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?