Let's Watch This - An Episode of "Wild Kratts"

Let me start off this review by talking about a show that is not the show I am reviewing today: Zoboomafoo.

Zoboomafoo premiered on PBS Kids in 1999. It starred the Kratt Brothers, Chris and Martin, alongside a lovable lemur named Zoboo (portrayed as both a real lemur and a puppet performed by Gordon Robinson). They hung out in this place called Animal Junction where all sorts of animals came to play, teaching the viewers about animals and their behaviors and stuff like that. The show only had two seasons, but it feels like it ran for much longer than that.

When I was younger, I loved the heck out of Zoboomafoo. It was one of my favorite shows. I have this show to thank for introducing me to more obscure animal species. The phrases "Mangatsika!" and "I can't believe my mind!" took up permanent residence in my brain. I got merchandise, too - CD roms and a Zoboo plush and I think a book or two. I taped episodes (this was before the TiVo came out). If I were to ever make a list of my favorite fictional lemurs, Zoboo would definitely be at the top (alongside Treelo and King Julien, of course). Alas, I don't think Zoboomafoo is airing anymore. But you can find a few episodes on YouTube, so there's that.

Zoboomafoo is one of a few different shows that the Kratt Brothers starred in. The first was Kratts' Creatures (which I haven't seen a single episode of). Then after Zoboomafoo they made a show called Be the Creature (which I also haven't seen a single episode of). And then, in 2011, out came the show that we're looking at today: Wild Kratts.

Wild Kratts, like Zoboomafoo, premiered on PBS Kids. The show features animated versions of the Kratt Brothers (voiced by them and everything!) going on adventures and saving animals from threats. They are helped by three kids named Aviva (voiced by Athena Karkanis), Jimmy Z (Jonathan Malen), and Koki (Heather Brambrick). And they have these "creature power suits" that give them the abilities of different animals. So far, the show has had six seasons and is still running today!

Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed that they didn't include Zoboo in the show. I mean, I can understand why they didn't (I mean, they didn't include that Ttark guy from Kratts' Creatures in Zoboomafoo), but it just feels wrong for me seeing the Kratt Brothers without Zoboo around.
But hey, I shouldn't judge the show simply because it doesn't have Zoboo in it. So let's watch an episode and see if I'll be wild for Wild Kratts. Specifically, we'll be looking at an episode called "The Mystery of the Weird-Looking Walrus".

The episode begins with Chris telling the viewer that some animals have really funny faces. Including Martin, who's making a "moose face" into a mirror for some reason. This part is all in live-action, by the way.

Then a real moose shows up, and Chris goes on about how strange the moose's face looks. The moose doesn't show it, but deep down I bet its feelings are hurt by Chris' remarks. Why do you have to hurt the moose's feelings, Chris?

"This camera smells like... well, a camera."

Chris and Martin talk some more about the moose and its big nose and lips that help it eat foliage. "That fun-looking face is PERFECT for what the moose eats!" Chris announces. "You know, even the weirdest-looking animals usually have a REASON for looking the way they do!" I dunno about that... I mean, what kind of reason could, Donald Trump have for looking the way HE does?

Then Martin brings up another animal that looks weird - the walrus! He and Chris start talking about how weird walruses look - the tusks, the blubbery bodies, the whiskers, the "humongous lips"...

Look, the walrus is hurt by your comments, too! Stop making animals feel bad, Kratt Brothers!

The Kratt Brothers want to actually hang out with walruses in the arctic in the hopes of figuring out WHY walruses look the way they do. As it turns out, they can! By turning into cartoon characters!

Why does Cartoon Martin look like Ron from Kim Possible?

After the theme song, we see the Kratt Brothers underwater, riding some sort of manta ray-shaped things until they come across a herd of walruses. I like the expression on this one walrus's face...

"Do any of you folks out there ever get the feeling you're being watched?"

The walruses start doing... um, THIS...

Are they hunting for underwater truffles or something?

And then the Kratt Brothers - and the audience - get a look at this cute little fella.

All together now: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW...

"I'm gonna call him 'Blobby'!" Martin exclaims. "And I'M gonna find out why walruses look so weird!" Chris replies before they go over for a closer look. But then Chris runs afoul of a giant pacific octopus, resulting in - you guessed it - WACKY SHENANIGANS!

"I know I said I wanted to be under the sea in an octopus' garden, but this is
RIDICULOUS!"

Martin tries to rescue Chris, but the octopus winds up grabbing him in his tentacles too. "Nice rescue, bro," Chris snarks.

Then we cut to this giant sea turtle-shaped building underwater where the three kid sidekicks are watching the Kratt Brothers' antics on a giant TV. Aviva asks if they're okay, to which Martin replies, "We're having a blast! Uh, just a little tangled up!" "You mean TENTACLED up!" Chris jokes. "Giant pacific's tentacles can grow up to THIRTY-ONE FEET! That's as long as a fire truck!" Uh, Chris, this is just my opinion, but maybe you should save the animal facts for when you're NOT about to be eaten by a giant cephalopod?

Aviva says that she needs more data if she wants to integrate walrus powers into the Kratts' suits. Chris uses his "Creature Pod" to learn that the octopus isn't going to eat them - they eat clams (among other things, but indeed, octopus eat clams but do not eat humans). "I! Think! I! Found! Some!" Martin groans as the octopus repeatedly slams his head against the ocean floor. Indeed, Martin finds a clam which they use to distract the octopus, which promptly lets them go. "Now THAT'S using your head!" Chris exclaims. Ba-dum-KSSSSSSSSSSSH.

The Kratts watch the octopus eat the clam, which makes me hungry for clams myself. Wait, is it wrong for me to talk about eating animals in a review of a show about how great animals are?

Back to the kids. They talk about how pearls are formed in clams, then Aviva tells Chris and Martin to get finding out information about walruses. "Weird-looking walrus, here we come!" Martin says as they ride off on their manta ray-shaped things. I'm still not thrilled by the fact that they're calling walruses "weird-looking". Maybe I shouldn't be offended because I myself am not a walrus, but you know what? I am. Walrus-shaming is NOT COOL, guys.

Then we cut to... um, this.

What, have we stumbled upon Frosty the Snowman's summer home or something?

Inside, some kids are looking at an arctic pearl that's on display. Ah, so it's some kind of... igloo-museum? But once the other kids leave, one kid is revealed to actually be... a robot! GASP! And she steals the pearl!

Then we cut to this evil dude (Zachary Bennett) talking to another villain (Eva Almos) in his secret lair, which happens to be in a yacht.

"Hello, I'm Generic Cartoon Supervillain, and I'll be your antagonist for this episode."

This guy - who sounds like a bad Gilbert Gottfried impression - is a "world-renowned mega-genius robotics inventor". And the other villain is some sort of evil fashion designer woman who uses live animals in her clothing line. So she's essentially Cruella De Vil?

Generic Cartoon Supervillain shows off the arctic pearl that his robot stole and Discount Cruella is all over it. She claims that it'll be perfect for her new line of pearl-encrusted sweatpants. Because apparently there's a real demand for that lately. She asks if he can get more. "Well," Generic Cartoon Supervillain says, "If my calculations are correct, there's a huge untapped source of pearls under the Bering Sea, which will cost us NOTHING and make ME... I mean, US... millions!" Yeah, okay, I get it, you guys are evil, where the heck are the Kratt Brothers?

Oh, there they are. They're watching the walruses use their tusks like sled-runners to slide across the mucky ocean floor. They're looking for something, but WHAT? Chris points out that walruses have four hundred and fifty whiskers - "Give or take a couple."

Back at the Kratts' sea turtle building, Jimmy Z (who's pretty much a discount Shaggy Rogers) claims that you can't find things with nose hairs. To prove that the walruses' whiskers are indeed very useful, Aviva dumps Jimmy's "controller" into his pudding. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Alas, now we have to see what the evil dude is up to. He's found out that there's a whole pile of clams under his yacht. Unfunny shenanigans ensue and he winds up tossing the pearl overboard. Then he orders his robots to find it. When the robots go underwater, they wind up spooking the walruses, resulting in a WALRUS STAMPEDE!

Even underwater, Black Friday is considered a big deal.

After that, the walruses keep digging and find some clams. "Walruses eat clams too?! But how do they get past the shell to the yummy parts inside?" Martin wants to know. Let me guess... does it have something to do with the tusks?

Well, actually, no. They just suck the clams out of their shells with one giant slurp. Huh.

The baby walrus (they're still calling him "Blobby", by the way) can't find his own clams yet, so his mom is feeding him. Chris decides that he wants to get this all on film, but the robots are watching them!

The robots' eyes somehow pick up footage of the walruses eating, and this gives Mr. Evil Dude an idea: "I can use the seal-thingies to pick up the arctic pearl!" he says. "Then they can suck all the clams in the sea to get the rest of them!"

"How many can they eat in one sitting?" Martin asks as the walruses keep on chowing down. "Over five thousand!" Chris exclaims. Dang, if only he'd said "Over NINE thousand", then I could've made a reference to that meme... eh, what the heck?

Now the Kratt Brothers know why walruses are so blubbery... and why they're so "weird-looking". Again with the walrus-shaming! Why are they so insistent on mocking walruses?!

Chris recaps everything they've learned: the tusks drag through the mud, the whiskers feel for clams, and their big-lipped mouths suck the clams out of their shells. Now Aviva can add walrus powers to their creature power suits! Yay...

"Hey, Chris, we've got another mystery to solve," Fred Jones... I mean, Martin says, pointing at the robots that have been spying on them. The robots swim off, and the Kratt Brothers discover that their "Manta-Riders" (that's what they call those manta ray-shaped things) were destroyed in the walrus stampede. They'll need to activate their creature power suits, which now have been equipped with walrus-swimming power!

Those suits look like they would be extremely hard to swim in...

The Kratts make it up to the surface and overhear the Evil Dude yammering about how he shall use his mind-control helmet to make the walruses do his bidding. The kids back at their base also find out about this, and Koki finds something online about an arctic pearl being stolen by an odd little girl who was in fact a "Zachbot". Yeah, apparently the name of the evil dude is Zach. But eh, I'm just gonna keep calling him "the evil dude".

Also, the other characters know about Zach. Is he a recurring villain?

Soon the robots have equipped all the walruses with mind-control helmets to make them find clams. They've also installed a conveyor belt that they can use to get the clams to the surface. Quick question, how does a conveyor belt work underwater? And he's got MORE mind-controlled walruses sucking the clams open! I didn't think anything could top walrus-shaming, but walrus-brainwashing? THAT'S diabolical! And he's force-feeding them, too! I hope the Kratt Brothers kick his butt.

Martin has a plan: with their walrus suits, they can infiltrate the chain, and fortunately they're able to do just that because the evil dude, as Martin puts it, "can't tell a walrus from a wombat". And the mind-control helmets that the robots put on them don't work because they don't have walrus brains.

Then Discount Cruella shows up in her pink jetplane (which apparently travels at the "speed of style") and demands her giant pearl. Evil dude fills her in on what's going on and tells her that the walruses stole the pearl. For obvious reasons, she doesn't believe him. Then Martin finds the arctic pearl in one clam and loudly announces it to everyone. Uh-oh...

"That sounded like a Wild Ratt!" the evil dude says (apparently, he calls the Kratt Brothers "Wild Ratts"). Then Discount Cruella points out to him that the Kratt Brothers are hiding among the walruses.

"Uh, we can explain..."

The Kratt Brothers are grabbed by the robots, and the evil dude demands that they give him the pearl. Discount Cruella is angered to find out that the evil dude STOLE the pearl as opposed to just FINDING it (apparently, even she has her limits when it comes to doing evil things) and demands the pearl NOW. Martin winds up throwing it underwater and he and Chris jump in after it, followed by the robots.

Fortunately, with their walrus powers, Chris and Martin are able to find the pearl before the robots can... but then Martin loudly announces that Chris found it and the robots overhear. D'oh. Long story short, they wind up destroying the robots, the third one with the help of that octopus from before. But the walruses underwater are in trouble! They can't go too long without air - specifically, they can't go longer than twenty minutes. And it's been fourteen! They have to do something about the mind control device. Aviva helps them crack its code, which shuts the thing off and snaps the walruses out of their trance, allowing the ones underwater to surface for air.

Since March of the Penguins was such a big hit, the studio immediately
greenlit a spinoff movie. Thus, expect March of the Walruses to waddle into a
theater near you.

Dang it, now I actually want someone to make a movie called March of
the Walruses...

But the evil dude uses his "Insta-Freeze Device" to freeze the ocean's surface before the Kratts and the walruses can surface. The ice is eight inches thick, so they can't break through it - and the walruses, they've only got twenty seconds before the whole "being a mammal underwater" thing kicks in!

The walruses, thankfully, remember that their heads can smash through the ice and promptly do just that. The evil dude is holding the baby walrus hostage as a last resort, but as we all know, you should never get in between a wild animal and their baby, and, well...

Discount Cruella runs back onto her jet and becomes a Karma Houdini. The evil dude is stuck on a pointy iceberg. The mystery has been solved. Chris and Martin recap what they've learned today. In fact, I think I'll do that, too.

So, what HAVE we learned today? Well, we've learned that the walruses' blubbery body keeps them warm underwater. We learned that they use their giant tusks a la sled-runners along the sea bottom. We learned that they use their whiskers to find clams in the muck. We learned that they use their big, powerful lips to suck the clams into their mouths. And we learned that they they can use their super-strong heads to smash through ice.

"Walruses look the way they do because of where they live, what they eat, and how they get it!" Chris summarizes. Likewise, Jimmy is covered in chocolate pudding because of what HE eats and how HE gets it. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Back to the live-action Kratts. They talk about how much they love weird-looking creatures and finding out why they look that way, then start listing off other weird-looking animals, such as elephants, warthogs, and anteaters. "All weird faces, all for a purpose," Chris says. "And there's nothing weird about THAT!" Martin adds.

"You know," Chris admits as they watch the moose from before eat, "Maybe they think WE'RE the weird ones..." The episode ends with the Kratts encouraging us to go out there on a creature adventure of our own. Go find animals with weird-looking faces. Like Donald Trump!

I know, I know... isn't it kind of hypocritical for me to make fun of Donald Trump's appearance after going on and on about how it was wrong for the Kratts to talk about how weird-looking moose and walruses are? Well, maybe a little... but hey, it's Donald Trump. He's earned the right to be made fun of.

I was pleasantly surprised by Wild Kratts. It doesn't have the same charm to it as Zoboomafoo, but it's all in all a pretty good show. Not spectacular, but good. For a show intended for the same audience as something like Dora the Explorer, it's nice that it doesn't talk down to its audience or get too saccharine or cutesy-wutesy. My only complaints are that the villain was kinda lame and the kid sidekicks could get a bit annoying. And it definitely needed some Zoboo. But aside from that, it's a decent show.

And remember: walrus-shaming is NOT COOL. And neither is walrus-brainwashing.

P.S. Is it just me, or does Chris Kratt sound very much like Scott Weigner?