Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "WALL-E"

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. This series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

Y'all remember WALL-E?

I remember going to see WALL-E in theaters twice. It's definitely one of PIXAR's best, with an environmental message that isn't too preachy, fantastic animation, and a cast of charming characters - a good chunk of whom don't really talk! If you haven't seen it already, it's on Disney Plus. Go watch it right now. I'll wait.

Are you back? Great movie, huh? For today's edition of "Did You Know?", I thought it'd be fun to share a few things about WALL-E that you might not have known. After all, you don't really see people talk much about the movie nowadays - it's mostly lumped in with everything pre-Cars 2 as the GOOD stuff that PIXAR's done, whereas everything post-Cars 2 (with some exceptions) is dubbed the BAD stuff that PIXAR has done. If this blog post can get people to start talking about the movie again, well, I've done my part to shed light on this rarely talked about PIXAR classic.

1) The original pitch for WALL-E was thought up by Pete Docter. His idea was kind of like National Lampoon, with a family of aliens visiting a planet where they were driven crazy by a tiny robot. John Lasseter nixed the idea, but something about the premise of a lone, tiny robot on a planet covered with trash stuck with Andrew Stanton...

Concept art for WALL-E himself.

2) While designing WALL-E himself, Andrew Stanton was insistent that the character should have his own body language, having him constrained by the boundaries of his design - lead character animator Angus MacLane described this as avoiding "dude-in-a-suit or Fozzie Bear acting" and "use a more minimal sense of acting" instead of "having a robot that was puppet-y and moves around a lot". Andrew didn't want WALL-E to at any point pose like a human. He set a "no elbows" rule, since WALL-E was built to pull trash into his belly, which doesn't exactly require elbows, ergo it wouldn't make much sense for him to have them. This made it difficult to figure out how WALL-E could reach the buttons on his trash compactor chest if his arms didn't bend. They considered flexible Dr. Octopus-style arms or limbs that telescoped like a car antennae, then Angus was inspired by his father's job of designing inkjet printers, which use a slide-like mechanism. Having WALL-E's shoulder move along an L-shaped track allowed the animators to subtly tweak the character's posture.

WALL-E's iconic "binocular eyes" came about when somebody handed Andrew Stanton a pair of binoculars at a baseball game. He said, "There's no nose, there's no mouth, there's nothing and it's not trying to be a face. It just happens to ask that of me when I look at it and I said, 'That's it!' I can't improve upon that. So that's why I ran with that." According to Angus, "It's hard for him to be mad. When his binoculars lock together, that forms a straight line across the top of his head, and at most he looks irritated."

More concept art for WALL-E.

3) Obviously, EVE is designed much differently from WALL-E, and it's not a coincidence that she looks like something Apple might have a hand in. Angus MacLane described her as "a bit like a matryoshka doll, in that she starts out like this impenetrable egg, and then she unfolds to be a bit more vulnerable, but functional. She looks dangly and wind-chimney when she's in automaton mode, but when she gets emotional, she does more arcs, like a porpoise flying."

"WALL-E represents the notion of who people actually are," Angus added. "The guy has dreams, and he has chores, he's not the best at everything he does, but he's good at his job. Just as a superhero team would have a bruiser character, that would be WALL-E, whereas EVE is a much more aggressive hero."

Jim Reardon, the head of story, says, "What we didn't want to do on this film was draw human-looking robots with arms, legs, heads and eyes, and have them talk. We wanted to take objects that you wouldn't normally associate with having humanlike characteristics and see what you could get out of them through design and animation."

"One of the nice things is, because they got designed together, we could really play the opposites," Andrew Stanton claimed. "You could play WALL-E as a box... and EVE as a circle. I remember going, a long time ago, probably 1993, to Peter Gabriel's 'Secret World Tour', and he designed the stage so that one side was about the male and the other side was about the female. And one side was square, and the other stage was circular. And I always thought that was fascinating... and he sort of decided which songs would be played whether they were a female song or a male song in their feel on either of the stages, and I never forgot that iconography. And that really did kind of influence, a bit, the fundamental nature of each of these characters... the other thing was that, just the design, we really wanted to be able to play with both spectrums of robotics: really high-end technology and really low technology. So, WALL-E, I always call a tractor, EVE, I always call sort of like a Porsche. She's the highest, most expensive, no expense spared kind of project that the Buy 'n' Large corporation could use to make a probe droid... WALL-E is much more 'nuts and bolts' and you can kind of get how he works from afar."

Concept art for EVE.

4) WALL-E is voiced by the film's sound designer, Ben Burtt. Ben gathered sounds to use in the movie from the real world with a microphone and recorder because, in his words, "When you use sounds gathered in the outside world, and you bring them into a science fiction film, you get a credibility of those sounds to sell the audience the reality of what's really just a very fantastic world."

The sound of the winds on Earth is made from recordings of Niagara Falls - except for the wind sounds heard inside WALL-E's trailer during the toxic waste storm, which were created by dragging a canvas bag across a carpeted floor. A thunder sheet was used to create the sounds of the spaceship taking off. The noise that WALL-E's little cockroach buddy makes when he moves was created by handcuffs. WALL-E's eyebrow movements are accompanied by the sound of a Nikon camera shutter, whereas his sneezes are Ben Burtt sneezing while a vacuum cleaner is running. He created a library of 2400 sounds for the movie, the largest number of all the films he's worked on thus far.

5) While WALL-E doesn't talk much, Andrew Stanton claimed, "I didn't want to do a silent picture. I wanted to do a picture that really played with the integrity of the character that it was, which was a machine. And I wanted it to feel like a machine because I was so smitten with the character of Luxo Jr. before I ever came to PIXAR and I just loved how every ounce of you saw it as an appliance and then you imbued a character on it, which is a lot more impressive and engaging than seeing something that is designed to be a character and trying to make you throw that on it."

Concept art for M-O.

6) EVE's voice actress is PIXAR employee Elissa Knight. Andrew Stanton called her in to do a scratch track, and he liked her performance so much that he decided to just use her as EVE in the movie instead of getting another actress.

7) "WALL-E", for those wondering, stands for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth Class". The gigantic robots seen in the garbage disposal on the Axiom are called WALL-As - which stands for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Axiom Class". EVE, meanwhile, stands for "Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator".

Concept art for the Axiom.

8) Why is there live action footage in the movie? Andrew Stanton, again, provides the answer - practical reasons. "Once I knew that one of the objects I wanted WALL-E to find would be an old musical, and we would be looking at actual footage, I said 'Well, he's going to be looking at live action people, that sets a precedent.' Now, any time I have him looking at real people, at footage from the past of any humans it should be the same world, so I made them live action humans." He felt he could get away with having the humans WALL-E actually encounters on the Axiom be animated because humans could have just evolved since then (and it would've probably been time-consuming to go all Roger Rabbit and have live action humans interacting with animated robots).

And why have Hello, Dolly be the movie that WALL-E loves so much? Andrew claimed, "It's one of those things, I did it out of pure, unconscious abstraction at first. I just, sort of like an artist sticking two colors together and going, wow, I wonder why that works. I knew I wanted old fashioned against the future and I loved the idea of some sort of old-fashioned music playing against the stars. And there was something about that, I just loved the juxtaposition, and then I started searching around for what the song would be." He took a listen to "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", and decided it would work (and it did... that first scene where we see outer space and hear "Out there... there's a world outside of Yonkers..." always stuck in my mind since I saw the movie). Then Andrew thought some more about what the song was about, and he realized that its being about two guys who want to go into the big city, experience life, and kiss a girl has "such a simple innocence to it that almost is WALL-E." After that, he listened to the other songs and found "It Only Takes a Moment". "Suddenly I realized how powerful these songs could be to convey story and push story along for me. Particularly the idea of holding hands, because I have two characters who can't say 'I love you', they have to find some other way to express it, and holding hands is one of the most intimate things you can do in public with somebody in many cultures, and I thought that was just a perfect way to convey that over the course of the movie, so then I was hooked," Andrew said. Ironically, WALL-E's music was composed by Thomas Newman, who is the nephew of Hello, Dolly's co-scorer Lionel Newman.

9) Before settling on Hello, Dolly songs, Andrew's initial idea was to have French swing music in the movie. He decided against it after the release of 2003's The Triplets of Belleville, which also featured French swing music, and was beaten by Andrew's previously-directed PIXAR film Finding Nemo for the Best Animated Feature Academy Award - Andrew didn't want people to think he was copying that movie.

10) To learn how to tell a story purely through visuals, the filmmakers watched Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies during their lunch hours. In just eighteen months, they'd managed to watch every single movie starring them.

Insert joke about WALL-E being a hoarder here.

11) For a while, the movie didn't have humans in it, but rather ALIENS (that pigeon from Bolt would approve). These aliens were boneless, gelatinous blobs with their own language and a giant castle at the back of the Axiom, who treated the robots shabbily, which apparently led to WALL-E starting a robot uprising. There was a twist - eventually, it would have turned out that the gelatinous blobs are what humans evolved into.

How did they come up with this idea? According to Andrew Stanton, the filmmakers consulted with a NASA scientist who told them that the reason why they haven't sent a human being to Mars is because if they did, disuse atrophy would kick in at some point - the lack of gravity would result in that human being losing a large percentage of their bones. Andrew thought that would be a perfect thing for people who've become dependent on technology doing everything for them (like the people on the Axiom) to deal with. The reason why they scrapped this idea is because Andrew eventually decided it was too bizarre, and it distanced the audience from the story emotionally. So instead they made the humans giant babies, which I personally think was the right choice over JELL-O aliens.

Incidentally, I fear that with how dependent on technology we've all become, eventually the human race IS going to end up like the humans in WALL-E - fat, lazy idiots who do nothing but sit in flying chairs and have fancy machinery do everything for them. That probably sounds irrational to you, but my fears are generally pretty irrational...

Concept art for the aliens.

12) WALL-E's little cockroach buddy is named Hal. This is a reference to both 1920s film producer Hal Roach and the computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (who was also the inspiration for AUTO). The painter robot that WALL-E meets among the robots in need of repair is named VN-GO, after painter Vincent Van Gough. Also, rumor has it that WALL-E himself is named after Walter Elias Disney, but I can't find official confirmation on that.

13) Remember the scene where the Captain is staring at portraits of past Axiom captains? The names of those past captains were taken from writers who worked at PIXAR, and their appearances are caricatures of those very writers (for example, Captain Thompson is named after Derek Thompson, a PIXAR story artist).

14) Andrew Stanton wanted the movie to look as though it was filmed on actual cameras. So he advised the animators to make the focus pulls look real and added lens flares and other camera imperfections. Cinematographer Roger Deakins was brought in as a consultant.

I have no idea what THIS is supposed to be concept art for... maybe the trailer
where WALL-E lives?

15) Early in development, the film was to be called "Trash Planet".

16) Andrew Stanton was determined not do "Disneyfy" Hal. "I took it as a challenge: 'Come on! We can make a cute cockroach! And without the aid of little gloves,'" he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "And you can. You can make almost anything cute, if you try hard enough."

17) Yes, there are indeed references to other PIXAR movies in the movie. Among the things WALL-E has in his collection are toys of Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. and Rex from Toy Story. There's also a piggy bank that may or may not be Hamm. Crush from Finding Nemo appears as well, during the end credits.

Rex is in between the bowling pins.

Speaking of Toy Story, you probably already know that the Pizza Planet Truck is one of the things EVE scans while looking for the plant. But you might not have spotted Skinner's scooter from Ratatouille and some orange traffic cones from Toy Story 2 among the trash, or Luxo Jr. among the things that WALL-E uses to make a statue of EVE, or Carl from Up's walking cane among the things in WALL-E's trailer, or a billboard for Eggman Movers, the same moving company Andy's family used in Toy Story, among the Buy 'n' Large ads. Oh, and those little mouse robots crawling on EVE in the trash compactor? They're called REM-Es, another Ratatouille reference.

Are there any references to non-PIXAR Disney movies? Well, there's a genie's lamp in WALL-E's collection as well. This could be a reference to Aladdin.

You can see the lamp and the piggy bank that may or may not be Hamm in this screencap.

18) AUTO was initially an independently-moving robot as opposed to a sentient steering wheel (similar to EVE, but with a more sinister look). There was a scene where he secretly goes to the databanks of the ship and we'd find out what his agenda was before the other characters did - Andrew Stanton described it as "a very funny scene that was sort of Get Smart of going through these secret doors and stuff and he goes down this long shaft and he has to give this eye scan, in the middle of the shaft, to get the ID to go into this bank, and he leans and his visor just goes tumbling all the way down the shaft." It turned out to not be that interesting.

Andrew Stanton said, "The one character that I did want to have speak, besides WALL-E and EVE having sort of limited skills in saying a single word and phrases, was AUTO. I really wanted AUTO to be the extreme end of programming... which would be a character that, you know, is about as soulless and as zeroes and ones and binary and cold as you could make it." He is "voiced" by the Apple computers' "MacTalk" program, which Andrew thought would be perfect for AUTO because of how monotone and soulless it sounds.

19) I found out about this one from Reddit - if you look closely during the scene where WALL-E is struck by lightning, the electricity charges WALL-E's battery back to full.

20) Production designer Ralph Eggleston was inspired by NASA paintings from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as concept art for Disneyland's Tomorrowland. The PIXAR animation team also made field trips to recycling stations to watch giant trash crushers and other machinery at work.

"The Lorax tried to warn us about this..."

21) Andrew Stanton was thrilled to collaborate with Peter Gabriel for the song "Down to Earth" that plays during the credits. "Working with Peter has been one of the biggest highlights of my professional career," he claimed. "When it came to the ending for our film, I knew that we needed to add some additional story points and create something with a global feel to it. And it suddenly dawned on me that Peter is the father of world music to much of the Western world. I got completely seduced with the idea of putting him and Tom in a room together and seeing what they could come up with. Tom went to London to jam with Peter, and it was like this whirlwind romance. Suddenly, there was this amazing Thomas Newman/Peter Gabriel song called 'Down to Earth' that is just beyond my wildest dreams. Peter's lyrics are so deceivingly simple, but they're spot on. I was so moved when I heard the lyrics, because they were so clever and fit so well. They felt completely indicative of Peter Gabriel, and knowing that it was based on the story I had written and that I had any association whatsoever with, it really blew my mind."

22) Andrew always thought of WALL-E as sort of like a beachcomber, a character that "collected things because he didn't understand what the world was before humanity left". Apparently, it was easy for the folks at PIXAR to think of things for WALL-E to collect - things that would probably fascinate and spark curiosity in a child, but would also "read" very easily onscreen. "I'd say for every one item you actually see in [WALL-E's] truck, there's probably twenty-five to thirty that you never get appreciated... all those shelves truly rotate, they all have different items in each one of them, they all have a little bit of a story behind them," he says in the film's audio commentary on the DVD. Also, the fact that it's a truck was based on the folks at PIXAR's love of Tonka trucks.

23) The sound that WALL-E makes when he's fully charged is the same sound a Macintosh computer makes when it starts up. This could be a reference to how PIXAR and Apple share a co-founder, Steve Jobs. Incidentally, you can hear the same sound in Cars 3 at one point.

Concept art for the interior of the Axiom.

24) The part where the Captain plays with the model of the Axiom and the globe was ad-libbed by Jeff Garlin. This was Jeff's first role in a PIXAR movie - after this, he voiced Buttercup the unicorn in Toy Story 3 and Otis, a car that Mater helps near the beginning of Cars 2.

"Because you're reading into everything, because you don't know what's happened to humanity in seven-hundred years, you don't know what the rules are," Andrew explained, "We found that whenever we played something almost sort of Homer Simpson-esque, people would just assume 'Okay, humanity got dumb. Humanity got really dumb.' And people would not like humanity, or especially the captain representing humanity. So we finally decided to stop doing things like that, and learned how to make [the Captain] just come across as tired, but still very vocal... just unmotivated at first, and it really opened our eyes to how we should be playing the Captain."

25) Y'know that one robot typing on a keyboard? The keyboard consists entirely of ones and zeroes. This is a reference to the binary code of ones and zeroes that technology is made from.

26) The first two humans you see on the Axiom are voiced by Andrew Stanton and Jeff Pidgeon. They were roommates in college, so they thought it'd be natural for them to voice characters having a conversation that goes like this: "What do you wanna do?" "I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?".

As Andrew put it, "We just thought we'd have to fall into old habits to have that discussion."

27) The use of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" when the Captain actually stands up and starts walking was initially just a joke. Then the filmmakers saw test audiences going wild - one member was actually punching the air triumphantly. So they kept it in.

There's a good chance you saw one of these standing in your local movie theater.

28) So where exactly does WALL-E live? I mean, aside from "on Earth, ga-doy". Somebody on Quora.com named Shawn Hoffman did some research and deduced that, since there's at least one nuclear power plant and a wind farm, plus WALL-E's truck sits on the interstate overlooking a large waterway, the spot on Earth where WALL-E lives is somewhere in the eastern seaboard, somewhere around the Carolinas. Somebody else suggested Philadelphia. Another common guess is New York City.

29) Originally, the film just had EVE repair WALL-E and presto, he's back to normal. There was a joke where he noticed a giant hole in the roof of his truck and was confused by it, then EVE blocked his view of it. But the filmmakers realized, that wasn't very dramatic - he's a machine, of COURSE they'd be able to repair WALL-E, why should anybody be worried when he's damaged? So they came up with the "WALL-E initially doesn't remember anything other than his directive of making trash cubes" thing to add a bit more to the ending.

30) To promote the movie, Walt Disney Imagineering built an animatronic of WALL-E, planning to have it roam the Disney theme parks at some point. It showed up in places like the Philadelphia Science Museum, the Franklin Institute, and a D23 expo, but never made it to the parks because there were concerns he could run over somebody's foot. A fan of the film has made his own WALL-E animatronic as well:

31) Here's another fun fact regarding the Hello, Dolly songs - years after the film's release, Andrew Stanton went to see the Broadway revival of the original stage show. Going backstage, he learned that Gavin Creel, who played Cornelius, had a dog named WALL-E, and that one of the dressers had named her daughter after EVE.

This billboard towered over Sunset Boulevard at some point in
2008.

32) The film obviously has an environmental message and a bit of mockery of big corporations with all the Buy 'n' Large stuff. But according to Andrew Stanton, "I wasn't trying to be anti anything. I think I was just trying to go 'Look, too much of a good thing of anything is a cautionary tale.' Honestly, everything I did was in reverse. It was like I've gotta go with trash because I love what it does to my main character and it's very clear, and then I went backwards from that. I said 'Why would there be so much trash?'. Well, it'd be really easy for me to show we'd bought too much stuff and it'd be really easy to show that without having to have it explained and it's kind of fun. It's fun to be satirical like that. You know we all have that sort of Simpsons bent, you know. So I just went with what felt somewhat true. I mean I think we've always felt that we have to be sort of disciplined in that area."

In that interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he added, "I hate being preached to and I assume other people do too in a movie. So I went there very reluctantly, and it ended up being out of pure necessity to my main drive, which was I just wanted to believe in the authenticity of why WALL-E was alone. It was really logic at the time, so we're talking 2005-06, that led me to any of the science and environmental and sociological choices that I did. I just went with kinda what was happening around me. We were having anywhere from two to a dozen boxes from Amazon show up at my doorstep every other day... I just started to think, like, 'Where does all this [CENSORED BECAUSE I WANNA KEEP THIS BLOG PG] go?'"

33) After the end credits, there are three logos. The first is, natch, the Walt Disney Pictures logo. The second is the PIXAR logo, which includes a gag where Luxo Jr.'s bulb goes out. So WALL-E enters the scene and replaces the bulb - look closely and you'll see that the bulb he replaces it with is a more eco-friendly one. And the third logo? It's the one for Buy 'n' Large!

Here's one more fun fact for you... I have a theory that you can put WALL-E in any picture (well, maybe not ANY picture, but you know what I mean) and it'll automatically become hilarious. Let's see if it does:

Well? Does it?

Sources:
- https://variety.com/2008/digital/news/how-to-build-a-better-robot-1117987668/
- https://www.moviefone.com/news/wall-e-pixar-movie-trivia/
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70024/10-space-age-facts-about-walle
- https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/45885-wall%C2%95e-writerdirector-andrew-stanton
- https://web.archive.org/web/20080626061223/http:/www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_14899.html
- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/wall-e-director-andrew-stanton-film-was-inspired-by-amazon-apple-1279519/
- https://ew.com/movies/2018/06/27/wall-e-anniversary-andrew-stanton-hello-dolly/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110711103245/http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/wall-e/media/downloads/WALLEProductionNotes.pdf
- The film's DVD commentary

Well, there you go. Thirty-three (technically thirty-four, but thirty-three REAL ones) fun facts about WALL-E. Usually I only have thirty-one fun facts in these "Did You Know?"s, but I decided to do thirty-three this time. Maybe I'll do thirty-three in ALL of my "Did You Know?"s from now one. We'll just have to wait and see...

Let's Watch This... Again: An Episode of "Ned's Newt"

It's time for another re-review! You probably recall that in 2019, I did a review of a Nelvana cartoon called Ned's Newt. I didn't care much for it.

Ned's Newt was the creation of Mike Burgess and Andy Knight. It premiered on Teletoon in Canada in October 1997, then in the United States it premiered on Fox Kids in 1998. Three seasons were produced, but apparently only the first season aired in the U.S.

What is the plot? Well, a kid named Ned (voiced by Tracy Moore) has saved up enough money to buy a pet. When he gets to the pet shop, he finds the only thing he can afford is a newt, so he buys one and names it Newton. Then he becomes annoyed that the newt doesn't do anything but sit on a rock in his bowl. It's a newt, Ned, what did you expect it to do? Card tricks?

He goes to the pet shop and complains to the owner, who gives him a can of "Zippo For Newt" pet food, warning him not to give his pet too much. So, Ned feeds Newton a little of the stuff and... nothing happens. He leaves the can of "Zippo For Newt" by the bowl and goes to bed, and in the middle of the night Newton climbs out of his bowl and helps himself to the stuff. Thus, Ned discovers the reason WHY you shouldn't give a newt too much "Zippo For Newt" - it causes them to become giant shapeshifters who constantly make unfunny pop culture references.

Newton is voiced by comedian Harland Williams, except for a couple episodes of the fourth season where he stopped showing up to recording sessions and voice actor Ron Pardo filled in. Most episodes focus on Newton dragging Ned into some sort of outrageous escapade, and as soon as Ned gets into hot water the effects of "Zippo For Newt" wear off and Newton's back to being a normal newt, absolving him of all blame while Ned gets punished. Because who DOESN'T love cartoons where a character gets another character into trouble and gets away with it? Also, Ned tries not to let Newton be discovered by anyone, even though that'd make it a little easier to explain the outrageous shenanigans he gets into (nobody's going to believe a giant talking newt made him do it if he tells them that). Maybe he's afraid that if people find out about Newton, he'll get captured by scientists and tested on in a lab or something? Of course, at least twice throughout one of the episodes I previously reviewed, Newton was around other people and they never questioned the presence of a giant talking newt - he was wearing clothes but it was still preeeeeeeeeeeetty obvious that he wasn't human - so I don't know what Ned is so worried about.

The episode I watched previously was the show's fourth, which consisted of the segments "Mars Dilemma" (in which Ned and Newton go to Mars to get tomato paste, which is apparently what Mars is made of) and "Saturday Night Fervor" (in which Newton tries to help Ned impress a girl he likes at the school dance). I didn't care for either episode, but I know there are some folks who look back on the show fondly, so it's entirely possible I just happened to watch one of the weaker episodes. We'll be watching the ninth episode today, which consists of the segments "Help Me, I'm Bald" and "Planes, Trains and Newtmobiles", to see if I judged the show too hastily.

"Help Me, I'm Bald" starts with Ned trying to style his hair - all two stands of 'em. I don't think it's ever specified in the show why Ned is bald. Maybe he's the descendant of Dopey from Snow White? The baldness thing is genetic? Plus, it'd explain the big ears...

I'd say his being bald is likely Newton's fault, but the theme song shows that he was bald
when he bought Newton, so that can't be it...

Newton, doing an impression of a radio disc jockey, suggests that Ned take him to school. Ned refuses, reminding Newton that every time he takes him to school, he causes trouble. Plus, y'know, giant talking newt, and Ned does not want Newton to get captured by scientists and dissected.

Actually, come to think of it, if the thing that makes Newton a wacky talking shapeshifter is a mass-produced pet food, how come there aren't more giant talking newts in this world? Perhaps there are, and Ned just so happens to be the only kid in his town or state to have a pet newt. Actually, there is another episode where Newton meets another pet newt who he feeds "Zippo For Newt", so make of that what you will...

Sometimes, Ned really regrets not buying a fish from the pet store instead.

Honestly, maybe Ned SHOULD bring Newton to school with him. The only other option is leaving him to cause havoc at home. "At school I can LEARN about people! Their DREAMS! Their HOPES!" Newton insists, to which Ned suggests that he learn about people by watching TV. Newton can do that.

Newton spends the day watching commercials for products that supposedly improve peoples' lives, which he finds very informative. And then he actually BUYS those products, thinking that now he finally understands human beings. And then he does a Peter Lorre impression for some reason. I guess it's because Peter Lorre is one of those celebrities whose voices everybody recognizes even if they've never seen any of his movies.

Actually, if Newton doesn't know much about human beings, how does he know who Peter Lorre is?

Maybe he caught a Boo Berry commercial while watching TV and he's actually doing an impression
of HIM?

Then some guy with a vacuum cleaner shows up at the door to try and sell it to Newton, but Newton hijacks his sales pitch. After about a minute, the guy does what anybody would do if they encountered Newton and his unfunny shenanigans and makes a run for it.

Quick question, where exactly are Ned's parents while all of this is going on? Is it ever established if they have jobs?

"So, Ted, did you make your sales quota today?"

"Well, I ALMOST did... then I knocked on one door and this big blue newt answered
and started torturing me."

"...Ted, I think you've been working too hard."

When Ned returns home, Newton declares that he's learned so much about humans. And now he's going to make Ned whole again. "I'm gonna make you into a real boy!" he says, turning into Geppetto.

Y'know, I think I'm beginning to see why Harland Williams stopped showing up to recording sessions. He probably realized how bad the material he was being fed was and decided to bail.

Even Drew Carey was a better Geppetto than Newton.

How does Newton plan to "make Ned whole again"? With decorative plates. Yeah, I don't know either. But Ned decides to go along with whatever Newton's plan is. Ned, you fool.

It's at this point I figured out that this episode doesn't have a plot. So far it's just eight minutes of Harland Williams bombing at stand-up (and Harland Williams is a successful stand-up comedian so I blame the weak material rather than him). Why is the episode even called "Help Me, I'm Bald" when there hasn't been a single reference to Ned being bald so far?

Ned agrees with me and declares that Newton is driving him crazy, but Newton still doesn't get the hint, eventually showing off all the crap he bought from infomercials to Ned. He also signed Ned up for several invaluable services. And how did he pay for all that? He didn't, so he and Ned promptly wind up receiving a bunch of bills.

Newton's expression here is the only funny thing in this episode thus far.

"Newton, this is JUNK! It's all junky junky garbage worthless JUNK!" Ned complains. Knowing that his parents will assume that HE bought all that stuff, he frantically tells Newton to help him hide all of it. But wouldn't you know it, the "Zippo For Newt" wears off and Newton is just a normal newt again. Either that or he just turned back into a normal newt voluntarily because he's okay with throwing Ned under the bus. I guess I can add this to my list of Reasons Why Newton is a Horrible Character:

1) He's annoying

2) He doesn't even look that much like a newt

3) Nothing that comes out of his mouth is funny

4) He's loud

5) He feels like somebody watched Aladdin and desperately wanted to do their own version of the Genie without understanding why the Genie worked

6) He wastes the talents of Harland Williams

7) He gives newts a bad name

8) He gives amphibians as a whole a bad name

9) He has no problem throwing Ned under the bus

10) Did I mention how annoying he was? Because he's very annoying

Ned's parents come in, but instead of assuming that Ned bought all the useless junk like you'd expect them to, they think THEY bought each other those things as anniversary presents, then proceed to each give Ned a dollar. But then they notice the bills...

So, yeah. Ned gets into trouble after all. We can add "constantly gets Ned into trouble and suffers no consequences" to the list of Reasons Why Newton is a Horrible Character. Next segment!

I really hope at some point Ned tells Newton, "Here's a good idea. Have a POINT. It makes things much more interesting for the listener!". It'd be a pointless pop culture reference, but at least it'd be cathartic.

Anyhow, "Planes, Trains and Newtmobiles" begins in the middle of the hot, hot desert. There's a gag where a frill-necked lizard eats a vulture... I notice that the show is actually funnier when Newton ISN'T onscreen... and then Ned's family shows up in an RV. They're on a road trip, and Ned is bored. So he gets out a packet of "Travel Zippo"...

No. No, no, no, no, NO. Bad idea, Ned. Do not feed Newton any of that stuff. There are much better ways to cure boredom.

Put down the packet, Ned. Put it down. Keep it AWAY from Newton's mouth...

Alas, he feeds it to Newton and it's WHACKY NEWTON ANTICS TIME. Don't blame me when Newton eventually blows up the RV or demolishes Mount Rushmore and frames YOU for it, Ned.

"This isn't sunscreen on my nose. It's seagull poop!"

Newton finds a bingo sheet next to his bowl. According to Ned, you cross off stuff on it that you see from the car. Problem is, there's no picture of a thousand miles of sand, so playing it isn't much fun. By the way, how come Ned's parents don't hear Newton's loud and obnoxious yammering?

Anyhow, the RV (or "Mega-Camper", as Ned calls it) stops at a gas station. Ned says that his parents told him not to leave the RV, but Newton is all "Come on, who are you gonna listen to, them or ME?". Before Ned can decide, Newton grabs him and drags him out of the RV. And wouldn't you know it, this leads to Ned's parents driving off without them.

I warned you not to feed Newton any of that "Travel Zippo", Ned. WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN
TO ME?!

There's one joke here that I'll admit I did find pretty funny. Ned and Newton start hitchhiking, and they see something approaching. Newton says it's just a mirage, and then you see a typical cartoon mirage - palm trees, a pool of water, that sort of thing - drive by. I'll give the cartoon that.

After crawling through the desert, Ned and Newton stumble upon a big pointy metal hut that they take shelter inside. But it's actually a rocket ship, and inside Newton sees a picture of a rocket with smoke coming out of its rear. Because Newton is an idiot, he assumes that it's the button that turns on the air conditioning and presses it.

"GET... ME... DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWN!"

The rocket lands in Russia. Ned is afraid that his parents will be worried about him, but if you can believe it, they STILL haven't noticed that he's mysteriously vanished. To get back, Ned and Newton hop aboard a boat... a boat that gets caught in a storm at sea and starts to sink. Which shouldn't be too bad for Newton, since he's an amphibian and all...

Sinking to the bottom of the ocean, Ned and Newton discover Atlantis. Yeah, okay. We can throw Atlantis into the episode all of a sudden.

"Starfish Bucks". Huh. A pop culture reference that's actually kind of funny...

Newton somehow causes Atlantis to rise back to the surface by... tripping on somebody's fishing wire? Huh?

Then Ned and Newton manage to borrow a sleigh from Santa Claus. How'd they do that? In the pet shop, Newton explains, he roomed with Rudolph's brother, Reardolph. His back end lit up. I'm not sure what the joke there is supposed to be.

"I also knew Rudolph's other brother, Rusty. He helped save Christmas, too. Brought
some kid to the North Pole to help the elves with computer trouble."

But once again Newton manages to screw things up and they fall out of the sleigh and into a pyramid. And then an Egyptian subway pulls up... just go with it... and we get a montage of Ned and Newton traveling.

Blah blah blah, the "Zippo" wears off just as Newton has taken on the form of a hot air balloon that Ned is riding in, turning him back into a regular newt and sending Ned into a free fall. Ned falls through the RV's sunroof, his parents none the wiser. He tells them he was playing Bingo.

What's the Verdict?

Ned's Newt is mediocre at best. And most of that falls on the fact that the titular character, Newton, is obnoxious. You have to be very careful when writing a WHACKY CHARACTER WHO DOES WHACKY STUFF 'CAUSE THEY'RE SO GOSH-DARN WHACKY - when done poorly, they're not funny, just irritating. Newton's entire purpose as a character is to mess things up for Ned and do failed comedy routines. I just wound up wondering why Ned would even want him around. Does the series finale have Ned feeding Newton to a flock of herons or something? Because I would like to see that episode.

But I will say this, the show's production values are good. The animation is solid, the voice actors (aside from Harland Williams, who's bogged down by a horrible script) do a fine job, and the theme song rocks (although I object to its claim that Newton is "where the fun is at". That is a big fat lie). If the most prominent character weren't so annoying, this could've been a very good show. If you'd like to watch it for yourself, it's streaming on Tubi and Pluto TV.

Fun fact - author and cartoonist Edward Gorey claimed in a 1998 interview that he thought this was "the greatest". Opinions are opinions, of course, but I still have to raise an eyebrow.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Billy Dilley's Super-Duper Subterranean Summer"

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.

It's the middle of winter. There is currently a blanket of snow outside my house. Which means it's a perfect time to review a cartoon that takes place during the summer, am I right?

Billy Dilley's Super-Duper Subterranean Summer is another one of those shows I never watched because I was turned off by the art style. I know, I know, it's really unfair of me to judge a show solely by its art style, but apparently I'm not the only one who did that - the show only received thirteen episodes, a rarity for cartoons on Disney XD. It premiered in June 2017, the creation of SpongeBob SquarePants writer Aaron Springer. The premise is that these three junior high students named Marsha (voiced by internet vlogger Catherine Wayne), Zeke (Tom Kenny), and eccentric inventor Billy Dilley (Aaron Springer himself) find themselves in a strange land within the earth's core called Subterrania-Tania after a mishap with Billy's science project. Will they ever return to the surface? Considering that the show only got thirteen episodes, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that we never actually see them do that (if I'm wrong, please fill me in).

So, yeah, the art style, combined with what little I've heard about the show, be they good things or bad things, led me to not watch it. It probably doesn't help that Disney's cartoons in the 2010s were, in my opinion, a mixed bag. Sometimes you'd get Wander Over Yonder, sometimes you'd get Pickle and Peanut. But I suppose it's only fair that I give it a chance. I mean, if nothing else, there's a lot of talented people who worked on this - Aaron Springer worked on SpongeBob, for one thing. And if you know me, you know that I love SpongeBob. In fact, there are a LOT of writers who worked on SpongeBob involved with this show - Derek Drymon, Zeus Cervas, Casey Alexander, Merriwether Williams, Clay Morrow... who knows? Maybe I'll enjoy it.

So, let's watch the first episode of the show (I was originally going to review the eleventh episode, but one of the two segments in that one involves Zeke trying to avoid cleaning up trash and I've already reviewed two other cartoons with that exact plotline already and I don't want to seem repetitive) and see if it's a hidden gem that had the potential to be great... or if it's something that should've stayed in the earth's core.

This is another one of those shows where each episode is two segments in one. Our first segment "Lab Friends... Forever?", starts with a strange sort of vehicle that looks like a rocket with an army tank's treads falling into a canyon. Inside the vehicle are our three main characters. Billy pauses the episode to fill us in as to what's going on: "That's me, Billy Dilley. These are my two lab friends, Zeke and Marsha." Also along for the ride is Billy's hideous pet rat, Anaximander. And this is where we run into our first problem... Billy has a really annoying voice.

Not "Herbert from Family Guy" levels of annoying, but annoying.

Apparently, this whole mess that they're in started on a normal day at school. Billy explains that he needed two "candidates" for that year's science fair. Quick question, do schools still do science fairs? I don't recall any of my schools ever doing one. Was this just something schools stopped doing by the 2000s?

Anyhow, Zeke was failing science class and heading for summer school and Marsha needed a good grade for the school newspaper, so they teamed up with Billy on his project for the fair. What's his project? That vehicle we saw earlier, the Cheeserator. It's supposed to put holes in Swiss cheese.

I already implied this in my review of Yakkity Yak, but... cheese is not funny. It's tasty, sure, but I wouldn't call it funny. Unless you're in a Wallace and Gromit short. Then you can make characters talking about cheese funny.

This is admittedly a nitpick, but why is Billy's hair SHINY?

The Cheeserator is great for putting holes in really, really big cheese, which the school just so happens to have for whatever reason. But then the vehicle's cord (it needs to be plugged in) is randomly struck by lightning and it randomly flies out of the cheese and starts digging a hole in the Earth. Totally how lightning works, right?

So for those of you who haven't figured it out already, this show is loosely inspired by Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. I assume any resemblance to the book's 2008 movie adaptation (remember that one? With Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutchinson? Anyone else remember that? Okay...) is entirely coincidental.

Billy, Zeke and Marsha land in what looks like a cross between Amphibia and Bedrock from The Flintstones. This leads to a few minutes of Billy demonstrating that he's quite possibly INSANE.

This makes slightly more sense in context. SLIGHTLY.

Then Billy discovers an ancient subterranean species, these two buck-toothed lizard-like guards who get an extremely detailed and disgusting close-up. My apologies for the nightmares that the following screencap might cause you:

When the guards discover that Billy, Zeke, and Marsha hail from the surface, they lock them in a cage. They don't take kindly to surface-dwellers 'round these here parts. "You've really made a mess of things this time, Billy Dilley," Billy laments.

But then, through the power of a dance routine, Billy manages to swipe the key to the cage from a guard, allowing them to make their escape... or at least Zeke and Marsha do. Billy gets his head stuck in a wheel (don't ask) and gets taken to the leader of these creatures, the Great Gorkager (Brian Posehn).

Imagine that thing with the voice of Burt from The Big Bang Theory. That'll amuse you
a lot more than this show has amused me thus far.

The Great Gorkager demands that Billy entertain him or else he'll smash him with a hammer he might've borrowed from Thor. So what does Billy do? He has his belly "talk". Y'know that thing where somebody tries to make their belly button look like a mouth? He does that. In the words of Starscream, this is bad comedy.

The creatures agree with me and start "boo"-ing Billy, but then he throws a glass of water in one of the creatures' face and they all start laughing. Then they all start smashing watermelons. Then the Great Gorkager finds out that Billy is from the surface, and he gets MAD! Why does he hate surface-dwellers? I don't know, they don't explain. Just as he's about to smash Billy with his hammer, Zeke and Marsha distract him by imitating Billy's antics from earlier in the episode, convincing the Great Gorkager that they're not surface-dwellers but rather the ultra-rare Wormasaurus Rex.

Again, this all makes slightly more sense in context.

That night, Zeke asks Billy how long it's gonna take to fix the Cheeserator. Billy's guess: all summer. Zeke is cool with that because it means he doesn't have to go to summer school. Oh, sure, their parents are probably going to run themselves ragged looking for them (and the school might wind up getting sued for negligence) and they have no idea how they're going to survive, but who cares?

Speaking of surviving, it's time for our next segment, "Surviving Billy".

This segment starts off with that cliched joke where a main character wakes up and thinks that the events of a previous episode were all just a dream, but wouldn't you know it, they find out it WASN'T a dream at all. Haven't seen THAT joke before. Then Billy shows up channeling George of the Jungle.

Alas, he seems to specifically be channeling the annoying 2007 reboot version.

Billy found a hospitable lagoon while Zeke and Marsha were sleeping, and we get the first funny joke in the episode. Billy says that he's glad he has his swimsuit, to which Zeke points at his clothes and asks, "THAT'S your swimsuit?" Billy says no, those are just his regular clothes, and then he takes them off, revealing an identical pair of clothes underneath - which, he claims, is his actual swimsuit. I'll give 'em this, that was honestly kind of funny.

Well, at least it WOULD'VE been funny if they had just stopped there. But nope, then Marsha points out that his swimsuit looks exactly the same as his regular clothes. "From the FRONT," Billy claims, then he turns around... and Zeke and Marsha react with repulsion. I guess the indication is that the swimsuit shows off his bare butt? Thank you for that mental image. And for ruining the only funny joke in the episode thus far.

Here's a screencap of Billy's pet rat. Repulsive little fellow, isn't he?

Suddenly there's a pterodactyl. A grimy green pterodactyl with bulbous red eyes. Is it supposed to be a zombie or something?

I believe the scientific name for this beast is the Pterodactylus Grinchylus.

The zombie pterodactyl grabs them in its talons and carries them to its giant nest. Fortunately, from the nest Billy can see the Cheeserator - which just so happens to have a survival pack on board that'll get them through the summer. "You got us into this mess, you're getting us OUT!" Zeke snaps. Billy's suggestion? They should ask Mr. Whatzit.

Who's Mr. Whatzit? Well, it's an action figure with a pull-string that Billy has in his pocket, based on a character from a TV show that Billy likes. Oh, great, is this gonna turn into a knockoff of the SpongeBob episode with the Magic Conch Shell?

"Be careful, guys, he's still in mint condition!"

Mr. Whatzit gives Billy the idea to make a whirligig out of egg shell pieces. Sounds strange, but they actually manage to pull it off. They even give it legs with little booties.

I wonder what they used for glue (actually, I don't wanna know. I have the uneasy feeling
that it was pterodactyl poop or something gross like that).

They push it to the edge, and it flies... without them in it. But then the pterodactyl pushes them out of the nest, and they land in the whirligig... which promptly cracks under their feet (it's made out of egg shells, remember), and they fall into a giant patch of briars.

Don't worry, Billy was born and bred in the briar patch.

How will they get out of THIS mess? Once again, Billy turns to Mr. Whatzit, who gives them the idea to run... right into a pool of lava. They manage to avoid being roasted alive in the lava by running on a giant stone wheel, but then Billy pauses to tie his shoe and they all fall off the wheel and get flattened by it. Fortunately, they survive being flattened by a giant stone wheel since they're, y'know, cartoon characters.

So then Billy takes out Mr. Whatzit's teeny-tiny pocket compass... which, as it turns out, doesn't actually work. By now, Marsha and Zeke have had enough of Billy (that makes three of us), and Zeke grabs Mr. Whatzit and throws it off a cliff, leading Billy to jump off the cliff after it.

Suddenly, a giant spider shows up and traps Zeke and Marsha in its web. I guess they DO sort of look like giant flies if you squint at them...

I have a headcanon: Zeke is actually the son of Yumi. I mean, they have the same hairstyle
and sense of fashion, so it's entirely possible.

Billy hears Zeke and Marsha's shouts for help just as he's about to save Mr. Whatzit, which of course leads to a "he can't save Zeke and Marsha AND Mr. Whatzit, who's he gonna save, isn't this suspenseful?!" moment. He takes out the spider, then falls into the web, which promptly launches him, Zeke and Marsha into the air. They land next to the Cheeserator. And what's in the Cheeserator's emergency survival pack?

Useless junk, of course! But there's ANOTHER emergency survival pack in the Cheeserator full of food. Then they build a shelter out of a few non-essential scraps from the Cheeserator. I was expecting there to be a joke about how those non-essential scraps actually WERE essential to the Cheeserator after all, but nope (maybe they were saving that joke for another episode). Instead, the rat shows up with Mr. Whatzit. We end with Billy screeching "MR. WHATZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"

Oh, so THAT'S where Anne's other shoe wound up...

What's the Verdict?

Oy. How do you get a bunch of people who worked on shows like SpongeBob, Camp Lazlo, Wander Over Yonder, and The Angry Beavers together to make a cartoon and the result is THIS? Okay, maybe it's not the WORST cartoon show Disney's ever done, but it's preeeeeeeeeeetty bad. The characters are annoying and/or one-note. Most of the jokes fall flat, and whenever there's a joke that's actually kind of funny they ruin it by dragging it out and giving it a horrible punchline. The art style is ugly, and even the animation isn't anything to write home about. Not to mention Catherine Wayne and Tom Kenny give weak performances, and Aaron Springer's performance as Billy is just obnoxious.

If this first episode is any indication, I can see why Billy Dilley's Super-Duper Subterranean Summer only got thirteen. There were far better cartoons on Disney XD at the time. I wouldn't recommend watching it, but if you want to give it a try yourself, it's on Disney Plus.

Yes, this is on Disney Plus but The Weekenders and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command aren't. That's totally fair, isn't it?