Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Sitting Ducks"

Sitting Ducks is yet another one of those shows that I remember hearing about, but never actually watched. It was based on a lithograph by Canadian poster artist Michael Bedard in 1977 depicting three white ducks with sunglasses sitting in beach chairs - or rather by the 1998 picture book Mr. Bedard wrote based on the lithograph. In the book, alligators hatch ducks in a "duck factory" and then load them up on trucks to a duck-populated city called Duck Town (methinks the gators aren't very good at thinking of names). One day, an egg rolls off the assembly line and lands on the factory floor, emerging from it a little duck who encounters one of the alligators. The alligator smuggles the duck out of the factory. Why are the alligators hatching ducks? So they can let the ducks fatten themselves up in the city and then eat them. Obviously. Of course, the alligator and the duck become friends, and then the duck goes to Duck Town and tells the other ducks about what's going on and that if they work out, they'll be able to fly south for the winter and escape the gators. So they do that and head to the Flapping Arms Seaside Resort.

Presumably, the showrunners thought that the "alligators fattening up ducks so they can eat them" part of the storyline was too dark, so they ditched the idea and just made the gators and ducks residents of two different towns: Swampwood and the aforementioned Ducktown. The main duck and alligator from the book are given the names of Bill (voiced by Ian James Corlett) and Aldo (Dave "Squatch" Ward), who have to put up with everyone else being all "OH, DUCKS AND ALLIGATORS CAN'T BE FRIENDS!". Think of it as The Fox and the Hound (note to self: review that movie at some point) with less melodrama.

Michael Bedard served as an executive producer, with Terry Shakespeare, David Molina, and (in Season 2) Gary Selvaggio the creative directors. The show premiered on Cartoon Network in September 2001 and received two seasons, each one consisting of thirteen episodes. Is the show any good? Let's find out, shall we? We'll be watching the third episode, which consists of the segments "Peeking Duck" and "Fred's Meltdown".

We start off with Bill and Aldo at the beach. Aldo's stomach is growling and he's getting tired of eating duck food like a plankton burger with a side of flies (yes, ducks actually do eat flies. Don't know if they eat plankton, however). He's really, really tempted to eat a duck. It must be really hard to be a cartoon character whose best friend is their species' favorite meal. Maybe Aldo and Freddy the Ferret from Barnyard should start a support group.

Please forgive the lousy quality of the screencaps.

Are ducks really the only things that the alligators of Swampwood eat? Real alligators eat a lot of different things - fish, mollusks, birds, small mammals, turtles, snakes, frogs, crayfish... young alligators even eat insects, just like the ducks in Ducktown, because they're small and easy to catch. Can't the gators just find some frogs to munch on and leave the ducks alone?

That night, Bill shows off his new telescope to his pals Ed (Louis Chirillo), Oly (Phil Hayes), and Waddle (Jay Brazeau). Alas, they want to use the telescope to spy on hot girl ducks in other apartments. That's not exactly PC, guys...

The other three nephews that Donald doesn't like to talk about - Sleazy, Cheesy and Queasy.

Bill, disgusted by the other three ducks' privacy-violating ways, kicks Ed, Oly and Waddle out of his apartment. He laments to his pet parrot, Jerry, that some ducks can be so rude. It really ruffles his feathers.

I find it kind of strange that Bill has a pet parrot. I mean, I know ducks and parrots aren't that closely related (at least I don't THINK they are), but it raises some confusing questions. In addition to ducks, the show also has anthropomorphic penguins and crows. How come some birds are anthropomorphic but others aren't?

Are parrots just to ducks, crows and penguins what humans are to chimpanzees? And if so,
why parrots specifically?

Bill tries to find Jupiter with his telescope, but while looking for it he spots Aldo in the window of his neighbors Claire and Cecil's apartment. Peculiar. The next morning, he goes over to their place and discovers that they're not home. VERY peculiar. And then he finds Aldo, spying on some sunbathing ducks and drooling. No, Aldo is not a peeping tom, get your minds out of the gutter.

Bill talks to Ed, Oly, and Waddle about Claire and Cecil's not being around while they're searching his refrigerator for relish to go with their chicken pot pie. Wait, ducks eat chicken pot pie? Isn't that cannibalism? Again, I know ducks and chickens aren't that closely related, but it's still a bird eating another bird. There's a reason why humans don't eat chimpanzees!

"Hey, Bill, you wanna join us for dinner tonight? We're going to KFC."

Ed and Oly tell Bill that Aldo must have eaten Claire and Cecil. "He's a gator! That's what they do!" Oly claims. Honestly, they don't have much room to judge Aldo for eating birds when they apparently have no problem chowing down on chicken pot pie. Bill, of course, isn't convinced, and then guess who barges through the door?

"Were you guys just talking about me? My ears would be burning if I had them!"

Ed, Oly and Waddle nervously dash out of the apartment. Bill asks Aldo if he knows where Cecil and Claire are, and he acts very suspicious. Gee, I wonder if Aldo really did eat them or if this is just a clever way of the writers to trick the audience into thinking he did when in fact he didn't.

Bill uses the telescope to see into Cecil and Claire's apartment that night, and wouldn't you know it, Aldo is in there again. And he's got an AXE!

"You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your
brains in."

Then Bill hears Aldo knocking on the door... wow, he got to Bill's apartment building from Cecil and Claire's really quickly. Does he have teleportation powers? Anyway, he asks Bill if he can borrow some salt, but Bill says no because he, uh, has a cold. "Ah, Jerry, how could I be thinking what I'm thinking? Aldo's my best friend," he tells his parrot. "On the other wing, where are Cecil and Claire? And, what was he CHOPPING? And why did he need SALT?"

So Bill enlists the help of Ed, Oly and Waddle to lower him down on a fishing line so he can see into Claire and Cecil's kitchen. This turns out to be difficult because Ed, Oly and Waddle start channeling the Three Stooges, and before Bill can get a good look he winds up falling into a trash can. Fortunately, Ed has a plan that can't fail - they'll sneak into the apartment through the air ducks... I mean, air DUCTS.

Are air ducts in real life really big enough for somebody to crawl around in? If not, where did this
cliche come from?

At one point, they find an apartment where a duck is painting a chicken... a chicken who, while plucked, looks at least somewhat anthropomorphic, which just raises further questions about the Three Idiots' wanting to eat chicken pot pie before. They also find apartments where a party and a yoga class are going on before they hear Aldo's voice laughing and saying "This is the best thing I've ever tasted!" But the vent it's coming from is closed, so they can't see into the apartment and find out just WHAT, exactly, Aldo is tasting. They manage to push the vent open and fall into the apartment, where they find Aldo... and also a very much alive Claire and Cecil.

What a twist!

You see, Cecil and Claire were out of town, and they asked Aldo to house-sit for them and watch their pet lizard. They asked Aldo not to tell Bill about it because they didn't want Bill's feelings to be hurt that they didn't ask him. Why did Aldo have the axe? He was making the lizard some cheese balls.

Oh, and apparently Waddle is a massive hypocrite because, after being all judgy of Aldo seemingly eating two sentient beings, he has no problem trying to chow down on the lizard.

Spit it out, Waddle! It can save you fifteen-percent or more on car insurance!

And that's about it. Next segment...

Ducktown has been caught in a heat wave. The sidewalks are hot enough to fry an egg on, which makes the ducks realize that walking around barefoot all the time might not be such a good idea. The ice cream shops are out of "Chocolate Tadpole Crunch", so Ed, Oly and Waddle decide to go see if Bill has some.

Speaking of Bill, when he goes outside to pick up his newspaper, he sees one of his few non-duck neighbors, Fred the penguin (also Phil Hayes), sliding around the hallway with blocks of ice tied to his feet. Curious, he goes over to the door to his neighbor's apartment and peers through the keyhole to see what's going on in there.

"Sorry, I can't talk right now. We're filming a Kid Cuisine ad in here."

When Fred answers the door, he grabs Bill and pulls him into his apartment. Inside, everything is made out of, or covered in, ice and snow. It's a great place to chill out. Get it? Chill out? Ha, I amuse myself...

Meanwhile, who should be waddling up to Bill's apartment but Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest. They're confused when they find the apartment empty, then they hear the sound of the air conditioner from Fred's apartment. "I think he's got air conditioning. The penguin's got air conditioning!" Ed exclaims. "No fair! How come he gets air conditioning when all WE get is Bill's lousy fan?!" asks Oly.

His electricity bills are through the roof, but that's the price you pay (literally) for comfort.

I expected Ed, Oly and Waddle to be responsible for this episode's conflict somehow since they're, as established, incompetent morons, but instead, it's Fred's adjusting his many air conditioners. Because of that, all the power in Ducktown goes out. No power means no air conditioning or fans to help the ducks beat the heat, which means that Ducktown is gonna have a lot of cooked ducks on its hands... er, wings...

The other ducks blame Fred for this. "Let him go back to the South Pole!" one of them shouts. Ouch, bird racism. The fact that it's white ducks treating a mostly black penguin like this just makes it more uncomfortable. Haven't these ducks ever read The Sneetches? Fortunately, before the ducks can form a lynch mob and, I dunno, try to catapult Fred back to Antarctica or something, Ed suggests that they all head to the pond. Oh, and by the way, it turns out that Jerry the parrot can talk. So apparently he's just PRETENDING to be non-anthropomorphic for Bill? I wonder why that is...

"Quack it up now, you stupid little ducks... one day, the parrots will rise up and take over,
and it will be YOU we will keep in cages and force to eat crackers! I hope you like Triscuits,
you pitiful waterfowl! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAAAAAA!"

Fred's got a big problem - all the ice and snow in his apartment is melting. If he can't find more, he'll die. He begs Bill for help, so Bill takes him to the local ice-selling shop. Alas, they're out of ice. So then Bill takes Fred to the pond, but the other ducks are still racist against penguins and tell him to buzz off. When Fred faints, Ed claims that he deserves it for "hogging all of the air conditioning". Is it bad that I'm actually kind of hoping for the alligators to eat these racist ducks?

Then Bill gets an idea - he'll take Fred to Swampwood, where they still have power, and grocery stores with freezers full of ice cream! The downside is... well, gators want to eat him.

"I'm not a duck! I'm uh, uh, a GOOSE! Yeah, that's it! A goose!"

"Eh, same thing!"

The gators back Bill into a corner, but Fred saves the day by threatening to knock over a display of Gator Gulp soft drink (which is a really big deal to the gators, perhaps because if he knocks it over it will spill on the floor and they'll have to clean it up. Very inconvenient). Before they leave the store, Fred notices that among the ice cream flavors it has is "Chocolate Tadpole Crunch". Hmmm...

We then see all of the ducks at the pond enjoying some "Chocolate Tadpole Crunch". Since Bill and Fred brought it to them, everybody likes Fred now. Huzzah.

What's the Verdict?

Sitting Ducks is alright. The animation is kind of primitive, maybe it was more impressive in 2001 but nowadays, it looks more like cutscenes from a video game than a cartoon show. As far as the characters go, the ducks (other than Bill) can get annoying, but I did like Bill, Aldo, and Fred. Most of the jokes were pretty funny. Good soundtrack, too - the use of horns that sound reminiscent of a duck's quacking was a nice touch. Although I dunno if I'd call this a FANTASTIC show, it certainly wasn't bad. Will I be watching any more episodes? Probably not. But when it comes to cartoons starring ducks, I'd gladly take this over something like Quack Pack.

If you want to watch the show for yourself, there were some VHS releases in 2004, as well as a "Season 1" DVD... that actually featured all of Season 2's episodes and only one of Season 1's episodes for some reason. Fortunately, almost every episode can be found via the Internet Archive.

I'm sure you're probably all getting tired of me reviewing cartoons that I find just okay, but I have no idea HOW I'll feel about a cartoon before I start the review. Maybe that's the main reason why so many of these shows fell into obscurity - if it's not really good (like Hey Arnold, for example) or really bad (like Fanboy and Chum-Chum), there isn't a whole lot to talk about. I dunno, maybe the show just had a lousy time slot and THAT'S why it wasn't a bigger hit. I don't think I watched much Cartoon Network in 2001, so I wouldn't know...

Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "Beauty and the Beast"

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, 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.

Ask somebody - anybody - what their favorite Disney movies are. There's a very good chance that Beauty and the Beast will be somewhere in the top five. The original, not the 2017 live action remake. We don't talk about that one.

This is one of THE most iconic animated movies in the history of cinema, and for good reason. It's got everything that people think of when they think of animated Disney movies - charming characters, beautiful animation, wonderful songs, all that stuff. Disney doesn't make movies like it anymore.

But there's a lot that you likely don't know already about the film. For example, did you know that...

1) The original choice for the voice of Belle was Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel from The Little Mermaid. Liz Callaway, who would go on to provide the singing voice of Jasmine in the Aladdin sequels, also auditioned. In the end, of course, the role went to Paige O'Hara, who incidentally has been friends with Jodi Benson since 1980, quite a few years before they both gave voice to Disney princesses. Liz Callaway is still in the movie - you can hear her during the opening song, "Belle".

Concept art for Belle.

2) Speaking of Ariel, Kirk Wise said in 1991 that "We were absolutely aware that comparisons to The Little Mermaid would be inevitable because we were working in the same realm: a Disney fairy tale with a strong female lead. We didn't want Belle's characterization to go in the same direction as Ariel's. Ariel was definitely the All American teenager, while we pictured Belle as a little older, a little wiser and a little more sophisticated. In addition, Belle is very protective of her father unlike Ariel."

Linda Woolverton, the film's writer, based Belle on Jo March from Little Women. As she put it, "Though the character of Jo is more tomboyish, both were strong, active women who loved to read - and wanted more than life was offering them." Gaston, meanwhile, was inspired by some of Linda's previous boyfriends.

3) Apparently, at one point in the film's development, Belle and the Beast weren't going to hook up - they were going to be just friends. Linda Woolverton didn't like that - "At heart, the story is a romance, and I didn't want to disappoint," she said. "Belle wanted excitement and adventure in her life - but, like most of us, she also wanted someone to share it with. The Beast is someone who shares her love of books, her values... in the end, Belle gets a great guy."

Concept art for the Beast saving Belle from a pack of hungry wolves.

4) Among the ninety actors who auditioned to voice the Beast was Tim Curry. Ironic, since he went on to voice the main villain, Forte, in the 1998 direct to video follow-up Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.

Also considered for the role were Laurence Fishburne, Val Kilmer, Mandy Patinkin, and even Regis Philbin. According to Kirk Wise, when they were looking for a voice for the Beast, "We needed someone who could stand like an eight foot tall hairy monster and at the same time express the warmth, sincerity and intelligence of a human prince." Robby Benson managed to combine both in a believable way.

5) Early in development, Lefou was going to be Gaston's accountant - back then, Gaston wasn't a macho hunter but rather a foppish aristocrat who Belle's aunt desperately wanted her to marry. This version of Lefou the studio was hoping they could get Woody Allen to do the voice of.

Then they considered calling him "Oui-Oui" and making him a horrific ethnic stereotype.

And I also found this piece of concept art for Lefou where he looks like a smaller Quasimodo in a nice suit.

6) Like Ariel, the reference model for Belle was Sherri Stoner, otherwise known as the voice of Slappy Squirrel from Animaniacs.

7) The "Be Our Guest" musical number was originally going to be earlier in the film, sung to Maurice when he arrives at the Beast's castle. The filmmakers thought the song was too good to be sung to a supporting character, so they moved it to when Belle's in the castle.

8) Andreas Deja came up with Gaston's design out of frustration towards Jeffrey Katzenberg's complaints that his previous designs weren't handsome enough. He threw every cliched "masculine" feature on Gaston, showed it to Katzenberg, and demanded, "Is THIS what you want?!" - and ironically enough, it was indeed exactly what Katzenberg wanted.

9) The signpost that Maurice comes across in the woods has signs pointing to Ramona, Saugus, Newhall, Valencia and Anaheim. I'm not sure what the significance of the first three are, but CalArts (the college that most Disney animators graduated from) is in Valencia, and Disneyland obviously is in Anaheim.

Some have interpreted this scene as a jab at Six Flags Magic Mountain, which is located in Valencia as well - the "Anaheim" sign points down a bright and cheery path, whereas the "Valencia" path points down a dark and scary path.

10) Okay, so obviously this gag is intended to be a reference to The Wizard of Oz:

But that's not the only reference to that movie in the film. Belle is drawn to resemble Dorothy. Notice how she's the only one in town who wears blue - this helps her stand out from the townsfolk. It was the idea of Brian McEntree, the film's art director, to have her ballroom dress be gold "to show her love and her warmth".

11) The film apparently takes place in the 18th century. This leads to some anachronisms - for example, the band at Gaston's wedding plays "Here Comes the Bride", which was composed at some point in the mid-19th century. And the baker uses the word "baguettes", despite the fact that "baguettes" wasn't used in France to refer to a type of bread until the 1920s. Of course, there weren't any big buffalo-like monsters or talking candelabras in the actual 18th century France either.

12) Here's an amusing fun fact John Musker shared on a now-deleted Howard Ashman tribute site - during production of The Little Mermaid, Ron Howard, John, and Howard were standing in the Flower Street building near where the animators sat. Nik Ranieri started talking to Howard about how much he hated the song demos he'd heard for Beauty and the Beast. He claimed that they weren't nearly as good as the songs Howard had written for The Little Mermaid. Then Nik realized that those songs he was trash-talking were written by Howard, which made for a really awkward situation. Ironically, Nik wound up animating Lumiere.

Concept art for Lumiere.

13) Chip is the only one of the Beast's servants (well, technically he's not one of his servants, but you know what I mean) to refer to Belle by name.

14) Lots and lots of different designs were done for the Beast. Early designs had him looking like a mandrill, a minotaur, Pumbaa, a dog, a lion... a lot of things. The final design has the head structure and horns of a buffalo, the arms and body of a bear, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the jaws, teeth and mane of a lion, the tusks and nose bridge of a wild boar, and the legs and tail of a wolf. I believe he also has the neck hair of an ibis. Oh, and according to Glen Keane, the Beast has a rainbow bum. Y'know, like the one on a mandrill. But nobody knows that except Belle (and I really don't want to know HOW she knows it).

On the flip side, when designing the prince that the Beast turns into at the end, the animators didn't put much effort into it because they knew people would prefer his beast form anyhow.

Concept art for the Beast, which might or might not have eventually inspired Goliath
from Gargoyles.

15) The animation of Belle and Prince Adam (it's for all intents and purposes his official name) dancing at the end is recycled animation of Aurora and Prince Phillip dancing from Sleeping Beauty.

16) The fight between the Beast and the wolves originally had a bit where the Beast breaks a wolf's neck. Paige O'Hara and Don Hahn both hated it (probably because animal cruelty doesn't exactly make for a sympathetic hero) and convinced the team to get rid of it.

17) A character cut from the movie was a music box who was basically meant to be the film's equivalent of Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After Chip's role was expanded, he wound up replacing the music box (for example, originally the music box stowed away with Belle when she left the castle, but in the finished movie it's Chip). However, the music box still makes a very brief appearance in the film just before the battle between the servants and the townsfolk (he's sitting next to Lumiere).

See the music box?

18) Throughout the movie, Maurice's socks are mismatched - one of them is striped, one isn't - as a sign of his eccentricity.

19) And now, more about voices! Julie Andrews was considered to voice Mrs. Potts. Jason Alexander auditioned for the roles of Lefou and Cogsworth. The role of Cogsworth was written with John Cleese in mind, but he turned it down, as did Patrick Stewart due to scheduling conflicts with Star Trek: The Next Generation. I've mentioned before that Rupert Everett auditioned to voice Gaston, but from what I've heard, Patrick Swayze and Donny Osmond auditioned as well. The latter would go on to play Gaston on Broadway.

TV Tropes also claims that Don Rickles and Ian McKellen (who, of course, played Cogsworth in the 2017 live action remake) also auditioned to voice Cogsworth, but I have no idea if there's any truth to that.

20) During the battle between the Beast's servants and the townsfolk, at one point you can see a baby buggy coming down the stairs. This is a reference to the Sergei Eisenstein movie Battleship Potemkin, which I have not seen.

Concept art for Belle and Rafiki... I mean, the Beast.

21) Most of the statues seen in the West Wing and around the castle are based on early designs for the Beast.

22) Paige O'Hara's husband, Michael Piontek, went on to be an understudy for Gaston for the Broadway adaptation of the movie. So I guess Gaston wound up marrying Belle after all, in a way.

23) When Angela Lansbury was on a flight to New York to record the film's title song, "Beauty and the Beast", her plane had to make an emergency landing because there was apparently a bomb on the plane. She came into the recording session exhausted... but still managed to do the song in one take!

And while we're on the subject of the title song, every lyric in the song has exactly five syllables. Jeffrey Katzenberg loved the song so much that he asked Howard Ashman to give it a third verse - after a week of trying, Howard told Jeffrey that the only other things he could think of that rhymed with "Beast" were "yeast" and "Diane Wiest".

24) Mrs. Potts' name was originally Mrs. Chamomille, after a very soothing herbal tea. Meanwhile, Lumiere was originally called Chandal (like a chandelier, get it?). Problem was, these names are hard to pronounce, so they decided to call them Mrs. Potts and Lumiere instead. Lumiere was named after the Lumiere Brothers, manufacturers of photo equipment.

Concept art for Mrs. Potts.

25) During "The Mob Song", Gaston sings "Screw your courage to the sticking place." For those not familiar with Shakespeare, he's quoting a line from Macbeth. I don't know what it means.

26) The smoke during the Beast's transformation at the end isn't animated. It's real smoke. The same real smoke used years earlier in The Black Cauldron.

27) Beauty and the Beast was the first animated Disney film to cross the $100 million box office mark.

28) 1970s Disney animator Ken Anderson loved the film, as did Chuck Jones.

Concept art for those creepy dancing forks in "Be Our Guest".

29) A lot of people have already pointed this out - if the curse is supposed to last until the Beast turns twenty-one, and Lumiere says in "Be Our Guest" that they've been "rusting" for ten years, that means that the Prince was cursed when he was eleven years old.

This is because Howard Ashman originally pitched a prologue for the film where the Prince is shown as a seven year old (so he would've been seventeen when Belle met him?) refusing to give an old woman shelter during a storm, resulting in the old woman revealing herself to actually be an enchantress and chasing the prince through the castle before finally turning him into a beast. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise hated the idea. Kirk kept imagining "this Eddie Munster kid in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit". When they told Howard this, he didn't take it very well.

30) In 1992, the Chairman of the Malaysian Censorship Board screened Beauty and the Beast - and demanded that a five second scene of a pig scurrying around in the background be cut before the film would be shown, believing that Malaysia's fundamentalist regime would "find the pig offensive". Disney executive Kevin Hyson's reaction to this was to say, "I guess we won't ever be releasing The Three Little Pigs there."

31) Let's end this post with something funny - the March 1992 issue of TV Guide had THIS on the cover:

For more fun facts about Beauty and the Beast, I'd recommend going searching for 'em with Google. I also found an interesting article bringing up more similarities the film and its characters have to The Wizard of Oz. I recommend checking it out.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Nightmare Ned"

You might not be familiar with Creative Capers Entertainment, but there's a good chance that you've seen their work. Over the years, they've done a lot of work for Disney... animation for the theme parks, the cruise ships, CD-roms, and even a few of their live action movies. One of the projects they worked on for Disney was a video game called Nightmare Ned, which they were also developing a TV series based on. The show wound up being completed before the game, so that's how the world was introduced to Ned.

Poor, poor Ned Needlemeyer, voiced by Courtland Mead, is an anxious bespectacled boy who is subjected to bizarre nightmares every time he goes to sleep. Turning into a dog, forgetting to wear clothes to school, being abducted by aliens... anything was possible in the dreams of Ned. Quite frankly, if I had horrifying dreams like that every time I went to sleep, I'd be terrified of getting in bed.

Nightmare Ned was created by Terry Shakespeare, G. Sue Shakespeare, and David Molina of Creative Capers Entertainment, and premiered in April 1997 on ABC. Apparently due to production difficulties such as disagreements between producer Donovan Cook and developer Walt Dohrn, the show only received twelve episodes (each featuring two segments, except for the twelfth episode which had three). For some reason, reruns never aired on Toon Disney and the show is not on Disney Plus at the moment (one of the many, many Disney cartoons that hasn't been added to it - why isn't The Weekenders on there yet, Disney?). It's an obscure little show that's ripe for reviewing on my blog.

And fortunately, you can find episodes of the show on YouTube, so what say we give it a watch? We'll be checking out the eleventh episode, which consists of the segments "Along For the Ride" and "Steamed Vegetables". This is Nightmare Ned.

We start off in what appears to be the middle of nowhere, with nothing but rock formations and cacti as far as the eye can see. Ned's family drives by in their car, apparently on a road trip. Ned asks if they're there yet, which for some reason really sets his dad (Brad Garrett) off. "It's very hard to have a fun family vacation with Ned being such a sad sack!" he complains. Jeez, way to be a pill, Mr. Needlemeyer. Who the heck talks about their kid like that? And IN FRONT OF THEM, no less?

Ned's infant sister (Kath Souice), meanwhile, is repeatedly squeezing a rubber duck, which gets on everyone's nerves. The mom (Victoria Jackson) tells Ned to take the duck away from her, but the second he does, the baby starts crying. "RETURN! THE DUCKY!" the dad shouts. This is one of those situations where Ned, quite frankly, can not win.

But look on the bright side, Ned - it could be worse. You could have an obnoxious talking
newt who repeatedly screws up your life for a pet.

Somehow, between the baby's repeated squeaking of the ducky and his parents' singing, Ned manages to fall asleep. In his dream, the sky is black as opposed to yellow and the desert is purple, and the car is approaching a charming little place called the Tumbleweed Motel. Apparently nobody told the folks who built this motel that motels usually don't have more than two floors. Shouldn't it actually be called the "Tumbleweed HOTEL"?

This screencap has been brought to you by the color purple.

Upon seeing the motel, Ned wants to stay in the car... even though the hotel doesn't really look that scary. A few minutes after his family heads inside, a creepy green-skinned guy with a hook for a hand (clearly Jeff Bennett) climbs into the front seat and announces that Ned will stay there FOREVER, bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha... oh, wait, he's just the valet.

I would not trust this guy behind the wheel of my car.

The interior of the Tumbleweed Motel looks like something Tim Burton would design if he went into the architecture business. The creepy green-skinned guy, as it turns out, is also the clerk, and he says that if the family wants a room, they'll have to pay forty dollars... and their SOULS. Because the dad is an idiot, he says, "Make it TWENTY dollars and our souls and you've got a deal!"

"Does this place have Wi-Fi?"

"Yes, but it's password-protected. I'll give you the password if you hand over your children."

"Well, I'm a typical bumbling cartoon dad, so I see nothing disturbing about that!"

Ned decides to take the stairs up to their room while his parents and sister hop into an elevator pulled by a rope that a rat is chewing on. By now, he's convinced that this place is "a horrible, twisted outpost of evil that nobody ever escapes from". At least you get a free mint on your pillow every night. Oh, and the creepy green-skinned guy is dressed as a maid now. Because I really needed to see him in drag. Thanks for that...

Since this episode takes place in a creepy motel, I fully expect them to make at least one reference to The Shining. At some point, the creepy green-skinned guy is going to burst through the door with an axe and shout "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S [WHATEVER THE NAME OF THIS CHARACTER IS]!"

It wasn't a glamorous gig, but the Wicked Witch of the West needed to put bread on the table
SOMEHOW...

The creepy guy sucks up Ned with a vacuum cleaner, propelling Ned into what could only possibly be described an acid trip. His head even falls off!

"I've heard of losing your head, but this is ridiculous!"

After his body retrieves his head, Ned is advised by a rat to look for his family behind that door with an "EXIT" sign over it. When Ned opens the door, he does indeed find his family - chained to the wall because of that creepy green-skinned guy. I love how the dad's reaction to seeing the guy is just to shout, "WHERE IS MY MINT, YOU FIEND?!" Nice to see that his priorities are in check.

The creepy green-skinned guy traps Ned in a cage and tortures him by... squeaking the rubber duck. Ned wakes up, and after screaming his head off he realizes that it was all just a dream and is relieved that he is not the prisoner of a demented hook-handed psychopath with skin the color of Shrek's. He then throws the rubber duck out of the car... which doesn't seem like such a good idea to me. Won't the baby start crying again?

What horrors await Ned in the next segment, "Steamed Vegetables"?

Well, Ned is taking part in his school play, "Happy Colon: A Wonderous Journey Thru Our Digestive System". He's not too thrilled about it, mainly because he's stuck in a goofy-looking ear of corn costume. Or maybe he's actually dressed as a loofah, it's hard to tell...

Despite his very impressive sea sponge costume, Ned failed the audition for SpongeBob SquarePants.

Mr. Needlemeyer channels the dad from Calvin and Hobbes and claims that doing things you hate builds character. Mrs. Needlemeyer gives her son a pep talk, but Ned is still a bundle of nerves and can't remember his lines. His teacher (Tress MacNeille) tells him to sit in a chair and breathe in and out repeatedly. This, as it turns out, is a bad idea - Ned winds up falling asleep in the chair. When he wakes up, he's dressed as a human ear, not an ear of corn (or a loofah).

No, no, Ned. The play about parts of the body is NEXT week...

When Ned peeks behind the curtain, he discovers that the audience looks more like the produce section of the grocery store. Carrots, broccoli, eggplants, tomatoes, onions... all of them looking really, really ticked-off.

If the tomato doesn't like Ned's performance, will it throw itself at him?

Ned messes up his line - it's supposed to be "Vegetables are succulent!", but instead he says "Vegetables SUCK!"... wow, how'd they get away with THAT in a kids' show? The rejected VeggieTales characters are very offended, particularly a Jeff Bennett-voiced ear of corn. "No, no! You don't understand! I love corn! I love ALL vegetables!" Ned says nervously. "I eat vegetables every day!" This, of course, is not a bright thing to say to a bunch of vegetables. Though I'm not sure why the tomatoes and pumpkin are offended, considering they're actually FRUIT...

"Make one 'lend me your ears' joke and I'll pulverize ya!"

Ned makes a run for it, the produce in hot pursuit. Eventually, they tackle him and things take a turn for the REALLY strange. They have themselves a little sacrificing, with pickles playing bongo drums and the veggies donning bunny ears and tails and chanting. Ned is placed on top of a skyscraper, dressed as a carrot and sitting on a plate.

The "EAT ME" sign is what makes it.

Even funnier, the creature that the vegetables are summoning turns out to be a giant pink bunny rabbit. Just as it's about to gobble Ned up, Ned frantically shouts that the rabbit can't eat him because he's, uh, DESSERT, since he's his favorite food he MUST be dessert, and he can't eat his dessert until he eats all of his vegetables... which turns the rabbit's attention to the sentient produce down below. Very clever, Ned. Very clever indeed...

Maybe if Ned gives it a giant drum and a pair of sunglasses, it'll leave him alone.

The rabbit picks up a tomato, but it protests that it's actually a fruit and that if it wants a vegetable, it should eat Ned. "Oh, silly rabbit! Are you gonna listen to a TOMATO?" Ned complains. "He's just a primitive form of ketchup! You gonna eat KETCHUP for DESSERT?" Then he takes off his carrot costume, revealing himself to be a boy... and rabbits don't eat people. Then the tomato reveals that it's not a tomato at all, it's an INVESTMENT BANKER. Then the rabbit reveals that he's not a rabbit at all, but rather a giant cowboy. A CANNIBALISTIC cowboy!

Ned is woken up by his teacher, who pushes him onstage with the other kids. And Ned remembers his lines. He feels pretty good about himself... until he sees the investment banker and the cowboy in the audience. I think they should've had the giant pink bunny in the audience, that would've been funnier...

What's the Verdict?

It's too bad this show only got a few episodes, I honestly thought it was pretty good. Of the two segments, I preferred "Steamed Vegetables" over "Along For the Ride", mainly because it was a lot funnier. I mean, come on, a kid in a carrot costume being served by sentient vegetables to a giant pink rabbit? It's so out there that it's hard not to laugh. The animation is pretty good, and the voice actors all do a great job - Courtland Mead, in particular, deserves a lot of credit for his performance as Ned. He really nails the character's frequent screams. It's obviously not the BEST of Disney's cartoon shows, I don't know if I'd even put it in the top ten, but it's worth checking out at least ONE episode.

I wonder if the reason why the show didn't catch on is because the premise scared kids away. The name "Nightmare Ned" implies that this is a creepy cartoon. Nobody wants to have nightmares, so why would they want to watch a show where the whole plot is this kid having nightmares? Though as far as cartoons go, this is far from the scariest I've ever seen. Even SpongeBob had scarier moments than this (those close-ups of the deer fly in "Wormy"... yeesh).

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain"

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.

This is a story that's been told time and time again. If you're at all familiar with Pinky and the Brain, I'd be shocked if you didn't already know the story. But, just in case you DON'T know it, here it is...

Pinky and the Brain got its start as a segment in Animaniacs, but it wasn't long before these two lab mice with spliced genes, voiced with gusto by Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche, became the most popular characters on the show. They're the only characters to get their own show, they're usually the only non-Warner Siblings characters* who appeared in the video games, and they're the only non-Warner Siblings characters who returned for the 2020 reboot (which demonstrated why having an Animaniacs reboot with only the Warner Siblings and Pinky and the Brain was a bad idea). Everybody loved Pinky and the Brain... with the exception of the Warner Bros. executives.

You see, when Pinky and the Brain premiered in 1995, the hope was for it to be The WB's answer to The Simpsons (kind of a tall order, isn't it?). Maybe it would've been if it hadn't shared the time slot of another channel's 60 Minutes. "We thought we'd be an alternative to people who may not want to watch a news magazine at 7 PM," Maurice LaMarche said in an interview. "But it turned out practically EVERYBODY wanted a news magazine on Sunday at 7 PM!" The show promptly moved exclusively to Saturday mornings, and apparently this whole situation - combined with the executives' not liking that one of the show's main characters wanted to take over the world (despite the fact that several episodes had the Brain confirm he wanted to rule the world because he thought he could make it a better place, so if nothing else he had good intentions) - resulted in pressure from the higher-ups to move the show's focus away from the Brain's attempts to take over the world and include more characters, like a third mouse. The main problem with this, of course, is that Pinky and the Brain are a comedy DUO. It'd be like, say, having a third character move in with Bert and Ernie.

To demonstrate to the higher-ups why this was a bad idea, the writers came up with an episode called "Pinky and the Brain... and Larry". It has the two lab mice suddenly being joined by a third mouse named Larry (modeled after Larry Fine of the Three Stooges) who contributes absolutely nothing to the show and is for all intents and purposes an afterthought. Eventually, Brain figures out that there shouldn't be a Larry, prompting Larry to leave and team up with Paul Simon to become a folk singer, and then Pinky and the Brain are joined by a mouse named Zeppo. The executives, apparently, didn't get the hint.

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong...

Now, around the same time, there was a character in another Warner Bros. cartoon show who the executives LOVED - Elmyra Duff. For those unaware, Elmyra is a character from the first Steven Spielberg-produced cartoon from Warner Bros., Tiny Toon Adventures. She's the show's equivalent of Elmer Fudd (in other words, the Buster and Babs to Elmer's Bugs) and her shtick is that she's a dimwitted girl who loves animals a bit too much. The higher-ups apparently couldn't get enough of her, in fact rumor has it that she was Steven Spielberg's favorite character, so in addition to shoehorning her into Animaniacs (she appeared in three episodes, though in one of them she didn't have any lines), they really wanted her to have her own show. While I don't hate Elmyra like the rest of the internet does... which probably stems from the fact that I'm not a huge Tiny Toon Adventures fan... I don't think she's the sort of character that can carry her own show. I don't think ANY of the Tiny Toon Adventures characters could carry their own show (considering most of them are just clones of Looney Tunes characters).

While all of the meddling with Pinky and the Brain was going on, which included Peter Hastings writing an episode called "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again" about the mice having to deal with TV executives meddling with their show until it's completely unrecognizable, somebody (Platypus Comix claimed it was executive Christopher Keenan, TV Tropes claimed it was Steven Spielberg, I have no idea which one is correct) decided to knock out two birds with one stone and turn Pinky and the Brain into Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain.

Nobody on the Pinky and the Brain staff wanted to do this. Peter Hastings bailed to go work on Disney's One Saturday Morning. Even the show's theme song straight-up says that they hate the idea as much as the fans did: "Now Pinky and the Brain / share a new domain / it's what the network wants / why bother to complain?". And in case you're wondering, no, no other characters from Tiny Toon Adventures showed up in the series... Elmyra didn't even go to Acme Looniversity, but rather "Chuck Norris Grammar School". The show premiered in September 1998 and received one season of thirteen episodes, only six of which were aired. The show's remaining episodes were aired as segments of something called The Cat and Birdy Warneroonie Pinky Brainy Big Cartoonie Show, which was apparently just a compilation of various episodes from previous Warner Bros. cartoon series.

The premise? According to the theme song, the ACME Labs was destroyed, with the eighth episode revealing that it was replaced with a parody of the Disney Store (because it wouldn't be a Warner Bros. cartoon show from the 1990s without them pettily making fun of Disney). A Christopher Walken parody named Wally Faust who ALSO wants to take over the world has heard about the mice and thinks that, since they've come closer to taking over the world than HE has, they must be eliminated. They hide out in a pet store, taking up refuge in the shell of a turtle... a turtle who Elmyra (voiced by Cree Summer once again) winds up buying and taking home, which is how they wind up as Elmyra's pets.

The show is pretty much loathed by anyone who's a fan of Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1990s. Is it as bad as everybody says it is? Let's find out. We'll be watching the fourth episode, which consists of the segments "The Girl With Nothing Extra" and "Narfily Ever After". Let's get started.

The episode begins with Elmyra watching a music video for a teen girl pop band called Janson that I guess is supposed to be a spoof of the Spice Girls or whatever teen girl pop band was popular in the 1990s. The main joke here is that the lyrics of the song they're singing consists entirely of gibberish. Ha ha?

Elmyra's so into it that she dressed Pinky and Brain up as members of Janson and sends them flying across the room on a roller skate. Pinky loves Janson too, Brain not so much. Then she attempts to smash the Brain with a hammer. Was Elmyra this sadistic in the original Tiny Toons?

"It's hammer time!"

Brain suggests that Elmyra go out and play with her friends, which will allow him to work on whatever plan he has to take over the world this week. Elmyra says that she doesn't have any friends. "I wonder why..." Brain snarks.

If Elmyra had friends, Brain points out, she would spend a lot of time out of the house at parties, sleepovers, and playdates, leaving Brain plenty of free time to perfect his plans. Unfortunately, Elmyra's too dense to understand what Brain's trying to say. Then we get the first funny joke of the episode - Brain looks at a pencil and says, "Maybe I should talk to YOU. There's at least a mathematic possibility that a pencil has a higher intellect than those two." I dunno, I just think it's funny that Brain thinks the pencil is sentient. Maybe living with Elmyra is doing strange things to his psyche...

The theme song for the original show says that "one is a genius, the other's insane", but
doesn't specify which is which... and I don't recall ever seeing Pinky talk to a pencil...

Brain's plan is to have Elmyra become very, very popular among her peers. Elmyra then proceeds to stick out her tounge, showing Brain the chewed-up remains of the peanuts she was eating. Pinky thinks this is hysterical. It should be pretty obvious by now that Pinky's entire purpose in the show is to share Elmyra's one braincell. To paraphrase Cosmo, they're two halves of a whole idiot.

So Pinky and Brain go to Elmyra's school's playground and approach the kids, none of whom question the presence of a talking mouse wearing an orange sweater and sunglasses. I guess if this takes place in the same universe as Tiny Toon Adventures, anthropomorphic clothes-wearing animals are just an everyday occurrence in this world. Makes me wonder if Pinky and Brain ever get self-conscious about not wearing clothes.

The first indication that this show is from the 1990s - cameras don't look like that anymore.
They now look like an app on our phones.

Brain claims that he and Pinky are from "Keen Preteen Scene Magazine", and they're doing a special article on cool kids. They're looking for the coolest kid in the whole school, who he promptly identifies as Elmyra. "She is SO cool!" he says. "Just look at that... how she does that... so COOLY! Why, that's the EPITOME of coolness... personified!"

Among the kids is recurring character Nelson Muntz... uh, I mean Rudy Mookich (Nancy Cartwright). Elmyra totally has the hots for him even though he's, to be honest, pretty homely-looking. Seriously, that bowl cut is NOT doing him any favors.

"TELL ME MOOOOOOOOOOOORE ABOUT MY EYES!"

None of the kids agree with Brain's claim that Elmyra is "the epitome of coolness", but what luck, Elmyra is also trying out for the school talent show, so Brain can "subtly influence the audience with the power of suggestion" to make them like Elmyra. And it works... until Elmyra shows off the chewed-up food on her tongue for a THIRD TIME. It wasn't funny the first time, it wasn't funny the second time, and it's not funny when you do it THREE TIMES. And considering that Brain's new plan is to make Elmyra's habit of showing off the chewed-up food on her tongue popular, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they're gonna keep doing it and it's not going to become funnier as the episode goes on.

Using some sort of device to intercept broadcast on every TV in the neighborhood, Brain and Pinky disguise themselves as members of Janson and claim that they're in a music video with the coolest kid ever, Elmyra. Then they start singing an awful song about Elmyra's showing everybody her chewed-up food. I gotta ask, was Elmyra known for doing gross stuff like this in Tiny Toons? Was that a thing? This seems more like something the Warner Siblings would do, not Elmyra...

And what on Earth has she been eating? Tasty Paste?

All of Elmyra's classmates now think that she's the coolest thing since Chester the Cheetah, which means that Brain will finally have time without Elmyra around to drive him crazy, right? Wrong-o, Chongo. Now Elmyra's room is filled with kids joining her in making Brain and Pinky's lives difficult. So, will Brain come up with a plan to make Elmyra unpopular again? Yes... but the episode's over, so we don't get to see what his plan is. Really? That's how it ends? The episode feels unfinished.

Oh, wait. That's NOT how it ends. Elmyra and the other kids interrupt the iris out to do the "show off your chewed-up food" joke again. Somebody on the writing staff clearly thought it was a riot. It is not.

I'm not even going to bother explaining why thy have mud on their heads.

Okay, so that was weak. Maybe "Narfily Ever After" will be better...

It's bedtime for Elmyra, and she wants Brain to tell her a fairy tale before she falls asleep. He refuses, but Elmyra and Pinky are insistent, so Brain decides to tell her the story of Cinderella... the REAL Cinderella, not the sugar-coated namby-pamby version she reads in her storybooks. Is he referring to the original fairy tale where the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to make them fit in the glass slipper? No, really. That was a thing in the original fairy tale! Look it up!

The REAL hero of Cinderella, Brain claims, was in fact a mouse. He's not entirely wrong - in the movie, Cinderella's mouse friends DID save her after Lady Tremaine locked her in her room so she couldn't try on the glass slipper. But in Brain's version, the mouse who saved the day was a self-insert named "Cranky Mouseykin" (as Elmyra suggests).

Since this episode parodies a Disney-adapted fairy tale, I expect at least one joke at Disney's
expense (as stated before, Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1990s made fun of Disney a lot.
I've heard it suggested that they were just jealous of the success of the Disney Renaissance).

Cranky Mouseykin and his pal Wee Willie Pinky live in Fairyland, a charming village where various characters from fairy tales and nursery rhymes live: Mother Goose, Little Bo Peep, Hansel and Gretel, Simple Simon, and... I'm not sure who those other characters are supposed to be.

Surely you're familiar with that beloved nursery rhyme "Mustached Guy Dressed As
Abraham Lincoln"?

Fairyland, Cranky claims, is in big trouble because everybody wears glass slippers. But he has the solution - what if he made shoes out of LEATHER? He's whipped up some sort of Rube Goldberg-esque device to make the shoes, and with them he shall revolutionize everything from fashion to football. And eventually he shall take over Fairyland, much like how the founder of Nike, Phil Knight, eventually became president of the United States. You remember that, don't you? His campaign slogan was "Elect me. Just do it."

Alas, Cranky was never able to complete his plans because of the constant pestering of a giddy girl named Cinderelmyra. She wants to go to Prince Rudy's royal birthday ball, but she doesn't have anything to wear. "I don't have time to act as your wardrobe consultant! You can wear RAGS for all I care!" Cranky snaps. Then Wee Willie Pinky points out that Cinderelmyra can't let the King and Queen of Fairyland and all the influential members of the court see her dressed in rags... which gets the gears in Cranky's freakishly large head turning. They shall go to the ball with Cinderelmyra and use the occasion to introduce his new leather shoes. To do this, he dresses Pinky up as Cinderelmyra's "Fairy Mousemother".

Why do I have the feeling Elmyra was created simply because somebody thought it'd be
funny to see Elmer Fudd in drag?

Cranky claims that Pinky can wave his magic wand (actually just a stick) and give Cinderelmyra a lovely gown and coach. So they dress her up in trash - just like the people who dress Lady Gaga! - and sing a clumsy parody of "Bibbity Bobbity Boo". I don't know who wrote the songs for this show, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it WASN'T Randy Rogel, because not one of these songs are in the same league as "Yakko's World".

They head to the ball, but since Cranky and Pinky aren't on the list, they're forced to wait upstairs while Cinderelmyra flirts with Prince Rudy... who suggests that they go push Humpty Dumpty off his wall. Get it? 'Cause that's another character from a fairy tale or a nursery rhyme or whatever. Fairy Tale Police Department this is not.

Seriously, that bowl cut is hideous.

Cranky has Pinky lower him down into the ballroom on a rope, only for Little Miss Muffet to mistake him for a spider. Since, y'know, mice and spiders look so much alike. Then we get a joke about Pinky trading the rope for magic beans, because there are more fairy tale references to be made here, creating a beanstalk that subjects Cranky to more WHACKY SHENANIGANS. Cinderelmyra flees the ball, since that's what Cinderella does in the story. When Cranky and Pinky meet back up with her at their place, she tells them that she left the shoes behind so Prince Rudy can find her. And wouldn't you know it, he does - NOT to marry Elmyra, but rather to have Cranky thrown in jail after he takes credit for the creation of the leather shoes because the king owns the factory that makes glass slippers and does not want to be put out of business.

By the time Brain finishes up his story, Elmyra and Pinky have both fallen asleep. He declares that he's leaving to try and take over the world. They're Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain. Narf.

What's the Verdict?

Yeah, it's bad. I don't think it's the WORST cartoon show Warner Bros. has ever done (it's at least better than the Animaniacs reboot), but it's still pretty bad. The show's premise is inherently flawed - Pinky and the Brain's main shtick is that it's a grumpy genius teamed up with a bumbling idiot. Elmyra's biggest personality trait is that she, too, is an idiot. Having the Brain teamed up with TWO idiots will not be twice the fun. He's not supposed to be Squidward Tentacles. As I've said before, Elmyra is not a character who can carry her own show. And even if you replaced her with another Tiny Toons character it wouldn't have worked (sorry, Tiny Toons fans, but a Fifi La Fume show likely wouldn't have been good either). Every so often there's a funny line, but most of the jokes fall flat. Think all of the weakest jokes from Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs - the pop culture references that probably weren't even funny back in the 1990s, the gross-out humor, the "LOL look at how stupid Elmyra/Pinky is" jokes... most of it probably stems from the fact that the writers straight-up did not want to do this show, but even then I doubt they just said "Meh, this show is going to suck anyway, let's not bother to put any effort into it." And the songs are really bad too. Honestly, based on this and Histeria!, maybe the Animaniacs style of cartoons was just running out of steam by this point. The best thing I can say about it is that the voice actors all do a good job. As a whole, it was a bad idea that really should've just stayed a bad idea, and a good demonstration as to why Pinky and the Brain work best when it's just Pinky and the Brain - no Larry, no Elmyra, no Zeppo.

By the way, I do plan on doing a review of The Cat and Birdy Warneroonie Pinky Brainy Big Cartoonie Show, so there's a fifty-percent chance I'll wind up watching another episode of this series when I get to that. In fact, that's the reason I chose to review one of the episodes that aired as part of the actual show instead of one that aired as part of THAT show whose overly long name I'm not going to say a third time.

* For clarification, I mean characters who appeared in the Warner Siblings' segments - so in addition to Yakko, Wakko and Dot, also Dr. Scratchensniff, Ralph the Guard, etc.