Ducktales 2017

[Pan Maciej]

At this point it's safe to asmue this version of Glomogld is stupid enoguh to not even consider that there is no Gold Fever and simply was so over-joyed with Scrooge's death that this lack of logic simply didn't crossed his mind or if it did he simply swept it away with a "Bah! Who cares? Scrooge is dead! I'm the richest! GLOM-GOLD! GLOM-GOLD!" 

[Hyaroo]

Well, I just watched four episodes in a row. Sum-up and thoughts/reviews:


Treasure of the Found Lamp:
I never really took to the old Ducktales movie. I saw it as a kid and then pretty much forgot most of it. So I wasn't really sure if this episode would really be for me. Turned out it wasn't so much a retelling of the movie, more like a bit of a continuity cavalcade, bringing back a number of characters and scenarios from past episodes. I really liked seeing Scrooge and Webby out on a solo adventure again (with no stupid "secret agent Scrooge" backstory to ruin it this time), and Selene was great. I also enjoyed Gladstone's brief scene, and the Beagles... and then there was Doofus. I haven't made any secret that I don't care for this incarnation of Doofus. He's just off-putting, and not in an entertaining way. But he was somewhat toned down here, and his appearance was brief, so I can live with it.

The ending with Scrooge lending out part of his collection of keepsakes to a museum and welcoming the kids to the new "tax-deductable" wing of the museum was cute... plus, it was a pretty neat way to bring in another trait from comic-Scrooge.... While this Scrooge has often been rather tight-lipped about his adventurous past life, several comics have had a pretty consistent trait of Scrooge's that he won't shut up about his adventurous past life. The ending where he launches into a story about the candy-striped ruby (nice Barks reference) seems to indicate that he's about to adopt a more comics-accurate attitude to them. We'll see.

I quite liked Djinn. True, while he is a clear reference to Dijon from the movie and old show, he really has nothing in common with him and is essentially a separate character to an even bigger extent than pretty much any other character on this show. Thing is, I didn't really like Dijon in the first place. I can see what they were going for with him, and I suppose he somewhat worked if you could ignore that he was a horribly racist caricature... but all in all, Djinn is a vast improvement. The stoic, hypercompetent warrior who just becomes ridiculous because he takes everything super-seriously really worked as an angle. 

All in all, I'd call it an averagely entertaining episode. If you already like this show you'll probably enjoy it -- if you don't like the show, this is not the episode that will change your mind.'


The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck:
Well, that was fast. Only one episode later, and Scrooge is already, quite unprovokedly, telling a story about his adventurous past life.

Unfortunately, it features Glittering Goldie, who along with Doofus is one of the characters I don't like in this show. Like Doofus in the previous episode, she has thankfully been toned down slightly here, and is a little more tolerable... but the problem is that this incarnation of Goldie still feels like she's being written by Steven Moffat. (I don't want to call her "River Song," largely because from what I've seen of River Song she's a typical Moffat-written woman, who exists pretty much only to provide sexual tension and frustration for the hero.)  Though I'm tentatively calling a sliiiight bit of cautious optimism with the ending of the episode... This season is really shaping up to be more about the development of Louie, and there's at least a possibility of something interesting with the idea of Goldie being a sort of not-very-moral mentor to the shiftiest of the Nephews. It might serve to give her some much needed character and motivation independent of Scrooge... even if she is initially doing this to annoy him, giving her an actual interpersonal relationship with someone who is not Scrooge could help her immensely as a character.

Not to mention, this could also start something for Louie, whom I still think is potentially the most interesting of the Nephews in this show. Not the most likeable one (that's Huey, easily), but he is the one with the most complex character traits. He's the laziest, shiftiest and least moral of the triplets, but he's also the most vulnerable and insecure one, the one who's most easily scared, most prone to self-doubt, and the one who's the easiest to emotionally hurt. I'm sort of starting to wonder if his laziness at least partially rooted in low self-esteem -- he does tend to give up at the first sign of obstacles, but is this because he just wants everything on a gold platter, or because failure hurts less if he doesn't put in any actual effort? It may be wishful thinking, or it may be me reading too much into it, but there's some real potential for some actual interesting character growth here. Certainly I'm more invested in Louie's potential than I ever was in Dewey's pathological need to always be the center of attention.

The episode also had John D. Rockerduck, whom I had been hoping to see for a while. It's not the Rockerduck I think the show would have worked best with (I still think he could have played the role Mark Beaks has in the show), but this version isn't a failure either. He seems to owe a fair bit of his characterisation to Don Rosa's portrayal of him in Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, what with his disdain for "commoners" and bossing people around, but he was at least more charming and funnier than Rosa's somewhat tiresome portrayal. I wouldn't mind seeing more of this Rockerduck.

I did not expect to see an ancestor of Fenton's in this episode, much less a time-travelling Gyro, but they worked. I'm not as disdainful of this Gyro as a lot of other people are, though I will admit that part of my approval stems from the fact that he's voiced by Jim Rash, and I've loved Jim Rash ever since I saw Community.

Good episode, though how I ultimately view it will depend largely on what the follow-up will be. This episode sets up a few potential plot threads, and if they're handled well, then this might step up from just "good" to "really good." And that's even with Goldie.




The 87-cent solution:
Wow. A title that references The Seven Percent Solution?! I'll admit, of all the references I thought this show might make, a Sherlock Holmes-pastiche about Holmes overcoming his cocaine addiction by going to therapy with Sigmund Freud was not one of them. This episode owes more than a bit to that episode; Scrooge's increasing paranoia and starting to blame seemingly impossible culprits very closely mirrors Holmes's in that story. (Bottom line: The Seven Percent Solution is a pretty good story, even if it takes some liberties with the Sherlock Holmes canon, and I can recommend at least checking out the movie based on the book; Nicol Williamson's portrayal of Holmes seems to have laid the groundwork for a lot of modern versions of the character.) But of course, where Holmes's paranoia was brought on by cocaine abuse and repressed trauma, Scrooge's paranoia turns out to be completely justified because someone actually did steal his eighty-seven cents, and spent most of the episode trying to make him look bad.

This... I'm a bit in two minds of this episode. It didn't really speak to me at all. The show has thoroughly demonstrated by now its ability to take clichéd Saturday-Morning-Cartoon plotlines and overdone story tropes and make them work, either through a clever spin on things or just using it as a springboard for some really good characterisation or comedy. In this case we have the "everyone thinks the main character is going insane but it really is just a clever scheme by his enemies to make everyone think he's losing it" plot. But somehow, in this case -- despite some really impressively tight plotting and tons of really good and subtle foreshadowing as to what is really going on throughout the episode -- it just kind of fails to engage. I suppose it's an episode that I can appreciate intellectually for what it accomplished, but emotionally it just doesn't deliver.

I do like the continued use of Zan Owlson as the assistant who tries and fails to be a stabilising presence for Glomgold. One of the problems with Glomgold throughout the various Disney Duck canons is that he doesn't really relate to anyone on a personal level, which probably has contributed to my dislike for and boredom with him as a character. Traditionally Glomgold just stands alone and has no meaningful interactions with anyone; he's just a jerk to everyone and that's it. While I'll continue to insist that this incarnation of Glomgold is the only one that's worth a damn as a character, giving him a non-evil assistant whom he at least seems to try to be civil to was definitely a good call. Maybe if the Glomgold of the comics had someone like Zan Owlson around to interact with and bounce off of I wouldn't find him such an immensely boring character? You never know.



The Golden Spear:
Now this is more like it. Della is very quickly becoming one of the best characters in the show, and they're really ramping up her presence in the series overall. This is the third episode where she plays a large role (I'm counting kid-Della from the Christmas episode) and the second where she is a main character. I admit, I did not expect her to actually manage to return to Earth this early -- I thought there would be a number of episodes where she was among the Moon people and then she'd get back to Earth in the season finale. But with Della back on Earth, and Donald launched into space, the series status quo has been shook up.

Speaking of Donald, I liked his role in the episode -- even if it didn't make a whole lot of sense with how he's been utilised in the series so far. I mean... if we count the double-episode pilot as a single episode, this is the thirty-fifth episode in total. Of those thirty-five episodes, Donald plays a major or semi-major part in ten. That leaves twenty-five episodes where he either doesn't appear at all or just has a cameo/minor role where he doesn't get involved in the story. Having an episode where he's stressed out over too much adventure just doesn't add up when the majority of the adventures on the show don't even include him. 

The ending where Donald is launched into space while his family think he's off taking a month-long relaxing cruise certainly fits the Duck's characteristic bad luck. It's definitely something I could have seen happen in a comic story. Though of course the comic story would probably be all about Donald's adventures (or misadventures) in space -- in this episode it feels suspiciously like convenient excuse to get him out of the way because the writers don't know what to do with him. I hope I'm wrong here, because while Donald is still underused in the show, he's consistently the best part of it, and if there isn't at least one episode about Donald having some weird space adventure, I'm going to be very disappointed.



Next episode should be interesting.... though I hope it doesn't get too angsty. I really don't want a whole lot of "WHY, MOM, WHY!?"

[Pan Maciej]

May 11, 2019 9:11:50 GMT Hyaroo said:

Though of course the comic story would probably be all about Donald's adventures (or misadventures) in space -- in this episode it feels suspiciously like convenient excuse to get him out of the way because the writers don't know what to do with him. I hope I'm wrong here, because while Donald is still underused in the show, he's consistently the best part of it, and if there isn't at least one episode about Donald having some weird space adventure, I'm going to be very disappointed.

As much I think they have their reasons for not having Donald around for a while, propably to focus only on Della and the kids meeting for the fist (even if I'm sure they will make some "Donald in Space" episode showing what he was up-to all this time, perhaps he will play some role in bringing down the alien invasion) this season to me shown me that they have noting but good will toward's Donald and enjoy comming out with stories for him... 

I mean, out of 11 episodes so far Donald was in 7, five of each he had a very big role in the plot... Which aslo make sence why we got so many Donald centric episodes in a row - they wanted to use all their Donald ideas now so they can sent him to space for the rest of the season, with kids thinking he's on vacation.

Honestly I woudn't be shock if they will take some ultra dramatic turn, like they will learn that Donald cruse ship sink or something and they will asume Donald is dead/lost now... Feels like a good set-up.


I'm still hoping for some flash-back episode showing some Scrooge + Della + Donald adventure before HD&L where born.

[Hyaroo]

Oh, I don't think they dislike Donald. I think they just don't quite know what to do with him. He wasn't really a presence in the old show outside a handful of "Special Guest Star" appearances, and with the creation of characters to take his role he doesn't really fit in that flawlessly with the Ducktales formula. But the showrunners know they do want Donald in the show, so they make sure he's included and part of the main cast... only to realise that now that they have him, they don't really have anything for him to do.

And so, especially in season one, they only really feature him in a handful of episodes, with only one episode where he's actually the focus (House of the Lucky Gander) and four where he plays an important role in the plot (Woo-Oo, Daytrip pf Doom. The Spear of Selene and the Shadow War duology), leaving nineteen episodes where he either doesn't appear or just appears in a cameo/minor role. Which is really notable for someone who is supposed to be, and has been advertised as, part of the main cast.

I think the showrunners really wanted to make Donald a main character, they just couldn't quite work out how. Especially since they seemed to think Dewey was the breakout character and potentially the biggest star in the first season.

As you pointed out, Donald did get more focus in the second season... in fact, of these first eleven episodes, five have featured Donald as a prominent or semi-prominent character, two had him in a minor role and only four didn't feature him at all. But what I'm sort of worried about here is that this was all the ideas they had for Donald, and just gave up and decided to shove him off into space so they'd have an excuse for not featuring him in the upcoming episodes. Maybe I'm wrong -- I certainly hope I'm wrong -- but that's sort of the feeling I get here.


On a more positive note, I recently read issue #20 of the Ducktales comic book, which stars Fethry! In this story, after the McDuck undersea lab was shut down, Scrooge decided to put him as Gyro's new intern. So we get Fethry with Grouchy Gyro, and more importantly we have a team-up between Fethry and Gizmoduck in order to take down a rampaging donut-making robot. It's a really fun little story, and they really nail Fethry's character here -- especially the page where he comes by a door marked "KEEP OUT" and immediately enters it because ""It's an obvious exercise in reverse psychology. It clearly means 'enter'!"

[Baar Baar Jinx]

One of my biggest complaints about the first season was the underutilization of Donald, and it certainly seems like they've tried to correct for that to a large extent in the second season. But as I mentioned in a prior post, it's easy to see how they had, and are still having, a hard time coming up with a meaningful role for him on this series. With so many other characters being so exaggeratedly comedic, zany and over-the-top, he's reduced to essentially being a straight man and the world's punching bag; a little like his situation in the longer Barks/Rosa adventures, but without the everyman and Brittle Mastery-type stories to let him shine. It renders him, incredible as this may sound, somewhat uninteresting. Even his one identifying characteristic from the early episodes, overprotective parent, seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I certainly hope we'll get to see some Donald-on-the-moon stories, which would be far more interesting than the Della-on-the-moon ones. Another possible reason I can see for the decision to apparently write him out when Della returns is to, at least temporarily, avoid the situation that Rosa mentioned as an obstacle in any story featuring the return of HD&L's parents; namely, what does it do to the Donald-HD&L dynamic? Donald is clearly the boys' adoptive parent, the only one they've ever  known; what happens when the biological parent returns in a johnny-come-lately fashion when HD&L are adolescents? Who raises them? Who do they look to as their guardians? Does Della take over raising them, and how will Donald feel about ceding his parental duties to Della? With Donald out of the picture, they can kick that can down the road for a while.

[deb]

Okay, they got me again. The most recent episode with Della on the moon and Donald trying to relax so he’d stop molting was a good one. Poor Donald just can’t seem to catch a break. He’s the most normal (for lack of a better word) character on this show, and he’s surrounded by off-kilter personalities that stress him out. It was nice to see everyone finally notice what they’re doing to poor Donald, and get him a ticket for the cruise...that of course he won’t be going on! I hope we get a few episodes about Donald’s adventures in outer space. The worst part is...no one will notice that he’s not where he should be for quite awhile!

[Pan Maciej]

HUM! I don't recall did someone ever comment on this here but have you noticed that in "Last Christmas" the Beagles in the flash-back had prison numbers rather then large "B"?

[Pan Maciej]

So there are some news about the upcomming episode "The Duck Knight Returns" which will air May 17... You know what that means! ^_^


THAT'S RIGHT!

LET'S GET DANGEROUS! 

[Pan Maciej]

Well I watched "Nothing can stop Della Duck"


This one was... Odd. I can't say it was bad, I enjoy it and it was interesting to finally see Della and the boys meet and bond. It's just felt strange to see episode with 2/3 being Della trying be good mom for the kids and then last second climax with the Gildenman comming to life (sadly not having much to do with Barks one) and at point there was something tad akward in the air.

The episode dose feel like it's changing the Status-quo for a long time!

Donald made few cameos so I guess we shall have his adventure soon.

I like scene where boys come one by one to hug Della and that Louie say "What if it's some trick by Magica?" (We all had "Magica pretends to be Della who came back" story in our heads at some point) 

The "I flew to close to the sun" line made me laugh.

I like the brief meeting between Della and Lunchpad... Why do I have a theory they will build some sort of romance between the two? Maybe it's her being dress like his classic outfit... 


Also THIS warms my heart for some reason... Maybe it's my inner parent, I don't know...

[Hyaroo]

And I saw the episode!

Huge relief, they didn't go all angsty. There were a couple of moments, but they were brief and didn't outstay their welcome -- the cliché moment where Della hears one thing and misses the context was almost immediately cleared up, and also worked because even the out-of-context revelation was a much needed awakening. Della doesn't know how to be a mother. She's so reckless that now Scrooge is the one who comes across as the responsible adult.

I also appreciated that the only one reluctant to accept Della was Louie, because that perfectly fits his character such as I talked about earlier, as the most vulnerable of the triplets. Louie is afraid of getting hurt, which is why he doesn't want to take any risks, and probably why he keeps everyone at a distance while hiding behind a wall of lazy greed. Opening yourself emotionally means you're also opening yourself to potential harm and heartache, and Louie doesn't think he can deal with that, so he doesn't even try.

At the same time, I appreciated that he was the one who admitted that he never had a mother and now that she was there he had no idea how to have a mother -- because that would probably be my reaction. I never knew my mother; she died two days after I was born. If she showed up out of nowhere when I was ten years old I probably would react the exact same way; no idea how to relate to her. I notice a lot of orphans in fiction who don't know one or more of their biological parents, and they have more a reaction like Dewey, where they grieve about the loss... but the thing is, if you never knew your mother in the first place, you generally don't think of it as a loss at all.  You can't miss someone you never knew, not really.

The Donald subplot... eh. Bit of a letdown that he crash-landed on the Moon and got captured by the Moon people, to be honest. Again, it feels like a "get rid of him" tactic so that they don't have to use him for a while, at least not until the inevitable invation of the Moon people. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe we'll get a running subplot of Donald on the Moon in upcoming episodes. But I'm not holding my breath.

[Pan Maciej]

Sorry to hear about your family history Hyaroo. I do have some family members I never meet and I can't imaging having an instant emotional connection if I would somehow appear in my life. I guess it's diffrent for HD&L who are ment to be 10 year old kids (and in Dewey case he spend a lot of time fantasising about Della and not to mention watching her in Selene's ball and meeting her during time travel). It's much more akward and diffrent if you meet them at being 31 after entire life of absence.

I remember when the show "Steven Universe" at one point teased that Steven's deceased mother may be still alive and come back... Luckly they didn't go that road, but at the time I read posts from some orphan fans who felt offended by the idea claming it would send kids a bad massage as for years they related to Steven for not having a mom and it would felt to unrealistic if that was somehow "fixed". Here at least they hinted early on ("The Great Dime Chase") that Della maybe out-there somewhere so it works. I do like boys standing scared in a corner before they come to Della. Felt somehow realistic reaction. The boys never reacted to new adults they meet this way so it felt like extra-disbelief on their part.



As for "Donald on the moon" subplot - Seeing how big part the alien invasion is building up to be I think it was a good way to develope that plot line. While I think it will take few episodes before we see him agian I think it's a good way for them to develope that story-line with having familiar character around the aliens. 

[Hyaroo]

You really don't need to be sorry. I'm not upset about my family history. That was pretty much my point. 

For the record, I think Steven Universe handles the idea of a deceased parent very well. If you watch the episodes, Steven does not miss his mother and isn't upset that she's gone. He feels bad for his family who did know and love her, and who do feel the pain and loss -- but he isn't upset for himself or lamenting what he's missing, because he has no basis for those feelings to begin with. Whenever he has an emotional reaction about his mother it's related to how she affected other people, or in some cases when the ideas and belief system she passed down to him are somehow put into a new light.

I'm glad that the Ducktales universe at least acknowledges that never knowing your mother is not the same as, and can't really be compared to, having her and then losing her. And I think Louie is the right character to express this. 

Louie is definitely the Nephew-in-focus for this season, but the showrunners seem to have learned from their past mistakes, and are making it a lot subtler than they did with Dewey for the first season. Louie is definitely going through a character arc here, and we're getting some subtler hints of his hidden and not-so-hidden depths, but this isn't coming at the cost of screen-time or focus for the other characters. 

[Pan Maciej]

So far three big arcs the show set up are :

- Della's return/Alien invasion
- Louie running his own buissnes
- Scrooge's/Glomgold's bet - who will remian the richest till the end of the year will get the other ones fortune (Which I don't knwow... We already had a "Christmas" episode so isn't this the end of the year by now? Oh, well, maybe they ment a year as in 365 days)

I can only imagine tomorrow episode about a quest for money tree seeds will involve Della so I guess the two story-arcs will colide.

[muggyruglugg]

May 13, 2019 10:51:48 GMT Pan Maciej said:

Also THIS warms my heart for some reason... Maybe it's my inner parent, I don't know...

Oh hey, it's a reference to that Barks painting.

[Pan Maciej]

To be fair I didn't realise this. I just found this.... well, super cute