Spin It! (A Talespin Retrospective)

[djnyr]

Mesterius: Once again, excellent point about the errors surrounding the term "pilot episode." I'll take pains to avoid that particular imprecision in the future. As for whether "I Only Have Ice for You" was the pilot in the true sense of the word, given the expense involved in the animation process, I doubt that any episode would have been animated before the executives gave the show as a whole the greenlight, and I also am doubtful that Magon and his crew would have solicited a script from a freelancer (Rosa) for a show that was still unsold (usually, the showrunners prepare the pilot themselves). Based on interviews with Magon, I get the impression that Talespin was sold to the execs through concept art and story pitches, not a finished episode. "Ice" was the first Talespin episode ever aired, though, being used to kick off the Disney Channel set of "preview" episodes, which may explain why takes pains to establish Baloo, Becky, and Don Karnage so effectively.

I do intend to cover the full-length movie version of "Plunder and Lightning"; I agree that it's definitely superior to the TV version, with extra scenes and bits of business (Karnage insolently snatching a drink at Louie's, the extended version of Kit's self-revelatory scene in the back of the Sea Duck, etc.) that flesh out the characters and make "Plunder" feel like a full-fledged movie, with a movie's pacing, rather than a more abbreviated TV episode. Cutting "Home is where the Heart Is" particularly damages the TV version; the sequence isn't just a musical number, but a key character-establishing moment for both Rebecca and Kit, and also the dramatic counterpoint to Baloo's "I'm Gone" song earlier in the show. Magon has frequently expressed his frustration with the fact that this scene was removed.

Matilda: Yes, the moments with the stocking and the nail file during the scavenger hunt did put me in mind of some of the absurd short Woodchuck/Chickadee stories from Western in the 1970s; Lewald and Talkington threw something of a messaging boomerang with those bits. Like Baloo immediately offering to give up his coveted Sea Duck repurchase fund to free the whale in the same writers' "All's Whale that Ends Whale", Becky's repurposing of vanity items as tools also doesn't ring true to the character--the Becky we know would read up thoroughly on the subject of scavenger hunting and would probably over-prepare herself by procuring every potentially necessary tool under the sun.

[Mesterius]

Jul 5, 2022 23:23:11 GMT djnyr said:

Mesterius: Once again, excellent point about the errors surrounding the term "pilot episode." I'll take pains to avoid that particular imprecision in the future. As for whether "I Only Have Ice for You" was the pilot in the true sense of the word, given the expense involved in the animation process, I doubt that any episode would have been animated before the executives gave the show as a whole the greenlight, and I also am doubtful that Magon and his crew would have solicited a script from a freelancer (Rosa) for a show that was still unsold (usually, the showrunners prepare the pilot themselves). Based on interviews with Magon, I get the impression that Talespin was sold to the execs through concept art and story pitches, not a finished episode. "Ice" was the first Talespin episode ever aired, though, being used to kick off the Disney Channel set of "preview" episodes, which may explain why takes pains to establish Baloo, Becky, and Don Karnage so effectively.

I can see your reasoning about animation costs, but even so, there are plenty of examples of animated shows that HAVE gotten full-fledged, half-hour pilot episodes produced before the commitment was made to do more. As an Inspector Gadget fan, that's a series that comes immediately to mind for me: the pilot episode was produced and aired on American television by itself in late 1982; and only after the distributor and investors were satisfied with its on-air performance, a full season of 65 episodes got greenlit. Concurrently from production company DIC came the Saturday Morning show The Littles, where producer Jean Chalopin has mentioned that ABC initially commissioned one half-hour episode, then when they saw the results they loved it so much they immediately ordered 12 more (i.e. the entire first season). And don't even get me started on all the failed pilots from DIC, such as Poochie, Defenders of Dynatron City, Battletoads, etc. etc...

(And yes, there are definitely examples of other studios doing half-hour animated pilots too. The DIC stuff is just what sprung to mind for me.)

When it comes to Disney cartoons in particular, I heard many years ago (not sure where) that a pilot episode for Goof Troop titled "Party Animal" was aired by itself in April 1992. I asked Mike Peraza about it on his blog back in 2010, and he replied that "Party Animal" was the "original pilot" and only aired once. His description of it sounded exactly like the regular-series episode "Axed by Addition", so my guess is it was very close to that episode -- maybe just the title was different. But it does sound like "Party Animal" was originally produced on its own. (However, it should also be noted that Peraza uses the word "pilot" loosely in his blog post, describing the opening storyline for Goof Troop where Goofy and Max move to Spoonerville as a "pilot serial".)

Regarding TaleSpin, you have no doubt read much more about its background and production history than I have. If interviews with Magon hint that concept art and pitches were what greenlit the full series for production, that's probably correct. Still, keep in mind that Rosa did not come up with the storyline for "I Only Have Ice For You" himself -- the producers gave him a synopsis to work from. And not only that, the script he wrote was "altered totally" before the episode was produced, according to his own comments. So it sounds like the showrunners were much more hands-on for "Ice" than "Sea Duck", the other episode penned by Rosa.

[djnyr]

That info about the Inspector Gadget and Goof Troop pilots is fascinating, Mesterius; it's my ambition to try and arrange an interview of my own with Magon one of these days, and, although it's still my impression from everything he and others have said that Talespin was not greenlit based on any one episode, if I ever get the chance I will make sure to ask him about that.  Now, let me (hopefully) justify my long absence from this thread by presenting the quadruple-length episode review I've been working on all this time.

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXIX, XXX, XXXI, and XXXII: “Plunder and Lightning”

The dreaded Don Karnage and his Air Pirates hijack a mysterious cargo from one of tycoon Shere Khan’s planes, but are hijacked in turn by the youthful urchin Kit Cloudkicker, who makes off with the pirates’ prize—a small box containing an apparent gemstone. On the run from Karnage, Kit literally crashes the island restaurant known as Louie’s, and encounters the carefree cargo pilot Baloo. Despite Kit’s initially prickly and secretive attitude, the two become fast friends, and Kit takes on the job of navigator for Baloo’s cargo plane, the Sea Duck. However, Baloo’s cargo-freighting business, which operates out of the great city of Cape Suzette, is in debt due to Baloo’s lazy and careless attitude; the bank forecloses on his plane and office, and then sells both to a young businesswoman named Rebecca Cunningham, who’s sunk her life savings into the purchase of this new venture and who is planning to build a life not only for herself but for her little daughter Molly. Retaining the services of Baloo, Kit, and Baloo’s mechanic Wildcat, Becky rechristens Baloo’s Air Service as “Higher for Hire”, and sets out to put the business on a paying basis, while a resentful Baloo tries to cope with this new situation. However, Becky’s plans and Baloo’s resentment both soon take a backseat to the menace of Karnage and his pirates—who are still determined to recover the lost gem and will stop at nothing to get it back, as it provides the key to a powerful “lightning gun” that will allow the aerial buccaneers to plunder Cape Suzette.



Written by Alan Burnett, Len Uhley, and Mark Zaslove, and edited by Jymn Magon, “Plunder and Lightning” would have been the first introduction to Talespin, its characters, and its world for everyone except those who had access to the Disney Channel, which (as I’ve discussed before) aired seven “preview” episodes during the spring and summer of 1990 before “Plunder” debuted on regular TV in September. “Plunder” not only succeeds as an effective introduction to the series, but as a really excellent full-fledged Talespin movie, with a movie’s structure and pacing. As aforementioned, while “Treasure of the Golden Suns” and “To the Rescue”, the multi-part intros for Ducktales and Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, consisted of largely self-contained episodes strung together by a connecting thread, “Plunder and Lightning” has a much more unified narrative, with the story gradually building to a climax and with each action sequence along the way serving to establish the characters, advance the plot, or both, instead of merely being used to fill out episode runtimes. For example, Baloo and Kit's jungle clash with the pirates during their first cargo run together is not there just to provide an action finish for what would become the first installment of the serialized version, but also plays a crucial role in the development of both characters—putting them on their quasi-father/son footing for the first time, by breaking down Kit’s guardedness towards Baloo and also demonstrating that Baloo, for all his cheerful selfishness, cares so much about Kit that he’s willing to risk his neck to rescue him and lose a valuable cargo (of “gorilla birds”) in the process.



The basic plot of “Plunder and Lightning” owes something to “To the Rescue”, in its gimmick of an apparent gemstone that is actually the power source for a superpowered weapon; the Darkwing Duck introductory episode “Darkly Dawns the Duck” would in turn borrow from “Plunder”, in having the villain relentlessly pursue an orphaned child who holds the key to the powerful gadget; this plot device also owes something to The Rescuers. The Talespin intro episode puts a new twist on the Rescuers-style plot, however, by having the fugitive orphan—Kit—not be a completely innocent victim; we learn part of the way through the episode that Kit was a fledgling air pirate himself and stole the gem from his erstwhile associates as a means of quitting the gang. This revelation is very nicely handled and gives rise to an excellent character moment, with Kit, even after he and Baloo bond, continuing to hold something back, until he angrily admits his past after repeated questions, and is then consoled by a cheerfully forgiving Baloo. The shadow of Kit’s past is used to good effect during the remainder of the movie, creating real poignancy when he’s forced to temporarily rejoin the pirates and causes Baloo to believe that the youngster has been simply using him all along; his association with the pirates also heightens the stakes of his attempts to thwart them from within during their attack on Cape Suzette—you know that Karnage will not let a “traitor” off lightly, and his eventual order to hurl Kit from the deck of the Iron Vulture is a genuinely chilling moment. “Darkly Dawns the Duck” gave Gosalyn a similarly dramatic near-death-by-falling at the hands of the villains, but it lacked the personal intensity of Karnage and Kit’s interaction here, since Taurus Bulba had no real past history with Gosalyn and was just acting according to standard villainous form. Unfortunately, Kit’s former piratical status was never referenced again in the series—a real missed opportunity, but I suspect some executive was nervous about the idea of continuing references to a child character’s criminal past. Bobbi Weiss, however, made good use of Kit’s backstory in several of her excellent Talespin tie-in comic-book stories.



Although the word “family” itself is only uttered once in passing (when Kit briefly mentions that he has none) during the entire 90-minute runtime of “Plunder and Lightning,” the movie's central theme is the need for family, and each of the main characters’ way of addressing that need. Baloo is happy with his complete lack of real ties as the episode begins; his only “family” is the Sea Duck, which demands little from him and allows him to avoid all other ties—a point that is established by the lyrics of the song, “I’m Gone”, which he sings at Louie’s in his first scene: “When life down here’s a thundercloud, I take off for the air/I soar above the madding crowd, without a single care!” This song number is not mere filler, but rather a clever summation of Baloo’s worldview; Kit’s disruption of the number, by crashing into Louie’s aboard his air foil, also is not just slapstick business, but a neat symbolization of the way that Kit will permanently disrupt Baloo’s self-proclaimed freedom from care, by giving him someone to care about.

 

Becky, on the other hand, is established as having genuine family ties from the start, in the form of Molly. Her song, “Home is Where the Heart Is”, which she sings to Molly as a lullaby, serves to underline her personality and worldview in turn—establishing that her aggressive business practices are not ultimately driven by greed but by the desire to build a home for her daughter; her song, in its emphasis on the permanency of the family tie (“There’ll always be a home for you/Here inside of me”), also provides the counterpoint to “I’m Gone,” which celebrated freedom from any ties. The “Home” sequence gives rise to a significant character moment for Kit as well; we see him peering in through the window as Becky sings to Molly, with a curious and thoughtful expression that emphasizes his longing for a family much more effectively than a dialogue scene ever could; the scene is perfectly capped when Becky picks up on his presence and knowingly leaves a cookie where he can find it. The whole sequence is so well-handled—moving without being treacly—and so central to the overall theme of the movie, that I share Magon’s indignation that it was cut from the television version.




This subtle emphasis on the characters’ need for family is so pervasive that the real third-act crisis of “Plunder and Lightning” is not Karnage finally getting his hands on the coveted gemstone, but rather Kit’s defection to Karnage’s side. His seeming betrayal is really an attempt to save Baloo and Becky from the air pirates, which feels like the type of desperate ploy that a well-meaning but troubled kid would come up with—i.e., making an extreme and overdramatic self-sacrifice in a panicked effort to protect the people he cares about. Baloo, who takes the betrayal at face value, also has just the type of bitter reaction you’d expect from an adult who’s avoided interpersonal relationships and only recently started allowing himself to care about someone else (“You let someone get close to you and they stab you in the back!”) Becky’s response to Kit’s behavior—she’s saddened, but refuses to believe that Kit has “gone bad”—is also spot-on; unlike Baloo, she has some actual knowledge of children, and also has the benefit of observing Kit’s longing look through the window during the “Home is where the Heart Is” scene (another reason why that scene should not have been cut—without that earlier interaction, Becky’s professed belief in Kit feels a bit more arbitrary in the television version).


Baloo’s subsequent hollow “celebration” at Louie’s, in which he sings and drinks by himself and over-heartily tries to act like he’s happy to be free of ties again, helps to underline the point—again, without ever spelling it out—that Baloo has been changed by his familial bond with Kit and can never really go back to the rootless cheerfulness of his introductory scene. Louie’s sad reaction to Baloo’s unconvincing conviviality is also excellent, the knowing pity of a veteran barkeep (“You keep saying that every five minutes, and you'll believe it in a year or two”). This surprisingly realistic depiction of our hero hitting rock bottom (you know there’s alcohol in the coconut mug that Baloo is waving around at Louie’s) provides a great lead-in to the emotional and dramatic highlight of the movie— which has Kit, aboard the Iron Vulture, trying to wreak havoc on the pirates’ incursion into Cape Suzette, and sending out a desperate radio message which is picked up at Louie’s and causes Baloo to snap out of his depression and single-mindedly set off to the rescue on “overdrive” speed, despite Louie’s warning that “you’ll melt your plane,” gunning the Sea Duck through the Cape Suzette cliffs, overtaxed engines aflame, just in time to save Kit from a deadly fall from the deck of the Iron Vulture. Animation, editing and scoring are exemplary in this sequence, with shadows and lighting creating a threatening mood, and some dizzying shots of the Cape Suzette bay accentuating the scariness of Kit’s plunge, while the intercutting between Kit and the pirates on one hand and the racing Sea Duck on the other creates a terrific sense of building tension and suspense.

 
 

The mid-air rescue of Kit provides the resolution of one of the third-act crises, but the other crisis—Karnage’s invasion of Cape Suzette—is resolved equally well, and almost as stirringly as the preceding race-to-the rescue sequence. In setting up the final battle with Karnage, the writers once again make their point—Baloo, Becky, and Kit all need each other—without ever once hammering it in. After saving Kit, Baloo, true to his “I’m Gone” philosophy, wants to cut out (“I’m no hero”), while Becky refuses to budge (“This is my home”); Kit casts the deciding vote by insisting on staying as well, and his stance drags Baloo into the fight. This sequence wonderfully demonstrates—again, without any explicit underlining of the point—how Baloo’s bond with Kit has made it impossible for him to ever be the carefree bum he was at the beginning of the episode, and how he has been reluctantly but surely drawn into the world of personal duties and responsibilities represented by Rebecca. The ensuing climactic action scene, with a rubber-coated Sea Duck setting out to destroy Karnage’s lightning gun, then allows us to see Baloo’s abilities at their peak, once he’s been pressured into actually using them; it’s Becky who comes up with the clever idea to give the Duck a protective coating of old tires to shield it from Karnage’s electrical weapon, but it’s Baloo’s flying skill that defeats the pirates’ fighter planes and finally wins through to the lightning gun itself, taking the weapon down and saving the city, although at the seeming cost of the Duck. Baloo’s whispered line “Sorry about this, baby” as he sets his beloved plane on a deliberate collision course is a truly poignant moment, comparable to Captain Kirk’s destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III, since we know how central the Sea Duck is to Baloo’s life (although, as with the Enterprise, we also know that its destruction won’t be permanent—as of course it isn’t). Baloo, however, would never have been able to perform this supremely heroic deed without Becky’s idea, or without Kit effectively forcing him to give that idea a chance--just as Becky and Kit would have been unable to defeat the pirates by themselves without Baloo’s flying. The three lead characters’ need for each other is thus emphasized, but by showing, rather than telling, and without a single utterance of dreaded cliché Saturday-morning-cartoon buzzwords like “family,” “teamwork” or “togetherness.”

 
 
Although the Baloo-Kit relationship is the emotional core of the movie, all the other regular characters receive good showcases too—as befitting the official introductory outing. Becky, of course, has the biggest role after Baloo and Kit; as aforementioned, her bond with Molly, her understanding of Kit, and her resourcefulness (as represented by the crucial tire-sheathing idea, as well as her sweet-talking manipulation of one of Karnage’s henchmen) are all highlighted, along with her creative but somewhat eccentric business practices (the gaudy trappings she furnishes Baloo, Kit, and the Sea Duck with on its first Higher for Hire run), her sharp-tongued sarcasm (on viewing Baloo’s unkempt office, she remarks “It needs a woman’s touch—or a bulldozer”; this gag was eliminated in the television version by unaccountably removing the second half of the line), and her comical love-hate relationship with Baloo—as epitomized by their running duel for possession of the “pink slip” to the Sea Duck, which Becky ultimately wins (and which calls to mind the tug-of-war over Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s discharge papers in Gunga Din). As for Molly, we get to see her adventurousness, imaginativeness, and mischievousness entertainingly demonstrated, as she stows away on Baloo’s cargo run, takes a turn playing pilot, and compels Baloo and Kit to permit her presence by hinting that otherwise she may let Rebecca know that Baloo is detouring to Louie’s. Molly’s emotional bond with Baloo—which feels like just the type of affection that often develops between a small child and a cheerfully indulgent adult—is also given more emphasis here than in most Molly-focused episodes of the series, with Molly intervening to exculpate Baloo of any responsibility for her stowing away, and Baloo taking care to be kind to her even when he’s bitterly walking out on Higher for Hire during the third-act crisis.

 

Louie, in addition to his reaction to Baloo’s empty partying, is given a few other good bits—avuncularly interacting with Molly, demonstrating his worldly-wise, jack-of-all-trades aspect by analyzing the “gemstone,” and indignantly standing up to Karnage’s invasion of his establishment but prudently subsiding in the face of the pirate’s weaponry. Wildcat receives a good comic introductory scene which establishes both his quirkiness and his near-miraculous mechanical ability (a trait that will be showcased much more frequently in ensuing episodes than it was in earlier outings); he remains in the background thereafter, but contributes some of his usual amusingly scrambled lines along the way (like his compliment of the refurbished Sea Duck: "Good as pretty and twice as new")

 

Don Karnage receives perhaps his best showcase of the entire series in “Plunder.” As usual, Jim Cummings and the writers give him a wealth of funny dialogue (“Allow me to introduce myself, a man who needs no introduction”; “This is Don Karnage here, speaking to you with my voice”), and the animators provide him with an array of amusingly overdramatic gestures and poses, as well as some amusing slapstick business.  However, he’s also allowed to be genuinely threatening, which was not always the case in the show’s regular-length episodes. His craziness is emphasized, but so is his cunning, as he carefully collects the parts necessary to create his lightning gun and smugly allows his uncomprehending henchmen to puzzle over his ultimate goal. His dramatic, supremely confident entrance to Khan’s captured cargo plane (in the opening scene) and his insolent saunter into Louie’s place help to build up his menace by making him seem supremely sure of himself, and his grimly vicious order to toss Kit from the Iron Vulture (“Drop him!”) demonstrates that, for all his engaging eccentricity, he can be ruthless if crossed. His funny and catchy “Sky Pirates” song number is more overtly comic than the other two songs in the episode, but in its own way it sums up his personality just the way that Baloo and Becky’s songs underline some of their essential traits. The number is provoked by Dump Truck referring to the pirate band as “robbers,” which infuriates Karnage (“We are pirates! Pirates, pirates, pirates! How often do I have to remind you?”) and drives him to emphasize in song the glories of the swashbuckling ideal of piracy (“Suave and dashing/sabers flashing/bodies crashing/molars gnashing”). You get the impression that Karnage feels a need to adhere to this idealized self-image not just for the gratification of his ego but also to convince himself that there’s something romantic and heroic about his criminality. His interchange with Kit, just before he orders the latter tossed to his (seeming) death, strengthens this impression, with Karnage loftily dismissing Kit from “my list of noble pirates” and Kit retorting “Noble? You’re nothin’ but a cheap crook, Karnage,” a remark which provokes Karnage to murderous anger.

 
Shere Khan is also given a strong showcase, with a lengthy introductory scene that allows him to proclaim his grim social-Darwinist ethos (“Business is like a jungle; you see, there are the eaters and the eatens”) while also engaging in a bit of dark humor, as he allows his collection of carnivorous office plants to menace a harried aide before finally coming to the terrified employee’s rescue in a very disinterested way. His subsequent appearances throughout the film continue to emphasize his icy ruthlessness, whether he’s coldly telling Becky that “I make my own rules,” or responding dismissively to an angry, broken-hearted outburst by Baloo (“Hmm, a very emotional man”). His reaction to Baloo’s apparently suicidal takedown of the lightning gun is also a great character moment, demonstrating that Khan does respect genuine competency without letting him break his imperturbable cool (“A pity; there was a pilot to be reckoned with”). His follow-up order to his own planes to drive the now-weakened Iron Vulture out of Cape Suzette shows yet another side of his character; he will freely use his power for the common good--so long as there is a benefit to himself in it as well.



The characters are not the only facet of the series given a full-length introduction in “Plunder and Lightning”; the show’s settings, aircraft, and other physical/visual trappings are spotlighted most effectively as well. The opening scene, with Karnage’s pirate fleet ambushing a Khan plane over an expanse of mountainous jungle terrain, provides at once a good intimidating visual introduction to the pirates’ weaponry and tactics and an enticing glimpse of the adventurous and exotic world surrounding Cape Suzette. The Iron Vulture is given a similar dramatic intro, accompanied by impressive music cues, and the Sea Duck in turn receives an extended initial showcase during the first aerial clash between the seaplane and the pirates’ planes. The pirates’ island headquarters, located in a network of ominous, torch-lit caves and tunnels, is depicted with great visual flair as well, as is Louie’s more hospitable island. Kit’s first visit to Cape Suzette is another visual highlight, with music and imagery combining to create a feeling of awe as Baloo gives the youngster an aerial tour of the great city; taking time to establish the splendor of Cape Suzette in this fashion helps to easily establish why Karnage is so obsessed with plundering it, and makes the subsequent climactic invasion of the city—with the lightning gun blasting buildings to pieces and citizens fleeing in panic—feel that much more devastating; the darkened, lightning-illuminated, rubble-strewn streets of the city under attack are such a contrast to the serene, well-lit metropolis seen in the earlier sequence.

 

Visuals are repeatedly used to underline characters’ personalities, as well; the scripting and the voice work aren’t left to do all the lifting as in so many modern cartoons. Kit’s introductory sequence—which has him snatching the gemstone from Karnage and then leading the pirates on a merry chase through the Iron Vulture until he makes a daring leap from the airship's "beak" and uses his airfoil to navigate the skies—is a nice, lively bit of animated business, but also helps to establish his daredevil personality with a minimum of words. Similarly, the sweeping and soaring maneuvering of the Sea Duck establishes Baloo’s virtuosity as a pilot by means of striking visuals as opposed to expository dialogue, while his impressively unkempt “office”, strewn with picturesque odds and ends, establishes his laziness equally effectively. Shere Khan’s dark, cavernous, foliage-filled offices, on the other hand, reinforce the jungle-predator aura that hangs about Khan and his business dealings.



There are flaws in “Plunder and Lightning,” as there are in all movies—the somewhat cartoony business of Kit unlocking Baloo and Becky’s handcuffs at the pirate lair was not really necessary to demonstrate that Kit is only pretending to join the pirates (we could have picked that up on our own); while it makes good dramatic sense for all three of the principal characters to be aboard the Sea Duck for the final charge against the lightning gun, only Baloo’s presence was actually necessary, and there should have been some in-story reason for Kit and Becky to ride along (particularly Becky, since if anything had gone wrong poor Molly would have been left to be raised by Wildcat); the switch in animation teams between the French unit (which handled the first half of the movie), the Japanese unit (which handled the third quarter of the movie) and the South Korean unit (which handled the final quarter) creates a few disconnects in character animation; everyone is more manic and expressive in movement in the first half than in the second half--sometimes effectively so, sometimes distractingly so.  The French style works best for the wackier characters, like Karnage and Wildcat; the expressions and movements of the more grounded characters like Baloo, Kit and Becky are sometimes more extreme than they need to be for purposes of the plot.


These flaws are pretty negligible, however, in view of the movie’s many, many strengths—well-defined and complex characters, exciting and well-animated action, striking and colorful animated locales, humor, and, above all, “heart”. That much-overused term seems to be trotted out in every promotional piece for every Disney product, but it’s truly applicable, here. There’s plenty of moving sentiment to be found in “Plunder and Lightning,” but practically no forced sentimentality. Magon, Burnett, Uhley, and Zaslove never once have their characters loudly proclaim how much they mean to each other, in the fashion of Original Ducktales or (more obnoxiously) New Ducktales; the emotional bonds between the characters are underlined in subtler ways—Kit sadly watching the sunset after he has seemingly driven Baloo out of his life forever; Baloo brushing off the threat of damage to his precious Sea Duck’s engines with a simple “I gotta save Kit”; Becky soothing Molly amid unfamiliar surroundings by singing her to sleep; Wildcat and the kids watching with obvious eagerness as Becky finally persuades Baloo to stay on at Higher for Hire. Without a single speech or line of dialogue heavy-handedly boosting the theme of “family,” Magon and his team nevertheless derive the movie’s great sense of heart from that theme; by showing how the proudly footloose Baloo, gradually and reluctantly, is drawn into an increasingly familial relationship with Becky, Molly, and (especially) Kit, and by demonstrating how that relationship ultimately prompts him to play the unlikely hero on behalf of all Cape Suzette, the writers make the unspoken point that real family ties, painful as they can be, can also change lives for the better.

 

Just as I would rank Talespin as the best Disney Afternoon series, so would I rank “Plunder and Lightning” as the best Talespin adventure—indeed, probably the best funny-animal adventure saga ever seen on the animated screen. Magon has called it his own favorite, and it’s truly an achievement that he and his crew should be proud of—and that certain latter-day Disney television animation crews would have been well-advised to pay more attention to.

Addendum: Of course, the best version—the “movie” cut—of this excellent film isn’t commercially available; there are copies floating around, but if you’re not able to track one down, the edited four-part television version is still much better than nothing. Clips of the most pivotal edited scene, the “Home is Where the Heart Is” sequence float around Youtube regularly (see below), and I would recommend anyone who can’t find the movie cut to at least watch that scene as accompaniment to the TV cut. As Mesterius mentioned on the preceding page, the only significant sequence that’s missing in the movie and present in the television version is a bit of comic action involving Baloo, Kit, and some pirate guards at Don Karnage’s island hideout, which is amusing but hardly an adequate trade-off for the “Home” sequence.



Up Next: "Citizen Khan" (after which we'll be more than halfway through)

[Mesterius]

Aug 1, 2022 0:32:29 GMT djnyr said:

That info about the Inspector Gadget and Goof Troop pilots is fascinating, Mesterius; it's my ambition to try and arrange an interview of my own with Magon one of these days, and, although it's still my impression from everything he and others have said that Talespin was not greenlit based on any one episode, if I ever get the chance I will make sure to ask him about that.

Ah, that sounds interesting. Whatever the case, it would certainly be great (if possible) to learn some more about what needed to be changed before the episode entered production, and why.

[Matilda]

djnyr, your review of "Plunder and Lightning" is stone-cold excellent writing, and I'm old-school enough to think it should be published on pages in a book. You have a great talent for clarity in your writing.

This review makes me mourn the fact that the movie cut is not commercially available. One more Disney thing that I wish so much were on dvd or otherwise available for sale. The loss of the "Home Is Where the Heart Is" sequence is very sad, and you point out how its absence makes Becky's confidence in Kit less understandable. Also, I agree that the removal of the "or a bulldozer" from Becky's comment on the state of Baloo's office is as you say unaccountable: not only do we lose the fine gag, but the truncated line has Becky buying into gender stereotypes with no ironic awareness to bracket them! And that's a poor reflection of Becky's character and stance in the world.

[djnyr]

Thanks, Matilda; I sometimes wonder if it's entirely sane to draft and re-draft these reviews the way I would a legal brief, so it's good to know the end result is apparently coming across effectively. Although I have a lot of points of disagreement with Geoffrey Blum, I am grateful to him for helping me realize, (through reading his Gladstone 1 text pieces during my childhood), that it's not silly or pointless to write about "funny-animal" stories with the same depth and thoroughness seen in reviews of "serious" fiction.

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXXIII: “Citizen Khan”

Baloo and Kit are transporting a cargo of kumquats over a long stretch of barren desert, and have brought Wildcat with them in case the Sea Duck requires emergency maintenance along the way. While passing the near-ghost-town of Boomstone, they are caught in an aerial speed trap and arrested by “Sheriff” Gomer, the foreman of the Boomstone silver mine and the self-appointed law in Boomstone. In his capacity of “judge,” Gomer sentences Baloo, Kit and Wildcat to hard labor in the silver mine, which has stopped producing silver but which is yielding yurgonium, a dangerous but valuable mineral that acts as a natural explosive. Gomer plans to keep all profit from the yurgonium to himself, and has deliberately omitted to provide notice of the new strike to the mine’s owner—Shere Khan. However, Baloo and Kit manage to trick Gomer into believing that Wildcat is Shere Khan himself, making an undercover check-up on the mine; this subterfuge frees our heroes from imprisonment, but does not get them out of danger—particularly Wildcat. Although the mine’s honest bookkeeper, Clementine Clevenger, takes a liking to the ersatz “Mr. Khan,” Gomer begins scheme to rid himself of his supposed boss, while the oppressed mine workers hatch a plot of their own against “Khan,” whom they see as the author of their wrongs. It will ultimately take an appearance by the real Shere Khan to sort out this tangle.



Written by Eric Lewald and edited by Bruce Talkington, “Citizen Khan” rather flimsily sets up Gomer’s initial mistake about Wildcat’s “true” identity; the mechanic acquires tiger-stripe-like smudges on his face after a mine explosion, which is enough to trigger Gomer’s paranoia about Khan, allowing Baloo and Kit’s manipulations to do the rest. However, the episode as a whole is very soundly structured, with Lewald continually introducing new developments instead of milking one situation for the entire runtime. “Citizen Khan” starts out looking like it’s going to by a simple rehash of the innumerable live-action TV show episodes in which the protagonists are victimized by a kangaroo court and must escape from a chain gang (pretty much every Western or action/adventure TV show had an episode like this, from the 1950s through to the 1980s). However, the story branches off in a more humorous direction with Wildcat’s pose as Khan, as Baloo assiduously attempts to keep Wildcat from accidentally giving the game away, Gomer assiduously tries to assassinate Wildcat, and Wildcat keeps veering between a sporadic, deep-voiced “dignified” pose (“Uh, billiards would be divine”) and his natural self (“That would hold better with a large wad of bubble gum.”)


Before the mistaken-identity plot can wear out its welcome, the story changes gears again with the miners taking Wildcat hostage, Gomer interfering with Baloo and Kit’s efforts to rescue him, and Clementine in turn interfering with Gomer’s machinations—by, among other things, placing a phone call to Cape Suzette which brings in the real Khan for the finale. Wildcat, in keeping with his loopy personality, is never quite in step with all these happenings around him, and his off-kilter responses to the other characters’ dialogue are very funny, whether in his interchanges with Clementine (“I am convinced nothing is too difficult for you, Mr. Khan”; “I draw the line at eating brussels sprouts”), Gomer (“How about a nice game of pool?”; “Sure, I love pool, but I didn’t bring my suit”) or the miners (“We work and starve so you can get fat”; “I thought I was putting on a few pounds”). However, he’s not an entirely clueless pawn in the episode either; he gets to use his mechanical wizardry to extricate all the protagonists from a cave-in towards the end, and also comes up with the idea of using kumquats to bring down the escaping Gomer in the final action scene. This action finale is another example of the episode’s solid structuring, as it provides a neat mirroring to the opening scene, which begins with Wildcat tossing spoiled kumquats out of the Sea Duck and segues into an aerial takedown of the Sea Duck by Gomer and Wendell in their “police” plane; the finale reverses the roles and has the Sea Duck taking down Gomer’s aircraft, while repeating the kumquat-tossing in a new context.
 

The Wild West desert setting, replete with boulders, cacti, and tumbleweeds, gives an unusual change-of-pace visual look to the episode; the one-shots characters’ outfits also emphasize the Western theme, as do the accents affected by those characters’ voice actors. Prolific voice actress Kath Soucie (who would later voice Morgana in Darkwing Duck), gives a good performance as feline guest heroine Clementine Clevenger, using a pleasant Southwestern twang that is not so exaggerated as to make her come off as a caricature. Clementine’s good-natured but spirited personality is as appealing as her voice; she figures as prominently in the episode as the regular characters do, progressing from merely criticizing Gomer’s high-handed behavior to actively interfering with his skullduggery, while developing a puzzled admiration for the unexpectedly gentle and kindly “Mr. Khan” along the way.


Gomer, the episode’s villain, is voiced with gusto by sitcom veteran David Doyle, whose coarse voice seems suitable for a porcine character; he makes the “Sheriff” suitably bullying and obnoxious without making him unfunny. His deputy, a scraggly coyote named Wendell, is voiced by the accomplished Frank Welker (in one of his comparatively few Talespin appearances), using a Pat Buttram/Dennis Weaver style whining drawl. Wendell is also the subject of a questionable running gag which has him inadvertently being blown up by the yurgonium; his repeated survival rather undercuts the idea that our heroes are in any real danger from the explosive mineral, even though the episode tries to evoke suspense on this point several times. The joke works best as the punchline of Wildcat’s unwitting billiards game using a yurgonium cueball, both because the billiards sequence is played partly for humor anyway and because Wendell isn’t quite in the immediate blast area. The later use of the joke, when Gomer is waiting to ambush Baloo and Kit during a jailbreak, is more jarring, since the scene is played quite ominously up until Wendell is exploded, and since the yurgonium projectile scores a direct hit on the deputy this time. I find it such Looney-Tunes-style gags rather out-of-place in a more grounded Disney series (Darkwing Duck would indulge in them frequently, but they fit that show’s style better than they do Talespin's).


The leader of the mistreated miners is a grim giraffe (voiced by Ron Feinberg) whose goatee and unexplained military beret feel like they have to be an allusion to something, although I’m not sure what; one of the other miners is, appropriately, a mole. The miners’ true boss, the redoubtable Shere Khan, only appears towards the end, but makes a strong impression, as always—reacting with bemused sarcasm to Clementine’s phone report of Mr. Khan’s kidnapping and making a menacing entrance into Boomstone to terrify the previously smug Gomer. His disbelieving disdain upon meeting his impersonator (“You mistook him for me?”) is amusing, and he ultimately gets to show yet another side of his eternally ambiguous character, fairly compensating (although with a hint of reluctance) Baloo for the lost kumquats in gratitude for the pilot’s aid in exposing Gomer, rewarding Clementine’s honesty by giving her Gomer’s former job, and disavowing any wish to continue mistreating the miners—albeit not for humanitarian reasons (“I desire only money and power; unpresentable employees provide me with neither”). The way in which Lewald and Talkington allow Khan to fill a benign function in the story without sacrificing his usual cold menace is a good example of how Talespin’s production crew always managed to avoid pinning Khan down as either a designated villain or a designated hero.


Like Wildcat’s mechanical contrivances, “Citizen Khan” holds together quite well, even if, like Wildcat himself, it never takes itself entirely seriously. Instead of forcing the characters into any preset plotting formula, it allows the personalities of the regulars and the guest characters—Baloo’s fondness for con-man manipulations, Wildcat’s cheerful obliviousness, Clementine’s conscientiousness, Gomer’s greed, the miners’ desperation, Khan’s ruthless efficiency—to drive the story along at a good and unpredictable clip to a satisfying conclusion.



XXXIV. "Double or Nothing"

Baloo accidentally breaks his favorite record, an antique handed down from his daddy, which plays a jazz number called “I Got Them Flat Broke Sticky Shoed No Banana Boogie Woogie Blues.” The only other existing copy of the record costs a hundred dollars, and when Rebecca, who’s heartily sick of Baloo playing the record at full blast while he works around the Higher for Hire dock, refuses to lend Baloo the money to buy a replacement, he turns to Kit, who has saved up fifty dollars of his own. Promising to double the skeptical Kit’s money for him and expecting to have plenty left over for the record, Baloo takes off for Moola-Boola, "trading center of the uncivilized world", where Trader Moe and his Goons are preparing to make a trading run with a valuable box. Baloo tricks the Goons into selling him the box and sets out with Kit to parlay it into a fortune through a whirlwind run of international trading, but the vengeful Moe is hot on their trail.



“Double or Nothing” is written by Bruce Morris, an animator and storyboard artist who worked on, among many other features and TV shows, The Great Mouse Detective; Karl Geurs, who wrote “Time Waits for No Bear,” the debut episode for Moe and the Goons, does editing duties. “Double” is a rapid-paced and effective comedy, although not as funny as the prior episodes with the Goons, mainly because the cast of characters is smaller; “Time Waits for No Bear” had Becky and Wildcat directly involved in the plot for additional comical complications, while “The Golden Sprocket of Friendship” used Spigot, Dunder, and Becky again to similar effect. Here, it’s just Baloo and Kit versus Moe and the Goons, with no involvement for any of the other recurring characters, so the range of gags is smaller, most of them deriving from Baloo repeatedly conning the Goons into helping him—first smooth-talking them into selling him Trader Moe’s cargo, later persuading them to throw Moe off a cliff (instead of Baloo and Kit), and finally facilitating his and Kit’s escape from a cell on Moe’s plane by getting the Goons interested in dancing lessons.


These Baloo-versus-Goons sequences are, in essence, all variations on one basic gag, but they are also all funny, partly due to amusing visuals but especially because of Chuck McCann and Jim Cummings’ well-characterized and well-timed voice work for the Goons. Cummings’ voice work as the murderously irascible Moe (who belatedly receives his “official” name in this episode, after going unnamed in his prior appearances) is entertaining as well, but he receives much more screen time than in his other episodes and thus his perpetual full-throated comic rage sometimes feels like a bit much; a more slow-burn approach to his irritation would probably have worked better in view of his extended exposure. Moe’s heavily-armed and fully weaponized airplane, seen here for the first and only time, makes a good humorous visual complement to his explosively bad-tempered personality.

 
The “trading” plot which provides the framework of Baloo’s encounters with Moe and the Goons brings to mind Barks’ "Maharajah Donald" and "Something Fishy Here", with its swift swapping of one odd asset (kung-fu fishing worms, a ferocious dog, umbrellas, clam shells) for another until an unlikely fortune is amassed. The trading also makes the pacing of the episode very brisk, with Baloo and Kit hopping from one quirky locale to the next—a settlement of Eskimo polar bears, a coastal village inhabited by lions who are allergic to cats, a desert city of cliff-diving hippos. The hippo civilization, with its macabrely humorous diving competition for the hand of the chief’s daughter, is the most enjoyable of these various destinations, although its visual look is more than a bit haphazard (the city looks Arabian, as does the chief's daughter's costume, but the chief himself wears a grass skirt while other hippos are dressed like the average Cape Suzette citizen).  An uncredited Howard Morris provides the voice of the hippo chief, using the Ed Wynn riff that he deployed as the genie in Ducktales’ “Masters of the Djinn.” The ailurophobic lion village is visually more consistent, with a sort of early-American look, but the inhabitants' reason for wanting to get rid of the cats is a little too silly (rather than having the entire town be allergic, why not just say the cats were playing havoc with the village’s fishing trade?).  The grim but fair polar bears are the most down-to-earth and least eccentric of the trading partners encountered here; their igloo village and Baloo’s bartering with them calls to mind Barks’ “Luck of the North” and “Zero Hero.”

 
The episode’s other location, the port of Moola-Boola, is not really explored at great length—it’s talked about as if it’s a sort of Mos Eisley cantina, but we only meet one of its inhabitants (and we also never learn why clam shells are worth big money in Moola-Boola, which feels like a definite lapse of imagination on the writers’ part, given how the need for the other trade assets was visually demonstrated). The only Moola-Boola denizen we meet, however, is a memorable one—a shifty, slippery husky-voiced rabbit named Bobo (voiced by Frank Welker), who peddles information to Baloo at the beginning (using a taximeter to keep track of his bill, in a cartoony but funny visual gag) and extracts an exorbitant price from Baloo at the finale in exchange for facilitating our heroes’ final escape from Trader Moe. Baloo’s resultant loss of the fortune accumulated through trading, in the tradition of the better Donald-makes-a-fortune stories, feels less like an arbitrary reset of the protagonist to his usual dead-broke status than like an appropriate karmic comeuppance—in this case, payback for the shady way Baloo initially acquired the goods which he parlayed into his short-lived fortune; there’s no hint that the cargo which Baloo conned the Goons out of didn’t legally belong to Moe, gangster though he is. 


“Double or Nothing” also resembles a Donald Duck get-rich-quick story in the way Kit serves as a warning chorus while Baloo goes about acquiring “easy money”; the Nephews filled a similar function in innumerable Donald stories of this type. Admittedly, Kit’s disapproval is driven more by the fact that he’s concerned for the return of the fifty dollars he’s invested in Baloo’s scheme; the Nephews, particularly in later stories, tend to object to Donald’s plans more on general principles than because they have an economic stake in the outcome. R. J. Williams perhaps overdoes Kit’s plaintive exasperation, screeching disbelievingly every time Baloo figuratively lets the money ride instead of realizing a quick profit, but it’s interesting to see the usually even-keeled Kit in a more comically frustrated light than usual. Although Kit is pretty cranky towards Baloo for much of the episode, the writers do ultimately palliate the sourness of some of Kit’s remarks, as well as the shiftiness of Baloo's initial borrowing of Kit's money, with a very well-handled ending: Baloo escapes Moola-Boola with only a hundred dollars and some loose change, and, true to his promise to double Kit’s earnings, hands the hundred over to him—only for Kit to turn around and surprise Baloo by buying the “No Banana Boogie Woogie Blues” record for him. This unsentimental but genuinely heart-warming bit serves to reassuringly reaffirm the bond between the two characters after  that bond has been stretched uncomfortably thin for much of the episode, and sends us out with a smile. However, pleasant as it is to see Baloo and Kit joyously dancing to the record’s tune, as someone who’s frequently dealt with over-loud music from neighbors or roommates (and as someone who shares Rebecca’s expressed preference for classical music), I can’t help but feel rather sorry for Becky at the fadeout, having to endure a cranked-up chorus of the “Blues” while vainly shouting for Baloo to “turn it down.”



Turning it down might have been advisable in regards to some elements of “Double or Nothing”—such as some of the noisier vocal acting or some of the more arbitrarily whimsical trade goods and trading locations, but the episode succeeds overall as a fast-moving comedy, with a breezy and rather cynical tone that recalls the Looney Tunes as well as some of Barks’ later ten-pagers--but without striking too cynical a note, thanks to the softening moment of heart at the conclusion.

Addendum: This episode would be the final bow for Trader Moe and the Goons in animation, but Bobbi Weiss would bring them back for another encore in “Idiots Abroad,” a funny comic-book story which did a surprisingly good job of capturing the Goons’ verbal humor without the benefit of Cummings and McCann’s voicework—as noted by Chris Barat in a complimentary letter (penned entirely in Goon-speak) to the Talespin comic’s letter column. I’m leaning towards reviewing at least some of the Weiss Talespin comic stories when I finish reviewing the actual episodes of the show.

Up Next: Molly and Wildcat meet the Thembrians in “Flight of the Snow Duck”

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXXV: “Flight of the Snow Duck”

Rebecca, hard at work in the Higher for Hire offices, asks Wildcat to babysit the imaginatively rambunctious Molly. Wildcat diverts Molly with a storybook about the adventures of a little girl and her heroic protector, the mighty Snow Duck.  However, the book sharpens Molly’s curiosity about snow,which she’s never seen, and causes her to stow away on Baloo’s cargo flight to Thembria, with Wildcat in tow. Molly and Wildcat’s subsequent sledding and snowman-building in the snowy expanses of Thembria is cut short when they’re arrested for wanton snowball rolling and frolicking without a license. At their ensuing trial, Molly’s cheerful admission that they were using their imaginations leads to an exemplary sentence, and they wind up in a prison camp alongside Baloo, who’s been arrested after a dispute of his own with the Thembrian officials. While Baloo makes repeated escape attempts, Molly determinedly trusts in the Snow Duck to come to the rescue—and ultimately, with Wildcat’s encouragement and mechanical skill, does in fact create a “Snow Duck” to get the trio out of the Thembrians’ clutches.


“Flight of the Snow Duck” was the first of four Talespin episodes written by Steve Roberts and edited by Duane Capizzi; they had written, both singly and as a team, for eighties cartoon series like A.L.F., C.O.P.S., and The Real Ghostbusters, and would go on to become regular Disney Afternoon writers, working on, among other shows, Darkwing Duck and the Aladdin series. Their work, both on Talespin and elsewhere, tended to be more fantastical than that of other Talespin writers such as Alan Burnett or Len Uhley, while lacking the deep characterization and emotional resonance that made some of Libby Hinson’s equally fantastical Talespin episodes so memorable. However, the Roberts/Capizzi collaborations were consistently fast-paced and enjoyable, and “Snow Duck”, the first of those collaborations, is no exception. That said, there are some whimsical but logically questionable elements in the episode that many of the show’s other writers would have steered clear of; for example, the Thembrians, who in previous episodes were given some kernel of a recognizable rationale for their tyrannically absurdist behavior (skipping a day in the calendar to avoid the people’s payday; obsessing over suspicious packages because of prior bombing attempts on the High Marshal) are depicted as amusingly but utterly insane here, particularly in their scenes with Baloo; the Thembrian customs official’s explanation of why their nation repeatedly buys, repaints, and sells (at a loss) the flamingo lawn ornaments, and his arrest of Baloo when the bear disputes his plane’s accidental but official classification as a “bird,” are funny but a little too nonsensical even for a Soviet-bureaucracy spoof.

The Thembrian charges against Molly and Wildcat are less arbitrary, but have a problem of their own—they turn the absurdist subtext of Thembrian totalitarianism into text. By making imaginativeness an official “capital crime” in Thembria, Roberts makes the country feel less like the Soviet Union satire it was in other episodes and more like the sort of topsy-turvy realm of generic institutionalized nastiness that you might find in a children’s fantasy story. The same point—that totalitarian regimes invariably interfere with fun, and abhor imagination—could have been made with equal force and much more subtlety by simply sticking to the initial unlicensed frolicking charge. Still, the basic idea of pitting Molly’s imaginativeness, one of her key traits, against the lockstep thinking of the Thembrians, was a good idea, even if it could have been executed with more finesse. The focus on Molly versus general Thembrian pig-headedness also provides a nice change of pace from the other Thembrian episodes, which focused on the adult protagonists’ clashes with Spigot; while Spigot does appear, he only receives a one-scene cameo, acting as the prosecutor at Molly and Wildcat’s trial--where he engages in some amusing cross-examination of Wildcat.


Like the portrayal of the Thembrians, the “Snow Duck” which our heroes use to escape from Thembria is rather fanciful, an airplane made of ice and powered by a repurposed air conditioner. I have a lot of doubts about the aerodynamic plausibility of this device, but there’s no denying that it’s a visually entertaining idea which leads to a fun and exciting climactic chase sequence with some engagingly creative moments—such as Wildcat using quick-freezing water to repair a damaged wing literally on the fly, a bit which feels akin to the “imagine your way out of trouble” theme of children’s books like the “Harold and the Purple Crayon” stories. The way in which the “Snow Duck” lasts just long enough to get the good guys back to the Sea Duck also calls to mind the sort of “Whew! Made it home safe just in time” conclusion found in the Harold stories and many other children’s books. While the ice plane does feel like the type of notion you’d find in a children’s book, it also feels like something you’d find in a very good children’s book.

 

Roberts and Capizzi’s fanciful tendencies make them a good fit for both Molly and Wildcat, the show’s two most fancifully-minded regulars. Molly, in her first extended showcase episode since “Molly Coddled”, is again depicted as appealingly cute and innocent, but not impossibly angelic; her endearingly naïve faith in the Snow Duck is balanced by her childish tantrum of despair when she loses faith in the mythical rescuer, and the pleading sweetness with which she propitiates the prison camp guard is balanced by the determination with which she later conks the same guard with a chunk of ice. The opening scene, with Molly scattering a startled Becky’s papers while playing Danger Woman, is also endearing, as is the scene where she helps Wildcat with the bigger words while he reads to her. Here as in other episodes, having a real six-year-old do Molly’s voice works wonders for the character; thanks to the naturalness of little Janna Michaels’ delivery, even her cutest moments (like her guidance of Baloo during the escape with strategies derived from the Snow Duck book) don’t feel fake-cute, as they easily could have even with a skilled adult voice actress. Libby Hinson would later take the theme of “Molly loses and regains childish faith” and develop it to much more memorable effect in “Jolly Molly Christmas,” but this first use of the idea works quite well, showing a new aspect of Molly that feels very much in keeping with everything we’ve seen of her—her imaginativeness, her temper—in previous episodes.


Wildcat receives some very good moments as well, and is allowed to be something more than the eccentric comedy relief for a change; his solemn reproach of Baloo after the latter has crankily shattered Molly’s faith in the Snow Duck—“That wasn’t very nice, Baloo”—is unexpected and interesting; it’s one of the only times in the series we ever see him seriously rebuke anyone, and indicates how his childlike nature makes him able to empathize with Molly more easily than a comparatively mature adult like Baloo can. Wildcat's subsequent cheerful encouragement of Molly, which leads to her conceiving the plan to build a “Snow Duck” airplane, is also interesting, getting across the point that the dreamy, off-the-wall thinking that makes Wildcat so out of step with everyone else also is the source of his mechanical creativity (“You’ll never make anything here [holding up his hand] if you don’t see it here first” [touching his head]). This scene also underlines the moral of the episode (Use Your Imagination, Kids!) in a non-heavy-handed way; it’s much more palatable to have a lovable goof like Wildcat make this point than to have it emphasized by a more serious and humorless character (as a kid, I always used to flinch a little when Mrs. Beakley would use her most schoolmarmish voice to point a moral on Original Ducktales).


With Molly and Wildcat the only other prominently featured regulars, Baloo becomes the adult in the room by default; the pragmatic side of his character, seen in earlier episodes such as “Spy in the Ointment”, makes him an appropriate foil to the whimsical imaginativeness of the other two good guys (as well as the illogic of the Thembrians). His pragmatism is illustrated chiefly by his repeated escape attempts, which are contrasted with Molly’s patient waiting for the Snow Duck to come to the rescue. The repeated failure of these escape attempts is played for laughs in an amusing series of Wile-E-Coyote-style blackout gags, but Baloo’s eventual frustrated outburst in response to Molly’s continual invocation of the Snow Duck (“There’s no such thing!”) is played quite seriously, as is Molly’s hurt, tearful reaction and Baloo’s subsequent shamefacedness; the scene plays like a very realistic clash between adult disillusionment and childish optimism. Although the protagonists’ successful escape on the “Snow Duck” vindicates Molly’s optimism, it’s worth noting that it’s Baloo’s outburst which causes Molly to stop passively waiting for rescue and craft her escape plan instead, which prevents the episode from feeling like a simplistic endorsement of imagination as a magical, all-powerful panacea; instead, the message seems to be that imagination can improve reality but that it must also acknowledge reality.



“Flight of the Snow Duck”, with its simplistic presentation of Thembria's anti-imaginativeness and the very fanciful craft which provides the means of the good guys’ escape, feels more firmly pitched at kids than the majority of Talespin episodes, but not in a condescending or stickily sentimental way. It makes its point about the power of imagination without overselling that power, features plenty of humorous but exciting action and some funny dialogue, and provides several good character moments for two of the show’s more underused regulars, Molly and Wildcat. With these two as the stars, the more childlike tone of the episode in fact feels rather appropriate, reflecting as it does the childlike personalities of both the little girl and the mechanic.



Up next: "My Fair Baloo"

[Matilda]

I appreciate your point about the importance of Molly's voice being that of a real six-year-old. That does indeed make her cuteness feel natural, not put on. The writers get credit for balancing her cuteness and naivete with her determination and temper, but the voice casting and Janna Michaels share credit for having her come across as a real kid.

And yes, Baloo's outburst plays an important role in spurring Molly to engineer her imagined rescue. A fine example of what the "self psychologists" say: that while empathy is emotional oxygen and necessary to healthy growth, a parent who is All Empathy, All the Time is *not* ideal. Lapses in empathy are also necessary to the child's growth--though the adult needs to acknowledge the failure, as Baloo does.

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXXVI: “My Fair Baloo”

Rebecca is eager to network with potential Higher for Hire shipping clients by attending the Cape Suzette Businessman’s Ball, which is held in the city harbor aboard the Spruce Moose, an airship converted into a nightclub. However, she has difficulty finding an escort, and ultimately, at Kit’s prompting, turns to Baloo, albeit with great reluctance. Although Kit and Wildcat try to give Baloo a crash course in etiquette, and although Baloo is enthused about getting to see the Spruce Moose, the pilot has a hard time fitting in with the wealthy and pretentious types at the Ball, much to Becky’s embarrassment. However, when gangster Owl Capone and his henchmen hijack the Moose and fly it out to sea, planning to rob the passengers and then make a getaway, Baloo’s lack of social savoir faire become unimportant, while his piloting skills become essential to everyone’s survival.

 
“My Fair Baloo” was written by Jeffrey Scott, a prolific TV animation scribe who penned an entire book (How to Write for Animation) on the subject, and who was, incidentally, the grandson of Moe Howard of Three Stooges fame. Jymn Magon himself does editing duties, which may have something to do with the fact that, despite this episode being Scott’s first outing with the Talespin cast, the character writing is sharp. Although the “uncouth character creates problems for more refined character at a social function” plot is a hackneyed one, it is not overworked here (the “social embarrassment” gags give way to the hijacking plot before they can wear out their welcome) and is well-suited to Baloo and Becky, meshing with the former’s well-established carelessness, and the latter’s well-established business ambitions, which make us sympathize with Becky’s frustration and embarrassment more than we would if she was merely dragging Baloo to the Ball for social-climbing purposes (as Daisy Duck might do). Having Baloo be awestruck over getting to see the Spruce Moose, and pondering over how much cargo it could hold rather than marveling at its glitziness, is also a good character touch which helps to keep his embarrassing conduct at the Ball from feeling like purely generic “slob among the snobs” humor. The subsequent scenes, once the hijacking plot gets underway, also showcase Baloo and Becky’s personalities to good effect, with Baloo’s caginess and flying ability being highlighted by surreptitious mechanical sabotage of the gangsters and an emergency landing of the Spruce Moose, and Becky’s courage and sense of responsibility being highlighted by her straightforward calling-out of the rich snobs whom she'd been trying to hard to propitiate, and by her persuading a disgruntled Baloo to come to the rescue of the same snobs one more time (as in “Plunder and Lightning,” Baloo is not quick to play the hero unless his friends or himself are in danger). Kit is only present in the earlier scenes, but is also well-characterized, with his assertive, hustling side preeminent as he first suggests taking Becky to the Ball himself, then pressing her into accepting the idea of going with Baloo, then frustratedly trying to coach the complacent Baloo in proper social decorum. Incidentally, Magon’s first name—along with those of most of the other male Talespin writers and editors—can be glimpsed on Becky’s list of crossed-out escort possibilities.


Magon also probably had something to do with the episode’s theme of social pretensions versus honest worth, which was also emphasized in Magon’s Ducktales adaptation of Barks’ “Status Seeker” and the earlier Magon-edited Talespin episode “A Touch of Glass.” The theme is a much better fit for Baloo and Becky here than it was for Scrooge in “Status Seeker;” Scrooge’s social fumbling in the French restaurant in “Seeker,” as both Chris Barat and GeoX pointed out in their reviews of that episode, was a little hard to credit coming from an international business tycoon, while Baloo’s social solecisms, on the other hand, feel entirely in character. Similarly, Scrooge’s climactic renunciation of the snobbish richniks (to borrow a term from Barks) at the end of “Seeker”, in order to preserve his relationship with his family and friends, doesn’t have the same dramatic or emotional weight as Becky’s above-mentioned fiery denunciation of the Ball attendees, in response to their ingratitude towards Baloo after he's saved their bacon. Scrooge, after all, has (to coin a phrase) “Wak You” money, and it’s really not going to make much of a difference in his life whether he obtains the respect of other rich folks or not—but wealthy clients represent lifeblood for Becky, the small business owner, and it’s thus a much greater sacrifice for her to burn her bridges with a group of such clients, for the sake of a friend.


The attacks on snobbery and class-consciousness are also not as heavy-handed here as they were in either “Seeker” or “Touch of Glass.” The rich characters are expectedly pompous and arrogant, and the species of some of the prominent Ball attendees provides a nice shorthand way of commenting on the unsavory aspects of the monied classes—the hostess of the Ball, Mrs. Rockafeather, is a vulture, and one of the other prominent guests (a stuffy and affected businessman named Herman Grapple) is a hyena. However, the plutocrats are not presented as completely cartoonish uber-jerks, just somewhat cartoonish ordinary jerks; their attitude towards Baloo’s uncouthness during the party is more annoyance than, say, the determined sadism of the rich party guests in Barks’ own “Knight in Shining Armor”—although their laughter at Becky for having no jewelry, even while they’re all being held at gunpoint by Owl Capone’s gang, is somewhat over the top. Their rudeness towards Baloo after he’s saved all their necks—but rumpled their dignity and scared them to boot—by crash-landing the Spruce Moose is unpleasant but entirely credible, but is also the subject of a shamefaced apology from Mrs. Rockafeather at the end; we even get to see Grapple engage in some awkward self-deprecation by jocularly repeating an insult Becky hurled at him earlier, while agreeing to a business deal with her.

Having Baloo and Becky thus managing to co-exist with the wealthy set, while recognizing that set’s limitations (as Becky tells Baloo when urging him to rescue the guests, “you’re better than them”) makes for a more realistic and mature ending than either having our heroes completely cut ties with the richniks or having the richniks turn out to be perfectly swell people. Additionally, the moral of the episode winds up going beyond the generic “snobbery is bad” moral of “Seeker” and “Glass” to make a more trenchant point: namely, that the pretentious monied classes are ultimately helpless without the unpretentious working classes; as Mrs. Rockafeather confesses to Baloo, “For all our money, the truth is we couldn’t change a flat tire.” This moral remains a very relevant one in today’s world, in which Rockafeather-style surface pretensions have largely been dropped by the well-to-do (pretty much every modern plutocrat likes to affect a regular-folks pose of some kind), but in which the wealthy classes are more than ever lacking in the real-world, down-to-earth skills which the members of the working class possess and which make it possible for the wealthy to maintain their insulated existence.


The only real flaw of the episode (other than a quick visual continuity error which makes Baloo appear to be in two places at once during the initial hijack) is the structuring of the climax; Baloo’s white-knuckle landing of the unwieldy Spruce Moose is such a well-executed and exciting piece of action that the subsequent final defeat of Owl Capone is so quick and easy that it winds up feeling decidedly perfunctory and anticlimactic, although it does continue the stealth sabotage theme of Baloo’s earlier actions aboard the Moose, and allows him to utilize his aviation know-how once again. It was admittedly necessary for narrative purposes to have one more danger arise after the crash landing, to give Baloo a chance to bail out the Rockafeather guests one more time and make them eat their words, but the climactic takedown of Capone should have been made a little more challenging.

 
Owl Capone himself is a one-dimensional but very entertaining one-shot villain, thanks in part to the old-school 1930s-gangster design of himself and his henchmen (which calls to mind Gottfredson's "Editor-in-Grief") but thanks especially to the voice work of Maurice LaMarche, a mainstay in Warner Brothers TV animation (he was the Brain of “Pinky and the Brain”, among many others), who makes one of his few Disney Afternoon appearance here; he uses a delightful Edward G. Robinson impression for the character (“Just like we planned it, see? Yaah”) which makes each of his appearances a lot of fun. The other guest voices are good too, with Michael Bell (the future Quackerjack) playing both the pompous Grapple and one of Capone’s henchmen, and Russi Taylor—sounding entirely unlike Webby—providing the voice of the overbearing Mrs. Rockafeather.


Over-familiar though the initial premise of “My Fair Baloo” is, Scott and Magon ultimately spin it into a pretty satisfying adventure, refusing to allow themselves or the characters to fall into the traps of sitcomish staleness or over-obvious social commentary.


XXXVII: “Gruel and Unusual Punishment”

Baloo is slated to take Becky to the Pilot’s Ball—but can’t fit into his tux. At Kit’s suggestion, he sets out to take a crash fitness course at the Elizabeth Tapir Center, an island reducing spa where “the big stars go when they get too big.” However, thanks to a mixup by Wildcat, Baloo winds up on Bedeviled Island, a tropical Thembrian prison camp. There, Baloo struggles with penal impositions which he mistakes for extreme reducing techniques, and is befriended by a fellow-inmate named Krackpotkin, an elderly Thembrian scientist who needs the help of a pilot for an escape plan—and for another, more ambitious plan of revenge on Thembria, which Baloo is unaware of.


“Gruel and Unusual Punishment” was written by brothers Mark Edens and Michael Edens, who both did a lot of TV animation writing for Disney and elsewhere (most notably the X-Men animated series). However, little of the Edens’ original treatment wound up in the finished episode; said treatment was extensively and significantly altered by Ken Koonce and David Weimers, who served as the episode’s editors. The Talespin “Animation Source” website provides the Edens’ first outline of the episode, which was initially pitched as a two-parter titled “Bedeviled Egghead.” The original story had Baloo trying to lose weight in order to get a pilot’s license from an officious quasi-Dutch nation (“Bangladutch”), as a prerequisite to landing a contract for Higher for Hire; when this was jettisoned, Koonce and Weimers apparently decided to crib from the prior episode in the production order, "My Fair Baloo" and recycle “taking Becky to a Ball” as a plot motivation, this time for Baloo's attempted weight loss.

The mad scientist’s master plan was also much more elaborate in the Edens’ draft, and involved Don Karnage and the Air Pirates (absent from the finished episode) in his scheme; reviewing the draft, one suspects that the two-parter would have felt like an over-ambitious inflation of a rather simple premise—although it would have provided the spectacle of Baloo and Karnage ultimately working together to thwart Werner Von Brain (Krackpotkin’s name in the first draft), which could have been a lot of fun. Still, it’s easy to see why Koonce and Weimers broke the two-parter down to a single installment; the story wasn’t really “big” enough by itself to warrant a double length, and, as Koonce and Weimers’ editorial notes point out, had no real “heart” to speak of (this criticism by Koonce and Weimers, though accurate, strikes me as rather ironic, considering the frequent emotional hollowness of too many of their own Disney Afternoon episodes). Incidentally, there’s a visual callback to the Jungle Book when Baloo floats down a tropical stream before arriving at the prison camp; Koonce and Weimers, who shouted-out twice to the “Bear Necessities” in their earlier “On a Wing and a Bear” probably added this gag in the editing process as well.

In the process of turning “Egghead” into “Gruel,” Koonce and Weimers gagged up the story in characteristic fashion, changing Von Brain/Krackpotkin’s original straightforwardly motivated scheme of flooding his home country (a Holland stand-in dubbed “Bangladutch”) in revenge for being sent to prison into a much wackier one—namely, destroying the “Glorious Thembrian Gruel Reserves” due to his frustration over being forced to live on gruel all his life. The replacement of Bangladutch with Thembria affected the episode in a much more significant way, however, and caused several plotting and continuity issues. First, giving the Thembrians an apparent colony in the tropics feels a little out of step with all the gags about their perpetually frozen realm and their ignorance of the world outside that realm, as established in the other Thembrian episodes (like their insistence in “Flight of the Snow Duck” that all flamingos are blue, not pink). Second, the prison camp commandant, Colonel Slammer (voiced in alternately bombastic and sardonic style by face-acting and voice-acting veteran Allan Melvin) is rather uncharacteristically cooperative for a Thembrian when Becky arrives to explain the misunderstanding involving Baloo’s incarceration—although that could be explained away by Slammer being so concerned about the threat of Krackpotkin’s plot that he’s willing to set aside typical Thembrian hostility to “Cape Suzette swine.”


Neither of these issues are really serious problems, however, compared to the issue created by Baloo’s inexplicable failure to recognize the Thembrians upon his arrival on Bedeviled Island. I am not a rigid continuity enforcer, but this is simply lazy and careless writing; If the Edens’ unfamiliar Bangladutch officials had been in charge of the prison camp, this problem wouldn’t have arisen. Having Baloo mistake a prison camp for a spa was already teetering on the edge of Hanna-Barbera’s more superficial comedy plotting (one can picture the idea being used for Huckleberry Hound or Yogi Bear), but having him fail to even notice that the Thembrian military—which he’s repeatedly clashed with in prior episodes—is running the “spa” pushes the episode firmly into “idiot plot” territory and keeps it there for far too long, as the writers work through some fairly obvious misunderstanding gags (a ball-and-chain is mistaken for an exercise device, a Bridge on the River Kwai-like hotbox for a sauna), along with additional gags about Baloo’s longing for food and frustration with his enforced “diet”. These jokes are mildly amusing, but it’s hard to get much enjoyment out of them when all the time we’re aware that Baloo has been uncharacteristically dumbed down in order to make the gags work. I get that Koonce and Weimers probably felt there was no time to introduce a brand-new foreign country in the pared-down version of the episode, but once they decided to jettison Bangladutch in favor of Thembria, they could at least have had Baloo mutter to himself upon his arrival on the island “Hey, those look like Thembrian soldiers—naw, it couldn’t be, they don’t come this far south”, which would have acknowledged the anomaly of a Thembrian tropical outpost and made the subsequent misunderstandings feel slightly less idiotic. Even better, Koonce and Weimers could have taken their retooling several steps further and made Wildcat, rather than Baloo, the central character of the episode; his characteristic obliviousness would have allowed him to carry this storyline much more believably and amusingly than Baloo does.


The episode does take a turn for the better about halfway through, when Baloo finally realizes he’s not at the Elizabeth Tapir Center. The ensuing firing squad sequence, with Baloo asking for an outrageously elaborate last meal and being saved from execution by one of Thembria’s chronic shortages (of gunpowder this time), is amusing enough, and is capped by a gloriously dark-absurdist line in the tradition of the better Thembrian episodes (“It’s against the rules not to die at your own execution; you’ll get another twenty years for that!”). After this scene, Krackpotkin’s escape/revenge plot comes to the fore, giving a much-needed sense of direction to the gag-ridden storyline; John Stephenson, a Hanna-Barbera voice-acting regular who typically played solemn human characters (like Jonny Quest’s dad Dr. Quest) does an effective and uncharacteristically humorous turn as the cunningly crazy mad scientist, giving him enough pathos to make his deception of Baloo believable but also indulging in some entertainingly cracked ranting. However, Baloo’s duping by Krackpotkin feels rather more irritating (particularly the gag involving the “mad scientist”/”bad scientist” misunderstanding) than it would in another episode, since, after Baloo’s extreme and hard-to-credit idiocy in the first half, the viewer is likely to have little patience left for yet another bout of cluelessness on the hapless pilot’s part, even though it would normally be understandable for the good-natured Baloo to be deceived by a seemingly pathetic and harmless old man—particularly after the old man helps him escape from prison. The climactic action scene is effective, though, with Wildcat doing some surprisingly fancy flying in order to save Baloo, and Baloo finally wising up and taking the wheel of the Sea Duck in order to save Thembria’s capital, after Krackpotkin has blown up the dam which holds the country’s gruel reserves. Spigot and Dunder make a late entrance to figure in this climax, and contribute the episode’s most genuinely funny moment when, armed only with spoons, they prepare to meet the onrushing gruel in a “hunger attack” (“Loss of appetite in the face of the enemy? Put yourself on report, Dunder!”)

 
By improving as it goes along and finishing up on a comparatively high note of action and humor, “Gruel and Unusual Punishment” manages to salvage itself in the end, but the jarringly contrived feel of the earlier prison-camp scenes—thanks to Koonce and Weimers’ careless, continuity-flaunting insertion of the Thembrians into the script—makes the episode one of the show’s most noticeably flawed entries. I think I would have, overall, preferred the original draft; the Edens’ script may have been overblown, but its two-part structure, with its emphasis on the mad scientist and Karnage’s crew in the second half, would have allowed the spa/prison sequence to feel like a mere prelude to the main business of the story instead of the story’s main raison d’etre—and, by having the prison camp run by a set of new characters, would have ameliorated the air of frustrating stupidity which hangs about that sequence in the finished version.


Research Notes: Below is the link to the Animation Source page which provides the backstory of this episode’s production:

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/articles/EXCLUSIVE-Bedeviled-Egghead-script/192198.html&id_film=9

Up Next: “Flight School Confidential”

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXXVIII: “Flight School Confidential”

Kit is starting to chafe at the idea of waiting several more years before he can acquire a pilot’s license. Although Baloo reminds him that he’s too young to fly yet, Kit attempts to operate the Sea Duck himself while Baloo is in Louie’s; the fallout from the resulting accident causes Kit to blow up at Baloo and sets off to seek a flying license in Thembria, where the age for flying has just been lowered to twelve. There, Kit joins a large group of young cadets at Thembria’s national flight school, under the tutelage of Colonel Spigot. However, he soon learns that Spigot has only recruited the twelve-year-olds as part of a face-saving scheme to prevent the High Marshal from finding out that the new Thembrian planes (ordered by Spigot) are too small—and that Spigot has no intention of actually letting any of the youngsters do any real flying. Kit rebels against this manipulation and sets out to prove he is ready to fly, but to do so he must reckon not only with Spigot but with his own inexperience.


“Flight School Confidential” was written by Martin Donoff, a rather mysterious figure whose only other credit on the Internet Movie Database is another Talespin episode. Despite his apparent lack of experience in comparison to most of the show’s other writers, he does a very good job with the episode, no doubt with some help from editor Duane Capizzi. Like “Flight of the Snow Duck,” also edited by Capizzi, “Flight School” makes a fresh use of the Thembrians by using them as a foil to one of the child characters, instead of having them clash with Baloo and Becky as in earlier episodes. Pitting Kit’s independent, fiercely ambitious nature against Spigot’s petty tyranny and the stolid obedience of the other Thembrians works well on both a dramatic and a comic level; Kit’s refusal to give up or run away despite the Sisyphean chores imposed on him by the vindictive Spigot provides a memorable demonstration of the strength of Kit’s passion for aviation and his general tenacity, while the lukewarm reactions of Kit’s Thembrian bunkmate Bobbo to Kit’s rebellious exhortations (“It’s about our rights as men!” “But we’re not men, Kit; we’re boys”) provide humor as well as a bit of insight into Thembrian national character.


Bobbo himself is an unobtrusively interesting guest character, the most humanized Thembrian seen in the series other than Dunder; his unambitious but commonsensical personality make him a good counterpoint to the fiery and somewhat reckless Kit, and their friendship feels like a genuine one, the type that often develops between a bold boy and a timid one. Like the regular child characters on the show, Bobbo is voiced by a real kid (Edan Gross, who possess a solemn, rather Linus-like voice), which accentuates the genuineness of his and Kit’s interactions. As for the aforementioned Dunder, he displays a kindly concern for Kit which maps well onto the friendship which he established with Baloo back in “The Golden Sprocket of Friendship”, while maintaining his characteristic "follower" mentality, as evidenced by his gently trying to convince Kit to stop butting heads with Spigot: “You know, you can’t win against him; he’s in charge.” Between Bobbo and Dunder, the point is unobtrusively made that many, if not most, Thembrians are not malignant, just far too regimented in their thinking.


As for Spigot, his anxiety about pleasing the High Marshal and preventing him from finding out about a discreditable snafu is relatable, while his refusal to let the kids operate planes is actually quite sensible (“You think I’m crazy enough to let twelve-year-olds fly?”) but his nasty, bullying treatment of Kit makes us want to see him get a comeuppance, nevertheless. Donoff, and/or editor Capizzi, showed solid story sense here; if Spigot had simply stuck to attempting to save face, his climactic embarrassment in front of the High Marshal and his subsequent “crueler punishment” would feel undeserved, but the overbearing and gleeful way in which he forces an exhausted Kit to clean and reclean an entire fleet of planes instead makes his humiliation at the end feel amusing and satisfactory. As in Spigot’s first appearance in “The Idol Rich,” the writers avoid the too-frequent pitfall (especially common in many Looney Tunes) of subjecting a comic antagonist to punishment disproportionate to his actual misdeeds.


Well-handled though the Thembrians are, the episode belongs to Kit; along with “Stormy Weather, “Plunder and Lightning,” and “A Bad Reflection on You”, “Confidential” ranks as one of the series’ best showcases of his personality strengths and flaws. His courage, resourcefulness and determination are highlighted through his defiance of Thembrian strictures (as aforementioned) and the means he finds of evading those strictures in order to take to the skies, while his recklessness and youthful overconfidence are also highlighted by his stubborn insistence that he’s ready to fly even in the face of mishaps which clearly show he’s not really ready to handle solo flight. By showcasing both Kit’s ability and his inexperience, Donoff and Capizzi avoid two different but equally bothersome plotting paths; it would have been very easy for them either to have Kit learn the banal and obvious lesson that kids shouldn’t fly planes, or have to have Kit prove all the adults wrong and flaunt his precocious skill in their faces (the former is the approach a 1970s/1980s Saturday morning cartoon would have taken, while the latter is the approach a modern cartoon would take).

Instead, the episode takes a more balanced and character-specific approach, by demonstrating that Kit does have a lot of talent but also has a lot to learn. This point is made primarily through action, not dialogue—both in the mid-episode action scene, which has Kit evading Thembrian tanks and piloting a small plane through the corridors of a building before finally crashing into Spigot’s office, and in the climactic action sequence, which has Kit successfully breaking away from the welded-together “Flounder” flight formation only for his flying to get increasingly shaky as he tries to control his plane by himself. Both sequences, in addition to being visually interesting and energetically animated, provide a stronger impression of the immature state of Kit’s aerial skill than dialogue scenes could have. Dialogue is used very effectively to cap the episode, however, underscoring the point that Kit’s skills are real but not fully developed by means of Baloo’s genial but cautious congratulation (“You’re gonna be a great pilot . . . but do me a favor and land so’s I can fly you home”) and Bobbo’s careful caveat as he delivers a farewell salute (“Kit, we’ll always remember you as the kid who flew a plane. Sort of.”).

 
The climactic sequence also provides a good character moment for Baloo, first when he dismissively insults and outflies the Thembrian forces in his hurry to come to Kit’s aid, and then when he talks a panicking Kit through a crisis and helps him to avoid a crash, maintaining a firmly positive but urgent tone and carefully avoiding any hint of panic or reproach—the ideal tone in the circumstances. This scene provides an interesting contrast to Baloo’s much more overemotional reaction to Kit’s mishap with the Sea Duck in the opening scene; he’s scared and concerned at first, then vents his irritation at Kit’s irresponsible action through gruffness and some sarcastic remarks. His behavior in both the opening and climactic scenes feels entirely in character—in the opening, he’s venting after a crisis has passed, while in the finale, he’s trying to manage a crisis as it unfolds, and is also acting less as an inexperienced would-be parent than he is as an experienced top-flight pilot. I would, however, have expected Baloo to put up more aggressive resistance to Kit’s announced departure for Thembria—instead, we dissolve rather quickly from Kit’s announcement that he’s leaving to his admission into the flight school; Donoff and Capizzi didn’t really leave themselves time for a “Stormy Weather”-style dramatic confrontation between the two.
 

I would proclaim “Flight School Confidential” as the best of the Thembrian episodes, if that didn’t feel like an apples-to-oranges comparison; unlike most of the other episodes to feature Spigot and his fellow-countrymen, it’s not primarily a spy-movie satire or knockabout comedy, but rather a character study of one of the regulars, with the Thembrians on hand to provide antagonism, humor and action as needed rather than to serve as the main focus of the plot. However, whether the episode is measured against the more typical Thembrian outings or against the general run of the show, it’s a very good effort by any metric.

Up Next: “Save the Tiger”

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XXXIX: “Save the Tiger”

Shere Khan’s private plane experiences an engine fire in mid-flight over the ocean, but Baloo and the Sea Duck happen to be in the vicinity, and the expert pilot is able to save the tycoon’s aircraft from a crash. As a reward for saving his life, Khan promises Baloo “whatever you want,” and offers him “all the time you need” to decide on just what he wants, on condition that he keep the entire incident a secret. Baloo asks for and receives enough money to buy back the Sea Duck from Rebecca—but, instead of admitting that this reward “settles the score” between himself and Khan, starts to pester Khan with further requests, causing Khan to realize that he made a serious mistake by effectively offering Baloo a blank check and unlimited time in which to cash it. Considering himself bound to honor his agreement with Baloo, Khan starts plotting to make Baloo voluntarily cancel that agreement, while the carefree bear lives it up on his dangerous benefactor’s bounty. In the meantime, Becky struggles to find a replacement for Baloo and the Sea Duck, while Kit, despite sharing in Baloo’s new-rich life, begins to miss the old days at Higher for Hire. When Baloo is kidnapped and held for ransom, Becky and Kit must somehow raise the money to set him free—and, by doing so, will ultimately set him free from his own self-indulgence as well.
 
Written by Stephen Sustarsic and edited by Mark Zaslove, “Save the Tiger” at first glance appears to be a riff on a familiar sitcom storyline—character becomes unexpectedly wealthy, but ultimately realizes he was better off poor—but winds up going much deeper than most such sitcom plots, using its shakeup (and inevitable reset) of the status quo not just for gags and an obvious lesson but for an excellent character study of Baloo, Becky and Khan, turning what could have been a thoroughly banal outing into one of the show’s best efforts.

In “Tiger,” Khan receives arguably his most memorable showcase of the entire series, with Sustarsic giving him some humanizing moments while simultaneously reminding us of his inhumanity, and also allowing him to concurrently play the role of Menace and Providence. Khan’s inhuman coldness and arrogance are highlighted from the start—for example, his insistence on keeping his debt to Baloo a secret (“I may be indebted, but I don’t want it known to everyone”), his rigid punctuality, and his dryly disdainful putdowns of Baloo (“How dreadfully uninteresting”). However, his sense of fairness, or at any rate scrupulous adherence to the letter of a business deal, is also emphasized, and we even find ourselves sympathizing with him as he slow-burns over Baloo’s increasing greediness and rudeness. The plan he hatches to rid himself of Baloo’s pestering then serves to remind us that, put-upon though Khan may be in this case, he is still as sinister and ruthless as ever—but it remains impossible to regard him as a simple villain, even after it’s confirmed that he was behind the kidnapping plot; his scheme, although entirely undertaken for his own benefit, ultimately rebounds to the benefit of Baloo and Becky as well, although it almost gets Baloo killed in the process. As I’ve said before, the closest thing to the morally ambiguous Khan that I can think of in the Disney funny-animal tradition is Barks’ early Scrooge, and even that Scrooge was usually a pure antagonist (“The Sunken Yacht,” “The Magic Hourglass,” many more) or, more rarely, a pure ally (“The Old Castle’s Secret”) in any given story, rather than benefactor and malefactor in a single story as Khan is here.


Becky also receives a strong showcase in "Tiger."  Her temper (when she’s chewing out Baloo for his mysterious behavior earlier in the episode) and her pride (when she refuses to directly ask Baloo to return to work for her, even with her business struggling) are both displayed, even while her better qualities are also highlighted.  Sustarsic shows us Becky's fundamental sense of responsibility, the deeper motives behind her tireless devotion to her business, and her ability to set those motives above the business itself, without making her seem self-righteous or impossibly selfless. Early in the episode, she explains to Baloo just what Higher for Hire really means to her: “a home, and a life, and—and everything that is important to me;” Baloo grumpily retorts that it’s really just money that is important to Becky—but she ultimately proves him wrong, demonstrating that “everything that is important” really means the people she cares about, including Baloo himself. This point is made, in an entirely non-soppy way, when she decides to sell Higher for Hire in order to pay Baloo’s ransom; she makes this sacrifice without any ostentatious dramatics, which makes it feel all the more momentous; the animation really complements the writing here, with Becky proclaiming “Ah, it’s just a dumb old business” while blankly swinging the “sold” sign back and forth with an expression on her face which conveys how devastating this really is to her.   

Appropriately, it’s learning of Becky’s sacrifice which motivates Baloo to make a sacrifice of his own by renouncing his windfall and returning to working at Higher for Hire. For much of the episode, the less appealing sides of his personality—his hedonism and laziness—are front and center as he wallows in gaudy luxury and cheerfully leaches off of Khan; unappealing as this behavior is, it feels entirely in character for him, as well as providing a general commentary on endemic human flaws—much like similarly selfish conduct by another individualized Everyman, Donald, in Barks stories such as “Maharajah Donald” or “The Golden Helmet.” As with Donald in “Golden Helmet”, Baloo’s ultimate renunciation of his greed and folly is much weightier than the “being rich is too dangerous/stressful/expensive” realization that motivates the protagonist’s return to the status quo in more superficial versions of the “new-rich hero” plotline (such as Talespin’s own “Balooest of the Bluebloods”). Instead, Baloo determinedly asks Shere Khan to restore everything to “the way it was” not as a scared reaction to his kidnapping and ensuing near-drowning, but rather as a generous response to Becky’s own generosity in sacrificing so much for his sake. Baloo's final restoration of the preexisting order includes voluntarily returning ownership of the Sea Duck to Becky; this abandonment of Baloo’s most cherished goal emphatically makes the point (without any actual dialogue to that effect) that Baloo has truly enjoyed a triumph over his baser side. The final lines in the episode, with Becky cheerfully responding to Baloo’s thanks with “You’d do the same for me, right?” and Baloo solemnly answering “I would now; I would now” puts this point across in a nicely understated manner, with Ed Gilbert’s thoughtful delivery establishing that Baloo has learned something about self-sacrifice without any actual dialogue to that effect.


Kit receives some strong character moments as well; it’s like him to move out with his surrogate dad Baloo when the suddenly wealthy pilot begins his new life, but it’s also very much in character for him to quickly get dissatisfied with Baloo’s idleness and start longing to revisit the Cunninghams at Higher for Hire. Molly has less screen time, but her wistfulness over Baloo’s departure and her joy when he returns on a visit, as well as her offer of her pocket change as a contribution to the ransom money, are excellent character touches. Wildcat is unexplainedly absent; I understand why he was omitted, since Becky could conceivably have kept him on as a substitute pilot and eliminated the subplot of her trying to find a new flyer, but there could have been one or two lines mentioning where he was while all this was going on.


In the midst of all its character explorations, “Save the Tiger” doesn’t forget to be funny; Baloo’s unconvincing explanations to Becky regarding his sudden wealth, Khan’s sarcastic remarks to Baloo, Baloo's eccentric uses of his wealth (like placing a tennis court atop the Sea Duck), the scenes with Becky’s neurotic substitute pilot “Joe the Barber” (whose amusing voice is provided by Patrick Zimmerman and whose nickname is explained by a good visual gag), the slapstick injuries which the stubborn Baloo inflicts on his kidnappers, and Kit and Becky’s encounter with an opportunistic hobo while attempting to deliver the ransom money all provide plenty of laughs. There’s a bit of action too, thanks to the opening air rescue by Baloo and a climactic runaway motorboat rescue by Becky; although the latter scene is not as spectacular as many of Talespin’s finales, the episode does not suffer one bit by the lack of any “big” action scenes: its character arcs are so strong that it remains engrossing, and rewarding, from start to finish.



Up Next: Libby Hinson returns with "The Old Man and the Sea Duck"

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XL: “The Old Man and the Sea Duck”

Running late after a stop at Louie’s for burgers and fries, Baloo and Kit take a disastrous shortcut through the dangerous Miracle Pass (so named because “if you make it, it’s a miracle”). Baloo’s white-knuckle piloting brings the Sea Duck through, but he sustains a serious blow to the head in the process—which causes him to forget how to fly a plane. Kit and Wildcat accompany him on his next cargo flight and try to rekindle his memories, but this plan goes awry when the Sea Duck encounters a storm which separates Baloo from his friends and sends him careening into the wilds at the helm of a plane which he no longer knows how to pilot. However, a voice on the radio comes to his aid and talks him down at a desert landing field; there, he meets the owner of the voice, a lame-legged old pilot named Joe McGee, who operates a flying school located in a desert canyon, and who takes up the task of overcoming Baloo’s mental block and helping him to rediscover not only the skill but the joy of flying.


Written by Libby Hinson and edited by Karl Geurs, “The Old Man and the Sea Duck” ranks alongside “Her Chance to Dream” (the product of the same writer-editor team) as one of the greatest Talespin episodes. As in “Dream,” which opened with what appeared to be standardized Scooby-Doo spookery, Hinson begins “Old Man” with what seems like a cliched television plot device—in this case, the “hero gets amnesia” ploy—only to take her story to an entirely unexpected place, and ultimately deliver a truly moving conclusion which transcends the usual boundaries of funny-animal cartoons. While she extracts some humor in the early scenes from Baloo’s sudden unfamiliarity with the tools of his trade (like the scene with Wildcat and the rudder), as the episode progresses she eschews the usual forgetfulness gags associated with amnesia in cartoons and instead makes it clear that Baloo’s “amnesia” is essentially a form of PTSD; he regains his memory and remembers how to fly during a co-piloted flight with Joe (as demonstrated by his joyous recollection of prior flights with Kit and clashes with air pirates), but his fears still make him unwilling to apply that regained knowledge as soon as Joe tells him he's ready to fly solo--as demonstrated by his frightened flashbacks to the Miracle Pass incident and the disastrous flight during the storm. His subsequent effort to evade a solo flight by feigning illness calls to mind the comedic alibis and procrastination we’ve seen him use in other episodes to get out of work, but there’s a sad irony in his use of these avoidance techniques here, since we in the audience know that he’s only hurting himself, by trying to avoid something which he actually loves and genuinely excels at.  

 
Thus, the episode goes in an entirely different direction than the typical “hero gets amnesia” story. In a comedic amnesia cartoon, we typically watch the hero become entangled in comedic misunderstandings until an inevitable second bonk on the head restores him to normality, while in a more serious action-adventure amnesia cartoon, we typically wait for the hero to remember who he is in time to save the day and defeat the villain. In “Old Man,” however, the focus is on the question of whether Baloo can triumph over himself—over his PTSD-induced fear, and over his deeply engrained habits of avoidance—and regain his love of flying. The episode thus centers not on a comic or serious external conflict, but rather on an internal conflict, one which entails some comic moments (like Baloo taking slapstick lumps from Joe’s flight simulation devices) but which is serious at its heart, and which does not require the involvement of a villain in order to underscore its seriousness. Instead, a sense of the importance of the stakes involved is imparted by Hinson’s emphasis, mostly through Joe’s dialogue, of the joy and wonder of piloting (“Look around you, Baloo; up here, you’re as free as a bird; the skies are yours”), which provides a poignant reminder of just what Baloo stands to lose if he fails to conquer himself. I mentioned in my introductory entries for this retrospective that one of the strengths of Talespin was the unironic way in which it embraced the romantic and mythic aspects of aviation; “Old Man and the Sea Duck”, among all the show’s episodes, does the best job of bringing home these aspects to the viewer. The episode’s backgrounds, full of towering and threatening canyons with vast and bright blue skies beyond them, provides a strong visual complement to this theme of the magic of flight.

 
When Baloo finally makes a harrowing flight directly through the most oppressive of all the canyons seen in the episode, the tunnel-like pass at the end of Joe's valley, and gains the open skies, there’s a triumphant and cathartic feel to the moment. Having him overcome the fear originally engendered by the hair-raising navigation of Miracle Pass, by means of his emergency navigation of an even more frighteningly narrow space, helps to underscore the idea that it's really PTSD arising from the Miracle Pass incident, and not simple forgetfulness, that's been hindering him--and also neatly brings the story full-circle, both visually and narratively speaking. It’s also an excellent touch that Baloo only achieves this triumphant return to glory when Joe fakes an injury and forces Baloo to fly for “help”; this accords with what we’ve seen of Baloo in other episodes—his ability to rise above his sloth and selfishness when a friend needs his help—and also makes an excellent unspoken moral point: Baloo doesn’t “earn” his right to enjoy the wonders of the sky again until he actually undertakes an unselfish action on behalf of someone else (which is particularly appropriate considering his original loss of his flying ability was, in a way, caused by his selfishness in stopping at Louie's).  

 
Having Baloo’s struggle be entirely against himself, instead of against the Air Pirates or some one-shot villain, would have made the episode distinctive enough, but Hinson, as in “Her Chance to Dream”, puts yet another dramatic layer on her story with her ultimate revelation of the true identity of Joe McGee. In retrospect, there are foreshadowings of the final twist in McGee’s misty, nocturnal introductory sequence, but the climactic Twilight-Zone-like scene in which Baloo learns the truth is still likely to be a surprise, to a first-time viewer, especially someone coming to Talespin for the first time after experiencing Ducktales and the other Disney Afternoon outings; "Old Man" was one of the first Talespin episodes I saw, and my reaction to the ending was, in effect "Wow, I'm not in Duckburg anymore." “Old Man and the Sea Duck”, again like “Her Chance to Dream”, is a sterling example of how supernatural elements, if handled with proper gravitas and if not over-relied on (looking at you, Frank Angones) can elevate and deepen an action/adventure/comedy series; the haunting fadeout scene, which evokes a combination of sadness, joy, and awe, is quieter than the powerful scene of love and loss at the conclusion of “Dream”, but is equally moving in its own way.

Hal Smith (Glomgold and Gyro on Original Ducktales) delivers an excellent vocal performance as Joe McGee, using a down-to-earth, avuncular but authoritative voice much more natural and low-key than his more comically exaggerated Ducktales voices; Joe's visual design—as a wizened but square-jawed old lion—complements Smith's vocal combination of elderliness and assurance. Another Ducktales star, Alan Young himself, makes a welcome appearance at the end as the tortoise doctor who provides Baloo with the history of Joe McGee; Young’s puzzled but admiring delivery of his character’s brief but pivotal expositional speech is pitch-perfect, and contributes noticeably to the power of the ending.

“Old Man”, with its quieter tone and more deliberate pacing, is not quite as intense and compelling as “Her Chance to Dream,” but I would still rank it as the second-best “regular” episode of the entire series, with only “Dream” and the movie-length “Plunder and Lightning” ahead of it. Once again, Hinson, with editor Geurs and showrunner Magon’s blessing, was able to successfully weave deeply emotional and even spiritual elements into a “kid’s” show, to unforgettable effect.


Up Next: "Bringing Down Babyface"

Addendum: The Talespin fan community has speculated for years that Joe McGee’s surname was an allusion to John Gillespie McGee Jr., a young British flyer who wrote the sonnet “High Flight” in a letter to his parents shortly before dying in an aerial training accident. The sadly now-defunct Talespin fan site High Flight even took its name from the poem.  I myself suspect that the character's first name, "Joe", was an allusion to the 1943 Spencer Tracy/Irene Dunne fantasy-romance A Guy Named Joe, which, like "Old Man and the Sea Duck," included the plot element of a deceased flyer mentoring a living flyer from the afterlife; this is all the more likely considering that Hinson, as Matilda pointed out, seems to have been partly inspired by another old movie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, when she wrote "Her Chance to Dream." However, that doesn't rule out "High Flight" as another influence on the choice of McGee's name and of the theme of the episode itself; much of the focus of A Guy Named Joe was the romantic triangle formed by the love of both the living and dead pilots for the same woman, but "Old Man" eschews a human romance angle for an emphasis on the romance of flight itself, and is thus more akin to "High Flight", a quasi-mystic poem which revels in the aviator’s experience and which almost seems to be echoed by some of the episode's soaring visuals.  Here is the poem itself:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XLI: “Bringing Down Babyface”

Becky rents the Sea Duck to the Cape Suzette police department, which needs to transport notorious gangster Babyface Half-Nelson from Prison Island to his trial in Cape Suzette. Baloo is nervous about the assignment, which promptly goes awry when Babyface is able to overpower and impersonate his guard before Baloo arrives to pick them both up. Baloo thus unwittingly aids and abets Babyface’s escape, and is arrested as a result, only to be “rescued” by a pair of thugs who were previously hired (by Babyface’s mother) to bust out Babyface himself and who mistake Baloo for the gangster. This escape puts Baloo in even deeper trouble with the police, forcing him, accompanied by Becky and Kit, to plunge into Cape Suzette’s underworld in an effort to recapture Babyface and clear himself.


“Bringing Down Babyface” was edited by Duane Capizzi and written by Ellen Svaco and Colleen Taber, who later teamed on several Darkwing Duck episodes (including the memorable “Toys Czar Us”). The episode’s somewhat outlandish physical humor and its somewhat atypical (for Talespin) nocturnal urban setting both anticipate the duo’s Darkwing episodes. Unlike the prior three episodes in production order, “Babyface” doesn’t attempt any in-depth character studies, but judged on its own terms it’s a lively and entertaining combination of action and humor which moves quickly from one comic situation to another. The initial mistaken-identity plot (Babyface switching places with his guard for Baloo’s benefit) is mined for several verbal gags and a slapstick scuffle but then jettisoned before it can become stale, giving way to a quick and continual succession of verbal and physical comedy bits, including Baloo, Becky, and Kit’s memorably amusing impersonation of underworld characters (Pretty Boy Lloyd, Roxie, and Mickey the Mangler). There are some good verbal jokes in this sequence (“Ya don’t look so pretty to me”; “Yeah, well, Reasonably Attractive Lloyd didn’t have the same ring to it"), but what really makes the sequence fun are the visuals (by Walt Disney Japan); the 1920s/1930s speakeasy atmosphere is enjoyably caricatured, and the sight of the regulars in their ostentatiously shady getups—particularly the usually prim Becky’s gaudy flapper/moll costume—is memorably bizarre without feeling contrived. The disguised Kit’s brandishing of a coin is also a nice unobtrusive in-joke, an allusion to George Raft’s coin-flipping henchman in the original Scarface.


The episode's lengthy action finale is also visually memorable, if decidedly cartoony (it could have fit into a Darkwing episode quite easily); it involves a crazy chase through the sewer system with the good guys--in the Sea Duck!—pursuing Babyface’s car, while the police, still after Baloo, drop traffic signals and various other obstructions  through manholes in their efforts to block the plane’s path.  The animation is lively throughout this scene, and the maze-like and cavernous background art is very effective. As with Kit’s indoor hallway flight in “Flight School Confidential,” the production crew deserves credit for coming up with a creative new backdrop for aerial action, physically improbable though it might. The comparatively sedate opening of this long aerial chase sequence, incidentally, provides a probably unintentional but nice bit of continuity, in that we see Becky capably operating the Sea Duck herself; it’s good to see that her erratic but promising flying abilities, demonstrated back in “I Only Have Ice for You,” have continued to develop.

 
 
With most of the focus on rapid-fire verbal and physical jokes, there aren’t many character touches, but what touches there are feel right, such as Becky’s exasperated remarks during the climactic chase or Baloo’s nervously glib efforts to talk his way out of trouble with gangsters and cops alike. Even the episode’s halfhearted stab at a moral (“little” crimes like Baloo’s unpaid parking tickets are still crimes) does no violence to the characters and fails to spoil the fun; the parking tickets give rise to several fine comic cross-purposes conversations in which first Baloo and later Becky think the police are after Baloo for his parking violations, rather than his involvement with Babyface. Even Baloo’s eventual promise to Kit that he’ll never break another “small potato” law again, after his reward money for capturing the gangsters has been swallowed up by his traffic fines, avoids heavy-handedness by having Baloo’s resolution be motivated not by the realization that “little crimes are real crimes” but rather the realization that little crimes are “too expensive.”


Hamilton Camp returns to the series with an entertaining guest performance as Babyface, a very tough bulldog who talks like (thanks to Camp’s vocal virtuosity) Jimmy Cagney. Babyface’s sweet-mannered but ruthlessly criminal Ma, voiced by Billie Hayes (“Witchiepoo” from H. R. Pufnstuf), provides a second Cagney reference, in that both her character and her relationship with her son are direct homages to Cagney’s famous film White Heat. Camp, Ed Gilbert, and Jim Cummings provide the episode’s incidental voices between them, for Babyface’s henchmen and the Cape Suzette police force.


Reviewed on the heels of “Flight School Confidential, “Save the Tiger,” and, especially, “The Old Man and the Sea Duck,” “Bringing Down Babyface” can’t help but feel run-of-the-mill by comparison, but a run-of-the-mill episode can still be quite entertaining when the mill is working smoothly and competently, which is the case here.

XLII.  “Pizza Pie in the Sky”

Rebecca leaves for a business seminar, which Baloo scoffs at as a waste of time (“I could tell you how to make money, just like that; it’s a matter of common sense”). Although Becky warns him not to do anything in her absence, he decides to prove his boast about his money-making ability and goes into partnership with Louie on an airborne pizza delivery service. The venture proves more challenging than expected, and when Louie is felled by an allergy to anchovies, Baloo and Kit have to not only deliver but prepare a huge pizza order on their own; they rise to meet this challenge in creative but decidedly non-commonsensical fashion.


Written by Mark and Michael Edens and edited by Ken Koonce and David Weimers, “Pizza Pie in the Sky” is much better than the previous collaboration between the Edens and the Koonce/Weimers duo, “Gruel and Unusual Punishment.” The episode easily could have been rote sitcom fare, with its familiar baseline plot of “character gets in a mess while more responsible character is away, has to clean up the mess before it’s discovered”, but the writers and editors “plus” their scenario as the episode progresses, by means of a series of creative visual gags which mount to a logical but crazy climactic sequence (I would suspect that Koonce and Weimers did much less editing here than they did on “Gruel,” since most episodes in which they had a significant hand tend to favor verbal humor over the physical humor which predominates in “Pizza Pie.”)

That said, the first half of the episode, although enjoyable by virtue of its brisk pace and energetically quirky tone, feels more arbitrarily absurd than the second half, with Baloo’s repeated attempts to deliver a pizza to an igloo being thwarted not so much by Baloo’s own mistakes as by amusing but highly improbable obstacles (like an orca jumping out of the ocean to seize one of the pizzas). The droll sequence which has Baloo and Kit trying to purchase anchovies from an eccentric fishmonger also feels arbitrary even while it amuses, while Louie’s anchovy allergy, although it serves a plot purpose (forcing Baloo and Kit to make the pizzas themselves), and leads later on to a memorably nutty fever dream in which Louie attacks a health inspector believing him to be a giant fish, likewise comes off as randomly selected wackiness rather than character-specific humor.


The second half of the episode, which focuses on Baloo and Kit’s efforts to fill one monumental order (for, as it turns out, Becky’s seminar), is more cohesive, and the humor is much more tied to the characters’ personalities. The highly unorthodox methods which Baloo and Kit use to mass-produce pizza are at once funny, imaginative, and rather horrifying from a sanitation and safety point of view—rolling out dough with a steamroller, dropping tomato sauce and toppings from the Sea Duck, cutting out individual pies by means of a garbage can attached to a pogo stick (I can see Gyro Gearloose doing something like this), and, in the climactic scene, baking the pizzas (after an oven malfunction) by placing them on the floor of the Duck and flying it through a volcano. Insane as it is, this behavior actually feels in-character for Baloo; it’s like him, once he decides to pursue a new business venture, to handle it with the same carelessly confident improvisation that he brings to his usual cargo-hauling job, and it’s also appropriate for him to rely on his beloved plane—his reliable tool in his typical trade—for this new pizza-making trade, despite its unsuitability to that trade. Similarly, Kit’s participation in this loopy plan, while voicing occasional doubts along the way, feels like an accurate reflection of both the thoughtful and youthfully reckless sides of his character.
 
 

The Edens and their editors add yet another humorous plus to the episode by their presentation of Becky’s business seminar (hosted by the Takeover Hostel—read it backwards); it would have been easy enough just to keep her offstage until the ending scene or depict her seminar as straightforwardly dull, but the writers instead give us a glimpse of her attending the seminar, and use it as a vehicle for some engaging satire of “inspirational” entrepreneurial lectures, with a ferocious speaker treating the seminar like a boot camp and delivering parade-ground pep talks to the participants (“Do you want to be losers? Do you want to be winners?”) Becky’s rather bemused participation in all of this (like her half-hearted effort to growl on cue and her deadpan sarcasm when the speaker takes a tumble) are funny, and also humorously illustrate that she is not really the fanatical super-capitalist that she sometimes aspires to be and that Baloo frequently sees her as.  The speaker at the seminar is a fierce-looking tiger (voiced by Dan Gilvezan), a nice example of the show’s use of species as shorthand for personality and social role; similarly, the fishmonger is a pelican and the igloo inhabitant (as in “Double Your Money”) a polar bear; in a bit of reverse-typecasting, the health inspector who bedevils our heroes is a rather unkempt pig (voiced by Jim Cummings).


The Walt Disney France unit handles the animation for this entry; their extremely expressive, almost manic style is a particularly good fit for the script’s exuberant eccentricity and its strong reliance on visual and physical humor. Between the story and the visuals, “Pizza Pie” adds so many crazily baroque flourishes to its simple premise that the final result is an inconsequential but wackily entertaining one.



Up Next: "Louie's Last Stand"

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

XLIII: “Louie’s Last Stand”

Douglas Benson, a very junior executive in Khan Industries, is eager to impress Shere Khan and ascend higher in the corporate food chain by scoring a big commercial coup. Impressed by the prosperity of Louie’s nightclub, he decides to acquire Louie’s business and island for Khan, but the orangutan is unwilling to sell. Unfortunately, Benson learns that the annual renewal of the “squatter’s deed”, under which Louie holds title, requires the title holder to be physically present on the island on each anniversary of the deed’s execution. That anniversary date is impending, and Benson decides to forcibly drive Louie from his island in order to prevent the renewal of the deed and allow for a corporate takeover of the valuable real estate. By forging Khan’s signature to a set of orders, Benson is able to enlist the full might of Khan’s private air force for his assault on the island, but Louie, supported by Baloo and Kit, decides to make a stand against the invaders.


Written by Chuck Tately and edited by Jymn Magon, “Louie’s Last Stand” is an outstanding effort, a fast-paced and action-packed episode with a strong emotional core, excellent character beats, and an unusually individualized guest villain. The lengthy assault on Louie’s island gives rise to a series of energetic comedy-action scenes, with Louie bedeviling the invaders with a series of ingenious booby-traps (from sling-shotted pineapples to an avalanche of logs which recalls Disney's Swiss Family Robinson)  as he, Baloo, and Kit climb, run, and swing their way across the island, trying to elude Khan’s pilots until midnight, when the deed will automatically renew. However, in the midst of all this amusing cartoon trickery and slapstick violence, we’re also reminded that something real is at stake for Louie (“Everything I love is here—good music, good times, good friends; I’m not giving it up, man—not even to Shere Khan!”), and are also made to realize that, for all our heroes’ success in frustrating the invasion force, the odds against them are too great to hold out forever, as first Baloo and then Kit acknowledge during the running fight, while Louie continues to refuse to quit.
 

Having Louie take the lead on the good guys’ side throughout the episode, both in terms of strategizing and sheer determination, is a good example of how Magon and his crew could vary the character dynamics of the show as dictated by the logic of particular situations, rather than locking the characters into a preset formula; many television shows would have had Baloo and Kit, as the regular “star” characters, lead the fight against Khan’s forces, and would have made Louie a pawn or bystander in the struggle, but instead the bears serve as supporting players in this episode, with Louie appropriately spotlighted as the primary defender of his own turf—much as Donald and the Nephews tend to recede into the background in a Scrooge-centric story. Kit, like the Nephews in most Duck stories, does get to execute a couple of saves at crucial moments, but overall the episode belongs to Louie, at least as far as the good guys are concerned; the roguish orangutan receives some of his best moments in the series—his breezily impudent deflections of Benson’s rudely peremptory offer to purchase, his wiliness as he leads the invaders from one trap to another, the above-quoted speech explaining why he won’t leave his island, and his defiant stand atop his light-up sign in the face of aerial gunfire (a bit obviously meant in part as a visual allusion to King Kong, but which also works on its own terms as a dramatic and even moving moment). His reaction when Benson (seemingly) finally defeats him by threatening to dynamite his nightclub unless he leaves the island, is also memorable, since his crushed and confused manner is so different from his usual slangy, glib self-confidence.

Other than Louie, the most prominent character in “Louie’s Last Stand” is Douglas (“Don’t call me Dougie!”) Benson; in fact, the first half of the episode more or less unfolds from his point of view. Tately and Magon, along with voice actor Mark Taylor, do an excellent job of making Dougie a hateful but well-drawn and surprisingly believable villain; his personality is neatly demonstrated in the episode’s opening sequence, in which he smirks condescendingly to himself as other junior executives present entrepreneurial ideas to Shere Khan, has his own fatuous idea dismissed sarcastically by Khan to the laughter of the other executives, and immediately becomes so consumed with brainstorming a new idea that he rudely ignores the kindly efforts of one of the other execs to cheer him up after the embarrassment. Here, and in subsequent scenes—like his rebuffed initial effort to buy Louie’s island—we’re tempted to feel sorry for Benson, as he’s clearly very much of an underdog within Khan’s organization (a point visually underscored by making him a housecat and depicting the rest of Khan’s executives as tigers, leopards, and panthers) and is repeatedly ridiculed by everyone around him, but our sympathy remains dormant because we’re made to see that much of the ridicule he provokes in the result of his own arrogance; for example, he opens his purchase offer to Louie by peremptorily addressing him as “You!--Ape!”, triggering understandable mockery from Louie and his patrons in response.


Benson is effectively his own worst enemy, a recognizable type that most of us have encountered in the workplace at one time or another—the guy who feels entitled to power and respect, but is so full of himself that he becomes the frequent butt of jokes, which he is too hypersensitive to return in kind and which instead cause him to become more fixated than ever on achieving power as a means of showing up all his detractors (“Ever since I was five years old, people have laughed at me: ‘little Dougie, what a nobody!’ Well, I’m somebody now!”). Like most such hypersensitive egoists, Dougie exploits his newfound status as “somebody” in bullying and vindictive fashion, threatening Khan’s pilots with the loss of their “pathetic jobs” if they don’t follow his orders, and attempting to dynamite Louie’s club in retaliation for the trouble Louie’s resistance has given him, after Louie has finally surrendered in return for Benson’s promise to spare the building. Of course, most workplace jerks, no matter how egotistical or hypersensitive, don’t go this far, but, allowing for some comic and dramatic exaggeration, “young Benson” (as Khan calls him) is the most believable and fully fleshed-out one-shot villain in the show, in that you can easily understand why he is the way he is and why he behaves the way he does, even though you can’t really sympathize with him.

Khan himself has only a few scenes in the episode, but plays a memorable part in the resolution of the episode’s conflict, stepping in to punish Benson for the latter’s usurpation of his authority and preventing him from destroying Louie’s place. As always with Khan, the writers manage to make him fascinatingly ambiguous even when he’s helping our heroes; note that he does not intervene when Benson forces Louie to leave the island with his dynamiting threat, even though we’re given to understand that Khan witnessed the high-handed formation of this “agreement”. Instead, Khan only steps in after Benson has broken his agreement with Louie and is about to dynamite Louie’s place anyway. This builds on what we saw in “Save the Tiger”—namely, that Khan is scrupulous about honoring deals—but also leaves the impression that Khan would have ratified Benson’s forcible expulsion of Louie after the fact if Benson hadn’t gone back on his word. In reciting Benson’s litany of sins, Khan reminds him that “you forged my signature, misused employees, broke a verbal deal”, but does not rebuke him for violently attempting to seize someone else’s real estate; for Khan, Benson’s real crime is untrustworthiness, not ruthlessness. Khan’s amused remark “I’m impressed” when reviewing the damage done to his pilots by the outnumbered trio of Louie, Baloo and Kit, is also a nice touch, echoing an aspect of Khan seen in other episodes—namely, that, disdainful as he generally is of everyone, he genuinely respects competence.

The lawyer in me also thinks that Khan might have realized that the seizure of the island wouldn’t have held up in court; I find it hard to believe that Louie, even if he was forced to “voluntarily” leave the island in response to Benson’s dynamiting threat, couldn’t have found a good attorney to argue that his departure from the island was coerced and that the squatter’s deed thus remained in effect. But then, I’m not sure of just how a “squatter’s deed” works, since I’ve never encountered such a document in the course of my practice. This is tongue-in-cheek quibbling, of course; I have the same puzzled reaction to some of the legal theories in many of Barks’ best stories (like Azure Blue’s right to North America or Chisel McSue and Soapy Slick’s claims on Scrooge’s entire fortune). Real-world legal questionability aside, “Louie’s Last Stand” is an excellent and thoroughly entertaining episode from start to finish, fast-paced and action-packed but still finding time for interesting character touches.



Up Next: "Captains Outrageous"