Spin It! (A Talespin Retrospective)

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

LXIII: “A Bad Reflection On You” (Redux)

Shere Khan’s planes have been mysteriously disappearing along a trans-oceanic cargo route known as the Master Run. Khan hatches a plan to get to the bottom of the disappearances, but needs an unwitting patsy, a “flying fool”, to execute the scheme. Meanwhile, Baloo has been making headlines, thanks to a daring nighttime emergency flight and a separate daylight rescue; Kit, who played an important role in the nighttime flight and who actually performed the daylight rescue himself, is frustrated by his lack of recognition, but Baloo reassures him that “none of that fame stuff means anything; you know who you are, and that’s all that matters.” Baloo fails to heed his own advice, however, when Khan selects him as his patsy and begins to butter him up, presenting him with a trophy proclaiming him “The Best Pilot in the World”, in order to manipulate him into flying a mysterious cargo along the Master Run. Baloo’s ego becomes so overinflated as a result that, even after he learns of the Master Run’s jinxed reputation, he blithely continues along the ominous route, brushing off the concerns of the less overconfident Kit. Baloo’s pride suffers a severe fall when he, Kit, and the Sea Duck are captured by Don Karnage, who has been using a clever new gimmick to seize planes along the Master Run. The cargo which Khan shipped aboard the Duck turns out to be a tracking device, but Karnage discovers it and starts preparing a minefield for the battleship which is following the device’s signal. It will be up to Kit to spearhead an escape from the brig of the Iron Vulture and rally Baloo, now trapped in a self-recriminating funk, to fly the Sea Duck to the rescue of the ship.
 
In my earlier entry on “A Bad Reflection on You”, I already discussed the two-parter’s confusing production history, but I will briefly recap it here. In a nutshell, Chuck Tately appears to have submitted the original script as a single-part episode, which got fairly far along in the production process (animation was finished and voice work was recorded) before being shelved. Then, towards the end of the show’s production history, the episode was evidently dusted off and expanded into a two-parter by Tately’s editor Jymn Magon, with some additional dialogue being recorded. Gregory Weagle’s useful breakdown of the scenes in which Kit is voiced by his first voice actor, Alan Roberts, and the scenes in which he is voiced by Roberts’ successor R. J. Williams, helps to give a clearer picture of which sequences were added during the expansion process; the scenes with Roberts would belong to the first draft, the scenes with Williams to the final expanded version. As mentioned in my prior “Bad Reflection” notes, the expansions improve the episode overall, developing and strengthening both the emotional storyline of the episode and the episode’s action aspects. The aforementioned daylight rescue scene (in which Kit saves a baby from a fall, only to have Baloo get the credit), Kit’s subsequent explosion of irritation after he finds his heroism has been ignored by the press yet again (after first being slighted in the account of the nighttime flight), and the ensuing heart-to-heart talk between Baloo and Kit in an airplane junkyard, during which Baloo gives the sulking Kit the sound advice quoted above and reassures him that “I think you’re the best”, were all part of the expansion. Taken together, these scenes give much more depth to the episode—making Kit’s anger feel more justifiable than if it had been provoked by merely a single snubbing by the papers, giving us a glimpse of Baloo acting as a good parent, strengthening the irony of Baloo’s own later fall to the lure of fame, and providing a stronger emotional foundation for the finale, in which Kit rouses Baloo from his despair by a remark which echoes the older bear’s own words during the junkyard scene. This moment—a very moving one in the finished version—would have had a lot less impact if Magon hadn’t gone back and inserted the earlier scene as a foreshadowing moment.

Similarly, the expanded version’s insertion of a lengthy chase aboard the Iron Vulture, with Kit doing his best to evade the pursuing Dump Truck as the latter chases him all the way to the top of the airship, lends additional punch to the action-adventure aspect of the plot, making the heroes’ escape from the brig feel more difficult than if (as was evidently the case in the one-part draft), the escape had been a simpler matter of Kit ducking in and out of some portholes. Mesterius, in his comments on this episode several pages back in the thread, objected to this sequence on the grounds that Kit evades Dump Truck due to the latter’s stupidity more than his own pluck, but I would respectfully differ on this point; Kit is shown utilizing his superior (mental and physical) nimbleness as he evades the big pirate, and his victory thus comes off as just as earned as any other triumph by a small but quick-witted character over a more physically threatening but dumber character—such as Mickey’s numerous defeats of Pete in their many scraps in Gottfredson’s stories. It helps that Dump Truck gives Kit a fairly harrowing chase, eventually cornering him on one of the Vulture’s rotors in the way Israel Hands cornered Jim Hawkins on the rigging in Treasure Island (fortunately for Dump Truck, Kit is not packing a pistol). The somewhat out-of-left-field idiocy of Karnage’s henchman Hacksaw, a deranged-looking, Aussie-accented dingo (voiced by Charlie Adler) who attempts to drain water out of the Vulture but brings about the opposite result, feels more contrived than anything Dump Truck does here, but the scene is still funny (mainly thanks to Karnage’s irate reactions) and in any case Hacksaw’s blunder doesn’t really make things easier for the heroes, in that it results in the partial flooding of the Vulture and makes the Sea Duck’s eventual escape from a water-filled compartment that much more difficult.

Mesterius also commented that the revelation of the cause of the plane disappearances as yet another Air Pirate plot feels like a bit of a letdown; I can agree more with this criticism, since the setup of the airplane disappearances is so beautifully done—thanks to scenes like the elaborate late-night aircraft tracking session in Khan’s offices at the beginning of the episode, Wiley Pole’s suddenly cut-off radio conversation as he and his airplane vanish as well, and Louie’s spooked speculations on the cause of the airplane disappearances (“There’s something out there gobblin’ up airplanes! Could be a giant sea monster, could be a hole in the sky; all I know is, you go out there—baby, you don’t come back!”); these moments are strongly evocative of Gottfredson’s “The Mail Pilot,” with its similar airplane disappearances and scary giant spider reports. With all this ominous buildup, it’s a little deflating to find that the culprit is simply Karnage again (just as, in “Mail Pilot,” one feels a little disappointed when the force behind the sky spider turns out to be merely the ubiquitous Pete and Shyster)—but, as I mentioned in my earlier discussion with Mesterius, I wouldn’t have wanted space aliens or some similar far-out contrivance to be dragged into the plot, and at least Karnage’s scheme for snaring aircraft—using a set of giant mirrors to dazzle and confuse pilots and cause them to plunge their own planes into the sea—is much more cunning and elaborate than his usual stratagems, making the revelation feel somewhat less of a letdown. Also, having Karnage immediately see through Khan’s tracking scheme and prepare a lethal reception for the battleship helps to strengthen the pirate’s menace, and further accentuates the feeling that our heroes are facing a genuine challenge.
 
As in all the best Talespin episodes, the characters have to overcome not just an external challenge but an internal one—namely, Baloo’s fall into self-loathing and despair after his capture by the pirates, the flip side of his smug overconfidence after receiving his “trophy” from Khan. The overconfidence, though not out-of-character for Baloo, feels a little overstressed (I would expect Baloo to be a little more worried when he hears about the Master Run disappearances, trophy or no trophy). However, the despair rings so true to Baloo’s character that his emotional crisis in the second half of the two-parter feels like a genuine one deep-rooted in his personality, rather than a generic “character learns a lesson” moment. As we’ve seen in other episodes (“From Here to Machinery”, “On a Wing and a Bear”), Baloo so closely identifies himself with his flying ability, the one area in which he really excels, that he tends to feel absolutely worthless when he fails as a flier, a point driven home here by his bitter reaction when Kit is trying to pep-talk him out of his funk (“Stop it, you hear me? Just knock it off! I’m a loser, a failure; I crashed my plane, I lost my cargo, and thanks to me a very big boat’s gonna get sunk and I can’t cut it! I tell ya, just…just leave me alone!”) Ed Gilbert’s delivery of this dialogue is excellent, but the writers also deserve credit for making the lines sound like a natural, human, slightly disjointed outburst rather than a pat piece of measured and moralistic self-rebuke. Kit’s heartfelt comeback to this outburst (“To me, you’re still the best”) is also perfectly judged; it’s truly moving in its simplicity and earnestness, and also perfectly parallels (as discussed above) the parental encouragement that Baloo gave to Kit during their heart-to-heart in the junkyard; this turnabout reaffirms the mutual bond between the pair and reminds us that Baloo needs Kit just as much as Kit needs him. Baloo ensuing epiphany is then conveyed not by needless self-explanation, but by a simple reversion to his jaunty, slangy norm: “This ain’t no hayride! Let’s pull chocks!” The scene as a whole ranks among the best character moments in the show, thanks to Magon and Tately’s willingness to trust in their audience’s ability to understand the emotions at play without having them painstakingly spelled out.
 
The subsequent action finale, after Baloo’s personal crisis has been resolved, is also excellent, with Kit dictating the strategy and Baloo doing the flying as the Sea Duck saves the battleship from a minefield, then eludes the pirates’ airplanes by means of a steep ascent between the giant mirrors, with Kit acting as Baloo's "eyes" after the Duck sustains windshield damage.  This climactic scene also provides a nice bookend to the aerial sequence early in the first part, in which Kit similarly acts as guide to the Sea Duck as Baloo steers it through a dark and stormy night. Another good touch during the climax has Baloo being forced to reluctantly jettison his trophy (the last vestige of his earlier egoism) in order to set off a mine and warn the ship; I also like the ship captain’s subsequent radio interchange with Shere Khan, in which the captain dryly remarks that Khan’s despised “patsy” is giving the pirates “a run for their money”—a wonderful little moment which reminds us that Khan, for all his intelligence and his ability to manipulate people, is too cynical and cold-blooded to fully fathom the heroic potential of a “fool” like Baloo. Frank Welker provides the voice of the battleship skipper, Captain Hotspur—a grim, authoritative lion who makes an imposing impression with limited screen time. Welker also voices the grizzled cougar aviator Wiley Pole, a recurring bit player in the series who receives his largest role here, getting to act crisply confident during the above-mentioned radio sequence before his plane is captured, then functions mainly as a crochety naysayer during the climactic escape and battle with the pirates, complaining that Kit’s “enthusiasm will get us all killed” and providing an opportunity for Baloo to gruffly voice his faith in his young navigator’s judgement.
 
 
I already discussed Shere Khan’s memorable introductory sequence in my first “Bad Reflection” entry, so I won’t repeat myself here, other than to remark that the episode gives him a good showcase, not just in that introductory scene but also in his later manipulations of Baloo, and his rather chilling response when he learns that Karnage is behind the plane disappearances (“Blow those pirates out of my ocean”). Karnage himself gets to be both nasty (as when he mocks Baloo for allowing himself to be used as a catspaw by Khan) and funny (as when he’s making an entry in his diary filled with mangled metaphors). The other regulars have less to do, but all of them make an appearance; Louie, as mentioned, gets to deliver ominous warnings about the Master Run; Becky has a couple of good moments trying to bring Baloo’s overinflated ego down to earth; Wildcat has a comedic brush with a runaway scooter; even Molly, who has no dialogue, gets a nice non-verbal bit in reaction to the scooter’s gyrations—clapping her hands enthusiastically as she watches the device runs wild, until Becky snatches her to safety.
 
It feels appropriate to have each and every one of the regulars on hand for “Bad Reflection,” since the finished two-parter would be Talespin’s last large-scaled action-adventure saga, and as such comes off as something of a grand finale; it’s a worthy finale, too, despite incidental flaws. Part of its success is due to an atmosphere of greater-than-usual scope, derived from plot elements such as Khan’s elaborate plane-tracking system, Karnage’s equally elaborate plane-capturing system, the threatening minefield, and the enormous battleship; one gets the sense that neither Khan nor Karnage are fooling around here, making it feel as if Baloo is dangerously caught in the middle of a clash of titans. However, the episode’s handling of its emotional angle is the biggest source of its success, demonstrating as it does the shortcomings and the strengths of both Baloo and Kit’s characters, while also showing (rather than simply telling) how important they are to each other.


Up Next: Libby Hinson delivers one more classic, “Jolly Molly Christmas”

[Mesterius]

Nov 19, 2022 14:20:27 GMT djnyr said:

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

(...)

LXIII: “A Bad Reflection On You” (Redux)Similarly, the expanded version’s insertion of a lengthy chase aboard the Iron Vulture, with Kit doing his best to evade the pursuing Dump Truck as the latter chases him all the way to the top of the airship, lends additional punch to the action-adventure aspect of the plot, making the heroes’ escape from the brig feel more difficult than if (as was evidently the case in the one-part draft), the escape had been a simpler matter of Kit ducking in and out of some portholes. Mesterius, in his comments on this episode several pages back in the thread, objected to this sequence on the grounds that Kit evades Dump Truck due to the latter’s stupidity more than his own pluck, but I would respectfully differ on this point; Kit is shown utilizing his superior (mental and physical) nimbleness as he evades the big pirate, and his victory thus comes off as just as earned as any other triumph by a small but quick-witted character over a more physically threatening but dumber character—such as Mickey’s numerous defeats of Pete in their many scraps in Gottfredson’s stories. It helps that Dump Truck gives Kit a fairly harrowing chase, eventually cornering him on one of the Vulture’s rotors in the way Israel Hands cornered Jim Hawkins on the rigging in Treasure Island (fortunately for Dump Truck, Kit is not packing a pistol). The somewhat out-of-left-field idiocy of Karnage’s henchman Hacksaw, a deranged-looking, Aussie-accented dingo (voiced by Charlie Adler) who attempts to drain water out of the Vulture but brings about the opposite result, feels more contrived than anything Dump Truck does here, but the scene is still funny (mainly thanks to Karnage’s irate reactions) and in any case Hacksaw’s blunder doesn’t really make things easier for the heroes, in that it results in the partial flooding of the Vulture and makes the Sea Duck’s eventual escape from a water-filled compartment that much more difficult.

Fun to see that you referenced my earlier comments in your review.

But I have to admit: when writing about this 2-parter months ago, I must have somehow merged Dump Truck and Hacksaw into one henchman in my head... because I thought Dump Truck was the one who floods the Vulture near the end! Yes, it also annoyed me somewhat that Dump Truck repeatedly fails to capture Kit; he's so clearly no match for the young bear that the sequence felt a bit like filler. But still, the number one thing I was thinking about in my criticism was how the henchman additionally managed to sabotage the Vulture, and as such, ruin everything for Karnage in one fell swoop. I see now that it was at least two DIFFERENT henchmen klutzing about!

I still don't like the self-sabotage, though, as this is the kind of thing that often - including here - feels to me like the easy way out: the hero is cornered by the bad guys, how to make the story proceed to the next phase? Have the villains shoot themselves in the foot!

Also, regarding this...

In my earlier entry on “A Bad Reflection on You”, I already discussed the two-parter’s confusing production history, but I will briefly recap it here. In a nutshell, Chuck Tately appears to have submitted the original script as a single-part episode, which got fairly far along in the production process (animation was finished and voice work was recorded) before being shelved. Then, towards the end of the show’s production history, the episode was evidently dusted off and expanded into a two-parter by Tately’s editor Jymn Magon, with some additional dialogue being recorded. Gregory Weagle’s useful breakdown of the scenes in which Kit is voiced by his first voice actor, Alan Roberts, and the scenes in which he is voiced by Roberts’ successor R. J. Williams, helps to give a clearer picture of which sequences were added during the expansion process; the scenes with Roberts would belong to the first draft, the scenes with Williams to the final expanded version. As mentioned in my prior “Bad Reflection” notes, the expansions improve the episode overall, developing and strengthening both the emotional storyline of the episode and the episode’s action aspects. The aforementioned daylight rescue scene (in which Kit saves a baby from a fall, only to have Baloo get the credit), Kit’s subsequent explosion of irritation after he finds his heroism has been ignored by the press yet again (after first being slighted in the account of the nighttime flight), and the ensuing heart-to-heart talk between Baloo and Kit in an airplane junkyard, during which Baloo gives the sulking Kit the sound advice quoted above and reassures him that “I think you’re the best”, were all part of the expansion. Taken together, these scenes give much more depth to the episode—making Kit’s anger feel more justifiable than if it had been provoked by merely a single snubbing by the papers, giving us a glimpse of Baloo acting as a good parent, strengthening the irony of Baloo’s own later fall to the lure of fame, and providing a stronger emotional foundation for the finale, in which Kit rouses Baloo from his despair by a remark which echoes the older bear’s own words during the junkyard scene. This moment—a very moving one in the finished version—would have had a lot less impact if Magon hadn’t gone back and inserted the earlier scene as a foreshadowing moment.

...I must admit that, while I liked the dialoge between Baloo and Kit in the junkyard, the execution made it obvious that it was a last-minute addition. If memory serves, we don't get any frontal views or closeups of the characters talking in that scene... which is of course because they didn't have the time or money to do new, lipsynced animation. I feel the scene could have had more of an impact if they had been able to do it with full animation, including proper dramatic cutting, closeups, etc. Still, what they did works as an emergency solution.

[djnyr]

Thanks for weighing back in, Mesterius, and thanks for the clarification on Dump Truck/Hacksaw; I admit that I was a little puzzled when you originally made that comment, since I couldn't recall Dump Truck doing anything particularly moronic (at least by his admittedly very low standards) in the course of this episode. I agree that it's better for the villains not to self-sabotage (the finale of the Ducktales episode "Hero for Hire", an otherwise excellent effort, bothers me in this way--Launchpad is able to escape at a crucial moment because the Beagles blow themselves up). I don't really have that problem with "Bad Reflection," though, since Hacksaw's idiocy, out-of-left-field as it is, is not really what causes Karnage's defeat (that's brought about by Baloo's superior flying during the climactic aerial chase/fight) or even Baloo and Kit's escape; Kit would have been able to evade Dump Truck and spring Baloo and the other fliers regardless of Hacksaw's blunder, and all the flooding really winds up doing is making the Sea Duck's takeoff from the water-filled compartment more difficult. I have to wonder whether Hacksaw was originally intended to be a more prominent recurring henchman, like Dump Truck, Mad Dog, and Gibber; if so, I would suspect the flooding bit (which would have come from the earlier portion of the episode's production history) was supposed to establish his loony personality, since it really serves no other purpose.

In regard to the junkyard scene, there are several long shots (something I realized while preparing screen grabs for this entry), but there are also some closer shots--of Baloo delivering dialogue as he crawls under a plane wing, and of him and Kit talking as Baloo leans against a plane; I used a frame from the latter shot in my entry on the first draft of the episode, back on page one of this thread.

[djnyr]

Happy Thanksgiving! Strictly speaking, the following post is a month early, but many people (including my own family, when I was young) kick off the Christmas season on or after Thanksgiving, and I've already had one snowfall in the Northern fastnesses where I live, so I don't think this review is too premature in its timing.

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

LXIV: “Jolly Molly Christmas”

It’s Christmastime at Higher for Hire, and Rebecca, while preparing for the holiday with her usual briskness, still finds time to reminiscence to Molly about the snowy white Christmases of her youth, an experience now lost to her in semi-tropical Cape Suzette. In the meanwhile, Baloo—by promising Molly that the “Peppermint Fairy” will replace a broken candy cane, then forgetting to follow up on the promise—inadvertently causes Molly to start suspecting that Baloo’s tales of Santa Claus are “baloney” too. Baloo determines to make amends by taking Molly to the “North Pole” to present her Christmas-gift requests to Santa Claus, pressing Louie’s place into the role of the Pole and convincing Louie himself to play the part of Santa. The masquerade enchants Molly, but the Christmas request which she makes to “Santa” takes both Louie and Baloo by surprise; hoping to make Becky happy, she asks for a Christmas snowfall, causing Baloo to scramble to bring snow, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, to Cape Suzette.

“Jolly Molly Christmas” was Libby Hinson’s final script for Talespin, and it’s a more than worthy end to her excellent line of episodes. With Karl Geurs again serving as her editor, she takes a premise that could easily have turned maudlin and instead develops it with humor, pathos, and heart. The key to the episode’s success, as I mentioned much earlier in this thread, is that it’s neither too sentimental nor too cynical; in many special Christmas episodes, of both live-action and animated shows, a show’s regular characters are often unconvincingly softened to punch across a Christmas message—or, alternatively, the regular characters remain so caricatured and snarky that the Christmas message feels hopelessly insincere.

Both unfortunate outcomes are avoided here; the personalities of Talespin’s central characters are well-rounded enough to allow them to convey Christmas-y warmth while retaining their usual humorous quirks and human flaws, allowing for both character-based comedy (like Louie’s incongruously jazzy portrayal of Santa Claus) and character-based drama (like Molly’s bitter reaction when the North Pole illusion is shattered amidst the raucous laughter of Louie’s patrons). We don’t get the feeling that the Christmas-themed story is modifying the protagonists’ usual traits, but rather that the story is being shaped by those traits. Baloo’s carelessness, good-heartedness and propensity for overelaborate schemes are all on display as he first accidentally shakes Molly’s faith in Santa, then hatches a plan (involving a cargo of soap flakes) to reaffirm that faith through an ersatz snowfall and grant her wish, smooth-talking the reluctant Louie into aiding him; similarly, Becky’s excitable briskness (as she’s rushing around making last-minute Christmas preparations) and her typically quick-tempered treatment of Baloo (when she initially finds out he hasn’t delivered the soap flakes) are both demonstrated, but are also juxtaposed with her softer and more thoughtful side, as she reminisces about her childhood Christmases (in a nicely-animated opening scene, beautifully narrated by Sally Struthers) and as she shares a heartfelt embrace with Molly at the end.
 
Likewise, Louie’s breezily worldly tendencies are in evidence, as he automatically assumes that Molly simply wants to be showered with presents, but his kindliness is showcased too, as he desperately tries to keep up the Santa charade even at the risk of irritating the Christmas Eve habitues of his establishment. Molly herself also runs true to her established personality, with her temper, her imaginativeness, and her sweetness all highlighted; she veers from peevishness (when Baloo muffs the “Peppermint Fairy” bit) to starry-eyed wonder (when visiting the North Pole) to angry despair (when Louie’s imposture is exposed) to confident joy—when she experiences a mystical Christmas vision at the end, and happily wishes Becky a Merry Christmas.

The handling of Molly’s climactic vision, and the accompanying miraculous snowfall, is also another key factor in the episode’s success; this finale is handled with such subtlety and such a sense of supernatural awe that it avoids feeling like a cheap deux ex machina finish and instead conveys a sense of haunting, transcendent happiness, assisted by a beautiful musical accompaniment (here, and elsewhere in the episode, Christopher Stone introduces several new musical cues with a distinctively Christmas-y sound). We see Molly’s letter to Santa, angrily discarded by the disillusioned Molly, being gently wafted up into the skies—but the reply to the letter is not an actual physical appearance by a ho-ho-hoing Santa, but rather a starry light shining down on an intently watching Molly, followed by the start of the snow; we are never shown just what Molly sees, and instead of having her go wild with glee in reaction to the visitation, she instead happily but quietly tells Rebecca “Mommy, I saw him”. The sense of supernatural mystery (to use the word in its old religious sense) and awe is further strengthened by Baloo and Louie’s solemnly dumbfounded reaction to the snow, and by Becky’s joyful but tearful embrace of Molly as the little girl bestows the gift of the snowfall on her mother.
 
Amidst all the Christmas emotions, Hinson smoothly integrates one last clash with the Air Pirates into the plot, deploying Karnage and his band not simply to provide a good aerial chase/fight scene in an episode that’s otherwise low-key in terms of action content, but for the crucial narrative purpose of thwarting Baloo’s artificial-snowstorm plan through a hijacking attempt which Baloo is forced to combat by unleashing the soap flakes on the pirates, thus preventing the use of the soap as "snow" and necessitating the final miracle. Karnage, in his last appearance in the series, remains true to his own comically warped character, refusing to abandon his devotion to piracy even in the face of his henchmen’s childish longing for Christmas presents, and instead promptly diverting that longing into his buccaneering worldview: “Is this not the season of giving? . . . Then, my plundering pirates, we shall make people give presents to us!”
 
Like Karnage and his men (and Louie as well), Wildcat makes his last bow in this episode, and is given some nice moments; his failure to realize that the “North Pole” trip is make-believe and his eager request to be taken along (“I’ll be quiet in the back seat!”) are endearing, as is his byplay with a snow globe. Kit’s participation in the episode is perfectly in character, too; he reacts as he always does when Baloo hatches an impractical scheme, vainly trying to dissuade him from launching the plan, but then loyally backing him up--first frantically gesturing to Baloo to stop before he promises a snowfall to Molly, then enthusiastically helping to convince Molly that she’s meeting Santa at the North Pole, and also straightforwardly intervening on Baloo’s behalf to explain the plan to Becky before she can really start to chew Baloo out for failing to deliver the soap flakes. We also get an amusing glimpse of Kit decorating the Higher for Hire Christmas tree with the aid of a pogo stick, a novel and slightly risky method of decoration that seems very much of a piece with his cloud-surfing.
 
“Jolly Molly Christmas” not only provides all of the regular protagonists (and the most prominent regular antagonists) with good moments, but also showcases Hinson, Geurs, Magon, and the rest of the series’ production crew members at their absolute best, as they spin a story which is at once character-specific and an archetypal Christmas tale of faith, doubt, and wonder, and which manages to combine humor with emotion without allowing one to undermine the other. It’s thus a fitting capstone not only to Hinson’s great run of Talespin episodes, but to the series as a whole.


Up Next: The last episode, “Your Baloo’s in the Mail” (which will be a pretty inconsequential anticlimax after “Bad Reflection on You” and “Jolly Molly Christmas”, but which is not entirely devoid of interest)

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

LXV: “Your Baloo’s in the Mail”

Rebecca, to her delight, learns that she’s won $100,000 in the Pazuza Sweepstakes; however, for her to collect her winnings, her ticket must arrive by mail at the sweepstakes office by 8 a.m. next morning. Since she has to take Molly to a school play, she’s unable to mail the ticket herself, and is forced to entrust the task to Baloo. As Baloo typically messes up whenever she asks him to do something important, Becky decides (at Molly’s suggestion) to simply not let Baloo know that this task is important—but this reverse psychology backfires when Baloo, taking Becky at her word as to the unimportance of the envelope, spends the money Becky gave him for same-day delivery charges on food and sends the letter by far more inexpensive eighteenth-class mail. When Baloo subsequently learns of the actual importance of the letter, and realizes that Becky has already started to make expenditures in happy expectation of receiving the sweepstakes proceeds, he and Kit must scramble to make sure the ticket gets to Pazuza in time, which requires them to try to hurry along the eccentric clerks and carriers in charge of eighteenth-class deliveries—a collection of superannuated eccentrics who are delighted that someone has actually asked them to deliver a letter (for the first time in forty years!), but who are not exactly swift when it comes to the completion of their appointed rounds.
 
Written by Jeremy Cushner and edited by Karl Geurs, “Your Baloo’s in the Mail” starts shakily with a stock sitcom situation—the lottery ticket which must be cashed in within a limited timeframe—and flirts with an equally cliched, and far more dire, sitcom setup—the character who goes on an ill-advised spending spree in the mistaken belief that he or she has become wealthy. This latter stock plot is one of my own pet peeves; whenever it rears its head in a story, I find it painful instead of funny—but, even if I didn’t have a personal aversion to it, I would complain about it here, since it doesn’t feel in character for Becky. I can see her indulging in the purchase of some nicer clothing or furniture, since she’s always come off as someone who once belonged to a higher socioeconomic class and would like to return to it (see, for example, Libby Hinson’s “Touch of Glass”), but I don’t believe that she would immediately start splurging on random luxury items such as a boat or multiple pairs of diamond earrings. However, Cushner mostly leaves this plot thread behind as the episode progresses, to focus instead on Baloo and Kit’s postal odyssey; when he returns to it at the end, he puts a more palatable spin on it than in the earlier scenes, since we see that Becky appears to have used at least some of her expenditures to dress up the Higher for Hire office (which feels much more in character for her) and to obtain appropriate gifts for Kit (a model airplane) and Baloo (a soda machine).

The gift of the soda machine is a particularly nice character touch, since it confirms something that we’ve always suspected—namely, that Becky’s perennial exasperation with Baloo is in large part caused by her perpetually shaky business situation, not by a real personal dislike of her pilot, and that, with some of the economic pressure relieved, she’s capable of being quite kind to him. Her reaction when Baloo confesses the postage snafu to her is also revealing; instead of exploding at him over his bungling, she blames herself for not telling him how important the mailing was; Baloo’s own insistence on telling her the truth and taking the blame himself, rather than engaging in his customary alibiing, is also an excellent touch. Their tearful mutual apologies, though played broadly for laughs, underscore a serious character point—namely, that Baloo and Becky have grown over the course of their fractious business relationship and are no longer defined solely by their initial dynamic of irascible boss and unreliable employee. By thus underlining the development of one of the show’s central character relationships, “Your Baloo’s in the Mail,” inconsequential though its storyline is, does in one sense feel like an appropriate final episode.

The bulk of the episode, however, centers around neither ill-judged spending-spree humor nor better-judged character touches, but on the running gag of outrageous postal delay and inefficiency. This is perhaps a somewhat obvious joke, but one that most of us can easily laugh at; the gag and its multiple variations are also executed with such baroque exaggeration that they come across as pretty amusing overall. Howard Morris, utilizing his old Gopher voice from Winnie the Pooh, voices the somnambulistic postal clerk who serves as the initial link in the long eighteenth-class mail chain, while Jim Cummings is a lot of fun as the salty old skipper who captains the mail boat; Cummings also voices Ralph, the aged mail flier who receives a little more screen time than the other postal eccentrics, and whose stubborn insistence that only he is allowed to fly the mail—even after Baloo volunteers the Sea Duck as a carrier vehicle—leads to one of the episode’s funniest visuals, with Ralph steering the Duck while sitting on Baloo’s lap (it’s Baloo’s disgusted expression that sells the gag more than anything). The whole harried comedic race to deliver the all-important ticket calls to mind some of Barks’ later, more frenziedly-paced ten-pagers, such as “A Duck’s-Eye View of Europe” or “Delivery Dilemma”; the final twist, in which, after Baloo has just missed the sweepstakes deadline by a few frustrating seconds, a collector emerges willing to pay an enormous amount for the ticket’s envelope and its rare eighteenth-class stamp, also evokes any number of Barks stories, as well as tying cleverly into the prior gags concerning the extreme infrequency of eighteenth-class mailings.
 
 
As the concluding episode in Talespin’s generally excellent run, “Your Baloo’s in the Mail” can’t help but feel like a very weak and inadequate anticlimax, especially when it follows several episodes (the two-part “Bad Reflection on You” and “Jolly Molly Christmas”) which felt like much more fitting conclusions to the series. However, taken simply as a standard episode rather than a finale, it’s adequate if largely routine, improving as it goes along by deemphasizing the poorly conceived spending-spree in favor of the funnier race against time (and postal delay), and even finishing up with some character beats that ring true, submerged though they are beneath broad comedy. It’s left uncertain at the end whether Baloo and Becky will actually be able to retrieve the suddenly-valuable envelope and cash it in, but I choose to believe that they did indeed succeed in recovering and selling the stamp, and thus finally were able to put Higher for Hire on a sounder financial footing—a pleasant thought on which to wrap up this series of episode reviews.


Up Next: Some concluding thoughts on the show as a whole, along with episode rankings; I also plan to add some commentary on the short-lived Talespin comic book.  

[Mesterius]

Nov 27, 2022 22:13:28 GMT djnyr said:

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

LXV: “Your Baloo’s in the Mail”

(...)

As the concluding episode in Talespin’s generally excellent run, “Your Baloo’s in the Mail” can’t help but feel like a very weak and inadequate anticlimax, especially when it follows several episodes (the two-part “Bad Reflection on You” and “Jolly Molly Christmas”) which felt like much more fitting conclusions to the series. However, taken simply as a standard episode rather than a finale, it’s adequate if largely routine, improving as it goes along by deemphasizing the poorly conceived spending-spree in favor of the funnier race against time (and postal delay), and even finishing up with some character beats that ring true, submerged though they are beneath broad comedy. It’s left uncertain at the end whether Baloo and Becky will actually be able to retrieve the suddenly-valuable envelope and cash it in, but I choose to believe that they did indeed succeed in recovering and selling the stamp, and thus finally were able to put Higher for Hire on a sounder financial footing—a pleasant thought on which to wrap up this series of episode reviews. 

I haven't watched this episode, but I was a bit puzzled by this paragraph. Does it really matter, as far as a "concluding episode" goes, which episode happened to be the last one coming out of the production pipeline? All 65 episodes of TaleSpin were done as one massive season, and they were not intended to air in the exact order they were produced. What ought to matter here is, which episode did the producers intend to be the final one to air? Going by online episode guides, "Flying Dupes" was episode #65 in the broadcast chronology, so I'm guessing that one.

[djnyr]

Yes, "Flying Dupes" was the final one to air. It's a stronger episode than "Mail," but too comedic to really feel like an appropriate finish either. In those days, the "series finale", which generates such buzz for modern shows, was not a thing, so it's a little unreasonable and anachronistic of me to expect a big finish. My own sense of the dramatic and of proper narrative structure (I wanted to end this series with a really deep, rousing, or emotional episode, doggone it!) is largely responsible for the paragraph you quote, and you're right that I should probably have been more understanding about the realities of TV production in general. There's always a danger, in writing reviews, that the reviewer may get so wrapped up in commenting on "artistic" concerns like structure as to lose sight of the practical conditions under which a work of fiction was produced, and I freely admit I may have lapsed a little into that danger here. That said, I really did get a sense from "Jolly Molly Christmas" that the production crew knew that the curtain was coming down shortly and wanted to deliver something special before the end--although that may actually be because they simply wanted to make the only Christmas episode stand out a little more. Conversely, with "Your Baloo's in the Mail" I got the impression that the writers were effectively saying "well, we're all but done, and we've just got to throw in a bit of filler to bring the episode count up to 65."

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 6—“To me, you’re still the best”

I’ve asserted on several prior occasions that Talespin was the best of the Disney Afternoon shows, and after completing my episode-by-episode retrospective, I stand by that position (hence my echoing of Kit’s words from “Bad Reflection on You” in the heading of this entry). Without rehashing everything I’ve said in the course of the prior episode reviews, I will try to summarize the factors that led me to my conclusion:

A. The show’s central emotional relationships were believable and compelling.

As much I enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, many episode of Original Ducktales, the show rarely managed to tug on my heartstrings, even when it was obviously trying very hard to do so, because I never really bought into the idea of Scrooge’s paternal bond with the Nephews and Webby, which was usually the source of attempted heartfelt moments. To be fair, someone coming to the show without a knowledge of Duck comics may not have had the same problem, but I was always aware that the “real” Scrooge was not a father-figure for the Nephews in the comics, which always made me regard his more emotional interactions with the boys as a little inauthentic. There was no preexisting Scrooge-Webby relationship in the comics for me to hold up against the show, but since Webby was not even related to Scrooge and had next to nothing in common with him, his soft spot for her never quite rang true to me, either; as I mentioned before in my comments on “Mommy for a Day”, one got the feeling that the two bonded simply because one was a grumpy old man and the other a cute little girl, a cliched but time-honored relationship which the writers evidently didn’t feel they needed to develop further.

On Talespin, on the other hand, the show’s three central emotional relationships—between Baloo and Kit, Becky and Molly, and Baloo and Becky—all ring true to me, and not just because there’s no comic-book canon to compare them against. Baloo and Kit don’t bond just because one is a good-hearted rascal and the other a plucky orphan; that archetype is the basis of their relationship, but said relationship (as opposed to that of Original Ducktales' Scrooge and Webby) is fleshed out with character specifics, instead of just being taken for granted. The two bears share a love of flying and a general free-spiritedness which makes it believable that they would bond, and each of them also has an empty spot in his life that the other fills: Kit needs someone to care for him and teach him to harness his impetuosity and his talent, and Baloo needs someone to care about who will help bring purpose to his otherwise aimless life.

Similarly, Becky and Molly go beyond stock “loving mother and daughter” figures to become characters whom I believe in not only as archetypes but as individuals whose relationship has helped to shape their personalities. They’re a tight-knit family of two who have been all in all to each other for years, and their mutual dependency has clearly had both positive and negative effects on them, just as such relationships often do in real life. They love each other deeply, but Becky’s obsessive business drive, prompted in part by her desire to provide for Molly, prevents her from showing that love as often as Molly would prefer, while Molly’s hyper-imaginativeness and emotional investment in fantasy characters (Danger Woman, the Snow Duck, Santa Claus, and so forth) feels like just the sort of trait that would develop in an only child who misses the attention that her sole parent is too busy making a living to fully provide.

As for Baloo and Becky, the humorous low-level workplace war that they wage over the course of the series rings true as well, and feels like the inevitable product of their personalities, not just a contrivance for the sake of comedy; Baloo’s wealth of practical experience but complete lack of initiative on the one hand, and Becky’s strong ambition and initiative but frequent impracticality on the other, make their clashes feel both natural and non-contrivedly funny, while at the same time conveying that each of them has flaws that are balanced by the other’s strengths, and that, bicker as they do, they need each other to succeed.

All of these relationships are simple, strong, and relatable, and as such are able to easily “register” with a viewer without any constant underlining. The characters don’t need to aggressively remind you of who they are and how they feel about each other; their interactions, from episode to episode, speak for themselves, and can easily be foregrounded for maximum dramatic effect without feeling jarring, unlike the more out-of-left-field showcasing of family affection in Original Ducktales (cf. “A Ducktales Valentine”), or without obnoxiously insincere and strident proclamations about the Importance of Family ™ seen in New Ducktales.

B. The show was able to depict adult characters while still making them amusing to kids, and also able to depict kid characters without making them nauseating to adults.

On Original Ducktales, the Nephews were obviously originally conceived as the primary audience-identification figures, but, to that show’s credit, it was unafraid to focus primarily or entirely on adult characters like Scrooge, Launchpad, Gyro, or (later) Fenton. However, the preoccupations of each of the principal adult characters on the show were so removed from ordinary adult concerns that they were essentially children themselves. On Darkwing Duck, Drake Mallard's full-time parental role made him somewhat more recognizable as an adult, but he didn’t hold a regular job in his Drake Mallard identity and apparently didn’t need to hold one, preventing him from ever seeming like a harried working stiff in the vein of Barks’ Donald. As for New Ducktales, not only did its showrunners have such an embarrassing lack of confidence in children’s ability to be interested in grown-up characters that they shoehorned one or more of the “kid” characters into every episode, but they also so completely insulated their adult characters from reality that they remained childish in the sense that they never had to deal with anything resembling real-world adult concerns.

On Talespin, on the other hand, Baloo, though immature in many ways, is an adult obliged to function in the real world, much like the similarly immature-but-functioning-adult Donald in Barks’ stories. Lacking Scrooge’s preoccupation with wealth, Darkwing’s obsession with superheroics, and the particular mystery-solving or magical preoccupations of the Rescue Rangers or the Gummi Bears, he’s the closest thing to an Everyman among the Disney Afternoon’s protagonists. Baloo has deadlines to (reluctantly) meet, a job to hold down, a favorite bar to hang out at, girls whom he tries to impress, and parental responsibilities in regard to Kit—even though, like Donald in regard to the Nephews, he’s a rather awkward fit for a parental role. Adult viewers can see something of their own foibles humorously reflected in him—while, at the same time, again like Donald, he’s not a dully “realistic” character; his job (flying) is something cool and out of the ordinary, and his personality is a lively and colorful one, allowing kids to enjoy watching him in action.

Rebecca is similarly allowed to be a relatable adult with relatable real-world concerns, much more so than Daisy generally is in Duck comics. Barks’ Daisy was typically a comically capricious and incalculable figure, someone to be propitiated or feared but never understood. With Becky, on the other hand, we’re allowed to see things from her point of view—that of a creative but inexperienced and financially shaky business owner trying hard to make ends meet and take care of a child into the bargain, while dealing with an incorrigibly lazy employee; adult viewers can sympathize with her efforts to juggle parenting and work, and with her frustration with the mercantile rat race. At the same time, she’s not depicted as a long-suffering martyr; she can be just as comically stubborn, as comically unreasonable, or as comically absurd, as Baloo himself can be; like him, she’s at once a funny cartoon character who can make the kids laugh, and a recognizably human character capable of striking a chord with the grown-ups in the audience.

The Talespin version of Louie is also depicted so as to be amusing to kids (both through his physical hyperactivity and colorful verbal patter), while also being both relatable and amusing to adults (many of whom were probably more likely to pick up on the rhyme patterns of Louie’s jazzy slang than kids were). In the Jungle Book film he was a colorful but one-dimensional guest villain most remarkable for a memorable but largely irrelevant song-and-dance turn; on Talespin he became not only a more sympathetic character but also a much more well-rounded one, a vivid and likable version of a familiar human archetype—the street-smart, slightly disreputable, but loyal and valuable friend, the guy who might trim you in a poker game but will rally round if you really need help, the bartender who can help unhappy grown-ups drown their sorrows or provide buoyant entertainment for delighted children.

While far from likable, Shere Khan provides yet another example of how the Talespin crew avoided childishly oversimplified characterizations. Throughout the show’s run, they resisted the temptation to permanently pigeonhole Khan as either a good guy or a bad guy, and instead used him to assist or menace the protagonists depending on the requirements of a particular episode’s story, while making both his helpful and his threatening behavior seem like aspects of one consistent character. As with Louie (and Baloo himself, for that matter), Magon and his crew actually made Shere Khan much more interesting than his original incarnation in the Jungle Book animated feature, changing that purely villainous figure into a more complex and ambiguous one, a type you might actually meet in the business world.

The strength of Talespin’s adult protagonists allowed them to carry multiple episodes with little or no assistance from the child characters—but the child characters were equally strong, neither too insipid nor too obnoxious. Magon and his crew were able to make Kit confident and “cool” without awkwardly linking him to external pop-cultural indicators of “coolness” (such as the rock-music/video-game allusions which Original Ducktales sometimes embarrassingly used to make the Nephews seem more with-it), and without obnoxiously forcing him into the forefront of each episode (unlike the wretched version of Dewey in New Ducktales). They also managed to make Kit a more interesting character than many of the post-Barks comic-book versions of the Nephews, who have too frequently had their boyishness deemphasized to turn them into perfect little fonts of knowledge and wisdom. With Kit, while you get the impression that he’s savvy and resourceful, and more sharp-witted than Baloo in some ways, you also never forget that he’s still a 12-year-old boy, with a 12-year-old’s limited experience and imperfect judgment.

Similarly, Molly is a more realistic little-girl character than either the Original Ducktales Webby or Gosalyn from Darkwing Duck (and, it goes without saying, than the New Ducktales versions of either character). Original Webby was an exaggerated compendium of sweetness and light, and Original Gosalyn an exaggerated compendium of hyperactivity and rowdy behavior; both characters were likable, and Gosalyn’s exaggerated traits were a good fit with the generally exaggerated tone of Darkwing Duck, but both felt more like caricatures of children than actual children. Molly, on the other hand, felt like the real thing—sweet and cute sometimes, willful and even bratty at other times, but with neither the cuteness nor the brattiness ever stressed to such an extent as to make her into a caricature. Too many televised depictions of kids, in animation or elsewhere, tends to either feel like idealizations by people who have never interacted with kids, or mockeries by people who don’t like kids; on Talespin, the portrayals of the children simply felt like depictions of kids as they are.

As previously mentioned in this thread, by both myself and Matilda, the use of a genuine 12-year-old to voice Kit and a genuine 6-year-old to voice Molly contributed mightily to the success of both characters, removing the additional layer of artificiality from their characterization which would have accrued had they been voiced as well as written by adults. While using real children limited the number of episodes in which Kit and (especially) Molly could appear, this limitation may also have had a salutary effect, since one gets the impression that the writers, knowing that they would only be able to spotlight the kids in selected episodes rather than having them constantly on hand, took pains to make sure that those spotlight episodes would showcase the youngsters to best advantage. A kid-centered episode on some shows is a cause for dread, but on Talespin the kid-focused outings (examples including “Jolly Molly Christmas,” “Mommy for a Day,” “Flight School Confidential,” “Molly Coddled,” “Stormy Weather,” “The Incredible Shrinking Molly,” “Captains Outrageous,” “Bullethead Baloo”, and “It Came from Beneath the Sea Duck”) are uniformly good and sometimes great.

C. The show embraced its inspirations without slavishly imitating them or subverting them.

As I’ve mentioned at several earlier points in this retrospective, and as emphasized by Magon in the show’s early promotional material (quoted and linked back on Page One of the thread), Talespin was inspired in large part by the pulps, comic strips, and movie serials of the 1930s—their gadgetry, their exotic locales, their daredevil heroes, their colorful villains, and their overall sense of adventure. The Talespin crew put a comic spin on this source material, by putting humorously flawed and fallible protagonists at the center of their action instead of the dashing heroes and daring heroines of the pulps, and by expanding on the comic potentialities of the villainous "pirate chief" archetype, just as Barks humorously humanized his adventure stories by centering them around the likes of Donald and Scrooge rather than more traditionally heroic figures, and by making his most frequent recurring villains a whimsically exaggerated version of a standard burglar gang.

However, Magon and company, while deriving humor from placing comically human characters into the action-adventure milieu, didn't ridicule the very ideas of heroism or adventure, or treat them as tired clichés that could only be handled ironically.  Scenes of action and derring-do--epitomized most frequently on Talespin by aerial flights, fights and chases--were played for all-out excitement, while a sincere ideal of adventure--again, symbolized mainly by aerial exploits--became a recurring theme throughout the show, conveyed not only through Baloo's skilled aerial heroics, but also through Kit's fascination with flying and through the respect shown to aviator guest characters like Whistlestop Jackson, Rick Skye, and (most memorably of all) Joe McGee. 

In short, the show managed to evoke something of the sense of sky's-the-limit wonder and larger-than-life heroics that marked the popular fiction of the 1930s, while still retaining the  individualized humorous characterizations and emphasis on human fallibility that should mark any good Disney funny-animal story--acknowledging the perennial difficulties humans face in living up to the heroic ideal, while also acknowledging the potency and worthiness of that ideal.  

D. Conclusion

Original Ducktales was a (generally) very entertaining show and also something of a ground-breaker, being the effective kick-off for the late 80s/early 90s Golden Age of TV animation, but it will always be in the shadow of its much richer source material, which it never quite managed to equal.  Gummi Bears was a charming, imaginative, and well-animated series (and I thank Mesterius for pointing me towards it, over a year ago, at the beginning of this thread)--but, having dived deeper into the show, I find it simply too low-key to really capture the mythic power of the Tolkien fantasies it was inspired by. Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers was well-done but formulaic, basically a Hanna-Barbera comedy-mystery show, only with animation and characterizations vastly superior to anything from H-B.  Darkwing Duck was a barrel of fun, with vivid characters and rapid-fire humor, but was so influenced by the wild physical comedy of the Looney Tunes and the parodic tone of Jay Ward's cartoons that it could rarely dive too deeply into its characterizations (Aaron Sparrow's comics have shown that the Darkwing characters can be mined for greater dramatic effect than they usually were on the show).  Gargoyles doesn't really belong in this conversation at all, and can't be compared to the other Disney Afternoon offerings; it was an attempt by Disney to imitate the Warner Brothers Batman show and the Fox X-Men series, and thus comparing it to the likes of Ducktales or Talespin would be like trying to compare WB's Taz-Mania to their Batman series.  The other later Afternoon shows were either awkward efforts to compete with wilder shows like The Simpsons or the Warners television cartoons (Goof Troop, Quack Pack) or elaborations of successful feature films (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid). 

Talespin stands out from all these others, in its originality (its world and the majority of its characters came from no external sources, and its three repurposed Jungle Book characters were essentially new creations), in its avoidance of any one regular plotting formula, and most of all in its willingness to plunge deeper into human emotions than any of the other funny-animal shows.  Ultimately, of course, my hailing of Talespin as the best can only be a subjective call, try as I might to make as fact-intensive a case as possible; I freely admit to an enormous fondness for the series (an admission which should scarcely be necessary by this point in the thread).  Thanks to Magon and the best of his writers and editors--among them Libby Hinson, Karl Geurs, Steve Sustarsic, Mark Zaslove, and Len Uhley--the bears, apes, wolves, tigers, and other denizens of the Talespin world feel more unique and more real to me than any of the other characters of the Disney Afternoon, and as such pass into the same space in my mental universe occupied by Barks' Ducks and Gottfredson's Mice; in my mind, somewhere, far to the southwest of Duckburg and Mouseville, the city of Cape Suzette still shines in the tropic sun.

Up Next: Episode Rankings

[donalddisneyfan]

Dec 7, 2022 1:14:50 GMT djnyr said:

 As for New Ducktales, not only did its showrunners have such an embarrassing lack of confidence in children’s ability to be interested in grown-up characters that they shoehorned one or more of the “kid” characters into every episode

Original Ducktales was a (generally) very entertaining show and also something of a ground-breaker, being the effective kick-off for the late 80s/early 90s Golden Age of TV animation, but it will always be in the shadow of its much richer source material, which it never quite managed to equal.  Gummi Bears was a charming, imaginative, and well-animated series (and I thank Mesterius for pointing me towards it, over a year ago, at the beginning of this thread)--but, having dived deeper into the show, I find it simply too low-key to really capture the mythic power of the Tolkien fantasies it was inspired by. Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers was well-done but formulaic, basically a Hanna-Barbera comedy-mystery show, only with animation and characterizations vastly superior to anything from H-B.  Darkwing Duck was a barrel of fun, with vivid characters and rapid-fire humor, but was so influenced by the wild physical comedy of the Looney Tunes and the parodic tone of Jay Ward's cartoons that it could rarely dive too deeply into its characterizations (Aaron Sparrow's comics have shown that the Darkwing characters can be mined for greater dramatic effect than they usually were on the show).  Gargoyles doesn't really belong in this conversation at all, and can't be compared to the other Disney Afternoon offerings; it was an attempt by Disney to imitate the Warner Brothers Batman show and the Fox X-Men series, and thus comparing it to the likes of Ducktales or Talespin would be like trying to compare WB's Taz-Mania to their Batman series.  The other later Afternoon shows were either awkward efforts to compete with wilder shows like The Simpsons or the Warners television cartoons (Goof Troop, Quack Pack) or elaborations of successful feature films (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid). 

I appreciate and respect your opinions of what you've said, just wanna point out though that the decision to shoehorn at least one kid character in each episode of the DuckTales reboot was said to be more of a decision of the executive higher ups (meaning even if the showrunners refused to go along with the higher ups, they'd likely just be fired in favor of someone who would follow the mandate, it happened with Joe Pitt when he tried to pitch a DuckTales reboot focusing on Scrooge as the main focus over the kids). It's sadly part of the perception in modern executives & cartoon creators and modern cartoon shows in general that a show can only be successful nowadays if a kid character is the main focus all the time.

Among the Disney Afternoon era shows you mentioned in that, I notice The Wuzzles, Bonkers, Raw Toonage, Mighty Ducks the Animated Series, Marsupilami, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers (the original cartoon), The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Timon and Pumbaa, and Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show are absent in that. Where would those shows hold as far as original Disney Afternoon era shows?

[djnyr]

Yes, it's fair to point out that the relentless promotion of the "kid" characters on New Ducktales was probably due as much to the execs as to the actual showrunners, but whatever the source of the mistake, Talespin (and Original Ducktales to a lesser extent) give the lie to the fallacious reasoning behind it.

I actually did mention Rescue Rangers in the section you quote above, between Gummi Bears and Darkwing Duck. In regards to the other ones you mentioned, the Pooh show was a Saturday morning cartoon, not part of the Afternoon lineup, but my take on it would be that it was pleasant enough but hardly measured up to the theatrical Pooh cartoons. The Wuzzles was so short-lived that it never really forged an identity beyond "merchandising-friendly kiddie show." Bonkers, Raw Toonage, Marsupilami, and Shnoonkums and Meat I would lump with Quack Pack as examples of the Disney TV animation department misguidedly trying too hard to imitate the Looney-Tunes sensibilities of things like Roger Rabbit and Animaniacs. Timon and Pumbaa is another example of unnecessary (in my opinion) elaborations of successful Disney feature films, while the Mighty Ducks was a bizarre, gimmicky, and unsurprisingly short-lived series. I hate to sound like such a Scrooge (Ebenezer, not McDuck) here, but I think Disney Television Animation most definitely lost its way when it reacted to Warners' run of successful zany and cynical series by attempting to imitate them instead of sticking to the Disney style; it's like Coca-Cola famously changing its formula in 1985 to try and imitate Pepsi, which didn't woo away any Pepsi drinkers and instead merely annoyed Coke drinkers.  Magon himself has said as much in interviews, commenting that he left when Disney "got weird" (the gutting of his Duck Daze pitch to create the mutation known as Quack Pack seems to have been the last straw). 

[djnyr]

Spin It! Appendix A: Episode Rankings

I find the whole idea of “Top Ten” lists somewhat dubious; they tend to feel more than a little random and arbitrary to me, and create the impression that the titles left off the list are lousy. This attitude informs the rankings which follow; I have provided a Top Ten episode list of sorts, but only in the context of a complete ranking of all the episodes.

First off, “Plunder and Lightning”, to my mind the greatest Talespin adventure of them all, has to be taken out of the equation before any ranking of the standard-length episodes can be done; it takes such effective advantage of its movie-length structure that it’s not fair to set it against any of the normal 22-minute episodes or even to the pair of two-part episodes. Nor is it fair to compare any of the individual serialized portions of the movie to a single episode of the series, since those serial installments were not meant to be judged as stand-alone episodes.

With “Plunder” off the board, but given a seat at the head of the table (in its full-length movie form), my Top Ten would be as follows:

1. “Her Chance to Dream”—a haunting combination of comedy, tragedy, and supernatural romance that would be remarkable enough on a live-action series and which is truly extraordinary in a Disney funny-animal context.

2. “The Old Man and the Sea Duck”—a compelling adventure focused entirely around the themes of Hero versus Nature and Hero versus Himself, rather than the more standard theme of Hero versus Villain, and with a less dramatic but equally haunting supernatural tinge.

3. “From Here to Machinery”—an unexpectedly mature use of the familiar “robot replaces hero” theme, which uses the robot not so much as an external source of conflict but rather as a catalyst for Baloo’s emotional crisis, and which gives some really excellent character moments to each of the other regulars.

4. “A Jolly Molly Christmas”—a funny but moving Christmas episode which avoids cynicism and sentimentality and which carefully tailors its Christmas cheers and tears to the personalities of the characters.

5. “Bygones”—a rousing action-adventure episode with powerful mythic-supernatural overtones derived from the episode’s unselfconscious embrace of the flying-ace mystique.

6. “Whistlestop Jackson, Legend”—a comedy, action-adventure story, and character study rolled into one, with interesting insights into Baloo and Shere Khan and a memorable flawed guest hero whose heroism is vindicated in spite of his flaws.

7. “Save the Tiger”—a darkly humorous commentary on human nature and a terrific character study of Baloo, Becky, and Khan.

8. “Stormy Weather”—an emotional, almost entirely serious examination of Baloo and Kit’s personalities and their unsteady father-son relationship, with some emotional gut-punch moments.

9. “Mommy for a Day”—an equally emotional examination of Becky and Molly and their mother-daughter dynamic, which is so powerfully handled that it easily overcomes a slightly contrived plot setup.

10. “I Only Have Ice for You”—a strong comic adventure which nicely showcases the contentious but ultimately symbiotic Baloo-Becky relationship and skillfully juggles it with a funny and exciting struggle against the Air Pirates.

Excellent as I believe all of the above episodes are, it would be very easy to come up with alternates for several of them; the show’s bench is a deep one. I also am not sure that the above list, focused as it mainly is on the more dramatic episodes, is entirely fair to the show’s many excellent comedic episodes, which have a different set of goals than the dramatic ones but which are no less effective in their own way. Anyway, here is a follow-up Second Ten:

11. “A Bad Reflection on You”—a two-part adventure with a lot of great moments of excitement and suspense, and with a strong character arc for Baloo and Kit at the heart of it.

12. “Louie’s Last Stand”—a good extended showcase for Louie highlighted by lots of action, a memorable and unique guest villain, and a strong character moment for Shere Khan.

13. “It Came from Beneath the Sea Duck”—a nice light-hearted romp focusing on Kit and Molly, with enough action to avoid feeling too lightweight and with many nice character beats.

14. “For Whom the Bell Klangs”—an impressive all-out large-scale pulp adventure with impressive visuals, a strong guest heroine, and a strong guest villain.

15. “Flight School Confidential”—a good character study which combines an external conflict between Kit and the Thembrians with an internal conflict between Kit and his own overconfidence.

16. “Time Waits for No Bear”—the show’s single best sustained pure comedy, a beautifully paced and plotted outing with humor that is both memorably farcical and character-specific.

17. “Bullethead Baloo”—a superhero spoof which validates Baloo’s non-super heroics without unjustly denigrating the superhero myth, and which combines excellent action and humor with strong character material.

18. “Flight of the Snow Duck”—a whimsical, but not cutesified, showcase for Molly and Wildcat, with an emphasis on the power of childish imagination that manages to be appealing instead of nauseating.

19. “Captains Outrageous”—a rollicking adventure with a good combination of humor and excitement and an appealing guest character.

20. “A Star is Torn”—a fun tribute to old-time Hollywood, an enjoyable mystery, and a strong showcase for Becky and her ambivalent attitude towards Baloo.

The list of strong episodes is still not exhausted, however; I think it would be possible to make a good argument for any of the next six episodes to place among the Second Ten or even the Top Ten, while the nine which follow them in the rankings are each very solid and entertaining, as well:

21. “The Incredible Shrinking Molly”—a scary, funny, and exhilarating adventure which is tremendously entertaining despite a few animation faux-pas.

22. “The Road to Macadamia”—a lightweight but extremely well-handled comic tribute to Hope and Crosby’s “Road” movies, which manages to be an effective pastiche of its source without being a mere imitation.

23. “Molly Coddled”—a cute and funny showcase for Molly, which manages the difficult trick of having her defeat a villain at every turn while still retaining her essential childishness.

24. “My Fair Baloo”—a good combination of satire (of the affected rich), action (especially Baloo’s white-knuckle landing of a damaged plane), and character study (of Baloo and Becky).

25. “On a Wing and a Bear”—a comic crisis of confidence for Baloo which is both humorous and involving, with good moments for the other regular heroes and villains as well.

26. “The Golden Sprocket of Friendship”—a well-executed comedy which effectively introduces some entertaining variations into Baloo’s usual relations with the Thembrians.

27. “The Idol Rich”—a nice look at Baloo in his various aspects as thoughtful parent, unthinking bumbler, and wily trickster, with an amusing (though not entirely characteristic) introduction for Colonel Spigot and the Thembrians.

28. “Citizen Khan”—an engaging showcase for Wildcat with a novel setting, some good mistaken-identity humor, and some effective guest characters (both good and bad).

29. “For a Fuel Dollars More”—an entertaining comic escalation battle with a strong visual imagination.

30. “Flying Dupes”—a nice comic capstone to the Thembrian sub-series of episodes, which provides a lot of entertaining slapstick and interestingly expands the new Baloo/Spigot/Dunder dynamic first introduced in “Golden Sprocket of Friendship.”

31. “In Search of Ancient Blunders”—a fanciful and sometimes surreal but very enjoyable comic-adventurous treasure hunt.

32. “Pizza Pie in the Sky”—a nuttily-written and nuttily-animated comedy which succeeds through sheer over-the-top gusto.

33. “Bringing Down Babyface”—a humorous chase saga with little time for character bits, but with a strong succession of entertaining and memorable visual gags.

34. “The Sound and the Furry”—a somewhat padded but very appealing Wildcat-focused episode which effectively balances the mechanic’s deadpan eccentricity against the extreme cuteness of the guest critters he befriends.

35. “The Ransom of the Red Chimp”—a pure farce focused mainly on a wildly comic guest character, which nevertheless manages to make said guest character likable and entertaining, and which does justice to the regulars as well.

The following episodes have, to my mind, flaws more noticeable than the ones listed above, but still work overall and are quite interesting:

36. “A Spy in the Ointment”—an excellent comedy-thriller for most of the way, with consistently funny, almost non-stop absurdist verbal and physical humor, only slightly marred by an ending that (perhaps unintentionally) comes off as unnecessarily dark.

37. “A Touch of Glass”—a mystery that’s a little obvious when watched out of the show’s original production/release order, but also an episode with strong character material which makes it work in spite of a twist that is easy to see coming and a moral which is somewhat heavy-handed.

38. “Double or Nothing”—a rapid-fire comedy that’s a bit too strident in places, but which finishes strong and provides a lot of laughs along the way.

39. “The Bigger They Are, The Louder They Oink”—built on a rather arbitrary premise, but helped by some good Baloo-Becky character humor and by generally amusing slapstick comedy.

40. “The Balooest of the Bluebloods”—an old-dark-house comedy which wastes the dramatic possibilities of its Baloo-leaves-Higher-for-Hire plot setup, but which delivers entertainingly on the spooky-comedy side.

41. “Baloo Thunder”—a lively but rather generic action-comedy caper, albeit one that derives some distinctiveness from its incorporation of a helicopter prototype into the plot.

42. “Polly Wants a Treasure”—a fast-paced and amusing treasure hunt, but one with a distractingly ambiguous level of anthropomorphism in its guest character.

43. “Waiders of the Wost Tweasure”—a treasure hunt with a fast pace, lots of good verbal humor, and continual visual flourishes, but an underdeveloped character-based subplot.

44. “Mach One for the Gipper”—filled with fast and funny action, and distinguished by a very engagingly voiced guest character, but weakened by the way it asks us to resent said character simply for being successful rather than conclusively demonstrating that his success is unearned.

45. “War of the Weirds”—an episode that begins with a very weak and contrived setup, but which snowballs entertainingly into a delightfully absurd farce.

46. “Last Horizons”— filled with interesting concepts and good character touches, but simply too narratively overcrowded to work as well as it should have.

47. “Paradise Lost”—an episode that could have been great, but which undercuts its potential emotional power through a disappointingly pat ending.

48. “Stuck on You”—a very thin slapstick premise which is salvaged and made interesting by being used as a vehicle for examining Don Karnage’s character.

49. “The Time Bandit”—a darkly humorous comic effort which is frequently quite funny, but which overstresses its dark humor towards the end and which hits a little too heavily on its ostensible moral.

50. “Vowel Play”—an overly didactic episode whose didacticism is alleviated by healthy doses of clever wordplay and quirky humor.

51. “A Baloo Switcheroo”—an episode that fails to use its body-swap premise to really explore the characters’ personalities, but does deliver a good-sized amount of entertainingly surreal humor.

52. “Destiny Rides Again”—over-reliant on vague magical hand-waving to drive its plot, but helped by a unique setting and its focus on an essential aspect of Baloo’s personality (namely, the reluctant quality of his heroism).

53. “Bearly Alive”—this episode entirely squanders the dramatic potential of Baloo’s mistaken belief that he’s dying, and the suspense/mystery potential of the “Bearmuda Triangle,” but stays afloat through its quick pace and energetic verbal humor.

The remaining episodes are more seriously flawed, to the extent that they fail to quite work for me as a whole. However, none of them—with the possible exception of the last entry on the list—are flat-out embarrassing, insulting to the audience, or impossible to rewatch in the way that some episodes of Original Ducktales and far too many episodes of Quack Pack and New Ducktales are.

54. “Jumping the Guns”—a mildly amusing but oddly flat and uninvolving handling of what should have been an exciting premise (the Air Pirates hatching a plot to sneak them past the Cape Suzette cliff guns).

55. “Your Baloo’s in the Mail”—harmed by the incorporation of a cliched sitcom plot (premature spending of lottery winnings) which doesn’t really fit Becky’s personality, but boosted by the genuinely funny moments surrounding Baloo’s struggle with the dilatory postal carriers.

56. “Feminine Air”—damaged by an unbelievable villain and a boomeranging attempt at feminist messaging which instead makes Becky look silly in an uncharacteristic way, but partly redeemed by its eventual eschewing of a generic girls versus boys plot to focus on Becky and Baloo’s specific interpersonal dynamic.

57. “All’s Whale that Ends Whale”—another “message” episode, one which warps Baloo somewhat out-of-character and which has less humor than “Feminine Air,” but which does at least provide some good moments for Kit and finishes up with a visually arresting finale.

58. “Sheepskin Deep”—an episode that feels like a school-sponsored PSA with mild humorous interludes for 75% of its running time, but with an unexpected ending that, while it doesn’t make up for the preceding dullness and contrivance, does save it from being a simple piece of scholastic didacticism.

59. “Gruel and Unusual Punishment”—my choice for the single weakest episode of the show, a paper-thin idiot plot, although even it has a few good points—mainly several funny bits involving the Thembrians.

To return to something I said towards the beginning of this thread, Talespin had at least twenty really good episodes (after the above breakdown I’m more inclined the raise that number to 25 or 30), over 20 good or very good ones, and no really bad ones; even “Gruel and Unusual Punishment” I would only call bad, not really bad. Howard Hawks famously defined a great movie as one with three good scenes and no bad ones; he didn’t offer any equivalent definition of a good TV show, but if he did, I think that Talespin would easily meet it.

(Oh, and in case anyone is wondering why the episode numbering only reached 59, not 65--I was thrown by that myself for a minute--it's because I omitted the four-part serialized version of "Plunder and Lightning" and counted each of the two two-parter episodes as one episode).  

Up Next: The Talespin Comics

[donaldistducktoons]

Dear djnyr, these are some of the best detailed analyzes of some series I could read. I also agree with most of what you listed. This brings me back to my nostalgia and to watch Talespin again when I have another chance. And that I love Talespin and I love the very concept of that series. And I have to admit that it is perhaps one of the few Disney animated series I've seen that used almost all kinds of anthropomorphic animals, unlike other Disney animated series like Ducktales, Darkwing Duck and Goof Troop that had mostly humans with dognoses, while the Rescue Rangers were mostly in the world of humans. And I actually like how Talespin made the most of it. Also the relationship between Kit and Baloo as well as Rebecca and Molly really feel like real father-son or mother-daughter relationships. I wish it was the same with Donald and his nephews (I know there's enough of that in the comics, but I'd like it to be in the animation as well). Also Don Karnage with his pirates was great, as was Shere-Khan. And let's not forget about Louie and Wildcat, which were good. And as for the animation, the best thing for me is how the studios in Japan, France and Australia did this very well. Overall, I agree with most of your analysis and commend you for detailing here what they are. For me, Talespin is one of Disney's best animated series.

Sorry, about this, I know you haven't finished yet, but let me tell you my impressions. I will definitely be watching this again Talespin.

[djnyr]

Thanks, donaldistducktoons, for the comments and for the kind words.  I'm glad you've been enjoying the analyses (although I think that Chris Barat did a superior and more exhaustive set of analyses with his Ducktales retrospective), and I agree completely with your opinions on the series itself; all those factors you describe are part of what sets it above its contemporaries (not to mention the Disney shows that came after it).  

Spin It! Appendix B: Talespin in the Comics

Remember those dizzying days before the notorious 1991 “Disney Implosion,” when Disney Comics was launching mini-series after mini-series and title after title to cross-promote Disney’s TV shows and feature films? Among the crop of comics that flooded the zone in those days was a Talespin comic series, which began in January 1991 as a four-issue miniseries adapting “Plunder and Lightning,” and which became a regular monthly comic in June 1991, lasting for seven issues before the Implosion ended it. Contemporaneously,  Talespin stories also appeared regularly in the Disney Adventures magazine. This appendix isn’t intended to be a comprehensive overview of each Talespin comic; although I’ve managed to read many of them, through Talespin fan sites and other online sources, I have not been able to track down them all, and in any event many of them are too slight to repay further analysis. However, I do want to summarize the run of the short-lived Talespin comic, and also touch on the most notable of the Talespin stories published in other venues.

Almost all of the noteworthy Talespin comics efforts, in both the regular title and in Disney Adventures, were written by Bobbi JG Weiss; she also penned English-language dialogue for a European-imported Talespin story featured in the Disney’s Colossal Comics Collection digest series. Weiss evidently had an affinity for the Talespin characters and a thorough familiarity with the show; she even explored aspects of the characters (like Kit’s piratical past) that were left largely undeveloped by the series itself. Her dialogue also captured the characters’ voices perfectly, to the extent that you could “hear” her written lines being delivered by Ed Gilbert, Sally Struthers, Jim Cummings, and the other cast members. The artwork which accompanied Weiss’ scripts, however, did not measure up to her writing or to the visuals of the TV show; with a few exceptions, most of the Talespin comic stories were penciled by Oscar Saavedra of the Jaime Diaz Studio, whose art was weirdly uneven, whether due to his own shortcomings or the multiplicity of inkers that the Diaz studios tended to utilize; within a single story, some panels can be subtly and amusingly rendered, while others are utterly bland and generic in the tradition of Paul Murry. Furthermore, Saavedra appeared to be so conditioned by the Diaz Studio’s years of illustrating Duck and Mouse stories that he tended to populate the stories’ supporting casts with standard-issue dognoses, rather than utilizing the rich diversity of species seen on the TV series. His generally pedestrian rendering of aerial action scenes also prevented them from looking as dynamic as they would have on television, although in fairness most artists would have trouble replicating the swooping and soaring of animated airplanes in a static medium. Part of me wants to see James Silvani, the excellent artist on Aaron Sparrow’s Darkwing Duck revival, do a redraw of Weiss’ Talespin stories (as he did with the Darkwing story “Kitty Kat Kaper”) I think Silvani would add a lot more visual variety to the supporting characters and would even be able to convey more of a sense of excitement in the aerial sequences.

My plan for this appendix is to cover first the Talespin comic series, then the Weiss Talespin stories published elsewhere, then the most noteworthy of the non-Weiss Talespin efforts. 

I. The Comic Series

The four-part “Plunder and Lightning” adaptation, mentioned above, was written by Weiss, and faithfully followed the animated original, mostly word for word. While the song itself was omitted, Weiss also retained the substance of the “Home is Where the Heart Is” sequence, indicating that (unlike those who recut the feature into the four-part television version) she realized how pivotal it was to the overall structure of the story. The first three parts of the adaptation were illustrated by Cosme Quartieri, another Diaz Studio regular, but one with a somewhat more consistently dynamic visual sense than Saavedra (Quartieri did the art for the Disney Comics Ducktales series, among others). It also helps that Quartieri directly recreates some of the shots and staging from the animated film, as during Karnage’s first appearance and Molly's bargaining with Baloo and Kit after stowing away. When Saavedra takes over in the fourth installment, it’s hard not to notice the drop-off in quality; although he does a good job with the panel showing Kit’s plunge from the Iron Vulture, his rendering of Karnage’s attack on Cape Suzette is extremely flat. That’s a Quartieri panel below on the left, and a Saavedra one on the right (or, depending on your browser, a Quartieri panel on top and a Saavedra one on the bottom):
  
The regular Talespin comic series kicked off with ”Flight of the Sky-Raker,” which was serialized in the first two issues. This lengthy story, written by Weiss, centers around the struggle for control of a valuable prototype plane coveted by both Shere Khan and the Air Pirates, with Baloo caught in the middle. It was an excellent inaugural outing for the comic series, with Weiss writing all the featured regulars (Baloo, Becky, Kit, Karnage, Shere Khan, and Wildcat) expertly, demonstrating her knowledge of the show’s wider universe by utilizing recurring bit player Wiley Pole in a key supporting part, incorporating plenty of aerial action (including a climactic conflict involving the Air Pirates, Khan’s air squadron, a group of freelance pilots led by Wiley, the Sea Duck, and the Sky-Raker), and creating an excellent new guest character in the person of Lily Ravenwood, the daughter of the plane’s inventor—an eighteen-year-old who has capably managed to survive on a deserted island but at the cost of becoming alienated from people and even somewhat paranoid. Her personal attachment to the Sky-Raker, the only surviving link to her departed father, is nicely contrasted with Khan and Karnage’s mercenary interests in the plane, and provides a strong emotional hook for the story; Weiss also intelligently links Lily to the regulars by having her father be the aircraft designer who originally “customized” the Sea Duck for Baloo, and by revealing Wildcat as the elder Ravenwood’s old mechanic. “Sky-Raker” has recently been reprinted in Fantagraphic’s Disney Afternoon comics collection, so it’s somewhat easier to obtain than the other Talespin comic stories; I’m not familiar with most of the other stories in that collection, but I’d certainly recommend getting it for “Sky-Raker” alone; it's involving and entertaining, even with the abovementioned drawback of Saavedra's somewhat uneven artwork.



The third issue of the Talespin comic featured “Idiots Aboard”, a successfully sustained farce which brings back Trader Moe and his Goons. Here, Weiss picked up on a throwaway line from “Time Waits for No Bear”—Moe’s grousing about needing new goons—and spun it into an entertaining story, by having Moe ditch the Goons and recruit a new pair of thugs in the hopes of pulling off a successful heist for a change. The Goons, not realizing that Moe is deliberately evading them, recruit an extremely reluctant Baloo to help them find their boss, and wind up inadvertently saving Moe from a double-cross by his new henchmen, who are really double-agents in the pay of Moe’s rival crime boss Queso Grande (here, at least, Saavedra broke away from the dognose default and came up with an appropriate species to complement Weiss’ clever character name; Queso Grande—“Big Cheese” in English—is depicted as a rat). As Chris Barat pointed out, in a missive to the Talespin letter column penned entirely in the Goons’ idiom (and reproduced below), one would expect it to be difficult if not impossible to recreate those characters’ voices in print, but Weiss did a splendid job of it—as witness the sample page below (I’ve also excerpted Chris’ letter). Weiss also finds time for good character bits for Becky, Kit, and Molly in the course of all the comedy, and caps said comedy with a climactic chaotic air rally which would have worked very nicely in animation.

     
“Contractual Desperation”, which occupied the fourth issue, was the least distinctive of Weiss’ outings for the Talespin title, but was still very well-done, albeit slightly derivative of the TV episode “The Sound and the Furry,” with a (rather bland) one-shot villain using gremlin-like animals called “Pieces Monkeys” to sabotage the Sea Duck as part of a plot to take over Higher for Hire. Weiss shows here that, in addition to being able to write the other regulars effectively, she also had a firm grasp on Louie’s personality; the ape was either absent or peripheral in the preceding stories, but gets to demonstrate his street-smart canniness here—identifying the Pieces Monkeys for Baloo, helping to piece together the villain’s scheme, and deploying his patrons and employees in a scheme to outfox the bad guy. Saavedra (or his inkers) also flexes his artistic muscles more impressively than usual here, with some good nighttime aerial panoramas and a funny running background gag in the first several pages (involving Wildcat’s misadventures with a new gadget) which recalls some similar bits from the TV series.

Issue #5 contained a full-length adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea Duck,” which, like the earlier four-part adaptation of ”Plunder and Lightning”, was very faithful to the source material, but not on the same level; the comic pages could not capture the alternating sense of dread and euphoria which the animated version brought to its claustrophobic canyons and the “sunlit silences” of cloudless skies.


“F’reeze A Jolly Good Fellow”, from Talespin #6, was another excellent original effort by Weiss, focusing on an only occasionally exploited dynamic from the series—namely, Molly’s ability to cutely but persistently persuade the indulgent Baloo to humor her whims; the story has the two of them teaming up, with Molly again assuming her “Danger Woman” persona, to rescue a hijacked cargo of Frosty Pep ice cream from Don Karnage, who wants it for a lavish birthday celebration (his own, of course). Molly’s childishly horrified reaction to the hijacking (“What if it’s gone, and there’s no Frosty Pep ice cream ever again?”) is spot-on, and sounds remarkably like something I remember one of my own siblings saying during my childhood, while Karnage’s motive for stealing the ice cream is perfectly in keeping with his comic narcissism—as is the revelation that he’s been celebrating his 29th birthday for the past several years, in the tradition of the perpetually-39 Jack Benny.


“The Long Flight Home”, which occupied the final issue of the series, filled in some corners of Kit’s history, showing us via flashbacks that he started out as a street urchin and became an aerial hobo before hooking up with the Air Pirates. In keeping with Talespin’s quasi-1930s (i.e., Depression-era) setting, Weiss creates and fleshes out an interesting air-hobo subculture, complete with slang terms like "bad ticket" as well as “friendly” marks and “warning” marks mirroring real Depression-era hobo symbols, and introduces us to some interesting new characters—a kindly old ursine couple (Grammy and the Gummer) who run a sort of island safe-haven for hobos, and to a Javert-like aerial official named Witherspoon who hounded Kit during the latter’s hobo days. When Witherspoon shows up at Higher for Hire, Kit panics and sets out on the road again, with Molly (to Kit’s exasperation) tagging along. The kids are eventually trapped on an island where a shady plantation manager is imprisoning hobos to serve as forced labor, allowing Weiss to neatly make the point that Kit is no longer a rootless hobo by having him persuade his excessively individualistic fellow-prisoners that they need to work as a team in order to gain their freedom. We also get a reference to Molly’s father (never mentioned on the show itself), as she refers to missing him and even makes a veiled allusion to his death. This story is a particularly good example of Weiss’ willingness to explore and build on the world of the show instead of merely penning quickie imitations of the TV episodes.



II. Disney Adventures (Stories by Weiss)

“The Gates of Shambhala.” Published in three installments in Disney Adventures, this lengthy story concerning the quest for a mystical city in the snowy mountain realm of “Ubet”, is interesting and ambitious, and delivers some intriguing character moments for the regulars, with Baloo, Becky and Kit saving Karnage’s life at one point, and Karnage returning the favor by genuinely cooperating with the good guys for the remainder of their journey. There’s also another reference to Kit’s past, with he and Karnage working together to thwart some bandits by utilizing a strategy from their old mutual pirating days. This new relationship between our heroes and the pirates eventually comes to nothing, however; the reset button is hit on the last page, undercutting Becky’s reflection that “we’ve all changed for the better” during the journey. Since the only actual change we see occurring in the characters’ relationships is the cooperation with Karnage, the eventual erasure of that cooperation effectively makes Baloo, Becky, Kit, and Karnage largely incidental to the only real character arc of the story. Said arc is centered on a rather emotionally remote and uninteresting guest character—Lucius, a former business colleague of Shere Khan’s who’s dissatisfied with material success and is seeking spiritual enlightenment in Shambhala. Lucius is a potentially compelling character, but he’s depicted as so noble and all-knowing from the start that his eventual entry into Shambhala feels more like a foregone conclusion that a triumphant redemptive moment; the climax of the story would have had more impact if we had first gotten to know him in his earlier life as a hard-driving businessman (which is only mentioned, not shown). Although he tells Baloo, Becky, and Kit that he brought them along was to help keep him true to his mission, we never see him wavering in that mission for a second, reinforcing the feeling that the regular characters are mere tagalongs in someone else's story. Due to this feeling, the story winds up coming off as less than the sum of its interesting parts.
  
“Rise of the Pillager Queen." This story features Weiss again doing something that the show never got around to—namely, putting Karnage and Colonel Spigot into the same story. She comes up with a plausible reason for the Air Pirates and the Thembrians to be at odds (a fight over a treasure-laden pirate airship which belonged to Karnage’s uncle Don Garbajo and was wrecked in Thembria), and also neatly arranges for Baloo to be pulled into the conflict, by having Spigot draft him to pilot the excavated airship. The story is on the shorter side and ends a bit abruptly (Karnage’s dread of the late Garbajo, crucial to the story’s climax, is not set up in advance), but is still a lot of fun, with the two sets of rival antagonists reacting to each other just as you would expect (Karnage contemptuously referring to the Thembrians as “frosty-bitten piggy people”, and Spigot calling Karnage “Degenerate pirate thcum”). “Pillager Queen” is also boosted by artwork from Cosme Quarteri, whose more dynamic style provides some striking and some funny visuals—one of my favorites being the panel below, which perfectly encapsulates Spigot’s personality and his relationship with Baloo:

“It’s a Plunderful Life”. With artwork by Luciano Gatto and (according to Inducks) an uncredited Romano Scarpa, this story has a more vivid visual look than most of the Saavedra-drawn Talespin stories, with the characters looking more like their animated selves—although the staging remains rather static, and the extreme gradient coloration is almost distracting at times. Unlike some of Weiss’ other Talespin stories, “Plunderful Life” doesn’t really expand on any unexplored aspects of the series, but it’s still entertaining and shows a solid grasp of both the series and its characters, with Baloo unwittingly doing some aerial moonlighting for a disguised Karnage (operating under the alias of Mr. O’Karny, complete with a fake brogue on top of his usual accent, which would have been great fun to hear Jim Cummings tackle in an animated version).

“Louie’s Ristorante”. Becky demands to see Louie’s place, where her pilot spends so much of his time; a nervous Baloo takes her to Louie’s for dinner, but tries to convince her that the establishment is a classy restaurant instead of a rowdy bar. Although very short, this story contains some good character touches, with Baloo presuming that Becky wants to go to Louie’s in order to pass judgment on his favorite hangout, but Becky eventually revealing that she merely wanted an evening out and was afraid that Baloo wouldn’t be willing to take her as a friend. Quartieri, who does artistic duty here, fills Louie’s place with a wider variety of species than usual in the Talespin comics.

“Voodoo Baloo”. The flimsiest of Weiss’ Talespin stories, the initial premise of this one is rather contrived—Rebecca buys a voodoo doll from a street peddler, and decides to use it to make Baloo toe the mark. Given Becky’s weakness for off-the-wall schemes, I can easily see her coming to believe in something as strange as this, but I would expect it to take something more impressive than a single dubious peddler to convince her—such as a book on witchcraft by some alleged authority. That said, Weiss does do a good job of contriving several coincidences which reinforce Becky’s belief in the doll (in one of these scenes, she includes a direct reference to “I Only Have Ice for You”). The ensuing slapstick complications during a trip to deliver a ferocious saber-toothed “Hokspitui Cat” to its native habitat and a subsequent clash with Karnage and his men—who are poaching Hokspitui fangs for sale on the black market—are reasonably amusing, and include one priceless exchange that I would have loved to have seen used on the series (Becky: “Baloo, you’re going to die!” Baloo: “Becky, if that was your idea of encouragement, keep quiet!”) However, contrivance again rears its head during the fight with the pirates; although Weiss, as usual, writes Karnage’s dialogue to perfection, I find it hard to believe he would waste his piratical time on anything as petty and unglamorous as illegal animal trafficking.


“Flimflam Flyboy.” An interesting and enjoyable story that could have been even better in animation (which would have lent more punch to the climactic rescue scene, which is handled in characteristically pedestrian style by Saavedra).  The catalyst here is a cocky 17-year-old student pilot named Lupo, who comes to Baloo for training but who plans to join the Air Pirates once he’s honed his flying skills. Kit’s initial jealousy of the obnoxious older boy’s eligibility for a flying license is a very good character touch, as is Kit’s later appalled reaction when he learns that Lupo is going to duplicate Kit’s own past mistake of joining up with Karnage. Here again, Weiss refers to Kit’s usually unreferenced origin, and also credibly expands the Talespin universe with a brilliant and hilarious touch—namely, showing us that Karnage has become a Robin-Hood-like figure of romance to some, inspiring a pulp series based on his adventures; this touch makes perfect sense when you consider the long line of historical pirates and outlaws lionized in popular culture, and when you realize that Karnage directs a lot of his criminality towards Shere Khan, a ruthless tycoon who is highly unlikely to ever be popular with the general public.

“Legend of the Chaos God – Crystal Chaos.” The first installment of the “Chaos God” saga, a five-part story (drawn by Quartieri) which took its title villain on a journey through each of the then-current Disney Afternoon shows (Talespin, Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, Ducktales, and Darkwing Duck), but which (as I’ve mentioned before) disappointingly didn’t utilize any cross-show team-ups (other than having Gizmoduck figure in the St. Canard climax, which was nothing new given his established recurring guest-star status on Darkwing Duck). Anyway, the Talespin opening chapter sets up the overall story’s basic premise by having an archeologist unearth a magical necklace which has the spirit of the evil sorcerer Solego imprisoned within it. The archeologist ships his cargo of artifacts via Higher for Hire, and Rebecca winds up getting possessed by Solego when she touches the necklace; the sorcerer attempts to use her to regain his freedom, forcing her to hijack the Sea Duck in the process. Although, like each of the installments in the “Chaos God” series, “Crystal Chaos” feels rather rushed and by-the-numbers, Weiss does give it some good Talespin-specific touches—especially the finale, when Molly and Becky’s love for each other ultimately allows Becky to break free of Solego’s control.


III.  Colossal Comics Collection (localization by Weiss)

“The Volcano of Gold.” Produced by Comicup Studios, the same outfit responsible for the lengthy Ducktales story “City Under the Ice” (published in English by Gladstone), this elaborate treasure-hunt story has the best artwork of any of the Talespin comics, more vivid and individualized than the work of Saavedra or even Quartieri, and less gaudy than Gatto's. However, its story, a fairly generic treasure hunt with a jaw-droppingly absurd deus-ex-machina finish, is not up to the standard of the artwork; there are a few good character-specific moments in the story (Baloo piloting an unwieldy aircraft across a lava bed, Becky clobbering a pirate for calling her “cutie-pie,” Kit boldly attempting to pull the mask off of a seemingly threatening native leader), but for the most part the story could easily have been a standard-issue Duck yarn, even though Weiss does her usual fine job of getting the characters’ “voices” right in her localization/translation. However, she can’t finesse away the story’s mischaracterization of Shere Khan, depicted here as a gloating, bad-tempered out-and-out villain who directly orchestrates a scam to take over Higher for Hire and who directly works with the Air Pirates throughout the story; Weiss does include dialogue between Don Karnage and Dump Truck to make it seem that this stooging for Khan is a one-time thing, but the spectacle, earlier in the story, of Karnage’s right-hand-man Gibber running directly to Khan to spill information (instead of passing it on to Karnage) nevertheless creates the impression that the pirates are nothing more than Khan’s regular henchmen—much as the post-Barks Beagle Boys have too frequently been depicted as mere goons for Glomgold or Rockerduck.



IV. Disney Adventures (stories by others)

Most of the non-Weiss Talespin comic stories were written by either Cherie Wilkinson or Doug Gray; the Jaime Diaz crew did artistic chores on almost all of these efforts. Wilkinson, who scripted the excellent Ducktales episode “Raiders of the Lost Harp,” was on much shakier ground with the Talespin universe; most of her stories were short, rushed ones which read like the perfunctory work of someone only vaguely familiar with the characters she’s writing about. “Shine a Little Light,” published in Disney’s Holiday Parade 1, is a good example—it depicts Spigot as the supreme dictator of Thembria, omits his trademark lisp, and peoples Thembria with foxes and many other non-porcine inhabitants (some of the non-porcine "Thembrians" may be the fault of the artist, but Wilkinson herself dubs an ostensibly Thembrian character "Mr. Fox" in the script). Other examples of her misunderstanding of the characters include her having the amiable and good-natured Wildcat refer to Becky, without any provocation, as a “capitalist business pig” (in the story “Congratulations, You Have Just Won…”), or having Becky become furious with Baloo for forgetting her birthday (in “Little Plane of Horrors”)—which is something Daisy would do, not Becky; she might privately be piqued at Baloo for forgetting, but her public outbursts of ire against her pilot are always reserved for his job-related missteps. Wilkinson’s longest story, “Mission Maybe Sort of a Little Impossible” is one I have not been able to track down, but Chris Barat, in his review of “Raiders of the Lost Harp”, mentions that it also mischaracterizes Don Karnage; however, I would still like to see it someday, mainly to see how the story’s artist—none other than Giorgio Cavazzano himself—interpreted the Talespin characters.


Doug Gray, who also wrote many of the 1990s Darkwing Duck comic stories (including “Kitty Kat Kaper”), did not make the egregious character gaffes that Wilkinson was sometimes guilty of, but at the same time his stories were not remarkable for sharp plotting; his Talespin efforts tend to devolve into a loosely-connected series of slapstick incidents and snappy dialogue—as did many of his Darkwing stories (think of the protracted television-party sequence with Megavolt and the other villains in “Kitty Kat Kaper”), although with Darkwing the loose plotting and random humor felt more appropriate. “Dr. Doyen’s Robotic Revenge,” one of Gray’s longer Talespin stories, is notable for Luciano Gatto’s artwork and for an entertainingly nutty guest villain, a rabbit mad scientist with a unique accent and a gun named “Franz;” Dr. Doyen’s unexpected rapport with the much nicer but equally loopy Wildcat is a nice touch, but most of the story is merely amusing narrative wheel-spinning, like the business involving Baloo, Kit, and Doyen’s huge but dull-witted panda henchman. Among Gray’s other Talespin efforts, the most noteworthy is “The Dogs of War,” which introduces a Germanic and militaristic set of canine villains named the Houns, sinister but bumbling N@zi stand-ins right out of one of Hollywood's WW2-era films. Since Talespin already has the Thembrians on hand to represent the Soviets, it feels natural to bring in an analogue of the other big geopolitical villains of the 1930s, but Gray doesn’t really do anything with the Houns other than use them as a basis for dialect humor and slapstick business; to become effective recurring villains, they’d have had to become more menacing and more sharply satirized.

Bob Langhans also wrote a few Talespin stories for Disney Adventures; like his many stories for Disney’s Ducktales titles, these tales (including “The Ruby Monkey Head” and “Danger With Danger Woman”) are furiously paced but have little time for characterization. The most memorable non-Weiss Talespin comic story was “The Girl from Pango Pango,” by Jim Bricker, who does a fine job of handling Kit and Baloo (the only regulars in the story), and who provides a new and interesting character arc for Kit—having him experience an especially perplexing bout of puppy-love after meeting an enigmatic female street urchin; the girl turns out to be the niece and accomplice of the leader of a gang of hijackers, but ultimately helps Kit against her uncle’s gang. The story is short, but it shows us Kit in a new and believable aspect and also shows intelligence in its characterization of the (unnamed) object of his crush--making her a sort of female equivalent to Kit himself at the outset of “Plunder and Lightning.” I would have loved to see this character brought back, and her personality and her relationship with Kit developed further.

By and large, the history of Talespin in the comics is a story of great potential never fully tapped; Bobbi JG Weiss’ stories were generally excellent, but the cancellation of the Talespin comic series cut short her run of full-length stories, and the artwork rarely measured up to the quality of her writing. The stories by other writers, though marked by some interesting ideas, rarely developed these ideas to best advantage. If I had the wealth of Scrooge or Shere Khan, I’d recruit Weiss and all the surviving creative personnel from the Talespin animated series—Jymn Magon, Libby Hinson, Mark Zaslove, Len Uhley—and commission them to write a new series of Talespin comics, with lengthy continuing arcs in the same style as Aaron Sparrow's Darkwing Duck series--and, hopefully with James Silvani doing at least some of the artistic duties. It's a dream worth dreaming, anyway.  

[djnyr]

Afterword:

Writing this series of posts has been a much bigger time commitment than I originally expected (as evidenced by the fact that this thread kicked off over a year ago!)—but it’s also been highly enjoyable, and I only hope my readers feel the same, whether they were previously familiar with Cape Suzette or whether they discovered it through this retrospective. If I’ve brought back pleasant memories to diehard fans of the show, or if I’ve managed to introduce even one Duck or Mouse fan to the glories of this additional Disney funny-animal universe, the thread hasn’t been in vain. My thanks to Matilda, Mesterius, Donaldistducktoons, Aldwayne, JuicyMcDuck, and everyone else who’s contributed comments to the thread; your input has been great and has also helped me to better refine and articulate my own thoughts over the course of the retrospective. For the moment, I’m gone, solid gone, but I’ll see you all at Louie’s one of these days.

[Mesterius]

Dec 15, 2022 21:24:28 GMT djnyr said:

Afterword:

Writing this series of posts has been a much bigger time commitment than I originally expected (as evidenced by the fact that this thread kicked off over a year ago!)—but it’s also been highly enjoyable, and I only hope my readers feel the same, whether they were previously familiar with Cape Suzette or whether they discovered it through this retrospective. If I’ve brought back pleasant memories to diehard fans of the show, or if I’ve managed to introduce even one Duck or Mouse fan to the glories of this additional Disney funny-animal universe, the thread hasn’t been in vain. My thanks to Matilda, Mesterius, Donaldistducktoons, Aldwayne, JuicyMcDuck, and everyone else who’s contributed comments to the thread; your input has been great and has also helped me to better refine and articulate my own thoughts over the course of the retrospective. For the moment, I’m gone, solid gone, but I’ll see you all at Louie’s one of these days.

Louie's is a fine place to hang out. I like its background music too.