.” Weird. Although he says that “Ice” was “altered totally” from his script, writers can be a sensitive bunch, and one writer’s definition of “altered totally” could be very different from another’s. So, who truly knows how much was changed? It feels to me like a lot of him survived onscreen.

My only other real note is that Charlie Adler’s Mad Dog voice is excruciatingly annoying. Between that and Mepps on Rescue Rangers, I wonder why Disney TV Animation in that era thought gratingly whiny henchmen were funny. Ick.

[Mesterius]

Jun 5, 2022 5:28:37 GMT paddywhack said:

I was inspired today to rewatch Don Rosa’s two TaleSpin episodes, and came across this thread afterwards. I wholeheartedly agree that, despite Rosa’s own comments, “Ice” feels very much more Barks/Rosa than the relatively sitcomish and oddly-plotted “It Came from Beneath the Sea Duck.” Weird. Although he says that “Ice” was “altered totally” from his script, writers can be a sensitive bunch, and one writer’s definition of “altered totally” could be very different from another’s. So, who truly knows how much was changed? It feels to me like a lot of him survived onscreen.

My only other real note is that Charlie Adler’s Mad Dog voice is excruciatingly annoying. Between that and Mepps on Rescue Rangers, I wonder why Disney TV Animation in that era thought gratingly whiny henchmen were funny. Ick.

Yes, "Ice" really is a lot better than "Beneath the Sea Duck". Whatever the producers changed or didn't change in Rosa's script, it worked.