Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Invasion America"

This has been on my "to review" list for a long time. When you think of DreamWorks shows, you probably think of the ones spun-off from their animated movies, don't you? The Penguins of Madagascar, the various Kung Fu Panda shows, Turbo F.A.S.T., etc.? But, before DreamWorks made a name for themselves doing CGI animated movies with pop culture references and celebrity voices, they dipped their toes into cartoon series. Their first cartoon, Toonsylvania, aired on Fox Kids. Their second cartoon is the one that we'll be looking at today: a little show called Invasion America.

This show was created by Harve Bennett (of Star Trek fame) and Steven Spielberg himself, who also served as executive producers, and served as a way for The WB to cash in on the success of The X-Files. Television executives, it would seem, agreed with that pigeon from Bolt...

The show's plot? In the 1980s, an alien named Cale-Oosha (voiced by Lorenzo Lamas), the ruler of a planet called Tyrus, believes that his uncle the Dragit (Tony Jay) wants to establish contact with the people of Earth. But the Dragit actually wants to invade Earth and conquer those puny Earthlings because of course he does. Cale refuses to do that, and a civil war gets started. Eventually Cale and his bodyguard Rafe (Edward Albert) escape to the Utah desert and meet a human woman named Rita (Kath Souice). After living on Earth for a few years, Cale returns to Tyrus. In the present day, the Dragit finds Rita and her young son David (Mikey Kelley) and all sorts of chaos ensues.

The original plan was for Invasion America to air on Kids' WB, but it was deemed too dark and violent for kids, so The WB aired it in prime-time. It premiered on June 8th, 1998... and promptly got cancelled after thirteen episodes because most people were going on vacation in the summer instead of watching television. To this day, the show hasn't gotten a single home video release, nor is it available on any streaming services.

Did Invasion America deserve to fail? Let's find out, shall we? Since this show has an overarching plot, I figured I should probably review the first episode, "The Legend", so I have some sort of idea what's going on. This is Invasion America!

The episode starts off in the scenic Utah Badlands. Just as the sun sets and night falls on the Beehive State (nicknamed that because the early pioneers that lived there considered themselves as hardworking as bees... hey, if I can't be funny, I should at least try to be educational), a helicopter appears, taking photos of random animal bones it can find. Eventually, it lands in front of a cave, and out step Major Phillip Stark (Greg Eagles) and Sergeant Angie Romar (Kristy McNichol), who meet up with a guy voiced by Jim Cummings (which automatically makes the show more awesome) who's checking out a dinosaur skeleton... or at least what LOOKS LIKE a dinosaur skeleton. I think the indication is that it's actually the skeleton of an alien that resembles a dinosaur. Say, wasn't there an episode of Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers with dinosaurs that were actually aliens? Maybe this fossil is of a dinosaur from that planet.

Before we can get any more information about this mysterious fossil, we cut to Glenport, Massachusetts. It's here that we meet our main character, David. As he does some nifty gymnastics, his inner monologue tells us that he's always been a loner, different from the other kids, and he doesn't know why. Probably because main characters of cartoons that happen to be teenagers are social outcasts more often than not. It's kind of a rule.

Maybe the other kids are just jealous of his epic gymnastics skills.

David's pal Jim (Rider Strong) enters and after some banter between them, they go for a motorcycle ride through the country. David's driving, even though five seconds ago he claimed that he isn't allowed to take Driver's Ed. Isn't that illegal?

"Getcha motor runnin', head out on the highway..."

Apparently it is, because a police car starts chasing after them, and David pulls over. Nah, I'm just kidding, he keeps going and we get a chase sequence. Because David is COOOOOOOOOOL, and COOOOOOOOOOOOL teenagers have no respect for the law. Just ask Jim Hawkins from Treasure Planet.

Of course, Sheriff Oozes Awesomeness here doesn't agree.

"My large forehead does not approve of this situation."

David reveals that this sheriff's name is Rafe... say, isn't Rafe also the name of Cale-Oosha's aforementioned bodyguard? I wonder if this guy is secretly an alien. Considering that after his little confrontation with David he wonders how long he can keep "this secret" from him, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say "yes".

It's flashback time! Seventeen years earlier, we see a spaceship painted the same colors as a Coca-Cola advertisement flying through space. Inside the spaceship are all these humanoid figures speaking in a weird made-up language. Fortunately, there are subtitles. Unfortunately, they're in Spanish, so I still have no idea what the humanoids are saying.

I'll have to make up my own translations. I'm going to assume that "Dragit, prepardos
para lanzamiento a Tierra." is Spanish for "Dragit, I look like a girl."

Actually, according to Google Translate, it's Spanish for "Dragit, ready for launch to Earth."

The spaceship unleashes these smaller red spaceships that head for Earth. Then it's revealed that the aliens CAN speak English... or, as they call it, "Earth-Speak". Two of the aliens are Cale-Oosha and the Dragit, and they're talking about how they're going to visit the Dragit's Earth facility. Rafe is there, too, and he gives Cale a magic glowing glove "to remind [his] uncle that [he] is the ruler".

"I love the Power Glove. It's so bad."

At that very moment, a blonde-haired woman is driving around the Utah Badlands in a Jeep, and she winds up being a front-row spectator of one spaceship's landing at the Earth facility. The aliens on board are greeted by Tyrusian air force general Colonel Konrad (Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy), who takes Cale on a tour of the place... and promptly lets it slip that they're getting ready for "the invasion" and that the Dragit (not just ANY Dragit, THE Dragit) gave them the order to do that.

Why does the Dragit want to invade the Earth? Because he thinks Earthlings are a threat to the Tyrusians. "Earth is a war-like planet with weapons of mass destruction," he claims. "Most of which are in this place called 'America'. The only thing Americans respect is superior force. We will use this place to support such a force."

Honestly, Cale should've known that the Dragit was evil. Those eyebrows totally
give it away.

The Dragit goes all Mark Zuckerberg and insists that they need to expand, but Cale declares, "There will be no invasion." But the Dragit and his minions aren't going to just abandon those invasion plans so easily, and if that means committing treason, they're okay with that. It's not even treason, the Dragit claims, it's revolution. Totally different.

"For the revolution!"

"For the revolution!"

"For the revolution!"

"For the revolution!"

"For the revolution!"

"For the revolution!"

"For the revolution!"

"For the evolution! Uh, I mean, revolution..."

"Dang it, Steve, we rehearsed this ten times!"

The laser guns start a-blasting and eventually Cale and some other invasion-hating Tyrusians make a run for it. Cale and Rafe manage to escape in one of the smaller ships (which repeatedly switched back and forth between 2D and early 1990s CGI, distractingly enough), but they're not out of the woods yet. They still have to deal with... pausing for dramatic effect... the MANGLERS!

What are the Manglers? Well, if you stuck the Xenomorph from Alien and the velociraptors from Jurassic Park in a blender, a Mangler is probably what you'd get. I imagine that the Dragit wanted to use them are part of his invasion plan - Earthlings are probably powerless against these ferocious sharp-toothed beasts. Then again, if we could domesticate wolves and make dogs, maybe we could domesticate these guys too?

They really don't like being compared to Xenomorphs, as Cale and Reif learned the
hard way.

Cale is rescued by the blonde-haired woman in the Jeep, whereas Rafe is cornered on the top of a building by the Manglers - at least until he jumps off and blows the place sky-high. As for Cale and the blonde-haired woman, they wind up making a helicopter explode. The Dragit and Konrad believe that they destroyed Cale. I bet when he eventually ruins their plans for invasion, they're gonna feel really stupid.

Cale and the blonde-haired woman take refuge in a cave, where Cale reveals to her that he's an alien... and the blonde woman reveals that her name is Rita. Romantic music starts up... oh jeez, is this going where I think it's going? Is Cale actually David's father?

"Fun fact: Mars isn't the only planet that needs women..."

Well, before any Tyrusian mating rituals can get started, a Mangler shows up and attacks Cale. This is where that magic glove Rafe gave Cale earlier comes in handy (no pun intended). It has some sort of weird Mangler-KOing powers.

And guess what? Rafe is alive!

Rafe's voice informs us that in the days ahead, Rita would become a guide to Cale... and a friend... and much more. Yes, it turns out that Cale and Rita DID wind up having a kid together. I was initially disappointed that they made the main aliens in the show just look like humans, but honestly, if they were going to have one of them marry a human being I think that might've been for the best.

I mean, could you imagine if Rita wound up marrying and having a kid with, I dunno,
Roger from American Dad? THERE'S a creepy mental image...

Alas, Cale is eventually needed back on Tyrus, which means he must leave his wife and son - otherwise, when the Dragit finds them, they'll be in great danger. We end on two creepy guys watching them from the shadows as the words "To Be Continued..." appear on the screen. Maybe I'll review the second episode of the show, maybe I won't. For now, I'll have to leave the review on a cliffhanger. Sorry...

What's the Verdict?

This was good. I legitimately thought this was good. Decent animation, great voice acting, genuine suspense and drama... this show had the potential to be a big hit!

So why wasn't it a big hit? Well, for one thing, airing it during the summer was probably a bad idea. There's a reason why new seasons of TV shows start up in autumn - people are more likely to be home and watching television regularly when the weather gets chillier (though apparently this began because it helped automobile advertisers promote their new car models). Of course, there are a lot of cartoons that premiered BEFORE fall and were huge hits - Futurama first premiered in March, SpongeBob SquarePants and Family Guy in May, and Cow and Chicken in July - so there had to be another reason. My theory? Maybe the world just wasn't ready for a serious animated show yet. Look at most of the cartoons that aired in prime time during the 1990s: most if not all of them were comedic. Everyone wanted to cash in on the success of The Simpsons, which was a comedy, so they made comedic cartoon shows. This didn't always work either (see also Capitol Critters), but most cartoon shows in the 1990s as a whole were humorous by nature. The only cartoon shows from the 1990s I can think of that took themselves seriously were superhero cartoons, which I imagine became popular because people already knew and loved the main characters from comic books and movies.

If Invasion America premiered nowadays, where more serious cartoons are beloved BECAUSE they take themselves so seriously, I think it would be a bigger hit. But alas, as is it's just a cartoon that could've been something great if people just gave it a chance. Who knows? If the show had been more successful, maybe it could've had a big impact on animated shows as a whole. Food for thought.

Let's Watch This: An Episode (or Two) of "The Twisted Whiskers Show"

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.

Did your school ever have one of those school supply sales? Y'know, where they'd set out a table and put a bunch of folders, notebooks, erasers, that sort of thing on it for you to buy? If not, maybe you went to a Target or a WalMart or wherever during their "Back to School" sales (which would usually start up in July, annoyingly enough... we're just trying to enjoy our summer vacation!). Either way, there's a very good chance that at some point in the 2000s, you saw something like this:

These warped, nightmare-inducing pets are part of the Twisted Whiskers franchise. Created by Terrill Bohlar for American Greetings and Corus Entertainment in 2001, all you had to do to create a Twisted Whiskers character was digitally modify a photo of an animal. Then you slap the result on a greeting card, a notepad, a sheet of wrapping paper... they even made Twisted Whiskers Valentines. Because nothing says "I love you" like a cat with eyes as big as dinner plates and a giant mouth full of creepy human-esque teeth!

I don't know how much money the Twisted Whiskers franchise has made as a whole, but they did well enough for The Hub (now Discovery Family) to greenlight a show about 'em. In fact, this was apparently the first program that The Hub aired - as in, BEFORE their more popular stuff like My Little Pony or Transformers: Prime.

The show received one season of fifty-two episodes, all of them focusing on the WHACKY SHENANIGANS that these various cats and dogs get themselves into. Two of the co-producers, Bill Kopp and Savage Steve Holland, are also responsible for Eek! The Cat, fittingly enough. I tried to do a review of Eek! The Cat, but I wound up deleting the review because it wasn't very funny (the funniest moment was me talking about airplane toilets and where the waste you put in them goes. That should tell you a lot), which is the same reason I canned my review of another one of Bill Kopp's shows, Mad Jack the Pirate. Maybe I'll have better luck with this one...

We're gonna watch the thirtieth episode of the show, "Dine and Dash: For the Birds". Why that episode in particular? Because it's the first one I could find on YouTube. This is The Twisted Whiskers Show.

The episode stars two cats named Dine (voiced by Peter Kelamis) and Dash (voiced by Lee Tockar), who with their striped pelts that resemble prison uniforms are your typical "streetwise leader and dimwitted sidekick" duo. They're hungry, and there just so happens to be a flock of blue jays perched on the fence nearby...

Dash is the one with blue eyes, Dine is the one with yellow eyes. Remember that now.

But, since this is a cartoon, actually getting to EAT the birds will be much harder than Dash and Dine anticipated. First, they set up a birdhouse. But when a bird (Scott McNeil) tries to move in, they're promptly kicked out by... a squirrel?

Okay, um, Comedy 101, guys: setups are a thing in jokes for a reason. What the heck is a squirrel doing in the birdhouse? We never saw him go in the birdhouse, so him just being in there feels very random if the cats' goal was to trap the birds inside.

"I am a crazy rabid squirrel! Also, I can burp my ABCs!"

The squirrel's purpose, it would seem, is to make things harder for the cats. It throws pies at them... oh, I get it. This is one of THOSE cartoons. The ones that try to emulate the classic cartoon shorts from Warner Brothers and Tex Avery but don't quite understand what made those shorts funny. I expect one of the cats to get clobbered by an anvil at some point too.

Well, problem solved: if the cats are hungry, they can just eat the pie.

"If we don't get rid of that rodent immediately, say goodbye to delicious bird dinner!" Dine tells Dash. I mean, surely there's some other way you can catch the birds, isn't there? Or some other way you can get food? Heck, why don't you just eat the squirrel? Cats can eat squirrels.

Spoiler alert: the cats wind up making total Sylvesters out of themselves. The squirrel effortlessly thwarts each of their attempts at getting him out of the birdhouse. For example, at one point they're hanging from a telephone wire. I was expecting them to wind up getting electrocuted since that's what usually happens when cartoon characters hang from telephone wires, but nope. The squirrel's got something else planned for them. Something involving a can of oil.

You're gonna give that back to the Tin Man when you're done with it, aren't you?

Offbrand Screwy Squirrel uses the oil to make the wires all slippery, resulting in the cats sliding down the wire and into a telephone pole. Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

Next, the cats try to flood the squirrel out of the birdhouse using a hose. But wouldn't you know it? The squirrel tied the other end of the hose to a car's bumper. Okay, seriously? How is this squirrel able to predict all of the cats' plans in advance? All I can think of is that he saw the cats working the hose before they climbed up to the birdhouse, but even then, how did he get down from there without them noticing? Has Jammet been supplying him with Pep-Ups? I know the answer to this is "it's just cartoon logic", but it feels very jarring. Also, I'm just gonna say it right now - I do not like this squirrel. You have to be very careful when writing characters who are in control of everything and effortlessly outwit everyone. When done wrong, it results in a very frustratingly obnoxious character. Bugs Bunny this squirrel is not.

The creepy design they gave him isn't doing the little rodent any favors either.

The cats then hoist large air fresheners up into the air so that they're directly in front of and behind the birdhouse. Once the air fresheners are turned on, they make things very, very chilly at the birdhouse. I have to give them credit for their determination, but once again, I have to ask if it's really worth it. Aren't there other ways you can get food?

So how long until the air fresheners land on the cats, crushing them in a joke that should
be funny but instead just comes across as needlessly brutal?

Then the cats start shaking the pole that the birdhouse is sitting atop, and the squirrel retaliates by pelting them with snowballs, icicles, and - of course - the air fresheners. Incidentally, do you know what this squirrel's name is? According to the credits, it's "Sinister Squirrel". Honestly a pretty fitting name, although I think "Sadistic Squirrel" would be more fitting.

Look, the cats have been crushed by the air fresheners. That's funny, right?

I generally feel sorry for Sylvester when I'm watching a Sylvester and Tweety short, but at least
I never actually rooted against Tweety. I'm actively rooting against the squirrel right now.

Dine snaps like a twig and decides to just chop the pole with the birdhouse on it down - I guess he finally figured out that it's not worth having to put up with that squirrel just to eat some birds. Speaking of birds, the bird who tried to move into the birdhouse before shows up again and tells them that HE'LL take care of the little pest. Yes. Please beat him up, Bird. I want to see that squirrel get what's coming to him.

Oh, who am I kidding? The squirrel's probably gonna effortlessly take down the bird, too.

"I'm gonna peck out those bulbous red eyes of his!"

What's this? The bird actually KOs the seemingly invincible squirrel?

I think this GIF summarizes my thoughts on the matter:

After kicking out the squirrel, the bird sends the cats fleeing with a mighty roar... hey, he IS descended from the dinosaurs. But when he heads back into the birdhouse, he finds out that somebody else has moved in. Specifically, a BEAR.

I'll be honest, I was half-expecting the squirrel to return and steal the birdhouse back. I'll
gladly take this over THAT.

Here's a question: why was this episode called "For the Birds" if we barely saw any birds in it? I mean, I know it focuses on a birdhouse, but still...

Okay, so that wasn't very good. But, since the episode was pretty short, I think I'll watch another episode to make the blog post a bit longer and see if I didn't just watch one of the weaker ones. The nineteenth episode, "Quiet Time With Tiny Head", is on YouTube, and the person who uploaded it dubbed it the best episode of the show, so let's see if they're right about that...

The episode starts off with a dog named Von Ripper (also Scott McNeil) - best described as Scud from Toy Story if he were part-shark - at the veterinarian's office. The vet tells his owner that Von Ripper's got high blood pressure, and if he doesn't calm down, he'll die. Wow, this episode's off to a dark start. The solution? Von Ripper needs a cat. His owner is all "No, he HATES cats!", but the vet insists that cats lower blood pressure.

No, I didn't crop out the humans' heads. This is one of those Muppet Babies-esque
shows where we don't see the humans' faces.

The Pet Therapy Center loans them a cat to help calm Von Ripper's nerves. That cat is the titular Tiny Head (Colin Murdock), whose shtick is that he has a very very very small head. I smell a one-joke character!

His head is as small as Megamind's head is big.

I know I've been making a lot of Looney Tunes comparisons here, but as soon as Tiny Head starts talking, it becomes clear that he's NOT just a one-joke character after all: in addition to having a tiny head, he's also sort of a Foghorn Leghorn wannabe in that he talks a lot. He even has a similar body shape AND a southern accent (though his voice sounds more like Bing Crosby's on helium than Foghorn's).

"Unfunny jokes, unfunny jokes everywhere..."

Tiny Head puts Von Ripper in a massage chair, and it seems to calm the dog down. Why Von Ripper's owner has a massage chair outside, I don't know. But it's working... until Tiny Head turns the dial too high, causing the chair to go haywire. Next, he wraps Von Ripper's head in steaming hot towels, which just winds up shrinking it.

Y'know what? Tiny Head might be a bit of a Foghorn Leghorn knockoff, but he's the only character on the show I kinda like thus far. He's a little funny, at least, if only because of his high-pitched voice. Plus, he's actually trying to be helpful, whereas Foghorn is pretty much just a troll. Foghorn might be more fun, but Tiny Head's more pleasant.

Picking one's nose must be very hard for Tiny Head.

Since the hot towels didn't work, Tiny Head places Von Ripper in a hammock and, after a lullaby, tries to rock the dog to sleep... and accidentally sends Von Ripper flying into a tree. His next attempt at calming the shark-like pooch down results in Von Ripper getting clobbered by a falling tree. Finally, meditation seems to do the trick... or at least cause Von Ripper to have a nervous breakdown, particularly when the Pet Therapy Center tells them that they can keep Tiny Head.

What's the Verdict?

Well, I watched two episodes of this show, and for once I had the opposite reaction to each one.

"For the Birds" was pretty bad. It tried way too hard to be like a Warner Brothers cartoon and failed miserably at it. The squirrel was way too repulsive and nasty to be likeable, I just felt sorry for the cats. The jokes (aside from the ending with the bear) weren't funny at all - lots of poor attempts at slapstick reminiscent of those Larry Doyle-produced shorts from the 2000s. On the flip side, "Quiet Time With Tiny Head" was surprisingly pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but I found it kind of funny and liked Tiny Head even if he was a bit too much like Foghorn Leghorn. The animation is fine as far as 2000s television CGI goes, the voice actors all do a good job... so if I had to sum up The Twisted Whiskers Show as a whole, I'd call it a mixed bag. Will I be watching any more episodes? Probably not, unless Tiny Head has a big role in them. In fact, maybe the show should've been all about him.

If you want to watch The Twisted Whiskers Show for yourself, you can find episodes on YouTube. It's also on Amazon Prime, but apparently it's "currently unavailable to watch in [my] location", you might have the same problem. And now, a teaser for my next review: