Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The X's"

The 2000s are known for many things - the first iPod came out, Shrek was released, American Idol was more popular than ever, Britney Spears was beloved by all, Crazy Frog was a thing... it was a mixed bag of a decade, I'll tell you that. But this was ALSO the decade in which Nickelodeon all but ruled the world when it came to appealing to children. And on the one hand, it gave us The Penguins of Madagascar, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron - Boy Genius, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. And of course, SpongeBob SquarePants (while it doesn't actually qualify as a 2000s Nickelodeon show since it premiered in 1999) was their biggest moneymaker, with countless merchandise, hilarious episode upon hilarious episode, and the 2004 release of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. And it was in 2002 that Nicktoons Network launched, offering a home for past Nicktoons like Doug and Rocko's Modern Life. On the other hand, the 2000s is also the decade when they stopped making Nickelodeon Magazine, Fanboy and Chum-Chum premiered, and the Nicktoons had to compete with airtime for live action "tweencoms". The 2000s also saw the closure of Nickelodeon's studios in Florida, a beloved part of Universal Studios Florida since it opened in the 1990s. Nickelodeon also came up with some pretty weird ideas during this decade. For example, remember THIS?

The 2000s is full of obscure Nickelodeon shows that are perfect for looking at on animation-reviewing blogs like this one. This is the decade that gave us Corneil and Bernie and Yakkity Yak, for one thing. One such show in this category is The X's.

What the heck is The X's? Well, it's the creation of Carlos Ramos (who previously wrote episodes for shows like Time Squad and Dexter's Laboratory), and it premiered on Nickelodeon in 2005. Nineteen episodes were aired, but apparently Nickelodeon didn't have much faith in the show as it barely advertised it or gave it reruns, and eventually cancelled it a year later.

The show's intro explains just what, exactly, the plot of the show is. The titular X's are a family of spies working for an organization called SUPERIOR. They consist of dad Tucker X (voiced by Patrick Warburton), mom Trudy X (Wendie Malick - so that's two actors who were in The Emperor's New Groove featured here), teenage daughter Tuesday X (Lynsey Bartilson) and young son Truman X (Jansen Panettiere). They fight an evil organization called S.N.A.F.U. (which stands for Society of Nefarious And Felonius Undertakings) led by the villainous Glowface (Chris Hardwick). They also have the help of a computerized brain that sort of runs their house for them named Home Base (Stephen Root).

I never watched this show when it was on, but I remember brushing it off as a knockoff of The Incredibles. Apparently, so did a lot of other people. Maybe that's why the show didn't last too long. After actually watching an episode, I discovered that it's really not all that much like The Incredibles. But is it a good show? I'm not going to tell you that right away, otherwise this review would be over in five seconds.

Anyway, let's watch the first episode of the show and see if there's anything of substance. This is one of those "every episode is actually two episodes in one" shows, so we have two segments here - "AAIIEE, Robot!" (gee, I wonder what movie that's a reference to) and "Mission: Irresponsible". Here we go...

"AAIIEE, Robot!" - or rather "aaiiee robot" as the title card reads - begins with the family fighting Glowface. Trudy winds up hurting her leg on a coffee table, which Glowface and his Mr. Herriman-voiced butler claim that nobody can avoid. "Curse you, coffee table, curse you!" Trudy says.

Glowface gets away by hailing a taxi, and they can't go after him because, according to Tucker, Trudy needs medical attention... and also, he needs to return some DVDs before the rental place closes. Remember when you could rent DVDs? From places like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video? Boy, THAT takes me back. Then streaming services like Netflix came along and ruined everything.

You'd think that being voiced by Patrick Warburton would automatically make the dad
funny. It doesn't.

So now Trudy is in bed with a leg in a cast for six to eight weeks. To fill in for her on missions during that time, Truman has created a robot. Behold "Robo-Mom".

Wasn't there an episode of Jimmy Neutron very much like this?

Yeah, that is without a doubt the crummiest-looking robot that I have ever seen. For one thing, why does it have a tail?

Anyhow, the robot immediately starts attacking Tucker... for some reason. Maybe it really hates cliched "dumb dad" characters.

No, seriously, why does it have a tail? Is that its exhaust pipe or something?

Suddenly, the X's get an alert from SUPERIOR and head off to fight evil, leaving Trudy to focus on getting better. Fortunately, she has Home Base around to keep her company.

Look at the size of that mouth.

She starts watching a Spanish soap opera... that's a common thing in cartoons, I've noticed. There was an episode of Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends where it's revealed Bloo watched a Spanish soap opera, too. Are Spanish soap operas considered funny? I've never watched one, is there anything inherently funny about them?

Meanwhile, Tucker, Tuesday, Truman, and Robo-Mom are off on their mission. Apparently, the Ambassador of "Pandracka" is in town to visit the Museum of Art. The X's must protect him from those who might wish him harm. Because apparently this Ambassador doesn't have any bodyguards. Truman will use his anti-gravity boots to follow the Ambassador everywhere he goes. Tuesday will pose as a museum guard and pre-screen each room before he enters. And Tucker will be disguised as a small child, because big beefy guys dressed like small children is another thing that's considered funny.

He's the one in blue with the lollipop, not the baby in the stroller.

We also get to hear Patrick Warburton shout, "WHERE IS MY DOLLY?! I HAVE TO MAKE WEE-WEE IN THE POTTY!" I love Patrick Warburton as much as the next animation fanatic, but having to say that really is not the proudest moment of his career.

Oh, and Robo-Mom will take the place of one of the museum's vending machines. Alas, Robo-Mom winds up attacking the Ambassador. I don't know if she's glitching or if this just means Truman stinks at building robots, but either way, Tucker's plan was an epic fail.

The family decides not to tell Trudy about what happened because then she'll feel like she let them down. So they'll just act like everything went great. Which will no doubt make Mrs. X feel great instead of making her feel sad because she thinks the family is fine without her as is normally the case in cartoons with plotlines like this. Home Base protests that he hates lying, but Truman and Tucker threaten to take a belt sander to his hard drive if he tells Trudy what really happened.

So they all tell Trudy that the mission went fine without her and Robo-Mom is awesome. Tuesday - who the heck names their kid that, by the way? - even goes so far as to cheerfully tell her that they don't need her at all. Because THAT'S not going to backfire on you, is it? And then Robo-Mom starts beating up Tucker again. Hello, Running Gag.

So then the family gets another mission and they all head out, leaving Trudy feeling sad because she thinks the family doesn't need her. I knew it. I knew this would happen. She decides to drown her sorrows with more Spanish soap operas.

Seriously, are Spanish soap operas actually considered humorous?

Glowface apparently has a new and improved version of the evil plan that the X's thwarted earlier. Robo-Mom starts acting up again and starts smashing the communications unit of the X's "X-Jet", which confuses Truman. Truman, no offense, but has it occurred to you that maaaaaaaaaaaybe you're not that great at programming robots?

And we keep cutting back to Trudy lying in bed watching Spanish soap operas. I still don't get it - why is this funny? Is it because they're speaking Spanish? Is Spanish automatically considered a funny language? Is it because soap operas are incredibly dramatic and have over the top acting and ridiculous plots? What's the joke here?

Eventually, Home Base gets fed up with the lying and Trudy acting all depressed and the stupid soap operas and tells Trudy that Robo-Mom is an utter catastrophe and that her family only told her otherwise because they didn't want her to worry. This gives her the confidence to help her family defeat Glowface - right after she gets a wheelchair, two atomic rockets, and some duct tape.

We haven't had a screencap of Glowface yet, so here's one now. Nice teeth
he's got there, huh?

Trudy shows up at Glowface's evil lair in a rocket-powered wheelchair. Did I mention how annoying Glowface's voice is? Because it's incredibly annoying. I mean, not "Herbert from Family Guy" levels of annoying, but annoying. She easily beats the crap out of Glowface's henchmen, but there's only one thing standing it between her and going to town on Glowface - a coffee table! You know, just like the one that she her leg on earlier!

Pictured: the TRUE villain of the episode.

So what does she do? Easy - she goes around it. Why that didn't occur to her the second she saw it, I don't know, but she defeats Glowface. Then her family shows up. Trudy tells them that she's learned something today: she can not be replaced because she has an unlimited capacity for senseless violence! Oh, and Robo-Mom beats up Tucker again. Fortunately, Mrs. X defeats her too.

And we end with the X's going home to watch more Spanish soap operas. Because Spanish soap operas are still automatically funny, I guess.

People watching Spanish soap operas = comedy, apparently.

Okay, next episode...

We start off with Truman and Tuesday playing a video game. Tucker and Trudy show up and send them to bed because it's 10:00 and they have an early morning mission the next day. Which reminds me, I really need to stop going to bed at 10:30, it makes getting up in the morning so difficult.

So, what do Tucker and Trudy have to do tonight? The same thing they do every night - try to take over the world!

Okay, obviously, that's not it, I just wanted to make that joke. Actually, the X-Jet needs to be refueled, Home Base's "reacticore" needs cooling, stuff like that. But Tucker and Trudy immediately become distracted by the video game.

Why do so many characters that Patrick Warburton voices have big chins?

They start playing the video game, and despite Tucker's claims that they're only going to play for a few minutes, we cut to them in the morning extremely tired because they stayed up all night playing it. Truman and Tuesday call them out for being so irresponsible, and you know what? They're right.

And because they didn't refuel the X-Jet the previous night, it immediately starts falling out of the sky. Fortunately, the X's parachute to safety! Unfortunately, the X-Jet winds up destroying Stonehenge. Oh, way to go, fellas. NOW what will people look at and wonder whether or not it was built by time-traveling aliens?

By the way, I'm just now noticing that Tuesday's hair switches colors every five seconds. In one shot it's green, in the next it's blue. Does she just dye her hair a different color every five seconds?

Speaking of color, why is everything green? Is that just the animators' favorite color
or something?

Home Base yells at Tucker and Trudy for destroying Stonehenge. As punishment, Tucker is no longer the leader of the team. He responds by making this face:

Hello, new potential meme...

Truman is dubbed the new leader, to which he exclaims, "Tasty!" I don't recall that being a popular thing for kids to say in 2005, but whatever. And Tuesday is replacing Trudy as second-in-command. They will be reevaluated at the end of a forty-eight hour trial period. Then Truman says that not only will they be swapping ranks, they'll also be swapping uniforms. Thus, Tucker has to dress like this...

Yeeeeeeeeeesh...

"You've been bossing us around our whole lives!" Truman points out. "So Dad, MOW THE LAWN!" Tuesday adds that Trudy must do all her homework for the entire year. As their parents walk off, Truman straight-up says that he's going to let the power corrupt him. I can only see THIS ending well...

Seriously, look at all that green. Did the X's have the Grinch as their house painter?

Tucker and Trudy fail epically at doing their new chores, but eventually Trudy figures out that Tuesday and Truman are trying to make them crack, which gives Tucker an idea - they must prove that it's harder to be THEM than it is harder to be Tuesday and Truman. So no matter how bad things get in the next forty-eight hours, they have to pretend that they LIKE IT. I can only see THIS ending well, too...

So Tucker and Trudy start acting like they're having the time of their lives doing their chores, much to Truman and Tuesday's shock. Tuesday announces that they'll have to turn up the heat. But first, Home Base tells them that THEY have things to do. For example, Tucker must fill out requisition forms. And Tuesday must begin a sixteen-hour training session that involves getting the crap beaten out of her by robots. Despite how much they hate it, they tell their parents that they're having a great time too because they don't want Tucker and Trudy to win this little game of "Let's All Act Like Idiots". Then they get another mission from SUPERIOR.

Walkmans and hand-held video games. Remember THOSE? Now we've got
smartphones and their fancy apps in their place. The 2000s were a different time,
let me tell you...

They arrive at the evil lair of... oh, jeez, Glowface again? I have to listen to his grating voice some more? They manage to make complete idiots out of themselves some more, and as a combination of their not knowing what they're doing and Glowface and his henchmen laughing at their stupidity, their mission turns out to be another epic fail.

Back at the house, Truman and Tuesday announce that it's time for Tucker and Trudy to watch EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION. Good thing SpongeBob isn't here. They turn on a Barney the Dinosaur knockoff, and despite how frustrated they are by it Tucker continues to act like he's having a blast. And I will admit, this scene WAS pretty funny.

Truman, meanwhile, has to shave despite the fact that he's, what, six? And SUPERIOR has "hairstyle regulations" as well, so now Tuesday has to get a hairdo like her mom's. Dunno why she's bothered by that, considering she dyes her hair a different color every five seconds anyhow, but eh...

The good news is, the forty-eight hour trial is up. And because the X's continue to think that deceit and lying is the best way to solve their problems, SUPERIOR has decided to make their new ranks PERMANENT. So finally and I mean FINALLY they admit to each other that they hate their new ranks and that they want to switch back. But they can't just swap ranks, SUPERIOR has to order them to. And as if things couldn't possibly get any worse, they get a video call from Glowface (he got their number after Tucker prank-called him).

Did they HAVE to make this guy's voice so incredibly grating?!

Glowface and his henchmen, still laughing at how the X's made idiots out of themselves, tell them to come over and invade his evil lair. Fortunately, Tucker has a plan to get SUPERIOR to switch their ranks back. How do they accomplish this? By firing a rocket that promptly destroys Mount Everest. This outrages SUPERIOR and they force them to switch back to their original ranks. Huzzah!

So the X's go to Glowface's evil lair and beat the crap out of him and his henchmen. Oh, and it turns out that Tuesday and Truman forgot to refuel the jet and it winds up falling out of the sky again. The end.

WHAT'S THE VERDICT?

I will say this - The X's wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. But it's another show that I'm just gonna put in the "okay" pile. Most of the jokes fall flat, the voice actors do their best but are held back by a lousy script, and the animation is a bit inconsistent - at times it looks like bad Adobe Flash animation, other times it's pretty fluid (I legitimately can not tell if this was animated in Flash or not). But it's not god-awful or anything. In fact, I would hesitate to call it bad. It's just okay. If nothing else, I give 'em credit for doing something unique with the art style (even if I really didn't care for the character designs). If you want to watch it, the series' director David Marshall uploaded every episode to Vimeo. Which is convenient, seeing as the show doesn't have a DVD release outside of two episodes being included on the fourth and fifth volumes of that "Nick Picks" thing.

So, what are we looking at next time?

Ah, yes, a Flintstones spinoff that was made because Hanna-Barbera desperately wanted to cash in on the success of Rugrats. This should be fun...

Looking at the Larry Doyle Looney Tunes Shorts

I'm gonna be honest, I've been having a really crummy year so far. I mean, it started out okay... not GREAT, but not awful or anything. Then as soon as I got back from Disney World, things went into a downward spiral. I'd rather not go into details. These past few weeks in particular have been really lousy for me, and I desperately need to blow off a little steam.

So, I decided to dust off this post I wrote back in... I'm not sure, 2019 maybe... that I've been holding back on because I've been worried it might come across as a bit too cynical or too harsh. I try not to be too negative on this blog. I don't want to come across as another Nostalgia Critic or the Mysterious Mr. Enter. When I do a review, I avoid saying anything insulting about the writers, director, what have you because I do not personally KNOW them and I don't want to dub them hacks or say they should be blacklisted simply because they wrote something less than stellar. But the guy who's responsible for what this post is talking about, from what I've heard, isn't exactly the greatest guy, so I guess it sort of evens out?

Let's get started... in the 2000s, AOL merged with Warner Bros and decided to can the entire "Classic Animation" department for some reason. This came back to bite them in the rear end around the time Looney Tunes: Back in Action was in production and they came up with the idea to start making new Looney Tunes cartoons. Then somebody suggested that they could send the new shorts to be animated overseas. That's not the bad part. The bad part is that they put Larry Doyle, who was working on Looney Tunes: Back in Action, to oversee production.

If you see "Produced by Larry Doyle" under the Looney Tunes logo, run for your life.

Apparently, Larry Doyle didn't want anybody who'd worked on a Looney Tunes project before to work on these shorts. Instead, he went out of his way to get people who had no experience with these characters. However, these people included like Rich Moore, Dan Povenmire, Jon Vitti... I think even Doug Lawrence. These people have proven themselves more than capable of making quality work. So you'd think that maybe these shorts would be pretty good, right?

Well, the answer to that is NO. No, these shorts are not "pretty good". Far from it, actually. And from what I've heard, the production process was not exactly a picnic either.

For example, let's talk about Bob Bergen. You probably know him best as the current voice of Porky Pig, and he's also a very nice guy. He spoke on the Toonzone Forums (or the Anime Superhero Forums, as the site is now called) about what a lousy time HE had working on these shorts. I am telling you this because I have a lot of respect for Bob and I feel that this should be brought up as proof that Larry Doyle wasn't the right choice to produce these things.

After auditioning (despite the fact that he's done the voice of Porky for years, for some projects he does indeed still have to audition), Bob booked the roles of Porky and Tweety and began to record the first short. Which leads us to problem number one: apparently, the original scripts for these shorts had a lot of inappropriate humor that didn't belong in a Looney Tune. A lot of jokes about sex and bodily functions, for instance. One short had Porky ask "What would Jesus do?"

Now, before anybody says anything, Bob and I are both perfectly aware that the original Looney Tunes shorts weren't intended to be strictly for kids. Here's the thing, though - the original Looney Tunes shorts might have been for an older audience, but they weren't CRASS. They didn't resort to using classless shock humor to get a laugh. Thus, Bob let Larry Doyle and others involved in production know that he wasn't comfortable with the raunchy humor in the shorts, but it didn't do any good.

Problem number two is that Larry wanted Bob to alter the way he played Porky. You see, Mel Blanc's voices for Daffy, Porky and Tweety were sped-up, so Larry took a bunch of old Porky shorts, slowed them down, and told Bob to "do" Mel, then they would speed him up to the same percentage. I get the mindset here, but Bob does Porky just fine naturally (and it's not like his Porky doesn't sound like Mel's, it DOES), so why bother pitching him up? In addition, Bob brought up some other reasons why this wouldn't work - his voice is much higher than as Mel's was, and the microphones used nowadays are very different than the ones used back then, so if Larry wanted to really get that classic sound he should've went out and gotten those old RCA ribbon mics. And on top of THAT, Larry slowed down those old Porky shorts too much. Bob knows this because he has an extensive library of radio interviews where Mel demonstrated what his Porky sounded like before it was pitched up. So this, all in all, was a recipe for disaster.

And a disaster it was... when Bob attempted to do Porky the way Larry wanted and was sped-up, the end result sounded like a stuttering Alvin the Chipmunk. Bob finally, and understandably, decided to call up his agent and quit the project. This was a very hard decision for him, as he loves doing Porky, but if THIS was the direction they were taking the characters in he didn't want to be a part of it. So he called up his agent and told him he wanted off the project... only for his agent to tell him that they'd just fired him. Ouch. Fortunately, it didn't take long for Bob to get the role of Porky back - not in the shorts, but in other projects.

I would not be so harsh if it weren't for the fact that Larry Doyle was ALSO active on the Toonzone Forums when these shorts were in production, and he spread lies about the shorts (claiming that there wasn't any toilet humor when in fact I saw at least one use of toilet humor in these shorts. More on that later...) and picked fights with other members. You're a professional writer, Larry. You should know better than that.

Anyhow, six shorts were completed, and then the higher-ups at Warner Bros. decided to give them a watch. Apparently, they were so appalled that they cancelled the shorts that hadn't been completed yet and scrapped the project. Then Larry Doyle left the company (I'm admittedly not sure if he chose to leave or if they fired him) and they went in and tinkered with the shorts that HAD been completed - taking out much of the raunchier humor, for one thing - in an attempt to make them salvageable before shipping them off to theaters. It didn't work, but at least they tried.

And then Looney Tunes: Back in Action was released, and it flopped because Warner Bros. put it up against movies like Brother Bear and The Cat in the Hat and barely advertised it (don't ask me why The Cat in the Hat did better at the box office than Looney Tunes: Back in Action). So what did Warner Bros. learn from this? Did they learn to promote their movies better? Well, no - movie studios are never willing to admit that they're at fault when a movie underperforms, so instead they came to the conclusion that people didn't like the Looney Tunes anymore. So they decided not to release the shorts in theaters, and over the years they've been released on DVD instead. I've also heard that the shorts not being released in theaters was due to the higher-ups' aforementioned being appalled by the shorts, but I'm not sure which one is true.

Here are some of the Larry Doyle-produced shorts that HADN'T been completed before the project was cancelled...

- "The Pig Stays in the Picture"
Most of the Porky shorts Larry wanted to do had Porky as a Homer Simpson-esque family guy. This one apparently would've focused on him trying to find a movie that the whole family could enjoy. Alas, it wouldn't have worked out that way (presumably because Porky and his family sitting in a movie theater watching a film that appeals to all of them and having a great time wouldn't make for a particularly funny cartoon short).

- "A Very Daffy Christmas"
While flying south for the winter, Daffy winds up at the North Pole. He meets two of Santa's elves, who want to cook him for Christmas dinner. This one sounds like it might've been interesting, although it DID include at least ONE pretty off-color joke... at one point, Daffy reads Santa's naughty list, which not only includes his name but all of the things he did to get on the list, and says, "Yeesh, this guy really DOES see everything. I even turned off the lights when I did THAT one..."

- "Executive Tweet"
Sylvester sneaks into the White House to eat the president's bird, and is aided by the ghosts of the presidental dogs. Uhhhhh...

- "What's Hip, Doc?"
Bugs is saved from Elmer by a supermodel (who apparently would've been voiced by Jenna Elfman) who then attempts to cut off his tail. Jokes apparently included Bugs running her over with a lawnmower. Yeah. Bugs Bunny running somebody over with a lawnmower. Totally in-character, right?

- "Scheme Park"
Porky takes his family to a very strange American history theme park.

- "Beach Bunny"
Bugs goes to the beach and meets a "beach dude" who was apparently supposed to be voiced by Brendan Fraser. It is kinda interesting that they were gonna have Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman guest-star in these shorts...

- "Baseball Taz"
The Tasmanian Devil becomes a baseball team's mascot.

- "Dancing Pepe"
This one sounds like it would've been really lame. It was gonna be about a chipmunk with a head cold falling for Pepe Le Pew in a dance club, and then one of her friends gives her some Claritin which makes her realize that he smells bad or something like that.

- "Daffy Contractor"
Porky hires Daffy to fix his sink. Hilarity ensues.

- "Reaper Madness"
Granny goes shopping and, not kidding, gets stalked by a tall gentleman with a black cloak. No. No no no no no. How exactly does one make "Granny is stalked by the reaper" funny? There's dark humor, and then there's... THIS.

- "Guess Who's Coming to Meet the Parents"
Bugs brings a squirrel home for dinner. His mother (who he lives with now, apparently) disapproves for some reason. I really hope that the squirrel was just a friend of Bugs and not his lover or whatever.

Yeah, I think it's for the best these didn't get made. But what about the shorts that WERE made? Why were THEY so bad that Warner Bros. didn't want to see what Larry Doyle would do if they didn't stop him from making more Looney Tunes cartoons? Well, let's start with...

"Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas"

Directed by: Bill Kopp, Peter Shin

In this short, Bugs Bunny (voiced by Joe Alaskey) winds up at a Las Vegas casino that Yosemite Sam (voiced by Jeff Bennett) built over his rabbit hole. He decides to try his luck at a few games, and promptly wins all of Sam's money. Once Bugs leaves, Sam becomes convinced that Bugs was cheating because he has "lucky rabbit's feet".

Now, this in my opinion is the least bad of the Larry Doyle shorts. Is it a GOOD short? Well, no. Does it have its problems? Yes. First of all, the animation is lousy. I recall reading that many of the animators who worked on these shorts didn't care much for how they were turning out either... maybe they didn't bother putting any effort into the animation because they knew the shorts would be crappy anyway? Second, while I am glad that they got Joe Alaskey to do the voice of Bugs here (apparently, it was originally supposed to be Billy West but Joe Dante and Eric Goldberg wanted to keep Bugs' voice in the short the same as it was in Looney Tunes: Back in Action), it wasn't necessary for them to pitch his voice up. Joe was able to do Bugs just fine without being pitched up, and it doesn't do anything to make his Bugs sound more like Mel Blanc. Third, the short isn't very funny - there are some jokes that I did find amusing (Sam claiming that he's down to his last quarter followed by Bugs saying he'll be back for it tomorrow, Sam chasing Bugs through the desert, the ending with Sam calling Bugs on his cell phone), but aside from that it's a very blah and unfunny cartoon. But with all of this said, there isn't anything disturbing or horrific about Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas, it's just bad in a "well, that stunk" way, not a "worst Warner Bros. cartoon ever" way. In other words, it's at least inoffensive. That's more than I can say for the other shorts...

Also, Bugs is frequently off-model in this short.

(Quick question - why are Billy West and Maurice LaMarche listed in the credits? I didn't hear their voices... from what I recall, the only character aside from Bugs and Sam to speak is that woman who counts Bugs' money, and she couldn't have been voiced by either of them...)

"The Whizz-ard of Ow" (geez, what a horrible pun...)

Directed by: Bret Haaland

Two wizards are duking it out in a desert for some reason, and after they destroy each other Wile E. Coyote finds one of theirs' "ACME Book of Magic". He decides that, hey, maybe he can use this to catch the Road Runner. Spoiler alert: it isn't much help.

This short apparently made its premiere at, uh, Wal-Mart stores, then got released as a bonus feature on the Looney Tunes: Back in Action DVD. Wile E. using a spell book MIGHT have had potential, but instead we have a short that it mediocre at best and not funny in the slightest. Jokes have a habit of dragging out... like, there's one scene where Wile E. levitates a boulder and tries to crush the Road Runner with it. The entire time I was thinking, "I know it's gonna fall on top of the coyote, stop dragging the joke out..."

I suppose the short isn't really that much worse than Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas, but there's one thing that makes me put it below that short - the needlessly brutal violence. Seeing Wile E.'s ears fall off creeped me out. I also could've done without seeing him get his stomach sliced by a jaguar. Or get his nose bitten off by a monitor lizard.

Also, I have a question about the ending... is the Road Runner intentionally trying to torment Wile E., or is he just goofing around with the spell book and not paying any attention to where he's pointing? It's a little unclear...

"Hogwarts, here I come!"

From here, the shorts get much, much worse...

"Museum Scream"
("Museum Scream"? Is that supposed to be a pun of some sort?)

Directed by: Dan Povenmire

Sylvester (Jeff Bennett) is hungry, and he finds out that Tweety (Billy West) is on display at a nearby museum. Thus, he decides to sneak in and have Tweety for dinner.

I suppose I should admit that I'm not a huge fan of Tweety... I don't DISLIKE him, I'm just kind of apathetic towards him. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I'm not too keen about a short starring him.

First, let's talk about the voices. I love Billy West as much as the next person, but I don't care for his Tweety... it sounds very awkward and stilted, and while this obviously isn't his fault they pitched his voice up too much. I've heard much worse Tweety impressions, though. Jeff Bennett's Sylvester is alright, but he overdid the lisp a little (probably just the result of bad voice direction) and I swear that they pitched him up like they did with his Daffy for some reason. June Foray is pretty much wasted. Second, Tweety just seems really snide and unlikable here... I don't know why, but I found him needlessly mean-spirited.

But the main problem with this short is how needlessly VIOLENT it is. A short with Sylvester and Tweety in a museum? Okay, sure, maybe you could get some good gags out of that... but there aren't any gags here. It's just scene after scene of Sylvester being mutilated. I didn't need to see Sylvester get eaten by a snake, attacked by a poisonous wasp, have his head bitten by a baby dinosaur, get sliced to pieces by a buzzsaw, or get impaled by an iron maiden (which then proceeds to explode for some reason). This isn't funny, it's just disturbing and makes me feel sorry for Sylvester.

Not pictured here: the aftermath, where we actually see Sylvester inside
the snake's stomach.

The short's climax, with Sylvester getting split into multiple multicolored versions of himself which then proceed to fight over Tweety is kind of neat, I guess, and the use of the "Thunder and Lightning Polka" is a nice touch... but even then, I didn't like seeing three of the Sylvesters getting electrocuted, and couldn't you have found a way for them to fuse back into one Sylvester instead of ending the short with Tweety shooting them all out of a cannon?

"Color has its harmony and that's like I have said...
Red, yellow, green, red, blue, blue, blue, red, purple, green, yellow, orange, red!
Red!"

But the absolute weakest point in the cartoon is the gag with Tweety sending Sylvester through a digestive tract display. That wasn't funny, that was just gross and disturbing. Oh, and then after Sylvester gets crapped out, Tweety says, "Are you okay, puddy tat? You wook POOPED!"

Yeah. Toilet humor in a Looney Tune. Real classy, guys...

"Duck Dodgers in Attack of the Drones"

Directed by: Rich Moore

Daffy (voiced by Jeff Bennett) creates a group of duck-shaped robots to fight an alien menace. Then once the aliens are defeated, the robots go on a rampage and Daffy must stop them. A lot of people have actually said this is the best of the Larry Doyle shorts. I, on the other hand, think it's one of the worst.

Let me start off by saying what I do like about this short... Billy West provides the voice of this old guy who I guess is the head of a council that Daffy's part of - and he's completely unrecognizable! When I first watched this short, I thought it was Maurice LaMarche. Major props. And here's something neat - near the beginning of the short, we get cameos from Zoidberg, the Great Gazoo, and a Klingon (the short also originally had a cameo from Stitch, but he was cropped out for the DVD release because I guess they were afraid that Disney would sue them if they didn't). How cool is THAT?

Now, what do I not like about the short? A lot of things. I think Jeff Bennett would've made a great Daffy had Larry Doyle not insisted on speeding him up... and again, they pitched him up WAY TOO MUCH. Also, a short about Daffy Duck cloning himself SOUNDS like it would be hilarious, but here's the thing: the drones don't act like Daffy. I mean, yeah, they go "Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!" a couple times, and Daffy's able to lure them into a trap with fake awards, but they do things like randomly attacking people, beating things up, setting random things on fire... these seem more like things that BENDER would do, not Daffy. In fact, the whole thing feels much more like a really crappy episode of Futurama than a Daffy Duck short.

"An unfunny short, this is!"

Perhaps the biggest problem here is that, again, the short is needlessly disturbing. I think that had this been released into theaters, kids in the audience would've been traumatized by it. When I first watched the short, it really freaked me out. Let's see... first we see one of the invading aliens devouring an astronaut's front half... then Daffy's drones beat up a sentient ATM machine... one of them sets a trash can on fire, and we then find out the trash can is sentient and it runs around screaming... and did I mention how much abuse DAFFY takes in this cartoon? He's blasted in half, impaled by a lightsaber, has his front half eroded (we actually see blood at one point during this gag)… and then there's the ending. Basically, Daffy thinks he's been able to destroy the drones, but it turns out they found the copy machine he used to make them and have started making more. The machine explodes, and Daffy winds up clinging to the top of a building as the city is overrun by drones, many of which start snapping at him from below. This is not funny. I can not be the only one who honestly felt sorry for Daffy, especially when he didn't do anything wrong in this short aside from act like an arrogant idiot.

And when the jokes AREN'T disturbing, they're still painfully unfunny. Particularly awful jokes include the parody of the Star Wars crawl at the beginning, Daffy's pathetic flying machine, the mirror routine gag, the nunchucks gag that was straight-up stolen from Robin Hood Daffy (they didn't even try to hide it!) and the ending with the Instant Martian, which honestly just felt like the writers couldn't think of a funnier joke to end the short on.

Oh, and by the way, there's actually an episode of that New Looney Tunes show that does the "Daffy cloning himself" concept a lot better. It's called "When Marvin Comes Martian In". Watch that instead.

All right, four down, two more to go...

"My Generation G... G... Gap"

Directed by: Dan Povenmire

I really do not blame Bob Bergen for not wanting to take part in this short.

Here is an actual photo of Porky watching My Generation G... G... Gap.

The plot of the short goes like this: Porky (Billy West) takes his daughter to a rock concert, and then he finds out how rowdy it is and I guess becomes worried that his daughter will get it on with one of the roadies or something. So he becomes obsessed with getting into the arena and getting his daughter out. And the rest of the short is just an excuse for the writers to make Porky suffer.

Here is a short that straight up did not try. It checks off every box on the checklist for bad Looney Tunes productions. Bad voice acting? Check! Again, I think Billy West is awesome but I do not care for his Porky at all, though again it's not Billy's fault that Larry Doyle insisted on pitching up the voices. It's way too obvious that they pitched it up. It makes Porky sound like he's on helium. Dee Bradley Baker and Greg Burson were also dragged into lending their voices to this thing. That's THREE incredibly talented voice actors, and even THEY couldn't save it.

"Maybe this dollar bill that's totally not a photograph poorly superimposed
into the scene because the animators think dollar bills are too hard to draw
will convince you to let me into your concert!"

Unfunny jokes? Check! There was actually one joke that DID get a chuckle out of me - specifically, when Porky plows through the reporter on his way to the concert arena. And the gag with the talking dollar bill was kind of funny, too. The other jokes, on the other hand? Awful. Why? Well, that brings us to the next item on the checklist...

Needlessly cruel violence? Check! What did Porky do in this short to deserve getting SLICED INTO THIRDS BY POWER LINES, THRASHED AROUND LIKE A GUITAR, AND ELECTROCUTED MULTIPLE TIMES? Do Larry Doyle and the writers just hate Porky or something and wanted to torture him simply because that's how they get their kicks?

And finally, trying too hard to be "hip" and "relevant" and whatever? Check! Porky is thrust into the role of a bumbling dad who isn't "with the times" or some crap like that, and has to be exposed to rock music or heavy metal or... I don't even know WHAT they're trying to do here, but it involves Porky dressing like this:

Seeing this makes my skin crawl.

The short ends with, of all things, a commercial for an album of songs performed by Porky. The entire joke of this scene is "HA HA! PORKY IS SINGING ACTUAL POP/ROCK/WHATEVER IT IS THAT THE KIDS ARE LISTENING TO NOWADAYS SONGS! THAT'S FUNNY, RIGHT?!" Call me crazy, but I'm not seeing the humor in have Porky perform "Bad to the Bone" and "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet". I mean, yeah, they're actual pop/rock/whatever music was popular when this short was made songs. AAAAAAAAND?

Speaking of ain't seeing nothing yet, as bad as this short is, the fact that it got at least ONE laugh out of me puts it above...

"Cock-a-Doodle-Duel" (not to be confused with the much better Garfield and Friends episode of the same name)

Directed by: Peter Shin

Ugh. This is a bad one. It's got Foghorn Leghorn, one of my favorite Looney Tunes characters, in it and yet it still sucks. It features the voices of Jeff Bennett, Tress MacNeille, and Billy West and yet it still sucks. It was written by Jon Vitti, a story consultant for the first Ice Age AND Horton Hears a Who, two genuinely good movies, and yet it still sucks. WHAT HAPPENED? How do you get that many talented people and yet we wind up with THIS?

What's the plot, you might ask? Well, it focuses on Foghorn (Jeff Bennett) feeling threatened when a scientifically-engineered superchicken or whatever (also Jeff Bennett) shows up on his farm and impresses all the hens. Foghorn is all "This is MY farm!" and becomes obsessed with beating the other rooster at SOMETHING. That's the plot. Riveting, isn't it?

Yeah, let's make a rooster "hot" so the girls in the audience will become...
what's the bird equivalent of a furry? A feathery?

This short has it all. The animation is bad. The story is weak. I swear that Tress MacNeille's voice was pitched up for one of those hens, and I think Jeff Bennett's Foghorn was pitched up too for some inexplicable reason. The jokes are all painfully unfunny. Why do so many of these shorts have characters getting electrocuted? Foghorn might not be a rocket scientist, but he's not dumb enough to sit in a cauldron of boiling oil until he was fried. Seeing Foghorn perform the Chicken Dance was cringe-worthy (I know it was likely intended to be pretty lame, but still). And even ignoring the fact that they stole a joke from The Swooner Crooner, if they HAD to steal a joke from The Swooner Crooner why did it have to be the gross Running Gag about the chickens laying eggs when they get turned on?

There's also a joke about steroids. Ha ha?

And once again, the short is NEEDLESSLY DISTURBING. There's a scene where after the other rooster clobbers Foghorn, the Barnyard Dawg (Billy West) says that he'd better make sure he can beat the other rooster at something because the farmer probably won't have a need for two roosters on the farm... and then Foghorn sees an axe sticking out of a tree stump and gets nervous. Yeah, let's have Foghorn spend the short fearing for his life. That's funny, right? And then there's the ending... dear lord, the ending. Do you want to know how this short ends? Well, here it is:

Foghorn, after getting beaten at tic-tac-toe, gets an idea. He tells the other rooster, "I bet I can eat more corn than you!" and then the other rooster eats a ton of corn. Then Foghorn says, "I bet I can crow louder than you!" and as the other rooster is crowing he shoots a hot coal down his throat. That makes all the corn in the rooster's stomach pop, and then the other rooster explodes. All that's left are his feet. Yes, I am not kidding. The short ends with the other rooster being killed. Foghorn actually murders another character and we're supposed to find it FUNNY.

There's a reason why, in shorts like Rabbit Fire, when Daffy is shot in the face we see immediately afterwards that he's fine, he's just singed and needs to readjust his bill. Because seeing Daffy die would not be funny. It would just be horrifying. Likewise, seeing the other rooster die is not funny either. Like, at all. And that's not even going into how out of character it is for Foghorn to kill somebody.

I think I've said enough. All of these shorts were failures. They range from "bad, but not horrible" (Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas, I'm looking at you) to "phenomenally awful" (My Generation G... G... Gap) to "what were they thinking?!" (Cock-a-Doodle-Duel). I don't know how you can get people like Dan Povenmire to direct these things and yet they still turn out this bad. Whatever Larry Doyle was trying to accomplish with these shorts, he didn't accomplish it. What these shorts DID accomplish was giving Bob Bergen a migraine and wasting the time and talents of Jeff Bennett, Billy West, Joe Alaskey, Tress MacNeille, Greg Burson, and Dee Bradley Baker.

You want to watch a "modern" Looney Tunes short that's actually good? I'm actually working on a list of 'em. The new Looney Tunes Cartoons on HBO Max are really good. Watch those instead. But for now, I have this to say: Larry Doyle might be a fan of Looney Tunes, and I'm sure the guy had good intentions, but being a fan of Looney Tunes does not mean that you know how to make a quality Looney Tunes cartoon. I mean, I'M a fan of Looney Tunes, but if you asked ME to write a Looney Tunes cartoon I doubt it would be any good. There are people who know why shorts like Duck Amuck, Rabbit of Seville, Duck Soup to Nuts, etc. work. Clearly, Larry Doyle is not one of them. Between the bad animation, the weak plots, the needlessly over-the-top violence, the unnecessarily pitched-up voice acting, and the painfully unfunny jokes, it's easy to see why Warner Bros. shut down production after these things were made.

Again, I wouldn't normally be this harsh, but from what I've read about Larry Doyle, combined with his behavior on the Toonzone Forums, he's earned this. I mean, I'm obviously not going to say he should be banned from Hollywood or whatever, but hopefully he doesn't go near the Looney Tunes franchise again. As for the people who directed and wrote these shorts... nothing but the utmost respect for you all, but these shorts unfortunately are not your best work. Sorry, guys.

Oh, and Warner Brothers? If Bob Bergen says that he's not comfortable with a joke or two in the script, listen to him. He knows what he's talking about.

Sources:
- https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/is-the-fate-of-the-new-shorts.3503071/page-2