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.