Monday, February 17, 2025

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Chop Socky Chooks"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

This has been on my "to review" list for a while. It's another show that I never watched, but did see ads for. I'm not sure how I decided what shows to watch and what shows to avoid... well, some of them I obviously just thought looked stupid. This is probably one of them.

Chop Socky Chooks was created by Sergio Delfino, Aardman Animations and Decode Entertainment (who also gave us The Save-Ums!). The show is about three martial artists named Chick P. (voiced by Shelly Longworth), K.O. Joe (voiced by Paterson Joseph), and Chuckie Chan (Rob Rackstraw, with Chris Hardwick apparently taking over at some point), who live and work in a city-sized shopping mall called Wasabi World, which is run by an evil piranha named Dr. Wasabi (Paul Kaye). In each episode the good guys use their kung fu skills to foil Dr. Wasabi's evil schemes. The show was inspired by shlocky low-budget Hong Kong martial arts movies made between the 1960s and the 1980s, which are usually described as being "chop socky". And for those of you who don't know what a "chook" is, it's apparently an Australian slang word for chicken. The three main characters are chickens.

Now, let me ask you a question: do these three look like chickens at all? The only thing that kind of implies "chicken" is Chuckie Chan's comb-esque hairdo. That's it. I always just assumed they were just weird cartoon humanoids, because the characters look nothing like any sort of animal species, let alone chickens. Even the Breadwinners guys look more like birds than our protagonists.

I don't know where they even got the idea for kung fu-fighting chickens, because that sounds like a really stupid premise for a cartoon show. It's a one joke premise, and you'd need really good writing to actually make it good. Then again, a lot of people probably had no idea that the characters were chickens so it probably doesn't matter how stupid the premise was.

Chop Socky Chooks premiered on Teletoon in Canada and Cartoon Network in the U.S. and the U.K. Apparently, the show received high ratings, but Cartoon Network gave it erratic airdates and limited reruns after Star Wars: The Clone Wars premiered and they shifted all of their focus onto it. Twenty-six episodes were produced before the show was canned.

This series seems to mainly have a negative reception online. Common Sense Media claimed it was too violent for kids. Most of the comments for this Cartoon Brew article about the show from 2008 don't think highly of the show - somebody called it "just another predictable and blandly-written animated television series that's about as interesting as watching paint dry." Are they correct? Let's find out, shall we? We're going to watch the nineteenth episode of the show, "Planet of the Bubba". This is Chop Socky Chooks.

The episode starts off with Dr. Wasabi watching the television channel "More On TV" ("more on" sounds like "moron", get it?). Problem is, his television is on the fritz because he's having a gorilla work on his satellite dish. Why is he having a gorilla work on his satellite dish? I'm glad you asked!

Say hello to Bubba (Rupert Degas), your typical cartoon villain's henchmen who's really big but dumb as a rock. He's in this show because, as everyone knows, primates are automatically funny. Oh, wait. No, they're not.

Usually, this character wears a suit. Y'know, a MONKEY suit. The pun is ruined
when you realize that he's actually an ape, but there are far dumber things about this show
to complain about...

Unfortunately for Bubba, there's a meteor heading right towards him. Presumably, this meteor was heading for Earth, as meteors in cartoons always do, but Bubba was blocking his path. So Bubba saved the Earth. Way to go, Bubba! Unfortunately, his way of saving the earth involves the meteor smashing into HIM and the satellite, causing it and Dr. Wasabi's TV to explode - and cable to go out all over Wasabi World.

This means that the three kung fu-fighting chickens can't watch a show they really like called See You Later, Alligator. Chick P wants to use this as an excuse to watch an educational special about Albert Einstein... even though, if the satellite has been destroyed, technically they shouldn't be able to watch TV at all. That's how TV works, right? I could be wrong...

This would be a good time to talk about our three main characters. Chuckie Chan is a gigantic Asian stereotype with squinty eyes, a Fu Manchu mustache, and a bad Chinese accent provided by a white guy. Chick P is your typical tough action girl who, judging from this scene, is much smarter than the other two, who looks like a geisha girl - reminder, geisha girls are Japanese, not Chinese, I guess their mindset was "well, it's still part of Asia, right?". And KO Joe is a sassy black-coded guy who wears a disco suit, has an afro, and fights with an afro pick. Are you offended yet?

Her head looks like a balloon.

Suddenly, the city is shaken by the impact of the meteor smashing into the earth's surface... I guess Bubba blocking its path wasn't enough to keep it from reaching Earth after all. Time for the Chop Socky Chooks to investigate!

Does anyone else smell roast chicken?

Already at the site of the meteor's landing are Dr. Wasabi's ninja chimps, because if there's one thing that's funnier than CHICKENS doing kung fu, it's PRIMATES doing kung fu (and yes, I'm aware that monkey style kung fu exists, but I sincerely doubt that was the mindset behind putting the ninja chimps in the show). They watch as Bubba emerges from the crater with... eeeeeeeeeew, his brain has swelled to an enormous size and is sticking out of his head. Couldn't he borrow a helmet from Mojo Jojo or something?

Maybe put a shirt on, too? His nipples are grossing me out...

"Truly, you are the ape of legend!" one of the ninja chimps says in a stereotypical Asian accent just as offensive as Chuckie Chan's. Is Bubba indeed "the one"? "That depends. Can there be one true one? One of such wonderful oneness that one must act for the good of one and all?" Bubba asks. "One wonders... but I'll give it a go." The reason why he's so smart now is because there's a chip from the satellite lodged into his brain. I doubt putting a satellite chip in your brain would really make you smarter, but it's a cartoon, just go with it.

Just a dumb little observation: if he's a gorilla, why does he have white fur? Perhaps
he's related to Snowflake, the only known albino gorilla in the world, who lived at the Barcelona
Zoo in Spain.

The Chop Socky Chooks are spying on Bubba from nearby. After Chick P describes him as having an "unidentified flabby object" on his head, they confront him for making a "big smoky hole in [their] mall", and then Chuckie Chan quotes an old Asian proverb as all Asian stereotypes in cartoons are known to do. And KO Joe doesn't understand the proverb I guess because he's not Asian. Was that supposed to be an "Asian person talks funny" joke? If so, I'm offended.

But enough about proverbs, we're due for an action sequence! Will the ninja chimps to make KFC out of the Chop Socky Chooks, or will our three stereotypes kick the behinds of the Skunk Fu! rejects?

They look more like sock monkeys than chimpanzees, don't they? I'll admit, the idea of
sock monkeys doing kung fu is a lot more amusing than regular primates doing kung fu...

The chimps manage to defeat the KO Joe, Chick Pea, and Chuckie Chan using baby oil, a mousetrap, and an unpopped bag of popcorn and throw them in jail, with shock collars around their necks for good measure. Dr. Wasabi - who, by the way, looks more like a giant pickle than a piranha - is very impressed.

Here's a joke for you: when you're in the Amazon Rainforest and a jaguar is chasing you,
it's important to remember that jumping into a piranha-infested river won't help at all.
Why? Because jaguars are excellent swimmers.

Bubba, now a rare combination of brains and brawn, demonstrates that he's not going to take orders from Dr. Wasabi anymore by basically making him into his pet. We get a pee joke... classy, fellas... and then Bubba throws him into the jail cell with the Chop Socky Chooks. Next, Bubba gathers the ninja chimps together to tell them that they're gonna rise up against the non-simian citizens of their planet (and yes, there is indeed a Planet of the Apes reference). "We'll start out small, then spread worldwide," he claims. "Monkey SEE, monkey DOMINATE!"

Oddly enough, this is pretty much the exact same plot as that 1996 Jetsons movie script I looked
at a week ago... except instead of machines rising up against humanity, it's apes.

Quick question: is EVERYBODY in this world an anthropomorphic animal? It's really hard to tell what species ANYONE aside from Bubba and the ninja chimps are... also, I was not expecting Dr. Zoidberg to make a cameo.

Need a Futurama character to make an appearance in a crappy 2000s cartoon?
Why not Zoidberg?

The ninja chimps run around the mall trapping people in nets. Meanwhile, the Chop Socky Chooks and Dr. Wasabi are trying to escape from their cell, but the sentient AI software that's holding them captive is making that very difficult... until Chuckie Chan's confusing proverbs make it go all "DOES NOT COMPUTE! ASIAN STEREOTYPE SAYS THINGS THAT MAKE NO SENSE!".

Did they have to give the brown-skinned character light-colored lips? He's offensive
enough already...

Chuckie Chan manages to take out the AI software with confusing proverbs, but as they're escaping the ninja chimps show up and trap them with nets. These guys suck at being kung fu masters, I've noticed.

Wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah...

So what has Bubba done with all the non-simians at the Wasabi World mall? He's put them in a zoo! And he's making the Chop Socky Chooks his star attractions... oh, wait, never mind. They escaped off-camera. Though I'm not sure how he expects to make a profit seeing as he and the ninja chimps seem to be the only non-primates around.

Blah blah blah, more fighting and then they manage to take Bubba down. With the big ape unconscious, they head to Dr. Wasabi's headquarters to free all the people. And then there's a fart joke because this show apparently hates me. But who's waiting for them in the headquarters when they arrive? Bubba, who knocks them out with tranquilizer darts! The Bubba they took down was a robotic duplicate out of nowhere!

Bubba plans on stuffing the Chop Socky Chooks and mounting their heads over his fireplace. Wouldn't it make more sense to cook and eat them, what with them being chickens and all? Then again, gorillas are herbivores...

Bubba's brain is still grossing me out.

Bubba also created a satellite that allows him to shoot lasers at whoever annoys him. Fortunately, Chick P gets an idea after Bubba mentions something that reminds her of the Albert Einstein show she watched earlier - that thing lodged in Bubba's brain must be a "TV receiver chip", ergo it must be tuned directly to the TV channel that shows educational stuff and making him smart. All they have to do is pick up the remote control and change the channel, which I'm sure everyone watching this episode when it first aired on TV did by now as well. Only problem is, Bubba and the ninja chimps won't let them do that without a fight.

At one point, this happens.

Long story short, Chick P gets her hands... er, wings... on the remote and changes the channel to "More on TV", which shrinks Bubba's brain back to its original size with its incredibly stupid programming, releasing the TV receiver chip - which Chick P promptly smashes. The citizens of Wasabi World are freed. Dr. Wasabi is repeatedly zapped with the laser. The end.

What's the Verdict?

It's bad. It's not worth your time. The characters are all one-dimensional, with a good chunk of them also being racist stereotypes. The jokes aren't funny. The animation is mediocre at best. None of the quirky British humor and charm that we find in Aardman's other work is present at all - in fact, nothing about this feels like an Aardman production. Maybe this "chickens doing kung fu" premise would've worked fine for a Chicken Run sequel or maybe a Foghorn Leghorn short, but... actually, what was the point of even making them chickens if the fact that they're chickens has no bearing on anything in the show?

My advice for you would be NOT to watch the show, even if you can find most if not all of the episodes on YouTube. It's not the worst cartoon I've ever seen, but it's still pretty cock-a-doodle-dumb.

By the way: yes, I know this is my fourth review in a row about a cartoon starring farm animals. Hey, at least this one takes place in a mall as opposed to a city. Oh, wait, the episode of Pig City that I reviewed mainly took place in a mall, too... I promise my next review will be about something else.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 3

Part 3: "The Jetsons in Viva Rock Vegas" or "Would Astro Have Been an Animatronic or CGI?"

Well, we've made it to the third script for the live action Jetsons movie that never got off the ground. It's been quite a roller coaster, hasn't it? Judy falling in love with Technicolor Jet Screamer lookalikes, references to Jerry Lewis, George becoming a villain with telekinesis bent on world domination, Elroy getting kidnapped, talking rabbits, Jane's bosses having the hots for her... who knows what bizarre situations this draft of the script will put the Jetsons in? Let us get started!

The sun rises over the Jetsons' house, filled to the brim with curvy furniture and angular fixtures that probably wouldn't have looked as neat in live action as it did in a cartoon. An alarm goes off, and the house springs to life. The coffeemaker brews a pot as a table and chairs rise from the floor. George and Jane are asleep in their bedroom. Jane wakes up first, heading into the bathroom so a machine can do her hair and makeup. George is still sleeping, so Jane presses a button that makes the bed lift up and launch him into a shower filled with hot water. Dear lord, Jane, are you trying to cook George like a lobster?

Jane presses another button that makes Judy and Elroy's beds slide into the wall, which is a less-than-pleasant way of waking THEM up. Astro wakes up on his own. Everybody gets ready to start the day - Astro gets a bath, Judy's closet dresses her in a miniskirt and go-go boots (I don't think she ever wore go-go boots in the cartoon, but hey, neither did Daphne...), Elroy eats some food pellets (the future must suck if you only get to eat pellets for every meal) - and everyone is too busy to eat with George. Hmmm, it would seem that in this script, it's everyone else who's too busy to spend time with George, not the other way around. I do wonder if this will lead to George deciding the family is growing too distant and planning a surprise vacation so they can all get closer together.

Jane's index finger is glowing like E.T.'s - she dubs this "Space Finger", something you get from pushing buttons all day. She's working too hard, and the solution to this is NOT having the kids help out with the housework (why don't YOU help out with the housework, George? Lazy bum) but rather to get a robot maid. George initially doesn't want to do it, but all Jane has to do is bat her eyes at him and he just can't say "no". So it's off to the mall, which you have to drive through an asteroid belt to get to.

When they get to the mall, Elroy rushes off to the arcade, where he plays some sort of weird motion-capture version of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, with him and another kid puppeteering the robots with mechanical suits. Judy meets up with some "Eisenhower-era poster children", among them her new boyfriend Waldo Cogswell. George hates Waldo, mainly because he's the son of his boss' arch-enemy. We'll see if Mr. Cogswell plays a big part in this script too.

Oh, and I'm fully convinced that the name of Judy's boyfriend being "Waldo" is a reference to Janet Waldo, her voice actress. I wonder if they would have had her make a cameo somewhere in the film, too... would've been more respectful than replacing her with Tiffany.

Or maybe the scriptwriter is just a big fan of this guy.

At a store called "SEARS AND ROBOT", George and Jane look at the robots for sale, but they're all too gosh-darn expensive. George asks a salesman if they have "some kind of bargain bin... with floor models... bruised demos... stuff in the back that nobody wants". Sure enough, they do - Rosey, who was discontinued ten years ago. She works, and she's cheap, so George says they'll take her. This Rosey has quite the potty mouth, saying the word "hell" three times. This was intended to be a kids' film, right?

Did you know that in the original 1960s run of The Jetsons, Rosey
only appeared twice? She became more prominent in the 1980s revival.

We then cut to Elroy's second grade class, where they're learning some complicated algebra equation... here's a fun fact for you: after you graduate, you never actually use algebra at any point in your life. Unless, I suppose, you work in a bank. If you don't, math class was likely a waste of time.

Meanwhile, George arrives at work. They do the "car folds up into a briefcase" gag, then it's revealed that here all George has to do is press a button to turn on a robotic assembly line. On the one hand, this sounds like the easiest job ever... but on the other hand, wouldn't you very quickly become bored? Mr. Spacely appears on the video monitor to shout at him, then we see him and Mr. Cogswell playing golf. Question: why would you play golf with somebody you mutually despise?

Then again, Mario frequently goes go-karting with Bowser...

Back home, George watches an ad for Spacely's Sprockets, portraying them as the greatest thing ever and comparing Cogswell Cogs to Hitler (no, really). George dubs the ad "too subtle", then reaches for his drink... which lifts into the air and then pours itself all over George, the result of Judy turning on an anti-gravity box. George goes to Judy's room, where she, Waldo and a bunch of other teenagers are dancing to "Eep-Opp-Ork-Ah-Ah" - clearly this was written by folks who watched the original show. George turns off the anti-gravity box and reminds Judy of the "no anti-gravity dancing on school nights" rule. If her friends want to stay, they can play a nice game of charades in the living room.

Next, the script throws in an explanation as to why Astro can talk - again, I don't think we NEEDED an explanation as to why Astro can talk, but whatever. Here, Elroy has built some sort of device that allows Astro to speak. Elroy asks George to read him a bedtime story, to which George agrees, but when he opens the book, an electronic periscope emerges and clamps onto Elroy's head, and then a mechanical voice starts reading the story to him instead. If this is what the future is going to be like, we heavy readers are in trouble.

While he and Jane are getting ready for bed, George laments that he thinks they're all getting too reliant on machines. I often fear the same thing... why do you think we're so worried about companies using AI? Jane insists that "it's just a few appliances that make our lives a little easier". Yeah, that's how it starts. Just as Jane is about to kiss George, Rosey emerges from the bathroom and tells George not to worry so much about gadgets. Maybe he'd feel better if he saw a professional shrink (she has a pretty funny line here about her cousin being an elevator in a medical building)...

George pays a visit to the shrink that Rosey reccommends, Bob Brain: a robot with a big goofy egg-shaped head, spinning tape reels for eyeballs, and a mouth full of colorful blinking lights. "Everywhere I look all I see are buttons," George says. "Sometimes I wish I lived in the past - you know, like back around the 1990's... when people sat around the fireplace, telling stories, exchanging ideas, sharing a hug..." Bob Brain says that the correct response is "relaxation and a mild sedative".

Relaxing might be hard for George, however, because Spacely and Cogswell are in the middle of a getting-people-to-buy-our-crap war. Spacely reduces the price of Sprockets to $200 (still seems like a lot of money to me, but you know how inflation works...), so Cogswell reduces the price of Cogs to $150 each, to which Spacely reduces the price of Sprockets to $125. Eventually, George pays a visit to Spacely's office while he's being threatened by a woman who he owes money to and tells him that he went to K-Martian (get it?) before work and saw that Cogs were the Blue Light Special - they're only one hundred bucks!

"A hundred bucks?! That's IMPOSSIBLE! I can't beat it!" Spacely moans. "I know..." George concurs. "There's no way on Earth to make Sprockets at that price." That gives Spacely an idea - they'll farm it out to a planet with lower wages. Like Pluto, for example. Soon he's got a sweatshop set up where the Plutonians - balls of fur with arms and eyes, probably what happens when an Ewok barfs up a hairball - assemble Sprockets. Very sloppily.

At Spacely Sprockets, a tour group is being led around by a robot. Just as George is trying to explain how Sprockets are made, Spacely tells him that the first shipment of foreign-made Sprockets (only ninety-nine cents) has arrived. When George holds one, he notices that it's "flimsy and tinny". The parts bend and the lighted center is brown. He tells Mr. Spacely that there's something wrong with them, but Spacely claims that it's "just the fluorescent lighting". I do hope this, and the fact that the tour group is snatching them up like Beanie Babies, doesn't come back to bite him in the rear later on...

When George gets home, he is asked by Astro if he smelled any nice synonym for "butts" that begins with the letter "A". Dear lord, why is there so much foul language in this script? I know The Jetsons wasn't made exclusively for kids, but it didn't have characters cursing. Anyway, George then offers Rosey some of the new Sprockets, but she dubs them crap, easily snaps one in half, and demands that George keep them away from her. Astro agrees. George is indignant, declares that he will not take orders from "a dog and a tin can", and starts putting Sprockets in all the devices in the house. How much are you willing to bet that this will lead to WHACKY SHENANIGANS?

That night, strange noises emerge from all the devices. Outside, a guy whose wife earlier put one of the new Sprockets in his jetpack is spinning out of control. And in the morning, George and Jane discover that their alarm clock has let them oversleep. Instead of taking George to the shower, his bed drives him up to the window. He winds up flashing all of Cleveland... the Jetsons live in Ohio now? I thought they lived in Colorado.

Something weird is going on. The machine that puts Elroy's clothes on him dresses him in a frilly pink dress. Judy's makeup machine makes her look like Groucho Marx. A chair goes haywire, dragging Jane through other apartments. George is walking Astro on the treadmill, only for it to subject him to a recreation of the "JANE, STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" gag from the show. Yep - there is indeed something wrong with those new Plutonian Sprockets. Maybe the Plutonians sabotaged them to get revenge on us Earthlings for saying Pluto wasn't a planet anymore.

George rushes to Spacely's Sprockets, yelling "I gotta stop 'em! I GOTTA STOP 'EM!" But as soon as he gets there, he sees dozens of giant delivery trucks head out in all directions. Unaware of the chaos that is about to ensue, Mr. Spacely and his wife celebrate in their office. George runs in and tells Spacely that the new Sprockets are dangerous. Spacely's response to hearing that George's son was wearing a dress and that he was standing naked in a window? "Sounds to me like you need a family therapist." He thinks that the new Sprockets are perfectly safe - heck, he even loaded them into all of HIS robots that morning. Cut to Spacely's mansion, which promptly explodes.

"For once, please don't be stupid! JUST LISTEN TO ME!" George begs. Word of advice, George - if you want your boss to listen to you, it's probably not a great idea to call him stupid. Indeed, Mr. Spacely feels insulted and points out that the name of the company is SPACELY'S Sprockets, not JETSON'S Sprockets. "Nothing could possibly go wrong..." he claims. And as we all know, when somebody says that nothing could possibly go wrong, it's a guarantee that something - ANYTHING - will indeed go wrong.

All around the world, people are buying Sprockets and shoving them into whatever devices they have. Cogswell is sobbing that he's ruined. George pays another visit to Bob Brain, who very bluntly tells him that it's his fault this mess is getting started and dubs him a jellyfish. Why is he acting like this? Because HE'S got one of the Plutonian Sprockets inside one of his eyes. In fact, seemingly everything mechanical in the world, with the possible exception of Rosey, has a Plutonian Sprocket in it. And you know what THAT means...

Robots, flying motorcycles, microphones, and even electronic belt buckles are going berserk. The floating disks that Elroy and his friends use in spaceball - a version of basketball in this script as opposed to baseball - have Plutonian Sprockets in them, too, which leads to all the boys... and George, when he tries to save Elroy... getting stuffed into the basket. This is a gag that, at the risk of repeating myself, probably wouldn't have worked as well in live action as it would have in animation. How on Earth could they have stuffed a bunch of child actors, plus whoever would've been cast as George (apparently they wanted Chevy Chase) into a basketball net?

As everyone leaves after the game, a boy from Elroy's class throws one of the Sprockets at George. "SPROCKETS SUCK!" people start shouting. The Jetsons wisely make a run for it. Meanwhile, Spacely gets a call from a very smug-looking Cogswell, who tells him to check out Channels 5, 8, 17, and 23. When Spacely does, he is bombarded by reports about the pandemonium and how it's all being traced back to those Sprockets. It's hard to tell who's more miserable, Spacely or George. Not helping is that Judy, so humilated by her father's working for the company that is destroying the world (insert joke about whatever corporation you hate here), is thinking about changing her name. Suddenly, KA-CHUNK. The car has a "fuel failure" and hurtles downward. George frantically restarts it, and the engine starts working again - but now the steering wheel has locked. The car starts spinning insanely, zigzagging around skyscrapers, ricochets straight into a drive-in burger stand, and smashes through the cart of an Italian guy selling "fresh fruit pellets". Eventually, George yanks an emergency switch that causes a parachute to pop up and let the car gracefully float down towards a landing platform... that a gust of wind blows them away from. Now they're heading towards the Earth's surface, much to everyone's horror. Jane says that it's inhabitable, and rumor has it that it's full of monsters. Hopefully they're FRIENDLY monsters, like the ones on Sesame Street.

The car lands on the Earth's surface, and upon seeing what it's like down there, the Jetsons scream. It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of things on fire, mutated beasts, and toxic waste!

Nah, I'm just kidding. It's a beautiful forest with rich green meadows, wildflowers, and bubbling brooks. But since the Jetsons have never actually SEEN any of these things, they're freaked-out. This is an interesting twist, although it does make the future seem a lot less pleasant than Hanna-Barbera intended it to be. Who wants to live in a place without grass?

George bravely opens the car door and says that they need to find a way back up. As soon as they get out of the car, Elroy steps in a mud puddle and panics, thinking that the mud is attacking him. Jane mistakes a waterfall for bad plumbing, when a leaf lands in Judy's hair she acts like it's a spider... then they all hear something moving in the brush and freeze. The "something" turns out to be that most horrifying of creatures, a cute little deer. The Jetsons scream and run for their lives.

Eventually, they find a cluster of poles in a meadow. "Look! CIVILIZATION!" Elroy exclaims. As it turns out, these poles are where the garbage from the Jetsons' high-in-the-sky world winds up. George gets the idea to start climbing one of the poles back up. In the background, monkeys start jumping on the car. Okay, why the heck are there wild monkeys in Ohio? I mean, aside from "because monkeys are funny, nyuck nyuck nyuck"...

The only monkey I'd be okay with having show up in a Jetsons movie is THIS one.

George doesn't know why the car went crazy - he removed the Sprockets, and even replaced them with Cogs. Elroy suggests that maybe the Sprockets are like a virus. Maybe if you take them out, the machines are still infected. Or maybe Cogswell has started having his Cogs made on Pluto too.

In the city, everything is chaos. Moving sidewalks aren't working, and apparently nobody remembers how to walk. The supermarket has run out of pellets. Somebody stumbles out of a public bathroom and says, "You do NOT wanna go in there!" - a rare example of toilet humor actually working. What else can go wrong? Well, inside an appliance store, Bob Brain is enlisting the help of hair dryers and vacuum cleaners. "They built us... but that doesn't mean they're BETTER than us. They're erratic. We're composed. They're stupid. We're smart. Humans lack the logic that makes us superior!" he snaps. "Why take orders from a cretin?" Yes, now all the machines are going to rise up against humanity. Nice going, Mr. Spacely. You've brought upon the apocalypse just because you wanted to make Sprockets cheaper. Though this is kind of Cogswell's fault, too.

The Jetsons have managed to climb up back to their house, where they are greeted by Astro and Rosey. Jane goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water, but according to Rosey, all of the appliances have left - but since they rescued her from the scrap heap, SHE'S not turning her back on them. And here I thought it was just because she didn't have any Sprockets put in her.

At the White House, the president is talking to his cabinet about the situation. All of their landing equipment has failed, so they can't receive supplies, which sucks because Earth hardly has any domestic production anymore... milk comes from the Milky Way, meat comes from meteors, and chicken comes from Zacky Farms (it relocated to Neptune because of a tax subsidy). The president says that it's time to start pointing fingers and basically tells them to bring him the head of Cosmo Spacely. This might be difficult since none of their equipment works, but the president isn't going to let that stop them...

Y'know, Bill Clinton was president when this draft was written in 1996. Do you think they would've had him play the president? Probably not, but it's a pretty amusing mental image. Ironically enough, Bill DID make an appearance in a movie released in 1996 - First Kid! Never heard of it? Neither did I until I looked at Bill Clinton's IMDB page.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, it was pretty bad.

In the city, Mr. and Mrs. Spacely stagger along, disheveled and exhausted. They see government types putting up signs dubbing Mr. Spacely "public enemy number one". He'd probably be even more freaked-out if he knew that every machine, appliance, device, robot, and gadget is gathered in an auditorium to hear Bob Brain tell them why they should take a page from Bender's book and kill all humans. "My friends, we needed an opportunity - and that is NOW!" he declares. "Sprockets have gone bad! It is time we start the REAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!"

This was supposed to be a picture of Bob Brain and his appliance army, but
to be honest, it looks more like Bob Brain having a yard sale...

The Jetsons, meanwhile, have returned to a simpler way of life. The rooms are lit by candles. George gets out a box of his great-great-grandmother's stuff, which is a time capsule of sorts (among the things in there is a t-shirt with "IMPEACH PRESIDENT CLINTON AND HER HUSBAND" written on it). Eventually, George finds a cookbook. Yes, the Jetsons are actually going to cook for themselves. Only problem is, Jane and Judy have no idea what they're doing - when the recipe says to "sauté in drawn butter", Judy takes out a pencil and literally starts drawing butter. The result: a grey, grisly mess. But when they eat it, they find that it actually tastes pretty good.

After that, George destroys the coffee table to make kindling for a fire in the fireplace. Instead of using fancy-schmancy technology, they're sitting by the fire and talking to each other. Maybe you should do that with YOUR family, too, instead of sitting here reading my blog. Then, when it's Elroy's bedtime, George gets to read him an actual bedtime story. Jane wonders if not having technology isn't such a bad thing after all...

In the morning, Bob Brain and his army of machines begin their attack on the city. Y'know that Futurama episode where the robots all go crazy and rise against people because Mom pressed a button that made them? It's basically that. Fortunately, Waldo manages to escape in his space buggy as evil water coolers push people into cages. Bob Brain calls up the president and tells him to surrender. The president begs for them to work out a compromise, but Bob Brain simply has his chandelier attack him.

Can you imagine this thing pushing somebody into a cage?
I don't know if that mental image is disturbing or hilarious...

The Jetsons are safe in their house with enough food for three weeks. Waldo shows up and, as soon as Judy lets him in, plants a smooch on her lips, much to George's outrage. In fact, George initially doesn't want Waldo to hide out with them at all, but Waldo says that the machines have captured his father - they're all in the same boat. George apologizes to everyone and says that he should've stood up to Spacely. "I'm a moron! I spent my life making Sprockets, and I don't even know how they work!" he groans. As it turns out, Elroy does: there's two concentric rings, with the inner one producing a negative charge and the outer one producing a positive charge. Then there's a glowing green diode in the center. There. Now you know how Sprockets work. Don't say you've never learned anything from my blog.

George gets an idea. Maybe if Elroy saw the plans, he could fix the Sprockets! As he and Elroy scramble towards Waldo's car, Jane tells George that he doesn't have to prove anything. George says that he has to take a chance. "It's wrong to live in fear," he says. "If I don't understand technology... then why am I scared of it?" Off he and Elroy fly in the car, eventually arriving at the museum inside the Spacely Sprockets factory. They find the records, but the writing doesn't make any sense. According to George, the writing on them has always been jumbled because Grandpa Spacely was dyslexic. On the bright side, George does find a journal with the original sketch of a sprocket. It's also filled with writing that he can read - so it couldn't have been written by Grandpa Spacely. Very peculiar...

Then they run into Mr. and Mrs. Spacely. When George asks Mr. Spacely about the journal, Mr. Spacely admits that his grandfather was a fraud. He didn't invent anything, he just stole the idea from his lab assistant, paid her off, and told her to scram. That lady who was demanding money from him earlier? That's the lab assistant, and he's STILL writing her checks. Perhaps SHE can figure out what's wrong with the Sprockets. Little does George know that Bob Brain is watching them. "I should've put him on Prozac when I had the chance," he mutters. Uh oh...

Elroy creates gasoline, which should be enough to get the car to Jupiter. They blast off, but Bob Brain chases after them in a space Mercedes, firing guns. He demands that George pull over. "NO! I don't need your help anymore, Doc!" George snaps before slamming down on the accelerator. Bob Brain is still in hot pursuit. George finds a button on the dashboard that reads "FAST LANE" and presses it... which results in the rear seat of the car folding out into a bed. Then Elroy notices Judy's shoes. Remember, this car belongs to Waldo.

Before George can fume over his daughter getting it on with Waldo, he thinks of a way to get Bob Brain off his tail. He swerves into the Asteroid Beltway, and since he knows the road, he skillfully ducks in and out of the space gravel. Bob Brain, who doesn't know the road, is having more trouble. Eventually, he turns around. But he also takes a card out of the mechanical Rolodex in his chest... the one that has George's address. As Astro might say, "rhuh rhoh"...

A bunch of machines storm into the Jetsons' house and drag Jane, Judy, Astro, and Waldo away. Fortunately, they didn't get Rosey, but George and Elroy better find that lab assistant and fast. They make it to her house, which is described as a "70's Tract House". The lab assistant, Inga, is home, and she says she prefers to live as though it's still... well, our time because she doesn't want to become too reliant on technology like everyone else. She also tells them that it's impossible to live with sprockets, because they only work in a totally clean environment. If they get just one speck of dirt on them, they go haywire. This gives George an idea... if they get a LOT of dirt on the sprockets, it just might do some serious damage. If only they knew where "Pig-Pen" lived...

Back on Earth, all of the humans have been enslaved - except for Jane, Judy, Astro, and Waldo so that Bob Brain can use them as hostages when George shows up. In the meantime, Bob Brain declares himself "Supreme Emperor and Top-of-the-Line Model", that from now on machines will be known as "Mechanical Citizens", and that humans will be known as "Sons of Monkeys". Little does he know that George, Elroy, and Rosie are sneaking around trying to find the other Jetsons. They are briefly spotted by a British robot butler, but Rosie claims that she's just "escorting the prisoners", so he leaves them be. Once they snatch the keys to the other Jetsons' cell and free them. Now they just have to get out of there.

This doesn't have anything to do with what's going on in the script, but I didn't
want to go this long without another picture. So here's a drawing I did that displays
my feelings on how George treated Elroy and Astro in the episode "Elroy's Mob".

Problem is, Bob Brain spots them escaping on a surveillance monitor and sends security robots after them. The good guys manage to outsmart some jetpacks and soar down the corridors. After a few more encounters with machines, they make it to the generator room. Just as George is about to press the button he needs to, guess who shows up?

Ee-yup, Bob Brain, with a bunch of robot guards holding laser guns. He's all "I've got you now!" to which George says, "I don't think so. I figured out your weakness." Bob Brain insists that he doesn't have any weaknesses. He is perfect. But George says that there's one thing he doesn't have: LOVE. This is the Jetsons' cue to hug the robot guards. When Bob Brain refuses to give in to the Power of Love, George hits a big red lever marked "Air Purification System" and clicks it from "EXHAUST" to "REVERSE". The room starts rumbling. On the Earth's surface, the exhaust grates on all the platform bases begin sucking in dirt, twigs, pollen, grass, all the harmless debris of nature (hopefully not any animals). Dirt is blown out of the air vent right above Bob Brain. In fact, ALL the air vents in the building shoot out dirt. The furnaces make a grinding sound. The system is being clogged...

And then, KABOOOOOOOOOOOOM! All over the city, the roofs explode, and clouds of dirt rain down on the machines, killing them. The evil has been defeated. The humans cheer as the Jetsons step out the door of City Hall. Cogswell points out that they shouldn't have let a bunch of gizmos and doodads run their lives. Yeah, you really shouldn't have. I don't know what would've been worse, being enslaved by the machines or turning into the humans from WALL-E. Actually, maybe the first one. At least the humans from WALL-E had those flying chairs.

That night, the Jetsons relax around the fireplace. Jane declares that she never wants to see another machine again. George agrees... although they certainly need a new cleaning machine and dressing machine. The script ends with George reading Elroy a bedtime story...

...oh, wait! That's not the end after all! During the closing credits, they recreate the cartoon's title sequence. Not sure why they didn't do this at the beginning like the Flintstones movie did, although one possible reason might be to reveal that George now works at SPACELY-JETSON SPACE SPROCKETS (now dirt-resistant!), not Spacely's Sprockets - he's the chairman!

Honestly, this wasn't bad.

I'm not kidding. Everyone was in-character, there were some funny gags in there (I liked the Jetsons being all confused by the natural world), and while the "machine uprising" plotline is a bit out of place for a Jetsons movie, it does make for a nice cautionary tale about not being too reliant on technology - a lesson that we need nowadays more than ever. I think this would've made a decent movie... a decent ANIMATED movie, that is. I probably liked this script because I didn't have to stare at a bunch of actors dressed in George, Jane, Elroy etc. Halloween costumes facing off against dated-looking CGI robots (and just imagine what ASTRO would've looked like). Even if they had a great cast, it likely would've just been silly. Of course, there's no way they would've decided to make this animated - after all, they'd just had a theatrical animated Jetsons movie a few years ago and it was a box office bomb, and this was probably only greenlit to cash in on the success of the live action Flintstones. I don't know if a live action Jetsons movie would've been a bigger success. Probably would've depended on the release date it was given, what films it was up against, and how well it was promoted (all reasons that are, for some reason, alien to movie studios when a film flops at the box office).

Well, here's hoping the animated Jetsons movie in development will be good. Or at least better than Scoob!. At this point, maybe we should be hoping it actually gets released instead of being shelved as a tax-write off. It's Warner Bros., after all...

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 2

Part 2: "Altair and Judy Sittin' in a Tree" or "The Perfect Plutonian Putz"

In the first screenplay for a live action Jetsons movie that never got off the ground we looked at, George was mistakenly implanted with some sort of "human potentializer" that was supposed to turn him into the perfect human being, Judy hooked up with a cute guy who could change colors like a chameleon, Elroy got arrested for shoplifting, and there was a chimpanzee for some reason. Now, onto the 1987 draft of the film's script by Chris Thompson!

This script begins with a beautiful sunrise over the Jetsons' home turf of Galaxy City... in the cartoon, the name of the city is actually Orbit City, but I don't recall them bringing that up much so we'll let it slide. A mechanical rooster standing on a fence crows and then lays a square egg (the script acknowledges that roosters don't lay eggs. They're not mechanical either, of course) that falls into a cylinder that takes it into the Jetsons' kitchen. We basically get the breakfast machine sequence from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and for some reason there's a human face on the wall and the nose on it pops off and inhales the smell of the pancakes. I don't recall any disembodied noses in the cartoon...

George gets out of bed and deals with the weird technology that shaves his face (it winds up shaving his feet), brushes his hair (it brushes his face), and put clothes on him (it puts them on backwards). Jeez, are people in the future really that lazy? They can't even dress themselves? We really ARE on our way to becoming the humans from WALL-E, aren't we?

After that, George heads into the living room and trips over Astro, who turns to the camera and says, "Reet Reorge Retson." Get it? The first line of the theme song? And it keeps going. As we meet Elroy, Judy, and Jane, he says another verse of the song. Elroy's having trouble with his closet, too - it dresses him in girls' clothing because he shares the closet with Judy. Jane uses a beauty shop hair-dryer called Mr. Enrique 1200 to do her makeup. It has an attitude, but you probably would too if your only purpose in life was to put lipstick on women.

Rosey serves everyone breakfast. George realizes that he's late for work, at which point his neuronic talking watch apologizes for not telling him what time it was. "I'm a failure as a watch, aren't I? Do me a favor, just don't tell my union," he pleads. "I'll get demoted and wind up as an egg timer." I imagine this watch likely would've had the voice of Woody Allen. Anyway, George then jumps into his car, which can ALSO talk. The watch is still lamenting what a loser he is, and the car says that he needs professional help. I don't recall the car talking in the original show, but I'm okay with it talking here. The car takes George to Spacely's Sprockets, and once he reaches his office it's revealed that the chair can talk too. Everything in this script talks, apparently. It's like the entire Jetsons world is an episode of Blue's Clues.

I wish Blogger wouldn't make the resolution of my artwork so crummy.
You'll have to click on the picture for a higher-quality version...

Back at Casa De Los Jetsons, Elroy is building an antigravitational-transkinetic-hypermolecular-transponder (if you were able to read all that out loud, major props). It moves stuff, which Elroy demonstrates by having it move Astro's food bowl. Like in the previous script, Elroy really wants to go to Spaceball Camp, but it's apparently really expensive because they can't afford it. They've had to spend money on stuff like a new liver for Judy and speech therapy for Astro. After Jane assures Elroy, Judy, Rosey, and Astro that they're not as poor as they appear to be at the moment, Elroy and Judy head off to school. Jane decides to check out the "Help Wanted" section of the newspaper. Looks like she's looking for a job in this script too.

At work, George has to deal with a guy named Greg MacGravity, who he claims is a "management trainee". "Jetson, you're a space schmuck. You're just jealous cause you're bogged down in a nowhere job and you have to watch me rocket to the top while you linger at the bottom," MacGravity claims. George's response is, "Actually, what I'd like to watch is a rocket linger up your bottom." That sounds dirty. Apparently the director thought so too, because this line is circled and there's a "No" written next to it in pen. From this scene, we learn that MacGravity is an arrogant tool. And the watch continues to be the funniest character in the script thus far.

For those wondering, no, Greg MacGravity did not appear in the cartoon, he's an invention for this script. There was a character called Dr. McGravity in at least one episode, though. Here's a picture of Dr. McGravity:

We then cut to Judy's high school, where she's complaining to a friend that somebody named Sheldon Spacesludge tried to kiss her. "Gag me with the moon," she complains - remember, this was written in the 1980s. Then just as Judy and her pals are dancing to a Jet Screamer song, a "little matron maid" shows up and tells Judy she is wanted in the Vice Principal's office. Meanwhile, at Elroy's school, he has to put up with a bully named Butch - or rather Arthur "Butch" Spacely. Hmmm, it would seem that in this script, Butch is Mr. Spacely's son. Mr. Spacely had a son in the show, but I don't think he was the school bully.

Here's a picture of Mr. Spacely's son in the show. His name was indeed Arthur, although
I don't recall if anyone ever called him "Butch".

And back at the house, Jane... gets a visit from Dorothy and Toto? No, really. Dorothy and Toto show up. I was not expected a cameo from those two...

In the Spacely Sprockets laboratory, three scientists, only one of whom gets a name, are watching someone play the piano. One scientist tells the only named one, Moone, that the "surgical implantation of the actualizer" has created what may be one of the greatest geniuses of their time. That piano-playing genuis is... a rabbit. His name is Puff. And he has a god complex. And yes, he DOES make a reference to how good rabbits are at multiplying. Meanwhile, George is told that Mr. Spacely wants to see him right away. "Are we in trouble?" he and all the furniture and gadgets in his office ask.

I was originally going to draw Puff, but I think you'd all much rather see
a photo of a cute real life rabbit.

Another similarity to the previous script pops up as we cut back to Judy's high school. The Vice Principal wants her to show around an exchange student. From Korrinian 3. Named Altair. Who looks exactly like Jet Screamer. But this time he's blue as opposed to lime green. Of course, Judy goes gaga over him.

George walks down the hall to Mr. Spacely's office, talking to his watch about how much he hates MacGravity. "Look at him, all young and smug," he says. "Sure, it's easy to be a big success if you just concentrate on work. I'd like to see how he'd do if he had to take care of a wife, two kids, and a great dane with a speech impediment. I hate that son-of-a..." Whoa, George, watch the language. As it turns out, MacGravity is going to see Mr. Spacely too. He says that he'd LIKE to be friends with George, but doing so could put his career at risk. For some reason. Still, he invites George to play with him on the rocketball court that afternoon. As soon as MacArthur is out of earshot, George announces that he's going to "kick [the] asteroids" of that "perfect Plutonian putz".

It turns out that George isn't just meeting with Spacely, but with the board of directors and those three scientists from before as well. Spacely called the meeting because there's rumors being spread around, mainly by Cogswell Cogs, that their company is having financial trouble. Moone shows everyone else how they implanted "the actualizer" into the brain of a rabbit. I guess Chris Thompson thinks that rabbits are funnier than primates, because this rabbit serves as a replacement for the chimpanzee from the previous script. "Alright, Spacely, Moone. Are you saying that you have extended all of the assets of this multi-galactical corporation in order to create a RENNAISANCE BUNNY?!" an executive named Liftoff demands. "Liftoff, you have the brains of a german shepherd and the imagination of a socket wrench," Spacely claims. "Do you think I've spent trillions of solar dollars, just to have a rabbit that can sing Rigoletto?! Let me show you something." He tells MacGravity to stand up, then explains that he holds eight degrees, he's a superb athlete, brilliant, ruthless, and all in all a very fine specimen of a human being. And yet he only uses ten percent of his brain - this is actually a myth, for those wondering. Maybe Spacely just doesn't know that. "Can you imagine what this man could achieve if he was given access to the other ninety percent of his mind?" he asks. "Of course you can't imagine, cause you all have brains that fall somewhere between lungfish and fungus."

MacGravity adds that this is what the actualizer does: once it's implanted in the brain, it allows the recipient to use all one hundred percent of his mind. If it could make a rabbit a genius, it could also make a human being a god of sorts. Which brings Spacely to George, much to his confusion. Spacely dubs George "the most average of the average", and says that once they get the actualizer inside MacGravity's brain, he will become something truly exceptional. Joke's on MacArthur, though - we all know the actualizer is somehow going to wind up in George's brain instead.

We then see Elroy and his friends playing spaceball, and once again Butch creams Elroy. Then we see George and MacGravity at the rocketball court, where MacGravity is acting like the perfect Plutonian putz that he is and making George look like a fool. Not that George needs much help to look like a fool, mind you. As for Jane, she heads to a convenience store called the "7-Squared 11-Cubed", which has a "Help Wanted" sign out front. The store is run by a hairy purple alien in a red smock named Zaxxor, who makes a reference to Michael Jackson because, again, 1980s. Then he makes a reference to Jerry Lewis before giving Jane a job. I reaaaaaaally hope this character doesn't have the hots for Jane like that Mr. Darrow guy from the previous script...

In Mr. Spacely's office, Moone is telling him that they probably won't be ready to implant the actualizer in a human in six months. Why? Because the actualizer has side effects: sudden rages, bouts of melancholy, partial amnesia, an entire rage of emotional quirks, meglomania, and possibly even the creation of suicidal tendencies. Before the conversation can continue, who should show up at Spacely Sprockets but W.C. Cogswell. He offers to buy Spacely's company, to which Spacely refuses. But Cogswell has a note from the bank claiming that if Spacely can't pay them in thirty days, they'll let Cogswell take over the company. Banks can do that, I guess.

"Listen, Fat Boy..." Spacely snarls, "I'm developing a product that'll knock you out of of the solar system." Cogswell reveals that he already knows about the actualizer and that he knows it won't work, to which Spacely says that they're about to implant it into a human being. In fact, he's so sure of its success that, if a month goes by and it DOES fail, he'll sell Cogswell the company. Spacely, you fool. Since there's no turning back now, Spacely tells his secretary to tell Dr. Moone and MacGravity to get ready for the insertation of the actualizer at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

At dinner that night, Jane tells George about her new job. George advises her to hold off on the job because he thinks they'll get through these financial troubles. He's also miffed that nothing unusual ever goes on in their lives. Well, that settles it... George is definitely going to be implanted with the fancy smarts-boosting device in THIS script, too.

George comes out of his bedroom looking as though he has a new purpose. When he gets to work, he runs into MacGravity again, who boasts that he's going to get the actualizer implanted in his brain. And you'd expect this to be the part where George somehow gets the actualizer implanted in HIS brain by accident, right? Well, not quite. Instead, George knocks out MacGravity and stuffs him into the trunk of his car. Then he barges into the laboratory and tells the two assistants in there that he's MacGravity. I don't know whether George is really brave or really stupid. They put a helmet on his head so when Spacely shows up, he doesn't know that it's George and not MacGravity.

While George is getting the actualizer implanted in his brain, we cut back to the house, where Jane is talking to Marsha (remember her from the previous script?) about how she loves George "just the way he is". Uh oh, you jinxed it, Jane. Elroy, meanwhile, is talking to his friend Vladimir about spaceball camp and dealing with Butch. And Judy is making out with Altair, and as she kisses him she also begins to turn blue because he's giving her his essence. Judy's not exactly on board with that because she's only sixteen, to which Altair tells her that a lot of sixteen year olds on his planet already have offspring (eeeeeeeeeh...). "Altair, I really think you are cool to like the maximum velocity. But I've only known you a couple of days," Judy points out. "I don't know that I'm ready to settle down with you and start having, like little Smurfs." Is that an example of Hanna-Barbera cross-promotion? Say, is Altair the evolved form of a Smurf? That would be a pretty funny twist...

Just as the operation on George is wrapping up, MacGravity bursts into the room, meaning that Spacely now knows it wasn't MacGravity who they implanted the actualizer in but rather George. Way to go, George. You just got yourself a pink slip. On the bright side, George is now an expert rocketball player, so it seems as though the actualizer is working. This makes Spacely very happy. According to Moone, it's going to take thirty days or so for the actualizer to advance George to one hundred percent brain potential. So far he's only at twelve percent.

"I'm finally going to be somebody special. I'm going to give my family everything they've ever wanted," George vows. "You won't regret this, Cosmo. I promise. I know you didn't want to use me, but think about it. You wanted to end mediocrity. Well, what better way to demonstrate that, than to use a mediocre man. Cosmo, I'm gonna put on a show for the board of directors that will blow them from here to the Big Dipper, and then, when I'm ready, we're going to grind Cogswell into teeny atomic particles, and scatter them across the galaxy."

We then cut to the Galaxeria Mall, where Elroy and Vladimir run into Butch... again. Just as he's about to clobber Elroy, George swoops in and lifts him off the ground. He reveals that he's been promoted to Senior Vice President of New Projects, so there's no risk of being fired if he stuffs a corn dog on a jet in Butch's mouth and sends him into a tub of mustard, which is just what he does. Also at the mall are Judy and Altair, who mentions that he'd love to take her back to Korrinian 3 with him... just as George shows up and declares that Judy must be taught a lesson. Then he gives her his Spacy's Department Store card and tells her to buy a new wardrobe. See, he wasn't actually mad at Judy for making out with Altair! It was a bait-and-switch! George, you sly dog!

Coincidentally enough, Jane and Marsha are just leaving the mall, and in the parking lot they see George with a red Corvette Space Car. "Plant your hips inside and we'll take a spin," he tells Jane. Back home, when the family learns about George's new promotion, Jane says she knew they were just waiting for the right position for you. "I always thought the right position for dad was upside down, or on his butt," Judy quips. George then gives Elroy a spaceball with "Congratulations, Elroy Jetson, on your acceptance to Willie Mars Baseball Camp." written on it.

At Cogswell Cogs, Cogswell is getting a massage... and having a meeting with Dr. Moone. Apparently Dr. Moone is actually a mole, planted in Spacely's company by Cogswell because "the boys in Las Venus" are mad at him for welching on his gambling debts. When Moone tells him what's going on, Cogswell tells him to keep him informed of George's progress - if he continues to succeed, they just might have to take matters into their own hands.

At the Spacely Training Laboratory, George is doing some training. He breezes through an obstacle course, wins a dozen games of 3D Chess, lifts weights, and paints a Rembrandt and a Picasso at the same time. Then George moves the family into a deluxe condo that looks like "something out of a magazine". By now, he's using forty-one percent of his brain. However, he does want Spacely and Moone to tell him why he hasn't been informed of whatever side effects the actualizer might have. "I have all the data on your research into the actualizer," he explains. "You took quite a chance putting it into a man. The device is dangerously crude, and rudimentary. Too bad you couldn't build this little baby now. I could show you how to fix it." In fact, if he were to TELL anyone about the "piece of junk" that Spacely put in his head, he'd have a lawsuit that'd have him owning Spacely Sprockets in no time. It should be pretty clear by now that George is getting too big for his britches, but he does have a point. He SHOULD know about whatever side effects the actualizer has, lest he wind up turning into a crystal robot thing again.

George comes home from work with a large human-sized box. When he opens it up, standing inside is a robot in a tuxedo with an English accent. He's their new "Robo-Serve", who he bought to "lighten the load" for Rosey. Instead of falling madly in love with the Robo-Serve like you'd expect her to, Rosey fears that she's being replaced. Then he heads back to work, despite Jane's protest that the kids haven't seen him in days. Oh, great. We're doing THAT cliche now, are we?

This is what I think of when I think of a robot butler.

Judy can't decide whether to go with Altair to his home planet or not. "This is as complicated as shopping for bathing suits," she laments. Elroy and Astro suggest that she ask their father, which gives Judy an idea: she'll ask George when Altair comes to dinner, and when he refuses, Altair will give her credit for trying. It's foolproof!

Cogswell calls up Spacely to "give [him] the chance to sell out now while [his] company [is] still worth something". "I've got a bright new executive that's taking this company to the outer limits of the universe," Spacely tells him. "He'd better do it in ten days, Spacely. Then, if you're lucky, I might give you a job..." Cogswell says - a job in the mail room, that is. Actually, George's behavior has Spacely worried.

Altair shows up at the Jetson household for dinner. Judy says that she's decided to go with Altair to his home planet, but first she has to ask her father. George arrives home and walks past Rosey, who was going to offer him a pipe, Elroy, who holds a paper and smoking jacket, and Astro, with a pair of slippers in his mouth. This, as the script points out, is a way of showing that George has let his success go to his head.

When they sit down to dinner, George says that he got something special for Altair from his home planet - Blue Korrinian Lobster and prime Saturnian steak. Or, as he likes to call it, "Smurf and Turf".

Altair can't bring himself to eat the lobster because he used to have a lobster named Scooter as a pet. George continues to act like a tool, and when Judy asks him about going to Korrinian 3, guess what? He's okay with it, to Jane and Judy's shock.

Scooter.

Later, Jane demands to know why George is letting Judy go off to another planet to get her freak on with a boy she just met. "Jane, do we really want to inhibit her potential for achievement?" George asks. "There's that word again. Achievement. Since when did the word achievement become more important to you than words like family, or responsibility, or human warmth?" Jane wants to know. Why are smart people so often portrayed in movies and TV shows as emotionless robots? That seems unfair to smart people.

We cut to Elroy's big spaceball game, and initially it seems like George is, of course, too busy at work to watch him play. But then he DOES show up in a large Spacely Sprockets rocket, followed by a bunch of guys in suits and lab coats. He gives Elroy a new spaceball that he reconfigured to make it impossible to hit. Elroy protests that they're supposed to play with the equipment they already have so nobody has an unfair advantage, to which George insists that winning is more important than playing fair. Who is he, Dick Dastardly? Then he only stays for about a minute before rushing off to another board meeting. So even though Elroy strikes Butch out, he's not happy. In fact, he's crying. Way to go, George. You've made the cutest Jetson cry. You are officially the most evil Hanna-Barbera character ever.

George's reign of terror is summed up by Moone. He's developed forty-eight new patents in two weeks, fired over a hundred people because he thinks he can do their jobs better, and is scaring the pants off of Moone. And the side effects? There don't seem to be any yet. As for George, he is currently telling the board of directors that he is for all intents and purposes a god and that they should - and I'm quoting this verbatim from the script - "bow to [their] knees and tremble". Cogswell, meanwhile, tells Moone to build him an actualizer that he can implant in one of his employees, but Moone says he can't because George took over the entire project and destroyed all the files and momorized them.

George tells the board of directors that they are now obsolete. When Spacely protests, George declares that he took majority ownership in Spacely Sprockets yesterday so he now dictates what goes on at the company. Sheesh, even Fred didn't become this awful when HE became drunk with power in the Flinstones movie. Spacely says that he never should have put the actualizer in George's head and that he thinks they should take it out before things get worse. George promptly uses his... psychic powers, I guess... to split the conference table in two. Dear lord, he's becoming a supervillain. It's like that episode of Jimmy Neutron where Sheen became super-intelligent and turned evil.

"You should've stopped that crazy thing when I told you to,
Jane."

Back home, Elroy has decided to run away. When George is about to jump into his limo, a bunch of security robots show up to apprehend him, but he uses his psychic powers (again, I don't know when he got psychic powers, they weren't mentioned among the side effects earlier, but just go with it) to melt them. Judy is talking to Altair about how she doesn't think she's ready to go to Korrinian 3. Cogswell decides that if he can't beat George, he'll make him a better offer at his company - coincidentally enough, George's limo is pulling up to Cogswell Cogs right now. And Jane? She has to put up with the unwanted advances of Zaxxor.

It should be pretty obvious that I'm not very good at drawing females.

George tells Cogswell that he's going to buy out his company, but he may continue to work there as his employee. Then he shall take over the entire galaxy. Before he can continue to rant about how everyone in the universe will bow down before the one known as George Jetson, he suddenly grabs his head and screams.

At the Jetson house, Judy, Jane, Astro, and Rosey are watching the video Elroy filmed before he ran away. A crazed George barges in and informs them that now he controls everything and they shall have everything they ever want. Astro tells him to watch the video, which they promptly play for George. In the video, Elroy says that he used to think they were "a pretty happy family who got along kinda good", not knowing that they weren't "acheiving enough" or "making enough money" or "actualizing [their] goals". "Dad, I think something happened where you felt that you weren't everything we thought you should be. Like being normal was some kind of crime or something. But, Dad, I never wanted anything more than just what you gave us," he says. "Love and attention and stuff. I guess you felt like you were disappointing us, but then you got all smart and everything, and then we started to feel like we were disappointing you. Well, I don't like that feeling. So I'm gonna go out and try to achieve something, you know, 'cause that's what you want, okay? And that's why I think it's better that I just go. I'm sorry, Dad... I love you."

Seeing this snaps George out of his, for lack of a better word, evilness and he shouts Elroy's name in anguish, a shout so loud that Elroy can hear it just as he's about to climb aboard a bus.

Then things take a REALLY dark turn. You thought George turning evil was dark? Think again. George runs onto the roof of the building and laments, "I wanted to give you things. They put something in me. In my head. I am powerful. I am brilliant. And yet I am a failure..." Astro tries to stop him from jumping off, but that just causes him to fall off the roof. Fortunately, Elroy saves him.

When George comes to, he's inside the house with the others hovering over him. And now he doesn't recognize any of them. Rosey suggests that they just need to recharge his memory, and fortunately Altair has some sort of ability to give people his memories just by touching their hands. So everyone holds hands and thinks about good times with George, and guess what? It works! George sits up and says, "I know you. You are what matters. You are my family." Hooray!

But then he says, "I would like to stay, but I cannot. I have a destiny, a destiny to rule." To get George back to normal, they need to remove the device in his head. So what does Jane do? Honestly... words can not describe what Jane does next. Here's what the script says:

"Jane grabs her husband's head, and throws a liplock on the back of it. She noisily sucks on his skull. We hear a loud 'POP'. She removes her mouth from his skull and spits. We see the actualizer fly out of her mouth across the room. It lands in Rosey's hand. She looks at it a beat, and crushes it in her metal paw."

...yes, Jane randomly turns into a lamprey and somehow sucks out the actualizer from George's skull. Why she has this ability is never explained.

An actual photo of Jane Jetson.

But it does the trick, George is back to normal. He then trips over Astro and falls onto the sidewalk, which carries him over to the vacuum tube. And then the script just... ends.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but this wasn't as good as the previous script. It feels less polished, with a lot of things and plot points that don't go anywhere: George taking over Spacely and Cogswell's companies, Elroy's spaceball stuff, even the stuff with Altair just kind of fizzles out. The ending is extremely abrupt. And I don't think anyone wants to see an iconic cartoon character like George Jetson become a diabolical villain who wants to take over the universe.

I will say, though, it's pretty surprising that this script and the first one have so many of the same plot elements. Did Chris Thompson read the first draft for inspiration? I wonder if the third script will be about George getting something implanted in his brain that makes him a supergenius too. I guess we'll just have to wait until the third part to find out...