Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Mucha Lucha!"

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.

This is one of those cartoons that I've probably taken waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to do a review of. Like, really? I got to Super Duper Sumos before this one?

Mucha Lucha! is the creation of Eddie Mort and Lili Chin for Warner Bros. Animation. It aired on The WB's Kids WB block from August 17th, 2002 to February 26th, 2005, receiving three seasons and fifty-two episodes in all. There was also a direct-to-video film made in-between the second and third seasons. Perhaps the show's biggest claim to fame is that it was one of the first cartoons to be made using Flash.

The show takes place in Luchaville, a town in California (not an actual place, obviously) where everyone is obsessed with the sport... at least I think it's a sport... known as lucha libre. For those unaware, lucha libre is basically the Mexican version of professional wrestling, the main difference being that everybody wears a colorful costume. Our main characters - Rikochet (voiced by Carlos Alazraqui for the first two seasons, with Jason Marsden taking over in Season 3 because Carlos was too busy working on Reno 911), Buena Girl (voiced by Kimberly Brooks), and The Flea (voiced by Candi Milo) - attend the Foremost World-Renowned International School of Lucha, where they study to become Luchadores.

I remember hearing about Mucha Lucha!, I'm pretty sure I saw a few ads for it, but I never actually watched the show. I never watched much Kids' WB in general, I can only remember watching it ONCE and that was at my cousins' beach house. It does have a cult following, though, so who knows? Maybe I'll like it.

We're going to watch the show's sixteenth episode (the third episode of the second season). This is Mucha Lucha!.

The first segment, "Nightmare on Lucha Street", begins on a dark, spooky night. Rikochet has found himself in a strange neighborhood where the sky is crimson, the sidewalk has a mind of its own, and a bizarre genie-like monster won't leave him alone.

There are even pop-up ads for Camp Lazlo appearing at random!

The green-skinned being desperately in need of a manicure introduces himself as Misterioso Grande, lucha lord of the dream world. He wants Rikochet's mask for his collection. I hope the indication here is that he just STEALS other lucha wrestlers' masks instead of, like, EATING them and just having the masks as a trophy. Rikochet won't hand his mask over without a fight, but someone who can shapeshift into anything like Misterioso makes for a very difficult foe.

"Perhaps you'd like to see how ssssssssssssssssssssSNAKE-LIKE I CAN BEEEEEEEEEE!"

Only one thing can defeat Misterioso - an alarm clock! Rikochet wakes up and is relieved that the whole experience was just a dream. His sentient action figure El Rey (Michael Donovan)... yes, there's a toy that's alive in this world, just go with it... tells him to get up so he can use his bed to test out his new wrestling move, the Flaming Garbage Toss.

He sleeps with his mask on? I know lucha is a way of life in this show, but that seems
kind of strange...

At the Foremost World-Renowned International School of Lucha, Rikochet learns from the Headmistress (also Candi Milo) that another student, Penny Plutonium (Tabitha St. Germain), has not been in school for two days. So she sends Rikochet, Buena Girl, and The Flea to see why that is.

The Headmistress is disturbing to look at. I'll be honest, I don't like when cartoon characters have exposed brains. There's a reason why Mojo Jojo always wears a helmet.

I know in this case it's not actually her brain showing, it's just a mask... at
least I think it's just a mask, I could be wrong... but it still grosses me out.

So, why has Penny been absent? It's not because her Uncle Gadget needs her help, but rather, because she had a nightmare about Misterioso Grande, and when she woke up, her mask was missing. The Flea has also heard of Misterioso - "He rules the Realm of Dreams! Which is next to the Land of Napping, and Slumberland-adjacient," he explains. If Misterioso Grande takes your mask in the dream world, you don't have it in the real world.

Fortunately, Penny's dad has been working on a dream machine that can send someone into the Realm of Dreams. Rikochet declares that he will use it to save Penny's mask. How does the machine work? Well, you sit in it, and it gives you a stuffed animal, a nightcap, a mobile, and a glass of warm milk. Then it hypnotizes you with a wheel of spinning sheep. So, really, Rikochet could've just waited until he fell asleep that night to get Penny's mask back, but eh...

"Repeat after me: you will not buy a Serta mattress. You will not put us sheep out of
a job..."

Penny's father also has a monitor that allows them to see and speak to Rikochet in the Realm of Dreams. Rikochet runs into Misterioso Grande rather quickly and demands that he return Penny's mask or face his wrath. But Misterioso, again, is a shapeshifter, and defeating a shapeshifter isn't easy. As I recall, Puss in Boots managed to defeat that shapeshifting ogre by getting him to turn into a mouse and then eating him. Perhaps Rikochet just has to trick Misterioso into turning into a taco or something.

In hindsight, maybe somebody else should've entered the Dream Realm WITH Rikochet?

"You're in a dream! You can do anything you want!" Buena Girl points out to Rikochet. "Let your imagination run free, and your subconsious will find a way to defeat Misterioso Grande!" So Rikochet dreams himself some Plastic Man powers...

"Hammer time!"

Using his imagination, Rikochet battles Misterioso, eventually defeating him by turning into a giant tidal wave (everybody knows that water is a dream-controlling monster's only weakness). Penny gets her mask back, and Misterioso is banished to the Netheregions. Upon leaving the Dream Realm, Rikochet gives a speech about how he defeated Misterioso by turning the nightmare into a sweet dream, and there's nothing as sweet as victory. Penny gives him a smooch on the forehead...

Do we ever see Rikochet without his mask on? I'm imagining that his forehead is
incredibly large. Like, as big as Megamind's.

The segment ends with The Flea being scared off by Penny's dog, who has either been possessed by Misterioso or decided to dress like him for the fun of it. Next segment!

It's the first day of school... just ignore the fact that the characters were shown in school in the previous episode... and unlike every other student on the planet, Buena Girl is very happy. She LOVES the first day of school because everything is so clean and shiny and new. I don't recall everything being clean and shiny on any of MY first days of school. Maybe I was too annoyed by summer vacation being over to notice?

And what is The Flea doing on the first day of school? Eating garbage. As one does.

Ew, has somebody been using the garbage can as a toilet? What else could that brown
glop be?

The garbage doesn't agree with The Flea's digestive system, and he quickly has to go to the bathroom. Problem is, ever since he fought a character called the Masked Toilet in a previous episode, The Flea has been afraid of bathrooms. Have you ever been in a school bathroom? I really don't blame him. I mean, they're not port-a-potty levels of disgusting, but they can be pretty gross.

But while he's in the bathroom, before he can take a dump, The Flea is suddenly ambushed by the Masked Toilet! Of course, as soon as Rikochet and Buena Girl run in, the Masked Toilet has vanished, so they don't believe The Flea when he tells them. Oh boy, it's one of THOSE episodes. Y'know, where one character keeps seeing something spooky but nobody else sees it whenever they try to show them, so the other characters just think the one character who does see it is crazy? Every cartoon needs to do an episode like that at SOME point, I guess...

I gotta say, it was very bold of that kid on the right to base his lucha persona off of
Keo from Yakkity Yak.

But then another student, this one dressed as a scarecrow, encounters the Masked Toilet in the bathroom as well! The Flea ISN'T crazy after all!

Well, maybe he still is. But he was right about the Masked Toilet!

All the other students in the school try to fight the Masked Toilet, but get their clocks cleaned. Wow, these kids must really suck at being lucha fighters if they're getting clobbered by a sentient urinal. What on Earth is this school teaching them? Eventually, the Masked Toilet gives The Flea a message challenging him to a "Full Flush Elimination Match". How does the toilet write without hands? The world may never know.

"P.S.: Your costume makes you look more like a bunny rabbit than a flea."

"A true luchador never runs from a challenge!" Buena Girl tells The Flea. "So LET US GET TRAINING!" First, she shows The Flea and Rikochet a new move she's created allowing her to turn into a plunger. So she has shapeshifting powers now too? And so does Rikochet, it seems, because he turns into a spring. What sort of witchcraft IS this?

"Noooooooooooooo springs! Hee hee hee hee hee!"

Training doesn't go so well (among other things, The Flea winds up with his head stuck in the training dummy toilet!), so I'm not filled with confidence regarding The Flea's ability to fight the Masked Toilet. Maybe he should call a plumber. Are the Mario Brothers avaliable?

And, sure enough...

So, just a recap, everybody: scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock smashes scissors, toilet pummels flea, and tidal wave clobbers green-skinned shapeshifter.

Eventually, however, The Flea finds the key to victory: his bowel movements! He... well, it's not shown what he does, but whatever it is, it's pretty disgusting. He wins the fight, but the episode ends with him making another enemy: the Masked Pencil Sharpener!

What's the Verdict?

Mucha Lucha! is kind of like El Tigre in that the fun mostly comes from how over-the-top it is. Sure, the characters aren't super-interesting, but they're likeable enough. The animation is... well, typical 2000s Flash, but I've seen far worse. The jokes... every so often there's a chuckle-worthy moment, but a lot of them fall flat. I think my biggest complaint is that we don't get enough time in the first segment to watch Rikochet deal with the dream realm, so his fight with Misterioso feels rushed. By contrast, the second segment with the Masked Toilet seems longer than it should be - you could've trimmed the training stuff, at least. Still, it's a show where a recurring villain is a SENTIENT TOILET WEARING A LUCHADORE MASK. It's just so out there that it's hard not to be charmed by it.

So all in all, it's not a GREAT show, but I found it fine for what it was. You don't even have to be a fan of lucha libre to enjoy it.

Rating: Three and a half masks out of five. Mucha entertaining.

And now, a word from our sponsor. This review has been brought to you by...

Isn't it so frustrating when you order something, or are expecting a package from somebody you know, and it takes forever to arrive? You wait and you wait and you wait... what's taking it so long? Sure, the folks at UPS are doing their best to get it there, but they're only human. Human beings aren't known for their speed.

We at Speedy Gonzales Delivery, on the other hand, ARE known for our speed. The fastest mouse in all of Mexico will get your package to you in the blink of an eye. Or at least in a few minutes. Seven, tops. You'll be amazed at how quickly it's on your doorstep. But don't take OUR word for it. Here are a few comments from satisfied customers...

"Narf! I ordered a gift for my friend Brain on Monday night and Speedy Gonzales had it delivered to us before we could even start Brain's newest plan to take over the world! Thanks, Speedy Gonzales Delivery! Poit!"
- Pinky the Mouse,
ACME Labs

"Those new weapons I ordered from stuffninjasuse.com got here in just five seconds thanks to Speedy Gonzales Delivery. Not only was I pleased, but my sons Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Donatello were as well. I highly recommend trusting them with your package."
- Master Splinter,
The Sewers of New York City

"Not only were my books delivered mere seconds after I'd ordered them, but they were in great condition too!"
- Geronimo Stilton,
New Mouse City (not to be confused with New YORK City) 

Speedy Gonzales Delivery: when it absolutely, positively has to be there ahora mismo.

Let's Watch This: An Episode (or Two) of "Little Shop"

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.

I have never seen Little Shop of Horrors - either the original movie from 1960, the musical it was adapted from, or the movie adaptation with Rick Moranis based on the musical. But I do know that it's a pretty spooky movie about a giant Venus flytrap who eats people. And yet, for some reason, the folks at Marvel Productions and Saban Entertainment thought such a film would be PERFECT for a kids' cartoon show!

How exactly do you make a show for kids based on a horror movie (okay, technically it's a horror-comedy, but you know what I mean)? Well, the show's developers, Mark Edward Edens and Ellen Levy, found a way. First, they made the main characters from the film, Seymour and Audrey, into kids, presumably so the audience could identify with them. Next, they reinvented the giant human-eating plant, Audrey II, as a friendly plant named Junior (voiced by Roland Buddy Lewis, with Terry McGee doing his singing voice) who originated from a fossilized seed rather than from outer space. Thirteen episodes were produced and aired on FOX Kids from September to November of 1991. You can currently find episodes of the show on YouTube.

I'm not sure what the mindset here was. I doubt a lot of kids in 1991 were Little Shop of Horrors fans, and fans of the movie were probably turned off by all the changes and the fact that Seymour and Audrey looked nothing like Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene (even Junior doesn't look much like Audrey II). But since, again, I've never watched any of the actual Little Shop of Horrors adaptations, I'll simply have to judge this cartoon on its own merits... or lack thereof. This is the eleventh episode of the show, "Walk Like a Nerd".

The episode starts off with Seymour (Marlow Vella, with Lisa Michelson doing his singing voice) and Junior on the subway, which is filled with all sorts of strange people. Frankenstein's Monster, a guy eating a flower, Igor, a biker with weird flesh-colored spikes sticking out the top of his head...

Is that his hair?

As the train pulls into the station, Seymour sees Audrey (Tamar Lee) walk by and attempts to make small talk with her. She's a sportswriter now, apparently. I didn't know kids could get jobs as sportswriters.

By the way, take a look at the subway train behind them. I guess it's supposed to look like it's covered with graffiti, but it looks more like Jackson Pollock gave it a paint job.

I'm digging Seymour's elephant hat, too.

After Audrey walks off, Seymour realizes that he left Junior on the train and has to follow it all the way to the end of the line. Junior is none too pleased.

The next day, Mr. Mushnik (Harvey Atkin) walks into the shop and finds Seymour begging Junior not to be mad at him. Well, one thing HASN'T changed from the original movie - Seymour works at Mr. Mushnik's flower shop. Even though he's, what, thirteen?

"Why does a nerd like you get to walk around free as a bud when I have to drag a flower pot around everywhere I go?!" Junior complains. He's so aggravated that he launches into a rap song. Why? Because this cartoon was made during the 1990s, of course! And cartoon characters had a habit of rapping in the 1990s to prove that they were hip and cool with the kids, yo!

Is it at least a GOOD rap song? I think you know the answer.

In an attempt to cheer Junior up, Seymour invites him to sleep over at his house. But Junior doesn't do any sleeping. Instead, while Seymour snoozes he reads about altering your molecular structure. Then he grabs a bunch of household appliances - a broom, a washing machine, a toaster - and combines them into some sort of strange device that even Rube Goldberg would be confused by.

If this thing actually alters his molecular structure, I'll eat my hat with a side of hashed browns.

Does the machine work? Well, not exactly. It doesn't give Junior feet. Instead, it sucks him up, puts him through the rinse cycle, sprays Seymour with water, and then... um... somehow puts him inside Seymour's legs? I have no idea how that happened. None of this makes any sense. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure this is not how molecular structure altering works!

But whatever, Junior is now in control of Seymour's legs. He's so happy to have feet that he launches into another rap song. This time, Seymour does some rapping too. It's just as cringe-worthy as it sounds.

"Hey, you know what they say, Seymour: two heads are better than one!"

So now Seymour and Junior share a body. And that gives Junior the ability to have Junior take control of Seymour's brain and have him say things like "Where do you think books come from?! Trees! They come from poor, helpless trees! Murdered in cold sap!" While everyone else in his class thinks that Seymour has been posessed by the Lorax, Junior forces Seymour to pull books out of the bookshelf and drive the other students into a frenzy. I will say this, for a kids' show this is just as disturbing as the movie likely is. Having a giant carnivorous plant controlling somebody's body isn't exactly much better than a giant carnivorous plant eating people.

However, there are benefits to having a sassy Venus flytrap sharing your body. For example, Junior manages to save Seymour from a thrashing by school bully Paine Driller (David Huband). TWICE! He also winds up as part of the track team, and starts imagining what winning the track meet would mean. I would now like to show you the funniest thing in the entire episode:

Come on, just LOOK at it and tell me it's not hilarious. I think what really makes it is the fact that his head is way too small for his body. Alas, that hilarious image is promptly followed by another awful song.

After that, with Junior's help Seymour manages to break the school's pole-vaulting record and pulls off the shotput so well that an entire building crumbles. But when they try to throw an incredibly heavy weight, Junior is somehow pulled out of Seymour's body. This might make winning the hundred yard dash difficult. Junior tells him that he didn't need him to win the other events, he just needed confidence. Then he uses his vines to tie the other runners' shoelaces together, torpedoeing the "you just need confidence" moral that they were presumably going for.

Despite that, Seymour winds up tripping over his own feet and then getting trampled by the now-barefoot other runners. As for Junior, he doesn't care that he doesn't have feet anymore. He might not have feet, but at least he's got soul.

"You sure you don't want me to eat that Driller kid? He's pretty obnoxious."

"Nah, we'd never get away with that in a kids' show..."

Nothing about this episode made sense. How did combining a bunch of household appliances put Junior in Seymour's body? Why did it allow him to take control of his brain? Why was the "Junior wants feet" plotline pretty much forgotten about halfway through? What exactly was the moral here?

Now, this is normally the part of the review where I give my thoughts on the show as a whole. But as I was posting it, I realized, hey, this review is incredibly short. I don't like my posts on this blog to be incredibly short. And you know what THAT means, don't you? It means I'm gonna have to look at ANOTHER episode of this show. Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

So, let's watch the SIXTH episode of the show, "Pulp Fiction". A reference to ANOTHER movie that I've never seen.

Seymour and Junior are going to the Skid Row National Forest, home of the oldest living tree in the world. And here I thought the oldest tree in the world was the Methuselah, located in eastern California. Oh, wait, I didn't, because I had to look it up. Don't say I never do my research!

When they get to the forest... I know I already made a reference to The Lorax, but it looks like the Once-Ler has been here. On the bright side, the oldest living tree in the world is still standing. Junior apparently worships it and tries to strike up a conversation. Silly Junior, trees don't talk. Except the ones in Oz, of course.

"All hail the redwood! King of trees! I shall do your bidding, my liege!"

This leads to ANOTHER LOUSY RAP SONG. Y'know, Junior, just speaking fast to a hip-hop beat does not a good rap make. I obviously agree with what you're saying about how pollution is bad, but there are better ways to get people to wise up than this. You could, for example, make a cartoon or write a book about the dangers of pollution. It worked for the producers of FernGully.

I'm sorry, but you can not in any way make rapping squirrels cool.

A few seconds after Junior's totally hip and fly rap song, yo, the tree is cut down. This makes Junior MAD! As it's being driven off to a sawmill, Junior grabs ahold of the tree with one of his vines, dragging Seymour along as well. When they get to the sawmill, Junior is very nearly burned alive. Fortunately, since the sawmill is entirely automated, there aren't any workers around to crap their pants at the sight of a talking venus flytrap.

All sawmills have a portal to Hades in them. Did you know that?

Whatever Junior's plan to save the tree was, it's a failure. Seymour tries to cheer him up by saying maybe the tree was recycled into a great book. Maybe, but there's also a fifty-percent chance it was used to make another one of those crappy Twilight novels.

Seymour then sings another song that sounds like it's trying to be Schoolhouse Rock but doesn't understand why the songs in Schoolhouse Rock work (for one thing, those songs are well-sung). Then he runs afoul of Pained and his dog, who are delivering newspapers. Upon reading the paper, Junior is enraged by the crap featured in it: a guy faces off against a hundred-pound grasshopper? A prehistoric dishwasher found in Egypt? Heck, the front page story is "SUN RISES". Yeah, and here's something else you might not have known: the grass is green!

"And the guys they've got reviewing movies in here don't know what they're talking about!
No way they actually made a film starring Vanilla Ice! That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"

"What kind of twisted mind would cut down thousand-year-old trees to print root rot like this?!" Junior demands. "I just made a tree-mendous decision! We're gonna find all the newspapers and take them back to the forest where they belong!" I guess his mindset is that if they plant the newspapers, they'll grow new trees or something? At this point, I'd say ANYTHING is possible in the bizarre world that Seymour and Junior live in.

When people are done with newspapers, they usually throw them out. So it's off to the landfill for Seymour and his amazing talking plant, where Junior... I'll give you three guesses what he does.

Yep! It's another rap song!

Even the dog from that animated Titanic movie is a better rapper than this plant.

Junior's awful rap apparently has the power to control paper, because the newspapers rise into the air and rain down on him and Seymour. Then they actually leave the dump, folding themselves into paper airplanes and inching along like a caterpillar. Instead of going back to the forest, however, the papers all go back to Skid Row. You see, Junior just told them to "go home" - in their minds, "home" is where they were delivered.

Now Skid Row is full of paper - enough paper, as Mr. Mushnik puts it, to "house-train an elephant". Seymour suggests that they all recycle the paper, but apparently everyone in this town is an idiot because they don't know what recycling paper actually is. They use the newspaper as toothpicks, they eat it, they use it as ankle weights, Orson Welles even appears to suggest using it as a napkin.

"No frozen peas jokes, please."

Then the people of Skid Row decide to plant new trees in the national forest. "It's amazing what people can do when they work together," Seymour tells us. Well, I will say this: "Pulp Fiction" was at least better than "Walk Like a Nerd", if for no other reason than because it was less boring and made slightly more sense.

What's the Verdict?

Again, why did anyone think doing a kids' cartoon based on Little Shop of Horrors was a good idea? Even if you try to separate the cartoon from the movie, you're left with very little of substance. The characters are flat, the animation isn't anything to write home about, the jokes aren't funny, and the songs are mostly incredibly lame raps that were probably just as embarassing back in 1991 as they are now. Little Shop has nothing going for it.

TV Tropes compares the show to the 1989 Beetlejuice cartoon, which also aired on FOX Kids and was based off a horror-comedy probably not safe for kids to watch but had the main antagonist from the film as a good guy. I've never seen a single episode of that cartoon, nor have I seen the Beetlejuice movie, so if you're wondering why that show succeeded where Little Shop failed (it had four seasons, was released on DVD, and seems to be looked at more fondly than THIS show was), I couldn't tell you.

Rating: One and a half flowers out of five. Leave the door to this Little Shop closed.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Teacher's Pet"

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.

The day I wrote this review, I originally attempted to write a review of Mega Babies. After so many reviews of cartoons that were simply mediocre, I figured I needed to review something really bad to keep the blog from getting monotomous. Problem is, I really couldn't find anything funny to say about Mega Babies - it was horrible, but all I could think of to say was "This is disgusting!" over and over again. Plus, I didn't want to subject my readers to the gross imagery in the show, but the only way to do THAT would be to do a review with no screencaps, which wouldn't be very visually interesting. So instead...

Teacher's Pet is one of Disney's best 2000s cartoons, I'd honestly put it above their more popular stuff from that era like The Proud Family and American Dragon: Jake Long (not that I don't like the latter, I just think Teacher's Pet is more fun). What really helped it stand out was its distinctive art style: that of Gary Baseman, one of the show's three creators - the other two being Bill and Cheri Steinkellner. Even if you've never heard his name, you have to have seen his work SOMEWHERE. He's the guy who did the artwork for the Cranium games.

In my house, we had Cranium Cadoo.

Premiering on ABC as part of its One Saturday Morning block on September 9th, 2000, the show focused on a nine-year-old boy named Leonard Helperman, voiced by Shaun Fleming, and his pet dog Spot, voiced by Nathan Lane. Leonard already has an embarassing experience at school every day because his mother, Mary Lou Helperman (voiced by Debra Jo Rupp), is his class teacher. But things get even WEIRDER for him when Spot decides he wants to go to school too. Spot disguises himself as a boy named Scott Leadready II and joins the class. Even though he's just a dog wearing human clothes, everybody falls for it... presumably because everyone else in this world is already pretty bizarre-looking. Eventually, Leonard finds out that the new kid is his dog, but reluctantly allows Spot to continue the charade. Hilarity ensues.

In 2002, the show was moved from ABC to Toon Disney. Two seasons and a total of thirty-nine episodes were produced. It even got a movie that served as the finale. In theaters! Which was a box office bomb, but still, even Phineas and Ferb never got a theatrical movie!

For years, only one of the show's episodes - the pilot - was released on VHS or DVD, as a bonus feature on the DVD release of the movie. Aside from that, after reruns went off the air you'd have to look on YouTube or Dailymotion to watch the show, at least until Disney got them taken off YouTube for copyright infringement. Fortunately, the entire series is now on Disney Plus. Which means that I've been able to rewatch the show and rediscover how great it is.

So, what makes Teacher's Pet such a fun show? Let's watch the fourth episode, "A Lick is Still a Kiss", and I'll elaborate a little. This is Teacher's Pet.

It's another glorious morning in the Helperman household. In walks Mary Lou, who has a surprise for the Helpermans' pet cat, Mr. Jolly (David Ogden Stiers). He assumes that she's taking him to the vet and hides in his food bowl. Yes, he's actually able to fit in there. Cartoon physics, everybody.

"I hate Mondays."

The best way I can describe Mary Lou Helperman is that she's Linda from Bob's Burgers done right. I frequently see Linda praised for not being the stereotypical naggy cartoon mom who's much smarter than her husband. Well, Mary Lou ALSO isn't the stereotypical naggy cartoon mom who's much smarter than her husband (in fact, Leonard's father never even shows up). She's ditzy, she's cheery, she's a goof, but she still feels like a functioning member of society whereas Linda is a total moron. When Linda speaks, I often find myself wondering how she's even survived for this long. You don't get that with Mary Lou.

Anyhow, Mary Lou is NOT taking Mr. Jolly to the vet. The surprise is a collar with a bell on it. All the stylish cats are wearing them.

I like that dog clock hanging up on the wall. Where can I get one of those?

"Don't despise me because I'm beautiful!" Mr. Jolly tells the Helperman's surly pet bird, Pretty Boy (Jerry Stiller), after he insults his smell. Alas, the constant ringing of the bell soon gets on Mr. Jolly's nerves. Even the doorbell ringing sends him into a frenzy.

Leonard answers the door, and who should be there but his crush, Leslie (Mae Whitman). She asks if she can borrow a cup of milk. Before Leonard can get her one, he realizes that he's standing in front of her in his pajamas and, like Mr. Jolly, freaks out.

Hey, it could be worse. At least you're not in your underwear.

Spot covers for Leonard while he dashes into his room to put some clothes on. He returns, desperately trying to be cool but I'm sorry, it's really hard to be cool when you're wearing a shirt with pineapples on it. And when your hair is styled to look like a rooster's comb. Unless the "Chicken Run character at a luau" look is what you're going for.

I wonder why Mary Lou has a normal skin tone but her son is as white as a stick of
chalk. Maybe he's just really, REALLY pale?

After Leslie leaves, Spot comments that whatever she smeared on her lips today tasted like lemonade with just a hint of mint. Leonard is still too embarassed by the fact that Leslie saw him in his pajamas. By now, it should be pretty obvious that Leonard is basically the Disney equivalent of Charlie Brown. Complete with him not having a normal dog like everyone else.

Spot's being blue is probably the LEAST strange thing about him.

Later, Leonard and Spot... I'm sorry, Scott Leadready II... arrive at school and see the cool kids hanging out. Scott suggests that they ask them what kind of pajamas THEY wear (it makes sense in context), but Leonard is terrified of even speaking to them. "I just don't know how to hang with those guys, okay? I always feel like, they think I'm the teacher's kid so they don't want to say anything around me, then I don't know what to say, then they ignore me, and I end up feeling like a dork," he laments. Scott urges him to give it a try anyway, and guess what? They wind up talking about Leslie and how shiny her lips are. Leonard tells them that she's wearing pink lemonade lip gloss, which tastes exactly like actual pink lemonade with just a hint of mint. This makes the cool kids very impressed. I guess they really like pink lemonade...

"It's so much cooler than REGULAR lemonade! It's PINK, for Fonzie's sake!"

Now, most of this show's episodes can be summed up as thus: Leonard gets into trouble because of Spot's good intentions. Case in point, Leslie marches up to Leonard while they're in class and demands to know why he claimed that he kissed her on the lips. So now she's mad at him, even after he insists that he never said anything of the sort. Then the other kids in class start spreading a rumor that goes from "Leonard kissed Leslie on the lips" to "Leonard murdered Leslie's pet hippo with paper clips". Scott assures Leonard that it'll blow over by recess... just before Principal Strickler (Wallace Shawn) shows up and drags Leonard to his office.

Between this, A Goofy Movie, and Chicken Little, it seems that Disney really likes
casting Wallace Shawn as the voice of principals.

For the crime of spreading a rumor - the fact that the other kids in his class spread the rumor as well is completely ignored - Leonard is threatened with being expelled and sent to the School For Losers. Scott tries to defend him, but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Leonard points out that he didn't say that he kissed her, just that her lip gloss tasted like pink lemonade, but Principal Strickler thinks there are only two ways he could know that: one, he kissed her, or two, he uses the same lip gloss. The only way Leonard can prove his innocence, he claims, is by showing up tomorrow with the lip gloss in hand.

Furthering Leonard's embarassment, now the class is talking about how Leonard wears his mom's lip gloss. Scott tells them to stop with the rumor-spreading and gives a big speech about how it hurts people. Back home, Leonard and Scott search for the lipstick in Mary Lou's makeup drawer while Pretty Boy mocks humans for not just secreteing like birds do.

"I was an angry bird before the app made it cool!"

Mary Lou doesn't have pink lemonade lip gloss, and a trip to the drugstore leaves Scott and Leonard empty-handed as well. So they go to the grocery store, where Scott buys a salmon ('cause it's pink), some lemons, vegetable oil (for the gloss), and minty bubble gum. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most supermarkets have lip gloss in stock? There's usually a whole aisle for body products. Heck, why doesn't Scott just ask Leslie if he can borrow her lip gloss? Seems a lot easier than making it from scratch.

So how does their homemade lip gloss turn out? Well, it does this to Scott's lips...

Disturbing, but still not as disturbing as Mega Babies.

"I guess I'll just have to go to the School For Losers," Leonard groans. But Scott isn't giving up yet. He remembers that Leslie has the very lip gloss they're looking for. So does he go to her house and ask if he can borrow it? No, no, that would be too obvious. Instead, he and Leonard carry a ladder over to her house, allowing Scott to sneak into her room via the window and steal the lip gloss. But Scott can't help taking his sweet time, and he hears the doorknob turning. Uh oh...

Thinking quick, Spot takes off his clothes and just acts like a dog. Leslie is very surprised to see Leonard's dog in her room, but at least he and Leonard aren't in even bigger hot water. As for Mr. Jolly, he's saved from having to hear that infernal ringing when Pretty Boy helps him remove the collar and dumps it in a trash can. But now he thinks it's too quiet, so Pretty Boy has to dig through the trash and find the collar. "Cats! Next time, leave 'em off the ark!" he shouts.

Leslie returns Spot to Leonard and makes it clear that she still hates his guts. On the bright side, Spot managed to grab the lip gloss on their way out, which means that Leonard can prove his innocence. Principal Strickler dubs him cleared, preventing Leonard from being sent to the School For Losers, and that night he tells Spot that he's learned a valuable lesson: NOT to never ever repeat what his dog says again, but to never answer the door again wearing cowboy pajamas. The next day, Leslie apologies to Leonard for everything... and sees Leonard in his firetruck pajama bottoms. But, aside from that, all's well that ends well... until Leslie realizes that her lip gloss is missing. Unless Spot somehow managed to return it to her house before she finds out, she might come to the conclusion that Leonard stole it.

Don't worry, Leonard. You're still not as much of a loser as the Leonard from The
Big Bang Theory.

What's the Verdict?

I wouldn't say this is the BEST episode of Teacher's Pet, but if you're just starting to watch the show, it's a good way to dip your toes in.

There's so much to love about this show. First of all, it's funny. Very, very funny. Most of that obviously stems from the delightfully hammy performances that Nathan Lane, Jerry Stiller, and David Ogden Stiers give, but the writing is incredibly sharp. The animation is well-done, with Gary Baseman's distinctive art style giving the show a unique look and allowing for some out there visuals without being too disgusting or disturbing.

...well, for the most part.

And the characters? Spot could've easily been another Newton, this annoying wacko who frequently causes problems for the kid and gets away with it. But two things help Spot avoid falling into that category. One, he has good intentions, and two, he usually fixes his mistakes. Leonard makes for a nice, sympathetic lead, and the other characters are fun as well (particularly Pretty Boy and Mr. Jolly).

So, yes, I recommend giving Teacher's Pet a watch if you haven't already. Now, whether or not you should watch the MOVIE as well, I don't know. I haven't watched it since 2004. Most of the internet seems to like it, though. Just start with the series, okay?

Rating: Five firetruck pajama bottoms out of five. After watching one episode, you'll sit up and beg for more.

The History of "Robots"

This edition of The History of... is about an animated movie that I have a pretty complicated history with.

I first found out about Blue Sky Studios' Robots when my family went to see Shark Tale in theaters. In the lobby, there was a banner featuring the characters from the movie. And... uh, to be honest, the characters freaked me out*. Not the villains, who are supposed to be a bit creepy, I mean the good guys. I'm not sure why, they just DID. So as a result, I avoided the film for years. Learning that the DVD had a short film starring the character with a large posterior called Aunt Fanny's Tour of Booty didn't exactly put the film on my "to-watch" list either.

I started warming up to the film after hearing people praise it online and watching the Blockbuster Buster's (extremely negative) review of it. That was, I think, 2014. It took me until 2022 to actually sit down and watch the film for myself. And y'know what? It was pretty good! It's no Ice Age, but what is? I feel silly for avoiding the film for so long now, honestly.

So, to make up for my misjudging the movie, let's take a deep dive into its production process and history. I normally only do this for films that were box office bombs, which Robots wasn't, but apparently there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff to talk about and the film's a Cult Classic, so what the heck?

Concept art of Rodney's parents building him.

So how did Robots get started? Well, instrumental in the film's creation was its producer, William Joyce - no stranger to working with animated robots, as he also created Rolie Polie Olie. He first became aware of Blue Sky Studios' work when he saw Joe's Apartment. Remember that movie? It wasn't animated. It was about a guy named Joe who moves into an apartment that he discovers is filled with friendly talking cockroaches. Blue Sky Studios animated the cockroaches for the movie.

In the book The Art of Robots, William Joyce said, "They created a Busby Berkeley-style dance number featuring cockroaches. It was incredibly inventive and broad, yet completely believable, and I thought, 'If these guys can be this original, funny, and clever, I've got to see what else they can do.'" Thus, he met up with Chris Wedge and they began developing an adaptation of his 1993 book Santa Calls. A test animation of that was produced, but nothing came out of it.

I think I've actually read this book. I found it at a local library.

So instead, they started thinking about robots. They didn't have an idea for a story and characters yet, they just thought it'd be cool to have a film with an all-robot cast. "When we started to draw them, or even look at the pop culture history of robots, the only robot that was really interesting to look at was the robot from Metropolis. Everything else was basically a soup can," William Joyce said. They went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which was having an exhibition about robots, and that gave them the inspiration not to do "what everybody thinks as the [look of the] future", but something "deeper" and "simpler". They started looking at machines.

Here's the best way I could put it: y'know how, in my Did You Know? post about WALL-E, I mentioned that Andrew Stanton said they wanted to "play with both really high-end technology and really low technology"? His exact words were, "WALL-E, I always call a tractor, EVE, I always call sort of like a Porsche. She's the highest, most expensive, no expense spared kind of project that the Buy 'n' Large corporation could use to make a probe droid... WALL-E is much more 'nuts and bolts' and you can kind of get how he works from afar." The filmmakers of Robots wanted the characters to be less EVE and more WALL-E. Basically, everything in the movie looks like it was made from household appliances. Rodney resembles an Evinrude outboard motor, one building looks like Chris Wedge's waffle iron, and another is a coffee pot.

Concept art for Rodney.

As the film's art director, Steve Martino, put it, "In the typical cartoon, you'll have a jet-propelled robot, and all his mechanical apparatus is hidden. All you'll see is smoke as the robot takes off. We thought it would be more fun to strip away the coverings and show the real mechanics. So if somebody is going to fly, put him in a pod, spring-load it, and fling him across the city. That way the audience gets to see the setup, the anticipation, and the result."

The robot world was organized into three distinct sections based on three distinct periods of technology: the steam era, the combustion era, and the modern era. The steam era, based on the Industrial Revolution, is the Chop Shop. The combustion era, based on early automobiles and engine-driven objects of the twentieth century, is the neighborhood where Fender and the Rusties live. The modern era, with its streamlined materials and the mechanisms mostly hidden under composite metal, is Bigweld Industries and the robots who run it.

After that, the search began for the film's writer, someone who "worked from character first". They eventually read the play Fuddy Meers and thought that its writer, David Lindsay-Abaire, would be a good choice. Chris Meledandri, one of the higher-ups at Blue Sky, said, "David was the one that really got our Robots story started. He wrote a sweet, funny draft that nailed a lot of the tone I had in mind for the movie." Specifically, Chris wanted the film to be a musical with the tone of a 1930s screwball comedy. David Lindsay-Abaire watched those movies, came up with a lot of funny lines, and even wrote a song. Eventually, however, it was decided not to make the film a musical. Blue Sky wouldn't make their first musical until Rio. David was joined by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. While they previously worked on City Slickers and A League of Their Own, this was the first animated film they wrote for.

Concept art for Rodney's arrival in the creatively named Robot City.

It's not easy creating an entire world from scratch. Chris Wedge said, "It was very intimidating at the beginning, because for a long time we had no idea what the limits of the world were and how fantastic we'd be able to make it. But as the work collects, the movie world starts to talk back to you. It's really a process of discovering things. You wade into the pool first, and then everyone jumps in."

So, who was the hardest character to design? Believe it or not, Rodney. According to William Joyce, it took two years for them to get his design down. As he put it, "He's an amiable ordinary fella, he's not Arnold Schwarzenegger and he's not Tom Cruise. We didn't want him to be too muscular or perfect. We wanted the audience to be able to put themselves in his shoes instantly and easily." Cappy and Ratchet were pretty hard, too.

Concept art for Piper.

Aside from that, designing the characters was pretty easy. ANIMATING them was another story. "This is the hardest thing I've ever animated," animation supervisor Mike Thurmeier lamented. "You don't get anything for free. The models look great as static images, but there's no flab jiggling around or tails and ears to follow through. You have to work incredibly hard to get a really good expression or mood." They wanted to make the robots really feel like they were made of metal but still have them be warm and expressive. Using that old technique of squash-and-stretch was difficult, for instance, because metal doesn't squash and stretch much at all. Early animation tests just looked too stiff and mechanical. "We knew we had to find a way to break the rules without breaking the character," co-director Carlos Saldanha explained. To help with that, the riggers built hidden extension rods into the characters' arms, legs and spines, allowing the characters to make goofier poses without making it look like metal was stretching.

Giving the robots detailed textures was hard, too. The traditional method of texture mapping, where 2D images are painted and then put on the 3D models, wasn't working, so they developed a new procedure to create a multi-level texture - for example, a core metal base topped by corrosion, primer, paint, and oxidation. To create the Chop Shop workers, the filmmakers created libraries of existing body parts that could be mixed and matched to create "Franken-bots".

Here is the original animation test for the movie (the director character here had his character design reused for Jack Hammer in the movie):

Robots was first announced to the public at the American Museum of Natural History's IMAX theater in June 2003. In addition to Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Mel Brooks, Drew Carey, Amanda Bynes, Stanley Tucci, Jim Broadbent, Dianne Wiest, Harland Williams, Jennifer Coolidge, Paul Giamatti, and Dan Hedaya, it was also mentioned that D.L. Hughley, Jamie Kennedy, and a pre-Modern Family Sofia Vergara were among the voice cast. I don't know which characters they were supposed to voice, or why they wound up leaving the film. There was also, strangely enough, no mention of Robin Williams or Greg Kinnear - maybe they joined the film after that?

"[Joyce's stories] have a golden era of Hollywood nostalgia to them," Chris Wedge said. "The robots aren't futuristic or spacey transformers. They ooze personality and personify objects that we know in our world, whether a car, an outboard motor or a washing machine."

I watched the DVD commentary of the film to see if it gave more information about the film's development that wasn't online, but there wasn't a lot. I did find out a couple things, though. For instance, at one point the film's plot was apparently going to be "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington meets The Three Musketeers meets Robin Hood", but with robots. Also, Rodney's name was "Dart" for a while.

Concept art for Fender, Crank, Diesel, and Lug.

John Powell was brought in to do the film's score (he would go on to do the scores for several other Blue Sky films). The filmmakers told him that they wanted to have the music sound like it was being done by the "Robot Philharmonic". "Part of the trick of putting a movie together with a theme like this... is to try and make everything feel connected," Chris Wedge explained on the DVD commentary. So instead of strings and violins, they used brass instruments. And who was brought in to help John with the score? Blue Man Group! Remember those guys? I think they're still a thing, but they were super-popular in the 2000s. Fitting that they were involved, seeing as they're something that freaked me out a lot when I was younger too (no offense to any members of Blue Man Group reading this).

Some of the music heard in the movie was replaced after scenes were done, though - apparently the higher-ups at FOX wanted more pop songs in the film.

I don't remember THIS scene being in the movie.

Since there are a lot of comedic actors in the movie, there was a lot of ad-libbing. ESPECIALLY with Robin Williams. Y'know the scene where Rodney and Fender try to sneak into the Bigweld Ball, and Fender is posing as the strangely-accented valet of  "Count Von Brokenzipper"? Robin did the scene about eight times, in eight different dialects. Fender's iconic "Singin' in the Oil" song was ad-libbed by Robin as well.

Perhaps the hardest part of making the film was the editing process. Apparently, there is a director's cut, but it's never been released. Among the stuff that got cut was some more development for Cappy and Lug, an extended version of the scene at the Bigweld Ball, there was an entire character cut out of the film, too - Dr. V. Needle, a mad scientist robot who was going to give Bigweld a lobotomy under orders from Madame Gasket.

A screencap of Dr. V. Needle.

To promote the movie, there were, of course, tie-ins. The first one to sign on was Sunbeam - if you bought a specially-marked Sunbeam toaster oven, toaster, mixer or iron, you could get a toaster oven that imprinted Piper's image onto your toast, or a cookie cutter in the shape of Rodney. There was also a contest where kids ages five to sixteen could write an essay about a hypothetical invention that could make things easier for their family, with the grand prize being a four-day trip to New York City, five hundred bucks, a tour of Blue Sky Studios, and the chance to meet the film's director. Robots also got its own cereal, and you could get toys of the characters in boxes of Kellogg's cereals and Burger King Kids' Meals. There were Robots Pop-Tarts, U.S. Postal Service put Rodney and Fender on its cancellation stamp, there was even a limited time flavor at Cold Stone Creamery called "Rodney Copperbottom's Crazy Crackling Cotton Candy Concoction".

I never ate these, so I have no idea how they tasted.

Unlike with Quest For Camelot, all that promotion paid off. The film made $262.5 million dollars on a $75-80 million dollar budget. Reviews were mostly positive. The main reason for Robots' obscurity is that, unlike Ice Age or Rio, it never got a sequel. An article from around the time that the film was released on DVD claimed that Chris Wedge was considering doing a sequel, but nothing came out of it. Probably for the best, honestly... Blue Sky's sequels were not their best work. I often find myself wishing that Ice Age had just been a standalone film.

If you can find Robots on a streaming service, give it a watch. You'll have a good time.

Sources:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20210418223204/https://www.ign.com/articles/2003/06/10/foxs-robots-revealed
- https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/robots-pushes-animation-envelope-20050916-geirtp.html
- https://www.chiefmarketer.com/robots-the-movie-brings-150-million-in-promotional-tie-ins/
- The Art of Robots

* I know, it's tremendously ironic that I thought Robots had creepy character designs while I was in the lobby waiting to go see Shark Tale. Nothing in Robots is as creepy as Will Smith Fish.