Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Hotel Transylvania: The Series"

It took me years to actually sit down and watch the first Hotel Transylvania movie. I thought it was okay, but that it could've been much better. Too much stunt-casting, not taking enough advantage of the "spooky" setting, a bit too cliched... it wasn't awful, though. I've seen far worse animated movies.

But despite its being one of those "you love it or you hate it" franchises (see also Cars, Ice Age, Despicable Me... geez, there are a LOT of animated movie franchises like that), it was successful enough to warrant a sequel. And then another sequel. And then another that Adam Sandler didn't come back for. And in between the second and third movies, a TV show.

Hotel Transylvania: The Series, a coproduction between Sony Pictures Animation and Nelvana, premiered on June 25th, 2017 on Disney Channel in the United States. Odd, seeing as Disney had nothing to do with the Hotel Transylvania movies, but eh. It received two seasons, making for a total of ninety-seven episodes (well, technically fifty-two, but each episode actually has two "segments" so...).

Now, I will say that the movie WOULD make for a great TV series - you've got all sorts of monsters running around the hotel, there's definite comedic potential there. There are a lot of storylines you could do about Dracula running the hotel, maybe with episodes about Mavis and Johnny exploring the world or the monsters teaching Johnny about their way of life. And what did we get? A show with barely any Dracula, very little of his friends, and no Johnny because the show is actually a prequel to the first movie. Here, Mavis (voiced by Bryn McAuley as opposed to Selena Gomez) is 114, which is the vampire equivalent of a fourteen-year-old. Dracula (David Berni) has to leave the hotel to do some business at the "Vampire Council", so now his sister Lydia (Dan Chameroy) is in charge of the hotel. Mavis and Lydia don't quite get along. Replacing Dracula's friends are Frankenstein's son Hank (Gage Munroe), Blobby [the green JELL-O guy]'s daughter Wendy (Evany Rosen), and a mummy named Pedro (Joseph Motiki) who I don't think is supposed to be Murray [the mummy voiced by Cee-Lo Green]'s son but still looks a lot like him. None of these characters were in any of the movies... which I guess means Frankenstein and his wife just abandon their son at home while they vacation at the hotel? That seems like lousy parenting.

Is the show any good? I don't know. Let's watch an episode and see if it's worth a watch or a pile of, as Dracula would say, bat poop. We'll be watching the sixth episode. Segment 1 is called...

How many times have we seen that pun in a cartoon before? With a cliched pun like that for a title, I'm not egg-specting much substance here.

We start off with Mavis and her friends talking about how her father is apparently the worst gardener ever, because none of his plants are alive. Well, actually, it's not Dracula's fault - Mavis promised him that she'd take care of his plants while he was away. Problem is, she waters them with ACID RAIN. Apparently Mavis is a few sodas short of a six-pack.

"I don't get it. I totally have a green thumb!" she complains. Hank does too... which is likely the result of gangrene. And yes, we get a close-up shot of it.

Eugh...

Mavis comes up with a scheme to prevent her dad from finding out that she can't take care of a plant to save her life - get new plants from Quasimodo's garden. Then we're suddenly treated to CHATTERING SKULLS IN OUR FACE! No, really. Suddenly chattering skulls. I'm guessing that was meant to be a transition, because after that we see Mavis and Wendy in Quasi's kitchen.

"Les poissons, les poissons, how I love les poissons!"

Mavis' "get new plants to replace the ones my father trusted me with" plan is interrupted by the discovery that Quasi plans on smashing a giant egg with a hammer. She's all "You can't smash that egg!" and declares that she'll raise it to prove that she is responsible. And the "prevent father from knowing that she's failed epically at taking care of his plants" thing that was her initial plan? Never brought up again.

What an egg-cellent plan you've got there, Mavis.
(See, I can make cliched egg puns, too. It's not hard)

Quasi warns Mavis that the egg is rotten and will eat her when it hatches. But Mavis insists that eggs don't eat vampires and takes it back to her room. We get some shenanigans involving Quasi trying to poach the egg, none of which are particularly funny.

I'm a little unsure as to whether or not Mavis knows how eggs work. One minute she's claiming that Quasi didn't give it the chance to "be an egg" and insisting that eggs don't eat anything, which seems to imply that she doesn't know eggs hatch into living animals. But now she's sitting on it like a chicken to keep it warm...

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. A vampire's faithful, one hundred percent."

Then Lydia's pet chicken... yes, she has a pet chicken. Because, hey, chickens are funny, right? …enters the room and shows Mavis the proper way to sit on an egg. After that, Mavis starts pushing it around in a stroller and her friends suggest playing a game called "Egg-Sport" which consists of kicking the egg around until it smashes. Predictably, Mavis is not fond of that idea.

Question: how does a being made of green slime grow hair?

But then the egg hatches, revealing itself to be... an egg with dragon feet. Sort of a prehistoric version of Sheldon from US Acres.

Well, this is a letdown. I was expecting something far more monstrous.

How exactly is that thing supposed to eat Mavis? Y'know, like Quasi said it would
when it hatched? It doesn't even have a mouth...

We get a montage of Mavis teaching the egg (who she's calling "W-egg-sley" now, by the way) how to swim, write, etc. But eventually the egg leads Mavis into Quasi's kitchen, lures her into a gigantic soup pot, and begins to make stew out of her. Wow, we went from "Mavis thinks she's now a mother" to "Prehistoric Sheldon wants to eat Mavis" pretty quickly, didn't we?

Again, how is that thing supposed to eat Mavis when it doesn't have a mouth? Has it
just not finished hatching yet or something?

Because Mavis is a moron, it takes her a few minutes to realize that the egg is, y'know, trying to cook her. Mavis turns into a bat and flees, but the egg sprouts wings and takes off after her. Blah blah blah, chase scene, yadda yadda yadda… this entire episode has basically revolved around one joke. That Mavis is a moron. Not only is it not funny, but I don't remember her being this ditzy in the movie.

Fortunately, Mavis is saved by a giant Venus Flytrap that she knocked off the ledge at the beginning of the episode.

"FEED ME, MAVIS!"

"I guess he WAS a bad egg after all. If only somebody had warned me!" Mavis laments, giving us Unfunny "Mavis is an Idiot" Joke #51. But won't Dracula be proud of Mavis for taking such good care of his venus flytrap... which promptly dies. I guess because it ate a rotten egg. Wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaah...

I would like to point out that Futurama, Back at the Barnyard, and The Penguins of Madagascar all did the "dimwitted character tries to hatch an egg" plot much better than this.

Okay, next segment.

"Hotel Pennsylvania" begins with Mavis setting up gigantic cables to a nearby house's satellite TV, allowing her and her friends to watch "human TV" again. I guess monsters have their own TV shows as well, then? Are there monster TV channels that they're somehow able to prevent humans from watching? I'm curious now...

Anyhow, Mavis admits that her aunt Lydia will probably be really mad if she finds out that Mavis and her friends have been watching human TV. But because she's an idiot, she's willing to take the risk.

You've probably noticed the logo for Descendants 2 on the left-hand corner of the screen there.
Just ignore it, please. The less attention we give those movies, the better.

And what show do Mavis and her friends love to watch? Hotel Pennsylvania! Which stars humans who look a lot like Mavis and her friends. Who apparently live at a hotel. Predictably, this is lampshaded.

Plot twist - the guy who looks like Mavis is actually Mavis' half-brother!

But alas, Lydia's pet chicken... again, chickens are not automatically funny... spots them watching TV and tells Lydia. She is not pleased and forces Mavis to watch all of Adam Sandler's worst movies as punishment.

I mean, she's even voiced by somebody doing an Adam Sandler impression. The showrunners
were clearly inspired by Jack and Jill when they created this character.

Lydia declares that she got rid of every TV in the hotel, which means that they won't be able to watch the final episode of Hotel Pennsylvania. Pedro claims that if you don't watch every episode of a show, you get a sickness called the "Don't See-z Disease". Mavis claims that there's no such thing, but the hotel doctor vouches for Pedro.

Boy, the Missing Link from Monsters vs. Aliens has really let himself go...

According to the doctor, if a monster doesn't watch every episode of a TV show, they'll melt into a puddle. And apparently they can't just tell this to Lydia because... I don't know why. Then again, maybe she wouldn't believe them. The doctor straight-up admits that he's a quack, after all.

The good news is, the humans who live in that house from before are watching Hotel Pennsylvania at the moment, so Mavis and her friends sneak over and watch along from inside their car. But guess who's been following them?

Why didn't they just give Lydia a pet MONKEY, too, while they were at it? Monkeys
are the OTHER animal that people think are automatically funny but aren't, after all...

The chicken blabs to Lydia, who forces Mavis, Pedro, Wendy, and Hank to clean up after the Ceberus heads. Mavis figures out that the chicken WASN'T spying on them... perhaps it was already there for another reason? So they follow her as she sneaks over to the humans' house, discovering that she visits the humans to provide them with fresh eggs. How evil of her!

They tell Lydia about this, and she punishes the chicken. Surprisingly, however, Mavis and her friends feel bad about getting the chicken in trouble. But at least now they can sneak over to the humans' house to watch their stupid show, right?

Wrong-o, Chongo.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

After that, Mavis apologizes to the chicken for getting her in trouble and says that if they work together, they can both get what they want. But how will they get past Ceberus? Answer: by digging a tunnel. Well, THAT was remarkably easy...

So the chicken gets to hang out with the humans, and Mavis and her friends get to watch their show.

And it turns out that Lydia secretly loves Hotel Pennsylvania too. In the words of M. Night Shamalayn, WHAT A TWIST!

What's the Verdict?

Yeah, honestly, there's not much worthwhile here. They basically took everything that was good about the movie out and left everything that was bad about it in. No Dracula, none of his friends, no wit, no fun, no creativity... the fact that the show is set in a hotel for monsters is barely brought up at all, and we're just left with a generic show about a teenager and her goofy friends getting into hijinks. Mavis is not a very interesting character... well, maybe she was in the movies, but here she's just so flat and uninteresting. It doesn't help that they seemingly tried to turn her into Star Butterfly, reducing her intelligence to about five percent and making her constantly perky and annoying. Her friends are dull. They have no individual personalities and are basically just there to be replacements for Dracula's friends from the movie. Very few of the jokes land. The animation is mediocre. Even if you're a fan of the movies, I wouldn't recommend checking this out.

It's too bad, because like I said I think the films do have the potential to make a good spin-off TV series. Had they gone another route, this could've been... well, maybe not an AMAZING show, but at least watchable. Ah well...

I don't want this post to end on a negative note, so here's Goofy singing "Monster Mash". See you next time!