Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Dr. Dimensionpants"

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'm back! Apologies for being on hiatus for so long. It's just gotten extremely difficult to write funny block posts and get them done once a week. I used to be able to write them in advance and then just choose which one I want to post which week, but by the beginning of this year I've been pretty behind. Fortunately, I now have at least eight posts written up and "in the vault". I'm hoping that's enough to get this blog going again.

So, what is Dr. Dimensionpants?

I'd never heard of this show until someone suggested I do a review of it. I don't think it ever aired on TV in the United States, although it did wind up on Hulu here. It's a Canadian cartoon, made by DHX Media for Teletoon, where it premiered on November 6th, 2014. And the show's creator, Brad Peyton, is also the guy who directed Cats and Dogs 2 and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island... two movies that I've never seen.

The theme song gives us the show's premise: in an average town lives an average boy named Kyle Lipton (voiced by Sam Vincent) with average pants and an average life. Then one day a unicorn named Philip (voiced by Richard Ian Cox) shows up and gives him a pair of magic pants that turn him into superhero Dr. Dimensionpants. Now he has all of the powers he ever wanted, including the power to travel to different dimensions. Two seasons consisting of twenty-six episodes, each one consisting of two segments, were produced (IMDB claims that the show is still going, but the most recent episode aired in 2015 so...).

Given my past experiences with Canadian cartoons, I wasn't quite sure what to expect with Dr. Dimensionpants. For every Grojband or Sitting Ducks, there is a Spliced or an Almost Naked Animals. And, alas, Dr. Dimensionpants falls into the latter category. Why do I say that? Well, let's look at the third episode of the show, which consists of the segments "Dr. Dimensionpants Camp" and "Cupcakes at Large". This is Dr. Dimensionpants.

"Dr. Dimensionpants Camp" starts off with Kyle and his dad, Dunley (Brian Drummond), riding through the woods in their Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.

Which is making me hungry for a hot dog... and I'm posting this review at 7:54 in the morning...

Kyle is very excited because he and his dad are going camping. And Philip is there, too! I guess this isn't like Ned's Newt where the kid's non-human best friend is kept a secret. Kyle's dad knows about the talking unicorn and is okay with it. Maybe he's a Brony?

Between this character and Dewitt, Richard Ian Cox seems to be typecast as the
non-human sidekick of red-headed boys a lot...

When they get to the campsite, Philip proceeds to make things difficult by finding a skunk and showing it to Kyle and Dunley, calling it a "whoopsie-dog". He doesn't know what a skunk is? Apparently, Philip is a few sodas short of a six-pack.

The Liptons aren't the only ones camping. Also around is the villainous Glass Skull (also Brian Drummond), called that because he (natch) has a skull made of glass. He is accompanied by his bratty daughter Rebecca (Shannon Chan-Kent), who did not inherit her father's lack of head skin, hair, and eyeballs. Yes, somebody married and had a kid with Glass Skull. Because who could possibly resist such a handsome face?

I like his hat.

Unaware of the presence of one of Dr. Dimensionpants' recurring foes, Philip continues to make things harder for Kyle and Glass Skull. It isn't until he causes a tree he just chainsawed down to fall on top of Glass Skull that he knows the guy is around. Okay, we're only three minutes in and already I'm starting to feel sorry for the villain. I should not be feeling sorry for the villain.

I'm just now noticing that Glass Skull has a laser beam on top of his tent.
I guess that's ONE way of dealing with mosquitoes...

"Enough! I'm going to do what I should have done before!" Glass Skull declares. Philip runs to Kyle, interrupting his dad's talking about marshmallows, and says that he must become Dr. Dimensionpants. Which Kyle promptly does.

He goes to stop Glass Skull... who it turns out is just making s'mores. I guess he DOESN'T plan on doing anything evil today. That explains why he didn't immediately blast Philip after the guy made a tree fall on top of him.

Kyle returns to his campsite, where his father tells him that Philip ate all the marshmallows. Now they'll have to forage for berries. Alright, y'know what, I've decided that I don't like Philip. Could he at least go five seconds without doing something stupid or obnoxious?

"Funny guy, sending me off to chase a totally harmless bad guy while YOU get to chill with my dad!" Kyle tells Philip. But then Philip says that he just saw Glass Skull poisoning the lake. He recreates the scene via a puppet show. I'll give him this, for somebody without fingers he's pretty good at puppetry...

"It's The Muppet Show, with our very special guest star, Dr. Dimensionpants! YAAAAAAAAAAAY!"

For obvious reasons, Kyle is skeptical, but Philip insists that he's right this time and that it's Kyle's duty as Dr. Dimensionpants to save the day and blah-blah-blah. So Kyle becomes Dr. Dimensionpants again and discovers that Glass Skull IS poisoning the lake with some sort of strange sprayer. He destroys the sprayer, only for Glass Skull to tell him that he was actually spraying organic lavender essence in the lake. Dang it, Philip.

"Philip, you are totally ruining my camping trip!" Dr. Dimensionpants complains. Then he and Glass Skull start fighting each other for some reason. Why are they not beating the crap out of Philip? HE'S the one ruining their camping trips. Dr. Dimensionpants just said that! While this is going on, Rebecca is floating in the lake in a raft, but the fight sends her raft drifting towards a waterfall. Y'know how all rivers in animation lead to waterfalls? Apparently, that goes for lakes now too.

So now Dr. Dimensionpants and Glass Skull fight over who gets to save Rebecca. Dunley shows up to ask them if they've seen his son. He knows about the talking unicorn, but he doesn't know about his son being a superhero? Go figure. Anyhow, now HE'S heading for the waterfall as well. And Dr. Dimensionpants and Glass Skull are too busy battling to do something about it. And Philip doesn't attempt to save Dunley or Rebecca himself because I have no idea.

Okay, I'll say this: I do like how Rebecca is just nonchalantly reading a book while she's
in danger. That's kind of funny.

While they fight, Dr. Dimensionpants and Glass Skull summon portals to other dimensions, reminding us of why the show is called Dr. DIMENSIONpants. Dr. Dimensionpants summons an opera-singing alien that shatters Glass Skull's head, then Glass Skull summons a giant mouth from the Garlic Breath Dimension to incapacitate Dr. Dimensionpants. And eventually, Dunley manages to save himself and Rebecca... while putting Philip in pain at the same time, which he totally deserves.

Glass Skull and Rebecca head off to the outlet mall, and then ANOTHER recurring villain of the show appears in a canoe. Philip does something smart for once and decides to pretend he didn't see him so Kyle and his dad can spend some quality time. Okay, I hate Philip slightly less now. Next segment!

"Cupcakes at Large" begins with Kyle's sister Amanda (Kazumi Evans) flying a toy airplane... which seemingly kills a seagull, that's pretty gruesome.

Well, maybe it just shreds off the seagull's tailfeathers. It's not clear what the implication
is. Either way, poor seagull...

Even though, according to Dunley, it's a perfect day out, Kyle and Philip are inside watching TV. After flipping through the channels for a while, Philip decides on a show called Dingo the Bounty Hunter, but then their attention is grabbed by a tasty smell from the kitchen.

Kyle's mom, Ann-Mary (Kathleen Barr), has made cupcakes! But she won't let Kyle have any before dinner because it'll spoil his appetite. We get a montage of him attempting to get his mother out of the house so he can sneak a cupcake, but none of his attempts work. But then Ann-Mary remembers that she needs to go to the store and get the stuff to make dinner. As soon as she leaves, it's cupcake-eating time for Kyle.

I suppose, since Philip is a unicorn, I should make a reference to that one My Little Pony fanfiction...
but I won't. Seems too obvious.

After eating all the cupcakes, Kyle realizes that when his mom returns, she's going to be really mad. She has a habit of overreacting, you see. He and Philip must get MORE cupcakes, and instead of, I don't know, going out and buying some (you can get 'em for cheap at Target), Kyle becomes Dr. Dimensionpants and they go to a dimension full of giant cupcakes.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now I'm hungry for cupcakes. It's 8:04 now.

I guess Kyle is hoping that his mom won't notice that the cupcakes are now much, much larger when she returns from the store. They also only bring back two, so either way I think she's gonna realize that you ate some.

Anyone else notice that all four members of the family have different hair colors? Kyle is
a redhead, the mom is a brunette, the dad has black hair, and Amanda is blonde.

And this is where the episode takes a turn for the bizarre. Not that a talking unicorn and a dimension with giant cupcakes isn't already pretty bizarre, but things get stranger from there. The cupcakes turn out to be ALIVE, and they promptly EAT Ann-Mary and Dunley. Philip runs in and explains that he's discovered the dimension they went to is a prison for the criminally tasty. The cupcakes trap Kyle, Amanda, and Philip in a giant pile of icing and declare that they're going to use their house as a secret hideout. You just HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD to eat the cupcakes your mom made, didn't you, Kyle? You couldn't have just waited until after dinner?

...is anyone else wondering exactly what crimes these giant sentient cupcakes have commited? Do they regularly go around eating people? Do they even have digestive tracts? One of the cupcakes threatens to digest their father, so I guess they do, but that just raises further questions...

Suddenly, I'm not hungry for cupcakes anymore.

And apparently Kyle, Amanda, and Philip are powerless against the evil cupcakes, because the next day Kyle is walked to school by them and nobody questions the fact that his parents have been replaced by giant sentient cupcakes. Here's an idea, Kyle: just EAT THEM. Take a bite out of them until you find your parents in their stomachs. Actually, now that I think about it, why don't the cupcakes just eat Kyle and Amanda too?

Adding to the confusion, the cupcakes give out normal, non-sentient cupcakes to Kyle's school chums and teacher. So these cupcakes are encouraging the consumption of their species? They must be really good cupcakes, too, because all they have to do is give one to the mayor and he gives them THE KEY TO THE CITY. Okay, is EVERYONE in this city incredibly stupid?

Eventually, Kyle and Amanda get an idea. Kyle dresses up like Dingo the Bounty Hunter and chases the cupcakes out of the house, where they are dive-bombed by Philip riding on the toy airplane, which Amanda is controlling. Eventually, the cupcakes vomit up Ann-Mary and Dunley, and now that they're safe Kyle becomes Dr. Dimensionpants and sends them back to their dimension.

Or you could just eat them. But this works, too.

"I'd say those cupcakes got their... ahem... JUST DESSERTS," Dr. Dimensionpants quips. You'd think that Ann-Mary and Dunley would be traumatized by the whole experience, but instead they assume it was all just a dream. So for breakfast, they serve their kids... broccoli. And Kyle faces no repercussions for eating the cupcakes after his mom told him not to, unless having to eat broccoli counts as a repercussion. The end.

Is the indication here that they regularly serve their kids cupcakes for breakfast?

What's the Verdict?

Just because something is weird doesn't mean it's GOOD. I've noticed that's something you can say about a lot of Canadian cartoons. Stuff like Yakkity Yak, Ned's Newt, and Spliced are certainly UNIQUE in how strange they are, but being bizarre does not a fun cartoon make.

Dr. Dimensionpants is another cartoon that assumes all it needs to do is be weird and it'll entertain the viewers. It does not. The characters are uninteresting, the jokes fall flat, the animation is THIS CLOSE to looking like something made by GoAnimate, and they don't even take advantage of the show's premise. You've got a superhero who can travel through different dimensions in the blink of an eye. Great! There's potential there. And what do they do with it? Nothing, outside of the occasional unfunny gag. Heck, even the presence of GIANT EVIL CUPCAKES isn't used very well.

So, no. I don't recommend watching Dr. Dimensionpants. The good news is, there's another cartoon show from the 2010s that focuses on a kid traveling to different dimensions and fighting evil. And it's much better than this.

But we'll look at that one another time.

Back to the Drawing Board: "Gigantic"

You might recall that in my previous edition of Back to the Drawing Board about the scrapped Disney film My Peoples, I mentioned that I would do posts about other scrapped Disney films called Gigantic and King of the Elves another time. Well, you'll still have to wait a while for King of the Elves - I'm not one hundred percent sure how much information about it there is online - but I'm going to talk about Gigantic today. Huzzah!

In the 2010s, Disney figured out the secret to making financially-successful, critically-acclaimed animated movies. Tangled was a huge success, so all they had to do was make films very, very similar to Tangled and keep repeating the formula over and over again: have a female main character, preferably a princess, who's optimistic, quirky, and at least a bit awkward. Maybe they're sheltered, maybe they've been stuck in one place all their lives and desperately want to go somewhere else. Eventually, she meets a snarky, morally-ambigous male and makes some sort of deal with him. They go on their little adventure, butting heads all the way, but eventually warm up to each other and fall in love, or at least become best buddies. Rapunzel was the optimistic quirky female and Flynn was the snarky morally-ambigious male. In Frozen, Anna was the optimistic quirky female and Kristoff was the snarky morally-ambigious male. In Zootopia, Judy was the optimistic quirky female and Nick was the snarky morally-ambigious male. In Moana, Moana was the optimistic quirky female (although less blatant in this case than Anna and Judy were) and Maui was the snarky morally-ambigious male. And it worked - the money was pouring in, the critics were applauding, nobody cared that they were basically just recycling the same character types over and over again. It wasn't until they ditched the snarky moral-ambigious male and just had the optimistic quirky female (Mirabel in Encanto and more recently Asha in Wish) that people figured out the formula and became bored of it. But that wasn't until the 2020s. In the 2010s, Disney was once again the king of the theatrical animation game.

The year was 2015. Disney was still milking the heck out of Frozen, and they had also recently released Big Hero 6, which was also pretty successful (but wound up getting ignored by Disney for a while because it was released after Frozen and followed by the also much more popular Zootopia). PIXAR had also released Inside Out, which was a huge hit and briefly got people to start liking PIXAR again. And it was this year, at the 2015 D23 Expo, that John Lasseter announced Gigantic.

Actually, Gigantic was kinda sorta revealed to the world in July 2013, before Frozen was released. One of Tangled's directors, Nathan Greno, said, "Trust me, we are hard at work on the new film! I wish I could say more - I'm REALLY excited to tell everyone what it is! If you enjoyed Tangled, I believe you'll love the new project." Then on July 10th, a blog by the name of Blue Sky Disney revealed that Nathan Greno's film would be called "Giants" and be released near the end of 2016. Considering how successful Tangled was and how obsessed Disney was with repeating its success, it makes sense that they'd want to get a new film from the same director out there ASAP (the other co-director of Tangled, Bryon Howard, was working on Zootopia at the time for those unaware).

Before this, however, I'd like to bring something up. At some point in the 2000s (before 2009, I'm pretty sure), I found a list online of Disney films that were in production - both theatrical and direct-to-video. I have no idea what site I found it on, or if it was even accurate, but among the multiple sequels that I know were indeed in production beofre John Lasseter ordered them to stop with the sequels (The Jungle Book 3, Chicken Little 2, Meet the Robinsons 2: First Date), I distinctively remember seeing a film called You Don't Know Jack and the Beanstalk being listed. I couldn't find anything about a Disney film called this online right now. Judging from the title, I'm guessing it was going to be another one of those "fractured fairy tale" type of movies greenlit to cash in on the success of Shrek. Y'know, sorta like Disney's Rapunzel Unbraided movie that eventually evolved into Tangled... but we'll talk about that one some other time.

The film's logo, after they decided to call it Gigantic instead, was going to look
like this.

In August, bleedingcool.com posted some information about "Giants" - this post has since been removed, but posts on various discussion forums have repeated the information, preventing all of this neat behind the scenes stuff from being lost and this post you're reading right now from being very short. Among the things they said...

- "Animated films have very long development times, and sometimes they go a long way into that process before going no further. Perhaps the most famous example of this would be PIXAR's Newt, and it happened with Disney, most recently, with King of the Elves. It's possible that a similar fate might befall Giants. The film hasn't been official announced, and it could disappear from the schedule even after it is. But for now, work on the film continues, and I understand that director Nathan Greno has had a couple of table reads and is getting the basic shape of the film into good order. I think this one's going to go all the way." Oh, the irony.

- "The look of this film - at least for now - is very much in the Tangled and Frozen vein, and the plan is to realize the film with the same sort of CG processes and styling - though I'm sure it will be pushed even further to allow for better textures, more expressive animation, advances in the tech all around. That's what happens at Disney, film by film."

- "A few years from now, we'll be some distance away from Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer, a film with which Giants shares more than a few specifics. For one thing, they both have a hero named Jack, and Giants named for the Fee Fi Fo Fum rhymes. In this story, these names are abbreviations of Feebus, Fifen, Fogel and Fobert, a family of giants at the heart of the tale. There's another brother too, Faustus, their leader. Like all good villains, he's got a relatable point of view, he's just not quite joining the dots correctly."

- "Also like Singer's film, we see the introduction of a love interest from a class above Jack. In this case, Angelica isn't royalty, but just from a merchant family, though her parents do see him as being 'below' her."

- "The real money is manifest in Marco, born to nobility and the third corner of a love triangle between Jack and Angelina. He's a good guy, though, and the only reason he and Jack can't be fast friends from the off is that they're both drawn to Angelina. And, yes, he's called Marco because, like Polo, he wants to travel - and to open up trade routes."

- "The fourth human lead is Inma, a scrappy tomboy type - and something of a class warrior, I understand. She's the one I'm rooting for in this story, the tireless fighter against injustice, taken less seriously because she happens to be a pre-teen girl. Of course, there is that story about David and Goliath..."

- "But, okay, it's not the humans that get the title billing here. It's the giants. The Storm Giants. Huge, thunderous figures. In this story, the Storm Giants have made a pact with the humans. If the humans work for them and give them a percentage of their harvest and livestock, hey'll return the favour by keeping danger and threats at bay. At first, it must have been appealing to have a Giant agree to fight your corner, but the people are't getting enough for themselves now. Faustus' name is seeming a touch ironic."

- "And this is where we find ourselves at the beginning. As you might expect, there's then a journey up to where the Giants live and some terrible conflict between the humans and the Storm Giants. There's a lot of sneaking about and gruesome recipes and all that good stuff you're used to from fairy tales about ogres and their ilk. But what you may not expect is how Jack ends up befriending one of the Storm Giants - and this is what sews the beans, if you will, for the adventure."

Now, I'm sure you're wondering "How do you know the guy who posted this to bleedingcool.com didn't just make it all up?". Well, Blue Sky Disney posted again and confirmed that most of what they claimed is true - and that apparently, Nathan Greno pitched the idea to John Lasseter around the same time he was working on Zootopia, which he was going to co-direct with Byron Howard again. However, a comment from somebody simply called "Anonymous" on the post said that they knew Nathan and Byron personally and that what they said was false.

Visual development by Michael Giaimo.

Rumors started flying around in 2014 that Robert and Kristin Anderson-Lopez would be writing songs for the film and that Daisy Ridley was brought in to audition for a character. There were also claims that the film was going to be pushed back to 2018, with others insisting that it was still going to be released in 2016. In August 2015, Bobby Pontillas was revealed to be working on the film as a character designer. Then came the D23 Expo, when - as mentioned earlier - the film was finally announced, now called Gigantic as opposed to "Giants", and it was confirmed that the Lopezes were writing the songs.

The film was described as being set in Spain during the Age of Exploration. Inma was now a sixty-foot-tall eleven-year-old girl with a "super-sized personality" and the secondary protagonist. Apparently, she was based on an actual kid the filmmakers met in Spain. She had a song in which she plays with Jack as though he were a doll, with lyrics like "You can toss him in the air / you can comb his tiny hair" and "You can make him do this, you can make him do that, and he even makes a pretty good bookmark!".

The film's presentation at the D23 Expo.

Apparently, Angelina and Marco had both been removed, or maybe Angelina had been turned into Jack's pregnant wife? From what I've read on the DVDizzy forums, Inma's father was the evil king of the Storm Giants and the film's Maximus equivalent - the hoofed animal that doesn't talk but acts like a dog - was to be a cow. There was also going to be at least one goose - Nathan Greno and Paul Briggs both posted (on Instagram and Tumblr respectively) about studying real geese for the film. Most versions of Jack in the Beanstalk have a goose that lays golden eggs, so presumably this goose character was going to fill the same role.

Now, I suppose there's an elephant in the room that I should address: Disney already did an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk back in the 1940s. That was the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" segment of Fun and Fancy Free (it was originally going to be a full movie, but then the war started up and, combined with some other reasons, led to it winding up as a segment of a "package film"). Despite the film's general lack of popularity, it did spawn one thing that's kept it more or less out of obscurity online - the character of Willie the Giant, who's since popped up in other Mickey Mouse productions like Mickey's Christmas Carol and House of Mouse. Would that have made things complicated for Gigantic? Probably not. Disney also made two adaptations of Chicken Little after all.

It seems that even the folks working on Gigantic knew about "Mickey and the Beanstalk". I have a copy of the book They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney's New Golden Age, which features four pieces of concept art for Gigantic. One of them features a giant who looks very much like Willie. I doubt it's just a coincidence.

This fella, right here.

In 2016, it was announced that Inside Out writer Meg LeFauve was going to be the film's co-director. As far as the voice cast goes, we know that Ava Della Pietra, then only ten and a half years old, auditioned for Inma. No idea who was considered to voice Jack.

The film wound up getting delayed AGAIN in 2017, this time to November 2020. Nothing about Gigantic was talked about at the 2017 D23 Expo, not a particularly good sign. However, animator Malcon Pierce did say on Instagram that he was working on the film. That was in October. A few days later, it was announced that Gigantic had been shelved.

Concept art by Dan Cooper.

Ed Catmull explained that it was just one of those projects where, even though they loved the idea and a lot of heart went into it, it just wasn't working (and yet nobody said that at any point during production of Wreck-It Ralph 2. Go figure). Instead, they'd be focusing their energies on another project in the works, also set for release in November 2020. Disney didn't release any animated films, be it in theaters or for streaming, in November 2020, so I have no idea what that project was (maybe it became Encanto or Raya and the Last Dragon or something?). As for Nathan Greno, he wound up leaving Disney in 2018 - he's now working at Skydance Animation.

Animator Andrew Chesworth stated in 2019 that, when he was working at Disney, he got to see some early screenings of Gigantic. "I loved this version," he said. "Fantastic mix of modern Tangled and 1940s Sleepy Hollow-era Disney influencing the artistic conversations."

What went wrong with Gigantic? A few folks on the aforementioned DVDizzy forums suggested that an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk should be a "huge and epic adventure" a la Aladdin - sneaking around the castle, facing off against giants, climbing a beanstalk. Disney was basically turning the story into, as somebody put it, "Tangled meets Wreck-It Ralph"... basically just recycling the "optimistic quirky female and exasperated morally-ambigious male team up" formula, except in this case instead of another pretty princess the female was a little girl. They were playing it safe once again.

Even Inma's character model, as seen here, just looks like they
gave Rapunzel a haircut.

And I think that's more or less why Disney's output as a whole is in a rut. They're still playing it safe by attempting to recapture previous successes. Every time a live action remake is super-successful, they greenlight five more, and they generally suck. Frozen was successful, make four sequels to it. Even with PIXAR, they're basically sabotaging their original films like Elemental and Elio (though the internet's turning on PIXAR after 2010 is definitely not helping with that) and demanding they make more sequels. Did we need a Toy Story 5? I know, I know. Disney is a business, it's all about making money, but they became such a huge deal because they used to give people things we didn't know we wanted, not just what we knew we already liked.

So is that it for Gigantic? Maybe not. Remember how I said that Nathan Greno is now working at Skydance Animation? Well, in 2023, it was announced that Skydance was working on an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk, to be directed by... Rich Moore, not Nathan Greno. Did Nathan, Rich, and John Lasseter take the ideas for Gigantic with them when they left Disney?

Oh, one more fun fact for you guys - Robert Lopez revealed in a podcast that one of the songs he and his wife wrote for Gigantic was reused for an episode of WandaVision. Another song was reused for a Netflix show called We the People. I've never seen either of those shows, but somehow I doubt the songs still had lyrics about using somebody as a bookmark.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Bailey's Comets"

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 recently recieved a copy of Mark Arnold's book Think Pink! The DePatie-Freleng Story for Christmas, and it reminded me that I haven't talked much about DePatie-Freleng Enterprises on this blog. These guys seem to get a bad rap nowadays, mostly because of their work with the Looney Tunes characters (they did most of those shorts where Daffy Duck faces off against Speedy Gonzales), but I've always had a fondness for them. Most of that, of course, stems from the fact that I love the Pink Panther, but they also gave us (among other things) the Inspector, the Ant and the Aardvark, Misterjaw, the Blue Racer, and all those Dr. Seuss specials from the 1970s. You gotta at least give 'em credit for THAT.

DePatie-Freling Enterprises made a lot of cartoons - not quite as many as Hanna-Barbera, but still a lot - and most of those are rather obscure today. Which means I have a bumper crop of material for my blog. I previously attempted to write reviews of their Dr. Dolittle cartoon and The Oddball Couple (which was The Odd Couple except animated and they were a cat and a dog), but neither one gave me enough joke material. While reading the book, however, I found one particular cartoon that seemed like a good choice to review on this blog: Bailey's Comets.

Created by David DePatie, Friz Freleng, Joe Ruby, and Ken Spears, this show premiered in September 1973 and is apparently considered one of the crappiest things DePatie-Freleng ever created. It was such a failure that DePatie-Freleng wasn't able to create another new series until 1975 and resulted in the cancelation of a cartoon about Evel Knievel cartoon they were working on that was supposed to premiere in 1974. Only sixteen episodes, each one consisting of two segments, were produced.

Why does the show exist? Roller derby was popular in the 1970s and Hanna-Barbera's Wacky Races was successful. I guess the mindset was that if you did a clone of Wacky Races where fifteen roller derby teams compete to find treasure, you'd have a hit on your hands. They did not. One of the animators, Martin Strudler, dubbed the show a disaster. "It was six teams on roller derbies and each team had to be six members. There were witches and one with hillbillies, etc. and you had to do them roller-skating," he said. "You had to animate six characters roller-skating right and then six characters roller-skating left and then six characters roller-skating towards the camera and then six characters skating away from the camera on six different teams. So, we were animating forever with that because there had to be stock footage while they were racing around the world. Then we had to do the backgrounds because the race went to Paris and we had to do Paris backgrounds... Today they would do it with a computer and it would be five times as fast, but this was all hand animated; six characters and eight drawings for each foot. It was 16 drawings before you could start a repeat and six different teams. It was a huge amount of work. I don't think they realized that when they got started. They signed on for it and then they had to do it. Dave DePatie had a fit. He was on the business side. The art directors did it in order to sell it and I don't think he knew what he was getting into when he signed on for it. Boy, it was a toughie."

The titular Bailey's Comets, one of fifteen roller derby teams featured in the show.

You can currently find a few episodes of Bailey's Comets on YouTube (there's apparently never been a home media release for the show, with the possible exception of a bootleg DVD or two), not in the greatest quality but beggars can't be choosers. We're going to watch the seventh episode of the show, which consists of the segments "Transylvania Mad Transit" and "Philippine Flip-Flop", to see if it's as bad as people claim. Who knows? Maybe there's SOMETHING of substance here...

"Transylvania Mad Transit" begins with the teams racing across the Transylvania countryside to Frankenstein's castle, where the next clue to the million dollar prize will be. The show's commentators, Gabby (voiced by Frank Welker) and Dooter Roo (voiced by Daws Butler), tell us that Bailey's Comets is in first place. The team consists of handsome leader Barnaby Bailey (voiced by Carl Esser), his blonde maybe-sorta-girlfriend Candy (Karen Smith), red-haired Brooklyn-accented Sarge (Kathy Gori), bespectacled team mechanic Wheelie (Jim Begg), ditzy Bunny (Sarah Kennedy), and chubby Pudge (Frank Welker). Since they're the main characters, they're the only team that doesn't have a gimmick.

No, wearing white and red is not a gimmick. Sorry, guys.

In second place are the Jekyll-Hydes, a bunch of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde clones.

"I was JEKYLL-JEKYLL-HYDE-JEKYLL-HYDE-HYDE-JEKYLL,
JEKYLL-JEKYLL-HYDE-JEKYLL-HYDE!"

And in third place are the Broomer Girls, a group of witches who aren't actually roller-skating but rather riding their brooms... but the brooms have roller skates on them, so I guess that's allowed?

Please forgive the mediocre quality of the screencaps.

The witches are also allowed to use their powers to sabotage the other teams, apparently. Specifically, they conjure up a rainstorm above the heads of Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes. Is this in the rules, or are the Broomer Girls just like Dick Dastardly in that they don't give a crap about the rules?

"We'd better find some shelter before we're washed out of the race!" Barnaby points out. Fortunately, there's a castle up ahead. Unfortunately, the castle belongs to a vampire. And not just ANY vampire - the one and only Dr. Dracula! Yes, Dracula has a medical degree. I'm learning so much today!

Also here is his dimwitted assistant, Igor. Everybody say "Hi" to Igor.

I thought Igor was Dr. Frankenstein's assistant. I guess he's a freelancer?

Dracula has just completed a "Transylvania People-Transformer" and needs some humans to test it on. And what luck, Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes skate right through the front door. With them apparently out of the race, the Broomer Girls are in the lead, followed by the Mystery Mob - a team of skaters always stuck in a big cloud of dust, so no one knows what they look like (saving the animators the trouble of having to design another team) - and the Ramblin' Rivets - which consist of a diminuitive professor (also Daws Butler) and some robots he built - fighting for second place.

Isn't it kind of funny how both Wacky Races AND this show feature a racer who's also a
mechanically-minded genius? But I'm sure it's just a coincidence. He said sarcastically.

One of the robots has a vaccuum cleaner built into it, which it uses to suck up the Mystery Mob and spit them out behind them. Again, I'm just gonna have to assume that this is okayed by the rules. If not, the Ramblin' Rivets should be disqualified.

Meanwhile, the Jekyll-Hydes and Bailey's Comets are still inside the castle. Funny thing is, Gabby straight up refers to it as the "house of Dracula", so if he knows that Dracula lives there, why on Earth didn't he warn Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes not to go in? Would that be interferring with the race too much or something? Does he WANT to see them get their blood sucked out of them?

Actually, even though Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes were previously seen skating into the castle, now they're just standing at the front door - and NOT in the rain, which means there's no reason for them to go inside anymore. I mean, aside from "because the plot demands it". When Bunny attempts to ring the doorbell, she just winds up honking Dracula's schnozz.

"Honk honk!"

Dracula opens the door, welcomes the teams, and then sends them down a trapdoor. Well, at least he was polite enough to welcome them first. Meanwhile, Barnaby and Candy peek through the castle's basement window and are horrified to see their team and the Jekyll-Hydes hooked up to some strange machine.

Dracula explains that with his Transylvania People-Transformer, he will "make the Comets act like the Jekyll-Hydes and the Jekyll-Hydes act like the Comets". So, it's not a "transformer", it's just a brain-swapping device. And apparently it doesn't even work the way it's intended, because when Igor pulls the switch, Bunny winds up in Pudge's body, Pudge is in Sarge's body (by the way, who the heck names their kid "Sarge"?), and Wheelie is in Bunny's body.

By the way, Wheelie calls Pudge "Banana Brain" a lot. I don't know what his problem is.

"You goofed, Igor! THIS is the right switch!" Dracula claims, and when he pulls it, it turns out the machine DOESN'T just swap brains after all: the Comets are turned into Mr. Hyde-esque monsters, and the Jekyll-Hydes, who are in their Mr. Hyde forms, become cheery humans. Then Dracula just lets them leave the castle and head back into the race... wait, he's not gonna keep him as slaves or anything? Then what was the point of even doing this? Oh, right, right. For SCIENCE!

Meanwhile, the other teams are still doing just fine in the race. In the lead are the Gargantuan Giants, a football team so big that you can only see their roller skates, which their normal-sized coach rides on.

"I knew making them take steroids once a day for three days was a good idea!"

Right behind them are the Slag Brothers... uh, I mean the Stone Rollers, three cavemen and a dinosaur who I guess stumbled upon a time machine and came to the 1970s.

I suppose there's a Flintstones joke I could make here, but I can't think of anything funny.

And in third place are the Cosmic Rays, who are aliens riding around in a skating UFO. Okay, who let that one pigeon from Bolt onto the show's crew?

"Huh. According to this map, we were supposed to take a LEFT turn at the London Eye..."

"Blast it, Renaldo! I TOLD YOU this wasn't Roswell!"

And then there are the Hairy Mountain Red Eyes, a group of hillbillies. Gee, I wonder which Wacky Races character THESE guys are inspired by... maybe the Ant Hill Mob?

Their arch-enemy? Clear Eyes. Get it?

And the Rockin' Rollers, a band consisting of hippies. If this show had become a big hit, there would probably be a lot of jokes online about them being stoners. That's just how the internet works.

Why do so few of the roller-skaters in this show wear helmets? Maybe the blonde one
thinks that his puffy afro will protect his head or something, I don't know...

And, of course, the Roller Bears (I guess this is supposed to be a pun on "polar bears", even though none of the bears are white), five bears who learned how to roller-skate and constantly laugh like idiots. See, Wacky Races only had ONE bear as part of the cast. THIS show has FIVE. So it's TOTALLY different from Wacky Races!

"Hey, what's that weird pipe-shaped thing above our heads?"

"I don't know, but it makes me laugh for some reason!"

As for the Comets... well, they look pretty much the same, aside from their skin having a bit of a green-ish tint to it... but now they're acting like Dick Dastardly and have decided to lure Barnaby and Candy into a trap. For some reason.

Is it weird that I'm wondering where they got the giant cage?

Not content with just trapping them in a cage, the other Comets put the cage on a teeter-totter sitting under a large boulder danging from a rope tied to a log hanging off a cliff. When the candle burns through the rope, down the boulder will fall, hitting the teeter-totter and catapulting Barnaby and Candy out of the race. I guess turning EEEEEEEEEEE-VIL made Sarge, Wheelie, Pudge, and Bunny forget that Barnaby and Candy are on their team. And, honestly, I think even Wile E. Coyote would find this needlessly complicated.

Fortunately, as they're skating away cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, a puff of smoke appears and Sarge, Wheelie, Pudge, and Bunny change back to normal... except they're British now a la Dr. Jekyll. They quickly save Barnaby and Candy from the trap... but for some reason don't bother to free them from the cage.

I honestly want to see what the now-nice Mr. Hydes are up to. Are they still in Dracula's castle?

Alas, they're only Jekyll-esque for a few seconds before turning back into EEEEEEE-VIL Mr. Hyde wannabes. So they drag them back to the trap... but then turn into Dr. Jekylls again and carry them away from the trap. Then they turn into Mr. Hydes and carry them back to the trap. And this time, after putting them back on the teeter-totter, they stand on top of the cage and revel in how nasty they are. I would love it if the boulder suddenly fell onto the tap while they were doing this, sending THEM flying to kingdom come with Barnaby and Candy. That would honestly be pretty funny.

That candle is sure taking its sweet time burning through the rope, isn't it?

I actually wasn't expecting that to happen, but guess what? It does! As soon as Sarge, Wheelie, Pudge, and Bunny turn back into Dr. Jekylls, the boulder falls down and launches them into the air.

After landing painfully, Barnaby points out that the only way they're gonna get back in the race is by getting the Jekyll-Hydes, going back to Dracula's place, and changing everyone back to normal. They find the Jekyll-Hydes off-camera and go back to the castle, but the Comets go all Mr. Hyde again, and during the ensuing chase they wind up smashing into the machine... which somehow changes them and the Jekyll-Hydes back to normal. Oh-kaaaaaaaaay then...

"My skin is so soft! That new lotion I bought is doing wonders!"

Thus, everyone is back to normal - except for Dracula and Igor, who are now in each other's bodies. For some reason. The other teams, meanwhile, have reached Frankenstein's castle and found the million dollar clue. When the Comets reach the castle, they meet Frankenstein's Monster himself, who tells them to take Highway 102. And the Broomer Girls get no comeuppance for starting this whole mess in the first place. Next segment!

Now the racers are in the Philippines, and the Comets are having trouble regaining their lead. Fortunately, Wheelie has "Hippety-Hop Grasshopper Skates" to help them. Maybe I'm just weird, but to me, leaping through the air and roller skates sound like a dangerous combination.

"I yanked the legs off an actual grasshopper. Come at me, PETA!"

I expected the "Grasshopper Skates" to backfire spectacularly in a comedic way because that's usually how inventions in 1970s cartoons work, but nope, they work just fine. Soon the Comets are hopping around like a kangaroo right by the hillbillies and the professor and his robots, but the Yo-Ho-Hos - pirates who ride a raft with roller skates on it - aren't going to stand for this.

I like how they don't have an actual mast, just a guy holding a tiny sail. They're pirates on a
budget.

What do the pirates do? They push the Comets, the Red Eyes, and Ramblin' Rivets off a cliff. How is THIS allowed in the rule book? On the bright side, the pirates wind up getting knocked off the cliff as well. I believe this is what is known as "karma".

Fortunately, the Comets have airbags in their roller skates - always be prepared - and they all land in a mysterious valley. The race continues, with the Cosmic Rays in the lead. In second place are the Roller Coasters, consisting of a ringmaster, a fat lady in a tutu, a strongman, a clown, a lion, and a skinny guy with an extremely long neck (the kind that could get one mistaken for a giraffe). I've heard of a flying circus, but a roller-skating circus? That's just absurd!

Seriously, that guy's neck is so long, when it rains, he's probably the first to know.

And in third place? The Texas Black Hats, a group of outlaws riding on roller-skating horses.

Jeez, the quality of the screencaps is getting worse...

Eventually, the Comets find a village of natives - and a giant lizard! Like, at what point do we start calling it a dinosaur? Barnaby, Candy, Wheelie, Bunny, and Sarge manage to get away, but Pudge isn't so lucky. Still, he manages to defeat the lizard through WACKY SHENANIGANS!

I'm going to assume this is a monitor lizard, which can indeed grow pretty big. Although they
generally do not eat humans...

Because he saved them all from the giant lizard, the natives dub Pudge their new leader. The others tell him that he can't be their leader because of, you know, the race, but the natives aren't going to take "no" for an answer. If he won't be their leader, he tells them, he can't leave at all... unless he defeats their champion.

Okay, what the heck is a gorilla doing in the Philippines? There aren't any gorillas in the Philippines. I don't think there are even any big apes there. What, did this gorilla come to the Philippines on vacation and get captured by the natives there? If so, no wonder he's so angry...

So it's either be king or fight the gorilla. But Barnaby has another idea - Wheelie apparently designed skates with little shovels in them, so they can just tunnel out of the village. This, however, might be difficult because the Ramblin' Rivets, the Red Eyes, and the Yo-Ho-Hos are determined to keep the Comets from ever leaving the valley. I guess this is because they think it'll increase their chances of winning. Or maybe Barnaby said that they looked like dorks or something.

Yes, the professor has a German accent. He's a professor in a cartoon, of course he has
a German accent.

It's time for Pudge to wrestle the gorilla, and he can't even use his "Grasshopper Skates" because the leader of the Yo-Ho-Hos swapped them out for normal ones. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

"Do you know how long it took me to find a bag of giant golf clubs? They cost, like,
two hundred bucks on eBay, but it was totally worth it."

Eventually, the Comets decide to just make a run for it. Bunny calms the gorilla down by singing (music soothes the savage beast, as they say), and Barnaby uses "Port-a-Bridge Blastoff Skates" to make it across a ravine and create a bridge for the other Comets to cross. Kind of anti-climactic, isn't it?

After rejoining the race, the Comets make it to the volcano where the clue is. Of course, because it's a volcano in a cartoon, the volcano erupts, but there's a message in the smoke it emits. I'm not sure how whoever set up the race did this, I'm going to assume that they used magic. The clue is "TAKE THE BING BING BANG BARGE TO THE NEXT CLUE!" And again, no reprecussions for the Ramblin' Rivets, the Red Eyes, or the Yo-Ho-Hos. Shouldn't they at least get points off or something?

What's the Verdict?

"You got your Josie and the Pussycats in my Wacky Races!"

"Well, YOU got YOUR Wacky Races into MY Josie and the Pussycats!"

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. This isn't the absolute worst cartoon ever, but much like The Oddball Couple, there's not much of substance here. It's incredibly mediocre. You know how a lot of people badmouth Hanna-Barbera's 1970s output? This is what people think shows like Speed Buggy and The Funky Phantom are like. Just take a popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon and copy it. In fact, as stated above, this cartoon attempts to be both Wacky Races AND Josie and the Pussycats at the same time - except instead of an automobile race or a rock band, the six teens winding up in these weird situations and dealing with bizarre  villains and monsters are in a roller derby. Speaking of which, there are too many characters - there's a reason why most of the characters in Wacky Races weren't teams. At most, you'd have two racers in one car, but the only actual "team" was the Ant Hill Mob. As a result, most of the characters seem underdeveloped, even the ones who actually had focus in these episodes.

Did the show deserve to be such a spectacular failure? Probably not, but it's still pretty weak. My advice: either stick with Wacky Races or watch that Pink Panther cartoon where he gets roller skates. You'll have more fun. Trust me.