Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Lilo and Stitch: The Series"

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.

I remember when Lilo and Stitch came out. I remember seeing it in theaters. I remember the bonus features on the DVD. I remember my sister having a Lilo doll. Lilo and Stitch was one of the only Disney movies of the 2000s to be considered (by the company itself, at least) a box office success. And you know what THAT meant, right?

ANSWER: it meant that they had a new cash cow.

And boy howdy were they going to take advantage of that - ESPECIALLY at the Disney theme parks. Well, at Walt Disney World anyway, I don't know if they did this at Disneyland too. Stitch received his own attraction in 2004 at the Magic Kingdom, Stitch's Great Escape. I never went on it, but apparently it was really bad, and it has since been shut down. Disney, however, was really proud of the attraction, because they promoted it perhaps more than they've promoted any other attraction in the resort's history... there were signs all over the park, Stitch stickers were pasted on the windows of the monorail, they even vandalized Cinderella Castle. Look at this:

And on top of THAT, somehow Stitch became the sixth member of Mickey's group of friends. On merchandise, he'd be included alongside Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto and he stuck out like a sore thumb. Eventually, the company calmed down on Stitch, but he was practically the mascot of Disney for a while.

Outside the parks, Disney kept the Stitch train a-chuggin' along with merchandise and direct-to-video sequels. He received three, the first of which was Stitch! The Movie. Kind of a weird thing to call a film's direct-to-video sequel, seeing as the name of the first movie was Lilo and Stitch. So this one is just Stitch? It's like if they made a sequel to Turner and Hooch and called it Turner! The Movie.

I've heard that the ACTUAL Lilo and Stitch direct-to-video sequel that came after
this one, Lilo and Stitch 2: Stich Has a Glitch, is better. The fourth one, Leroy and Stitch,
is apparently the weakest of the Stitch movies.

The name makes a little more sense if you know that Stitch! The Movie was actually just a feature-length pilot for the Lilo and Stitch TV show that Disney was making, which was going to be called Stitch! The Series at first before they decided to call it Lilo and Stitch: The Series instead.

This show, developed by Bobs Gannaway and Jess Winfield, premiered on September 20th, 2003. It was basically Disney's answer to Pokemon - Stitch's name, before Lilo found him, was Experiment 626, right? So that means that his creator, Dr. Jumbaa Jookiba, made 625 experiments BEFORE he made him, right? Thus, the show had Lilo (once again voiced by Daveigh Chase) and Stitch (once again voiced by Chris Sanders) chasing after all the other experiments that Jumbaa (David Ogden Stiers) created, which were stored in tiny ping pong balls that would free them when contact was made with some sort of liquid. Along for the ride were Lilo's big sister Nani (Tia Carrere), Jumbaa, and the one-eyed former Galactic Federation agent Pleakley (Kevin McDonald). The show received two seasons, making for a total of sixty-five episodes.

I remember watching the show when it was on, but to be honest, I don't think it holds up very well. Apparently, executive meddling resulted in the charm of the film it was based on being tossed out the window in favor of zany, more lighthearted antics. The original film was pretty mellow and laid-back. You're not gonna find any tender moments like Stitch's speech about his family here. Nope, we have episodes about experiments that turn people into babies, crossovers with Kim Possible and American Dragon: Jake Long, and... well, just look at this:

This episode, by the way, has a really heavy-handed moral about healthy eating.
Yes, it's one of THOSE shows...

The characters got Flanderized as well, most notably Pleakley. In the original movie, he was intelligent (he just didn't quite understand humans) and tried his best to keep the bombastic Jumbaa in line. In the show, he's now a massive idiot who exists so that the writers can make jokes at the expense of gay people. I shouldn't have to say this... somebody being gay is not a joke. Making fun of people for not being straight is wrong, okay? In fact, television shows' mockery of gay people is likely a reason why homophobes are still a thing.

All right, all right, let's get on with the actual review. We'll be watching the third episode, "Clip". As they say in Hawaii, E hoʻomaka kākou! Thank goodness for Google Translate...

The episode begins with Lilo and Stitch at a spa, where Lilo explains to Stitch that if he wants to fit in on Earth, he has to obsess over how he looks like everybody else. Wow, that's some pretty biting social commentary for a show where the main running gag is "hurr-dee-durr, this male alien is dressed like a female". Then they get into a mud fight, sending the stuff flying everywhere and making a mess of the salon. This makes the salon's owner MAD, and she kicks Lilo and Stitch out.

I do like that the show has watercolor backgrounds like the original movie. Downside: it
makes the lower budget TV animation of the characters stick out even more.

Lilo complains about how the salon owner made them clean up all the mud... what is she talking about? That didn't happen. Immediately after Stitch threw mud in her face, we saw Lilo and Stitch fleeing the salon as the owner shouted at them to stay out. Well, anyway, there's no time to dwell on the salon owner being a grouch, because a bald guy runs out of the salon screaming about how something ate all his hair. What is responsible for his baldness? A mutant hairball who Stitch recognizes as one of his "cousins".

Boy, does she need a manicure.

Lilo and Stitch chase the mutant hairball as it runs around wreaking havoc, either making people bald or just giving them stupid haircuts. Eventually, they trap it in a hatbox, and Lilo decides to give it the name "Clip". Presumably because it likes to CLIP hair.

Little do Lilo and Stitch know that they're being watched. Everybody, say hello to Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson), the show's main antagonist. In the movie, he was captain of the Galactic Federation, assigned to capture Stitch and bring it back so they could hold it prisoner. He was competent, he just didn't count on Stitch by that point becoming a good guy and escaping his clutches, then going back to save Lilo. So what did the TV show do? They turned him into a bumbling idiot, of course! He now works for Jumbaa's old lab partner, the evil Dr. Hamsterviel (Jeff Bennett), who wants to capture the experiments because... I don't recall, they probably explained this in Stitch! The Movie. In every episode he tries to capture the experiment that Lilo and Stitch have found this week, only for them to take him down via WHACKY SHENANIGANS. He's basically the Dick Dastardly to Lilo and Stitch's Yankee Doodle Pigeon, except Dick Dastardly is more fun to watch.

Gantu's mad because they rejected his audition for Street Sharks.

Gantu receives a call from Dr. Hamstreviel, who screams at him to get the experiment. That basically sums up Dr. Hamsterviel in a nutshell - his purpose in the show is to screech at Gantu, act like a bad impression of the French guards from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and be mistaken for a hamster (though he looks more like a jerboa to me).

"I blow my nose at you, so-called Gantu Captain! You and all your silly alien experiments!"

Lilo and Stitch head back to the house and meet up with Jumbaa, tells them that the experiment they found (Number 177) is very dangerous. He created it years ago to eat an alien fuel source called Uburnium. Unfortunately, he made a mistake and wound up creating a creature that eats HAIR - and it promptly ate HIS hair, which explains why he really wanted to try on Pleakley's wig in the movie.

Yeesh, Jumbaa really does not translate well to this show's lower budget art style.

And then who should walk in but Mr. Non-Straight People Are Funny himself, Pleakley, who contributes nothing to the scene but at least we don't have any jokes at the expense of the gays thrown at us. Lilo says that they need to find the one true place where Clip belongs. How about as Chris Rock's pet? Then she can go around eating people's hair and Chris Rock can make mean-spirited bald jokes at their expense.

Anyhow, they go back to the salon because Lilo thinks Clip can live there and eat all the hair that falls to the floor when people get their hair cut. But then who should emerge from the salon but Lilo's arch-rival, Mertle (Liliana Mumy), and her posse, all of whom have been practicing the DreamWorks Face.

That one with the pigtails has really gotten the hang of it.

Mertle makes fun of Lilo's completely normal-looking hair, presumably for no other reason than to demonstrate that she is an unlikable brat. As soon as she and her posse walk off laughing, Lilo declares that Mertle needs to be punished. Uh oh, I smell a lesson about how revenge is bad flying our way!

Dressing up as cat burgulars, Lilo and Stitch sneak into Mertle's house and leave Clip under her pillow. Lilo tells her that tonight, she will dine on Mertle's curly red locks.

She's like an evil tooth fairy.

After an encounter with Mertle's dimwitted mom, Lilo and Stitch return to their house, where Lilo says like an idiot that nothing about their get-back-at-Mertle plan could possibly go wrong. Dang it, Lilo, haven't you ever seen another cartoon? Saying "nothing could possibly go wrong" ALWAYS causes something to go wrong. It's just common knowledge.

And sure enough, something DOES go wrong. Unbeknownst to Lilo, Mertle is at a sleepover that night. So not only is Lilo's plan an epic failure, but Gantu shows up at Mertle's house to capture Clip, only for her to make a getaway and head off into the night to wreak more havoc. The next day, Lilo goes to her hula class and is shocked to discover that Mertle still has all her hair, and that her mother saw Gantu reaching in through her window just before she was attacked by a "flying yellow furball".

Oh, and Pleakley has supplied Jumbaa with a rainbow afro wig. Nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck.

"Why do I have sudden urge to sing that annoying song from Madagascar 3?"

Jumbaa doesn't like the wig, so Pleakley decides to get the hair follicles woken up by dancing on Jumbaa's head. Apparently Jumbaa would rather risk Clip eating the three remaining hairs that he has than deal with Pleakley, so he agrees to help Lilo and Stitch capture Clip. They go to Mertle's house and interrogate her mother, who actually ISN'T mad about Clip eating her hair. "Remember, a haircut doesn't make you who you are," she says, "YOU make a haircut what it is." Which makes Lilo realize that it's not a big deal if people tease you over your hair... your completely normal-looking hair. The moral probably would've worked better if the episode had started off with Lilo getting a legitimately lousy haircut, because now it just seems like Mertle decided to pick on Lilo for no reason (which, let's face it, she totally was).

Also, she calls Jumbaa handsome, apparently because she has a thing for big purple-skinned aliens. And that makes Jumbaa happy, and his head doesn't feel "clenched" anymore, so...

Remember, all you bald people out there - all you have to do is feel happy and your hair will grow back! Trust me, I'm a hair expert. Also, pigs have the ability to fly, they just don't do it when people are looking.

I will say this, Jumbaa's shout of "I! HAVE! HAAAAAAAAAAAAIR!" is legitimately pretty funny. He, Lilo and Stitch head out to find Clip, and after an encounter with a hairless squirrel they discover that Clip has eaten so much hair that she has become gigantic. Lilo and Jumbaa make it through the encounter unscathed, Stitch not so much.

Wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaaaaah...

Oh, and Gantu is there, too - running away from Clip. He is subjected to WHACKY SHENANIGANS as he tries to get away, culminating in him being forced to hula dance. I think I'll let Starscream sum up my thoughts on this scene...

Lilo laments that it's all her fault Clip is running amok. "Who knew life would be full of such hard lessons?" she moans. "I'd never use a hair-eating monster on someone when you're unhappy with yourself." Then she remembers that Mertle gave her a bottle of hair conditioner yesterday - hair conditioner with "FOR TAMING WILD AND UNRULY HAIR" on the label. Hmmm...

"Stitch, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"Stitch thinks so, Lilo, but isn't that why they invented tube socks? Narf!"

They go to the hair salon and find Clip rolling around terrifying everybody. Stitch squirts her with hair conditioner, which causes her to shrink down to her original size. Lilo talks about how she learned that revenge is wrong and blah-blah-blah. Now Clip can get a job at the salon giving haircuts, and Jumbaa asks her to get rid of the afro because it doesn't fit an "evil genius" like him. As for Gantu, he's still hula-dancing - now in drag, because Pleakley didn't dress in drag at any point in this episode and we need to get in a "drag queens are funny" joke in there SOMEWHERE.

"Ha ha ha! The male character is doing a non-masculine thing! How hilarious that he
does not fall into traditional gender roles!"

What's the Verdict?

Lilo and Stitch: The Series is mediocre. At the very least this episode didn't have a lot of "LOL gay people" jokes, presumably because Pleakley wasn't in much of it. As I've said before, the charm of the movie is nowhere to be found, replaced with Flanderized characters and unfunny jokes. The animation as a whole isn't bad, but the art style seems cruder and the characters all look strange. And I know somebody's gonna say "Oh, you probably just watched one of the weaker episodes" - to which I say, after watching "Clip", I watched another episode of the show (the one where Lilo enters Stitch in a dog show). It was just as bad - in fact, it was even worse. Or I could've reviewed the episode with the experiment that makes people fall in love. That episode alone perfectly summarizes how hilarious the show's crew thought gay people were.

It's too bad, because a Lilo and Stitch show had the potential to be good. Maybe if they scrapped the "find all the other experiments" plot and just focused on Stitch learning about life in Hawaii. Oh, but don't take MY word for it. Here's a Lilo and Stitch fan's Tumblr post that sums up all the show's problems. My recommendation would be to just stick with the original movie.

There are far worse cartoons based on movies, though. In fact, I sincerely doubt it's worse than those Stitch animes where Lilo was replaced with other, similar girls.