AFOS Blog Rewind: The Simpsons, "Simpsorama"

(Photo source: FY Springfield)

The following is a repost of my November 14, 2014 discussion of the Simpsons/Futurama crossover. Futurama is back in the limelight again, after Dan Lanigan, a reality TV producer, posted on July 18 a trailer for Fan-O-Rama, an ambitious live-action Futurama fan film he co-wrote and directed. The Simpsons/Futurama crossover is streamable on FXX's Simpsons World app.

"Meanwhile," Futurama's this-time-for-real-it's-the-end series finale, was one of the classiest exits a long-running show has made. "Simpsorama," the Simpsons/Futurama crossover that brings back the Planet Express crew for one more on-screen adventure (while they've experienced an afterlife in print as stars of their own Bongo Comics titles), feels kind of unnecessary as an extra farewell to the Matt Groening/David X. Cohen creation on-screen. (This crossover might not even be the last farewell, if the rumors that Fox is now considering reviving Futurama for a fourth incarnation are true.) Let's put it this way: "Meanwhile" was Star Trek VI. "Simpsorama" is all the scenes with either Kirk, Scotty or Chekov during Star Trek: Generations.

But the scenes with Kirk, Scotty or Chekov were good, even though the material for Scotty and Chekov was a slightly clunky rewrite of material originally written for Spock and McCoy (the rest of Star Trek: Generations--except for the opening titles with the floating Dom Pérignon bottle and the surprisingly effective dramatic scene between Picard and Data on the Stellar Cartography deck--was atrocious). Though "Simpsorama," which was penned by J. Stewart Burns (the writer of my favorite 2010s Simpsons episode so far, "Holidays of Future Passed"), pales in comparison to "Meanwhile" or Futurama at its peak, I actually enjoyed it.

It's a far more satisfying crossover than the terrible Family Guy/Simpsons crossover (and it's non-canonical too, Simpsons fans who despise Futurama and Futurama fans who despise "Simpsorama," in case both of you camps forgot that the appearance of Kang and Kodos, the human-devouring aliens from the non-canonical "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, automatically makes "Simpsorama" a non-canonical Simpsons story). Homer (Dan Castellaneta) and Bender (John DiMaggio)--who's been sent by Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) to 21st-century Springfield to kill Homer but gets distracted from his mission because he and Homer have a lot in common--are a funnier pair than Homer and Peter Griffin, mainly because the two kindred spirits don't get into a tedious chicken fight. An even better comedic combo is Lisa (Yeardley Smith), Professor Frink (Hank Azaria) and Professor Farnsworth in the same room. The sight of an old genius like Farnsworth reverting to a jealous child over "the annoying girl" and her precociousness is a highlight of the crossover. His disdain for Lisa is so thick you could build a Parthenon with it.

Only one joke in the crossover made my eyes roll, and its wretchedness is typical of so many similar bits of fan service in post-season 8 Simpsons episodes. That would be the umpteenth reappearance of Seymour, the dead dog Fry (also West) was briefly reunited with in one of Futurama's most popular episodes, the heart-wrenching "Jurassic Bark" (and again in 2013's "Game of Tones," in which a dream-state version of Seymour, who was voiced by Seth MacFarlane, got to say one line to Fry: "Philip, have you lost weight?"). Seymour's first reappearance in the 2007 made-for-video feature film Bender's Big Score bugged me--as does his cameo in "Simpsorama"--because the film's retconning of "Jurassic Bark" felt like the Futurama writers were saying that they were ashamed of the episode's sad ending. They received hate mail from some viewers at the time of the airing of "Jurassic Bark" for ending that episode on a downbeat note, and I wish I could tell the writers, "Who gives a fuck what those viewers think? That ending was perfect." To borrow a catchphrase from a certain cantankerous Simpsons character, worst concession to irate viewers ever.

(.GIF source: FY Springfield)

Memorable quotes:
* Mayor Quimby (Castellaneta), referring to Lisa's jazz concert in the park getting disrupted by stormy weather: "Even God hates jazz."

* Homer: "Oh... my... God... He's telling the truth. I have to take you to our civic leaders." Cut to Homer and Bender at Moe's.

* Homer: "Hey, uh, what's the robot version of bromance?"
Bender: "Ro-mance."
Homer: "You future guys have a word for everything... pal."

* Marge (Julie Kavner), thinking to herself: "Oh, don't mention her eye. Don't mention her eye."
Leela (Katey Sagal), thinking to herself: "Don't mention her hair. Don't mention her hair."

http://fyspringfield.com/post/111893189712

* Marge: "Can you please just get us out of this lousy future?"
Farnsworth: "Actually, of all probable futures, this is the worst."
Marge: "It is, 'cause my baby's not in it."
Farnsworth: "Motherly love--why did we outlaw that?"

* Farnsworth: "The only way to handle the creatures is to do what we do to each year's Super Bowl losers: shoot them into space."

* Omicronian emperor Lrrr (Maurice LaMarche) to Kang (Harry Shearer) and Kodos (Castellaneta), regarding his upset wife Ndnd (Tress MacNeille): "Uh, perhaps the one of you that is female should go console her." Both Kang and Kodos go console Ndnd, which has to be the funniest button on a concluding Simpsons scene in years.

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Black Dynamite, "How Honey Bee Got Her Groove Back or Night of the Living Dickheads," and The Simpsons, "Simpsorama" (tie)

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Ian Edwards, a staff writer for Black Dynamite this season, is a solid stand-up whose most hilarious moment took place not during one of his sets or his TV writing credits but on a podcast. In episode 69 of WTF with Marc Maron, Edwards was one of several guest comedians Maron interviewed on stage at Portland's Bridgetown Comedy Festival. I've brought up this 2010 WTF episode before because it's my favorite of the live WTF episodes, but to keep it succinct, Maron's conversations on WTF with black guys who aren't Wyatt Cenac (who worked alongside Maron on one of his old Air America radio programs), Chris Rock or W. Kamau Bell tend to be on the awkward side, and Maron's exchanges with Edwards at the festival were no exception. He referred to Edwards' older stand-up routines about his Jamaican background as a phase where Edwards "leaned on the Jamaican thing," which led to Edwards retorting, "You don't lean on it. You're from there. How the fuck you lean on some shit you're from, man? I don't really understand that one, Marc, but hey... You're really leaning on this white thing. I hope one day it goes away, Marc."

Maron also confused Jamaica with Haiti while bringing up the then-recent subject of Haiti earthquake relief. Edwards corrected him and then joked, "You sure you didn't send [money] to Panama or some other island? How sure are you that you sent it to Haiti? 'Addressed from Marc Maron to Black Island...'" I always laugh my ass off whenever I play back Edwards' reactions to Maron transforming into Michael Scott at the Dunder-Mifflin racial sensitivity training session right in front of a live audience.

The Edwards-penned "How Honey Bee Got Her Groove Back" doesn't quite compare to the off-the-cuff hilarity of Edwards roasting Maron alive, but I love how thick and incomprehensible almost all the Jamaican accents in this Black Dynamite episode are--I wouldn't be surprised if Edwards himself had a hand in the voice direction--and the special guest stars in this Jamaican vacation episode are quite impressive as first-time animated show voice actors. You have Chance the Rapper portraying a so-polygamous-he-could-be-half-Mormon Bob Marley, who becomes enchanted with Honey Bee (Kym Whitley) while she and her judo-trained hoes take a long-overdue, How Stella Got Her Groove Back-esque vacation away from the Whorephanage. Chance nails Marley's voice, plus you have Erykah Badu stealing the episode and bringing to life an obese and laid-back Whorephanage employee who's straight out of Chris Rock's "Fat black women don't give a fuck what you think: she goin' out on Friday night!" bit from Bigger & Blacker.

But what's even more enjoyable than the guest voice work--or the episode's admirable ballsiness in regards to not adding subtitles so that the whitest of viewers can better understand the Jamaican male hoes' dialogue--is Black Dynamite once again fearlessly taking aim at a black figure who's revered by the show's viewers, but doing so without rehashing the same old jokes about that figure. "How Honey Bee Got Her Groove Back" could have trotted out the usual jokes about Marley's love of spliffs or his accent, which Honey Bee says she barely understands (by the way, one of my favorite "what an old white shithead this British or New Zealand newscaster is" videos on YouTube is a 1979 Marley interview where the patronizing Zealand interviewer opens with a disclaimer that warns viewers of a "patois which at times is difficult to understand"). But instead, "How Honey Bee Got Her Groove Back" takes aim at the married reggae legend's history of womanizing, a part of his life I wasn't really aware of until this episode made me Google Marley's polygamy. Who'd expect Black Dynamite to be educational in addition to being funny as hell?

Memorable quotes:
* From Honey Bee's first encounter with Marley: "Well, I never heard of you. Must not be that good, but keep workin'. Who knows? One day you might be as famous as Marlon Jackson."

* Honey Bee, while she and Marley flee from assassins: "With all this damn weed, I thought this island would be way more peaceful!"
Marley: "Well, some parts are peaceful."
Honey Bee: "What parts, Bob?"
Marley: "Um, mostly the parts I'm... not in?"

* "Your cheeks togedder/Right in de palm of my hand/Don't need de rubber/Let's go raw, I know you understand/We gon' fuck/We gon' fuck/We gon' fuck/We gon' fuck/Can you feel it..."

***

"Meanwhile," Futurama's this-time-for-real-it's-the-end series finale, was one of the classiest exits a long-running show has made. "Simpsorama," the Simpsons/Futurama crossover that brings back the Planet Express crew for one more on-screen adventure (while they've experienced an afterlife in print as stars of their own Bongo Comics titles), feels kind of unnecessary as an extra farewell to the Matt Groening/David X. Cohen creation on-screen. (This crossover might not even be the last farewell, if the rumors that Fox is now considering reviving Futurama for a fourth incarnation are true.) Let's put it this way: "Meanwhile" was Star Trek VI. "Simpsorama" is all the scenes with either Kirk, Scotty or Chekov during Star Trek: Generations.

But the scenes with Kirk, Scotty or Chekov were good, even though the material for Scotty and Chekov was a slightly clunky rewrite of material originally written for Spock and McCoy (the rest of Star Trek: Generations--except for the opening titles with the floating Dom Pérignon bottle and the surprisingly effective dramatic scene between Picard and Data on the Stellar Cartography deck--was atrocious). Though "Simpsorama," which was penned by J. Stewart Burns (the writer of my favorite 2010s Simpsons episode so far, "Holidays of Future Passed"), pales in comparison to "Meanwhile" or Futurama at its peak, I actually enjoyed it.

It's a far more satisfying crossover than the terrible Family Guy/Simpsons crossover (and it's non-canonical too, Simpsons fans who despise Futurama and Futurama fans who despise "Simpsorama," in case both of you camps forgot that the appearance of Kang and Kodos, the human-devouring aliens from the non-canonical "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, automatically makes "Simpsorama" a non-canonical Simpsons story). Homer (Dan Castellaneta) and Bender (John DiMaggio)--who's been sent by Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) to 21st-century Springfield to kill Homer but gets distracted from his mission because he and Homer have a lot in common--are a funnier pair than Homer and Peter Griffin, mainly because the two kindred spirits don't get into a tedious chicken fight. An even better comedic combo is Lisa (Yeardley Smith), Professor Frink (Hank Azaria) and Professor Farnsworth in the same room. The sight of an old genius like Farnsworth reverting to a jealous child over "the annoying girl" and her precociousness is a highlight of the crossover. His disdain for Lisa is so thick you could build a Parthenon with it.

Only one joke in the crossover made my eyes roll, and its wretchedness is typical of so many similar bits of fan service in post-season 8 Simpsons episodes. That would be the umpteenth reappearance of Seymour, the dead dog Fry (also West) was briefly reunited with in one of Futurama's most popular episodes, the heart-wrenching "Jurassic Bark" (and again in 2013's "Game of Tones," in which a dream-state version of Seymour, who was voiced by Seth MacFarlane, got to say one line to Fry: "Philip, have you lost weight?"). Seymour's first reappearance in the 2007 made-for-video feature film Bender's Big Score bugged me--as does his cameo in "Simpsorama"--because the film's retconning of "Jurassic Bark" felt like the Futurama writers were saying that they were ashamed of the episode's sad ending. They received hate mail from some viewers at the time of the airing of "Jurassic Bark" for ending that episode on a downbeat note, and I wish I could tell the writers, "Who gives a fuck what those viewers think? That ending was perfect." To borrow a catchphrase from a certain cantankerous Simpsons character, worst concession to irate viewers ever.

Memorable quotes:
* Mayor Quimby (Castellaneta), referring to Lisa's jazz concert in the park getting disrupted by stormy weather: "Even God hates jazz."

* Homer: "Oh... my... God... He's telling the truth. I have to take you to our civic leaders." Cut to Homer and Bender at Moe's.

* Homer: "Hey, uh, what's the robot version of bromance?"
Bender: "Ro-mance."
Homer: "You future guys have a word for everything... pal."

* Marge (Julie Kavner), thinking to herself: "Oh, don't mention her eye. Don't mention her eye."
Leela (Katey Sagal), thinking to herself: "Don't mention her hair. Don't mention her hair."

* Marge: "Can you please just get us out of this lousy future?"
Farnsworth: "Actually, of all probable futures, this is the worst."
Marge: "It is, 'cause my baby's not in it."
Farnsworth: "Motherly love--why did we outlaw that?"

* Farnsworth: "The only way to handle the creatures is to do what we do to each year's Super Bowl losers: shoot them into space."

* Omicronian emperor Lrrr (Maurice LaMarche) to Kang (Harry Shearer) and Kodos (Castellaneta), regarding his upset wife Ndnd (Tress MacNeille): "Uh, perhaps the one of you that is female should go console her." Both Kang and Kodos go console Ndnd, which has to be the funniest button on a concluding Simpsons scene in years.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner Extra: Back to the Futurama past (with former Futurama assistant director A.L. Baroza)

Tonight, Futurama, which premiered on March 28, 1999 on Fox, airs its final episode on Comedy Central, the network that--to the delight of fans of the animated cult favorite and its direct-to-video, post-Fox cancellation spinoff movies--brought Futurama back to series form in 2010. For those who have been frozen in a cryogenic tube in the last few years, Futurama is about a 20th century pizza delivery boy named Fry (Billy West), a stranger in a strange land called the 31st century.

Helping Fry to continually adjust to 31st century life after his awakening from an accidental cryogenic sleep are his 173-year-old descendant, the unsurprisingly exposition-y Professor Farnsworth (also West), a boozy robot roommate named Bender (John DiMaggio) and Leela (Katey Sagal), a one-eyed, karate-chopping delivery ship captain who was raised in an "orphanarium." Several things have kept Futurama from being a lame retread of The Jetsons, which it appeared to be at first: the misanthropic brand of humor of Life in Hell and Simpsons mastermind Matt Groening, who co-created the show with writer David X. Cohen, gorgeous state-of-the-art animation and some brilliantly written episodes that, in addition to being genuinely funny, also hold up as solid and cerebral sci-fi, particularly "Godfellas," "The Late Philip J. Fry" and the surprisingly moving "Jurassic Bark."

And then there are episodes that are just plain funny from start to finish, like "Where No Fan Has Gone Before." An homage to Fry's favorite show, the original Star Trek, 2002's "Where No Fan" somehow managed to get the voices of nearly all the surviving (and still-bickering) '60s Trek cast members together in the same episode, if not the same recording booth (the only surviving cast member who sat out the episode was the late James Doohan, whose refusal to participate resulted in a couple of great gags about a Doohan replacement named Welshie).

In the recent Futurama episode "Assie Come Home," a robot chop shop is strewn with pieces of the Iron Giant; C3P0; Muffit II from the '70s Battlestar Galactica; Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons; Octus from Sym-Bionic Titan; Robo Bill and Robo Ted from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey; Alpha 5 from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; Gigantor; Paulie's robot from Rocky IV; a Dalek; and a Cylon. (Photo source: Sexy Machine)

Animated comedy shows aren't exactly known for bringing great change and upheaval to their characters' lives and making such a thing permanent (for instance, you'll never see Bart, Lisa and Maggie age, unless it's a DC Elseworlds-style Simpsons episode about an alternate future), and Futurama was no exception. Even through all the countless body (or brain) transformations and deaths they've experienced, the Planet Express crew has remained fundamentally the same: Fry's still lazy, Bender always looks out for number one, Leela's always more sensible than the other two, Amy Wong (Lauren Tom) bangs anything that moves, as long as they're not Asian (a young Asian woman on a white show who's scripted to bone everybody except Asian guys--how surprising!), and so on.

But there's one story thread on Futurama that's evolved over the years, and it's the relationship between Fry and his fellow misfit Leela. Their gradual romance (which became an official thing in the Comedy Central years) was the focus of what was thought to have been the final Futurama episode when the series aired on Fox, and it's once again the focus of the this-time-for-real series finale. Many Futurama viewers think the show has lost some of its luster writing-wise--which often happens to shows that go past five seasons--so tonight, will Futurama go out in high style and win back those viewers?

Shortly before Futurama takes its bow for the third and most likely final time, I got A.L. Baroza, an assistant director and storyboard artist on the show during its Comedy Central run, to recall to me his five favorite Futurama episodes that he worked on. Not surprisingly, one of them involved an elaborate mechanical killing machine sequence that also happens to be one of my favorite pieces of animation the show has ever done. After Futurama wrapped up production, A.L. has moved on to storyboarding Fox's Axe Cop, based on the Nicolle brothers' completely nonsensical superhero comic of the same name.

(Photo source: The Infosphere)

"The Tip of the Zoidberg" (season 6, episode production number 6ACV18; aired August 18, 2011)
"In the earlier episode 'The Duh-Vinci Code,' I storyboarded this Rube Goldberg sequence where Fry and the Prof get launched into space from the Parthenon. I guess the Futurama powers-that-be must have liked it since in 'Tip,' I got the Murderlator sequence, which is a Rube Goldberg machine that pretty much took up an entire act of the script. It was the hardest storyboard sequence to board in my entire animation career. Although it was a somewhat painful experience, it was worth it, in no small part due to the CGI crew at Rough Draft Glendale, who modeled some (but not all!) of the Murderlator sequence. And the episode was nominated for an Emmy!"

"Overclockwise" (season 6, episode production number 6ACV25; aired September 1, 2011)
"I enjoyed doing the Cosmically Aware Bender stuff where I could bring all my years of reading Jack Kirby and Jim Starlin comics to good use. Alternately, I loved doing the extended take of Fry and Leela that closed out the episode, just two characters acting and reacting silently. I love doing scenes that give viewers the feels, as the kids call it these days."

(Photo source: Sexy Machine)

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (02/27/2013): Bravest Warriors, Archer, Out There, Do's & Don'ts and Adventure Time

I keep misidentifying Out There as Over There, that Gulf War show that starred Sticky Fingaz from Onyx. What I really need to do before writing is... cram! Duh duh duh, duh duh duh. Let the boys be boys!

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

"Ultra Wankershim," the penultimate webisode of Bravest Warriors' first season and one of the series' strangest installments, marks the return of the enigmatic Emotion Lord (series showrunner Breehn Burns), a cross between a Jedi and a Time Lord. This older and nutty incarnation of Warriors leader Chris travels back to his past to witness the Dawning of Wankershim (also voiced by Burns), the moment in Martian history when Wankershim, the holographic elf from the Warriors' Holo-John who has evolved from hologram to actual lifeform, becomes so large and infinite in size that he absorbs all of humanity and the universe into his "Wankerbeing."

The Emotion Lord explains to the Warriors that the Dawning also brings about the end of the universe, but he's not allowed to divulge anything else about the future because doing so could damage the space-time continuum, so he can only help the Warriors to figure out how to save the future on their own. Chris becomes curious about his future with Beth, the fellow Warrior he has a crush on, so he gets his older self to teach him the Emotion Lords' power of seeing visions of future events. The few images of the future that Chris is able to briefly glimpse include the emergence of an evil version of Plum (Tara Strong), the alien mermaid chick who threw herself at Chris in "Gas Powered Stick," and Beth making out with a darkened stranger who appears to be Danny, Chris and Beth's fellow Warrior. Chris also inadvertently receives hints about a grim future for Beth when his older self starts to weep while staring at Beth. To keep himself from ruining space-time, the Emotion Lord makes himself vanish and departs with a phrase he's been repeatedly saying during his latest visit: "It's always been Wankershim."

"Ultra Wankershim" may sound like a somber installment that's concerned with advancing the show's mythology and is all business, but the episode doesn't forget to be funny and tosses in silly gags like a play on that old time-travelling term "paradox" and a Martian anchorperson (Maria Bamford) who oozes slime from her face when she speaks, a gross and amusing alien version of Albert Brooks' sweating scene in Broadcast News (except this anchor is unruffled while slime oozes out of her). This first season of Bravest Warriors may be a bit short, but the series compensates for the small amount of webisodes by featuring clever writing, as well as animation that exceeds what we usually expect out of a web series and is equal to the animation quality on series creator Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time. Bravest Warriors has seen the future of animation produced exclusively for the Internet, and it's not crude Flash animation with wonky sound quality anymore.

***

I knew at some point in Archer's current fourth season that the show would revisit the titular spy's curiosity about the identity of his dad, whose absence from his son's life was one of many reasons why Archer's such a screwed-up man-child. I just never expected the arc to resurface in "Once Bitten," while Archer's poisoned from a snake bite in the middle of a mission in fictional Turkmenistan and hallucinating sketchy and rudimentary flashbacks to his boyhood, with James Mason's Mr. Jordan character from Heaven Can Wait (special guest star Peter Serafinowicz) as his spirit guide. (In a couple of other Heaven Can Wait shout-outs, Archer is clad in Warren Beatty's football sweats from the film, and he finds himself playing Beatty's sax, which Archer clobbers Buck Henry's officious angel character in the head with. You can tell how young some Archer recappers are by their inability to notice the Heaven Can Wait references.)

Archer's mind reimagines his hazy memories about why he is the way he is as clips from '80s HBO fixtures like Beatty's 1978 hit movie and The Natural instead of reimagining them as something more typical of his obsessions, like The Cannonball Run or Gator (although his fevered dreams are full of gator imagery, which is connected to his fear of gators, but does the imagery also mean some part of him believes Burt Reynolds is his dad?). The material about both Archer's past and the mixed-up movie references in his poison-addled state ("What frickin' movie is this? What's next? Mr. Gower slaps me deaf? C'mon, you're all over the road here!") is easily the most entertaining part of "Once Bitten."

Several critics have found the plotting of "Once Bitten" to be flat and underwhelming (I'm not as underwhelmed by it), but even when the storyline may be sort of underwhelming, the dialogue on Archer is always golden:

* Malory: "Look, I don't want to sound racist, but..." Lana: "But you're gonna power through it."

* Archer to an injured Ray: "Are you shitting me? Bionic legs, and you lifted with your back?"

* Everyone's hatred of Lana, the agency's voice of reason, and her "self-righteous clomping" in "Once Bitten" seems to be building towards either a future office mutiny against Malory led by Lana, who questions Malory's actions in this episode, or the Truckasaurus-handed spy's departure from ISIS (and switch to ODIN?). Insane but sometimes lucid Cheryl/Carol's mini-monologue to Lana about the latter's self-loathing is so terrific (and is responsible for one of many excellently animated expressions from Lana this season) that I've included it word-for-word: "Please, if you really cared, you'd resign, but there's no way you ever will because you're just counting the days until, her face bloated and yellow from liver failure, she calls you to her deathbed and, in a croaky whisper, explains that Mr. Archer is totally incompetent and that you, the long-suffering Lana Kane, are the only one qualified to run ISIS, and you weep shameful tears because you know this terrible place is the only true love you will ever know... What? Oh my God, was I talking?"

* A barely conscious Archer (to Cyril and Ray), while reacting to the arrival of the fur-hatted Turks: "Hey, check it out, Fred and Barney, we're at the Water Buffalo Lodge!"

* Cyril to the Turks, whom he thinks want revenge for the camel he accidentally ran over with Archer's Jeep (in, as usual on this show, extremely gory fashion): "No, I had the right-of-way!"

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (11/14/2012): Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Avengers, Kung Fu Panda, Adventure Time and Regular Show

With that hairdo, Falcon looks like he's about to sing backup on "If I Ever Fall in Love" with Shai. (Photo source: Marvel Animation Age)

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

These days, I'm more of a Doctor Who fan than a Star Wars fan. That's mainly because unlike Star Wars, Doctor Who took a huge leap in quality--ever since Queer as Folk creator Russell T. Davies revived the long-absent show in 2005. Instead of mistakenly thinking that visual effects and spectacle are the only elements that deserved an upgrade, Davies and his fellow writers, including his eventual replacement Steven Moffat, also worked on upgrading the writing and acting on Doctor Who. They added a new layer to The Doctor's character (in the form of the PTSD and survivor's guilt that Christopher Eccleston's Doctor suffered from due to the off-screen "Time War"), they frequently delved into why The Doctor is the way that he is and they made The Doctor's new companions fully realized characters instead of one-dimensional sounding boards for him like in most of the show's pre-Ace years (some hardcore fans might disagree and have dismissed most of the new female companions as lazily written Mary Sues, especially Billie Piper's Rose Tyler, who was in love with The Doctor and was clearly a stand-in for the openly gay Davies, even more so than omnisexual Captain Jack).

I've avoided watching Cartoon Network's CG-animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars because it focuses on the characters from the dreadful prequel trilogy--those three movies are among the greatest examples of when a style-over-substance approach goes wrong--and it's not supervised by animator Genndy Tartakovsky, whose cel-animated, nearly dialogue-less 2003 Clone Wars prequel to Revenge of the Sith was more satisfying than any of the three live-action prequels (why Lucasfilm didn't ask Tartakovsky back for another round of Clone Wars continues to boggle the mind). But when Peter Mayhew reprised his role as Chewbacca in the 2011 episode "Wookiee Hunt," I finally tuned in, out of love for the first two Star Wars flicks.

I ended up enjoying "Wookiee Hunt," not just because of Chewie's presence, which briefly helped turn The Clone Wars into the Star Wars I grew up with and remember fondly, but because the Clone Wars character Chewie interacted with, plucky Jedi trainee Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), had a spark to her that was missing from the boring characters in the live-action prequels. Still, "Wookiee Hunt" wasn't enough to make me a regular viewer of The Clone Wars, which is spearheaded by supervising director Dave Filoni instead of Tartakovsky. I continued to be uninterested in the show until Lucasfilm announced that former Doctor Who star David Tennant was the guest star in this week's "Test of Strength" episode, which pits Ahsoka and a pack of Jedi younglings (the most badass of the youngling group?: the Wookiee kid) against Hondo Ohnaka (a Ricardo Montalban-inspired Jim Cummings), a space pirate who attempts to steal the younglings' lightsaber crystals.

(Photo source: Wookieepedia)

What a casting coup, right? Some Doctor Who fans feel that Tennant is wasted in his role as Professor Huyang, a wise old droid who designs lightsabers for the Jedi (Tennant signed up for a three-episode arc, by the way, so yay, more Tennant), because the synth effects the show uses to transform Tennant into a droid obscure Tennant's voice too much. But I've had no problem recognizing Tennant's voice. I even had flashbacks to his days as The Doctor when Huyang instructed the younglings with "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow"-esque technobabble like "You have inverted the emitter matrix, which will cause the power grid to backfire."

I'm still not sure yet if "A Test of Strength" and the two episodes that are left in this four-episode youngling arc will totally convert me to Filoni's Clone Wars (which is now in its fifth season and like M*A*S*H, it will end up lasting way longer than the three-year war it's been depicting, if recent speculation that the Disney/Lucasfilm deal will call for Lucasfilm to produce future Clone Wars episodes for Disney XD ends up becoming true). But because charismatic Ahsoka is the focus of this arc instead of stuffy young Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ahsoka's not-yet-corrupt master Blandakin Skywalker, I'm interested in how Ahsoka will pull herself out of her current predicament, in which she's captured by Hondo, whose plans for Ahsoka and her body are perhaps not-so-TV-PG-friendly. And if the action sequences continue to be as nifty and engaging as the engine momentum trick Ahsoka comes up with in "A Test of Strength" to eject the pirates from her ship Ellen Ripley style, perhaps the reports from lapsed Star Wars fans that the franchise has been dead since Tartakovsky's Clone Wars have been greatly exaggerated.

***

After 52 episodes, the cartoon that began when "there came a day unlike any other" calls it a day. In "Avengers Assemble!" (also the title of Marvel Animation's next show featuring the Avengers team), The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes ends its two-season run by pitting the team--as well as the rest of the New York superhero community--against one of Marvel's most giant-sized adversaries, the planet-eating alien god Galactus, a threat Captain America was first warned about earlier this season in "Prisoner of War," an episode that was a series highlight. "Prisoner of War" was also a better-executed summation of the series' mission statement (disparate personalities who should have no business being in the same room together are forced to unite against threats bigger than themselves) than "Avengers Assemble!"

However, I like what "Avengers Assemble!" writer and series story editor Christopher Yost does here with Iron Man at the start of "Avengers Assemble!," and it's remarkable that Yost is able to insert a moment or two of character depth with Tony, considering how little time Yost has in this action-packed series finale. The Avengers leader has been feeling worn-out from the onslaught of recent villains and has lately been worried about how history will remember him and the rest of the team after they're gone (when one of those recent foes is a master of mind control who turned you into a fascist who used your inventions against the world, of course you'd start to undergo an existential crisis). Then Tony gets an answer to his question of "How will we be remembered?" in the form of heralds who represent a mute alien stranger named Galactus. They arrive to stir up lots of calamitous shit on Earth so that their ginormous master will be able to devour our planet like a barbecued rib.

(Photo source: Marvel Animation Age)

While "Avengers Assemble!" plays to the series' two biggest strengths (efficient storytelling, which Yost often excels at, and action sequences that are even more epic than the ones in Joss Whedon's live-action version) and treats us to several strikingly animated mini-battles between smaller three-person teams of heroes and Galactus' heralds, I'm not so enamored with the way the episode rushes through the Galactus crisis. "Avengers Assemble!" is a victim of Marvel Animation's mistake of tinkering with Earth's Mightiest Heroes' preference for longer storylines and forcing the show to do more standalone episodes.

The choice of Galactus as the adversary is a great one for the series finale, but one can't help feeling throughout "Avengers Assemble!" that more could have been done with Galactus. "This isn't some supervillain or would-be conqueror. This is different. This is a force of nature," observes Mr. Fantastic (Dee Bradley Baker), and Galactus' calamitous assault on Earth would have been better suited for a two-or-three-part story instead of a standalone. The sense of danger is diminished when you try to cram the war against Galactus into a 22-minute finale. Justice League Unlimited, DC Animation's Earth's Mightiest Heroes counterpart, had a more satisfying series finale, simply because storylines like its series-ending Darkseid arc were allowed to take their time and breathe on that show (also, JLU's characters were a lot wittier, which is surprising because Marvel is often better at witticisms than DC).

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (10/17/2012): Dragons: Riders of Berk, The Avengers, Randy Cunningham, Adventure Time and Regular Show

Nice to see Macaulay Culkin getting some acting work again.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Wow, those were really short seasons of Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice: Invasion. They must be going for a Sherlock "leave the viewers wanting more" thing.

Without warning last Saturday, Cartoon Network pulled both first-run episodes of GL:TAS and Young Justice off its schedule after only two weeks of new episodes. Viewers like me who DVR both cartoons were surprised to find back-to-back repeats of Dragons: Riders of Berk in their place while playing back the recordings of both later that morning. Adults and kids who are fans of the "DC Nation" block angrily took to Twitter and Facebook (Cartoon Network's "DC Nation" Facebook page asked viewers who their favorite supervillains were, and many of them snarked, "Cartoon Network execs"). In response, the channel hastily posted a two-sentence statement on Facebook that explained so much ("Fear not, DC NATION fans! Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice will return in January with new episodes, only on Cartoon Network!").

"Did anyone remind Cartoon Network that the end of the world is this December?," joked dissatisfied GL:TAS co-executive producer Giancarlo Volpe on Twitter.

This is stupid, NBC-removes-Community-days-before-its-fourth-season-premiere-level shit. It's also not surprising to see shady behavior like that from Cartoon Network, which moves first-run programs around the schedule--like it did with the short-lived Sym-Bionic Titan last year--without telling the programs' viewers where to find them and without explanation. I'm going to go with "contract dispute" as the reason why "DC Nation" kid viewers like this one are in a sour mood in their parents' Twitpics:

***

Well, good thing Dragons: Riders of Berk is occupying the "DC Nation" block's slot, not Annoying Orange. If it were the latter, I would have put my fist through the wall.

While the How to Train Your Dragon sequel series isn't always the most original of cartoons, it's definitely a quality kids' show, and a solid episode like "Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Man" is why I'm glad Dragons is in the "DC Nation" block's slot for the next three months. Like the best episodes of Young Justice, "Portrait of Hiccup" combines well-staged action with rich characterizations as it channels both the integrity and zest of How to Train Your Dragon.

(Photo source: How to Train Your Dragon Wiki)

Feeling inadequate after Bucket (Thomas F. Wilson) paints an official portrait of him with his father Stoick that inaccurately depicts him as a buffed-up teen, Hiccup embarks on a treasure hunt that Stoick and Gobber failed at to prove his mettle. How to Train Your Dragon stood out from other DreamWorks Animation feature films because it wasn't so reliant on pop-culture reference humor that has sometimes aged really badly in those other films. The treasure hunt in the caves leads to Dragons making what has to be its first-ever pop-culture reference gag when Hiccup does the exact same movements Indiana Jones did with his hands before grabbing the idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The gag should have fallen flat, but "Portrait of Hiccup" somehow makes it work and not seem so out-of-place on a show that usually doesn't go for that kind of gag.

Overweight teen Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is the resident coward in the group of dragon trainers and a frequent source of "what a wimp" humor on the show, but there's an intriguing moment in "Portrait of Hiccup" where Fishlegs rises to the occasion when Hiccup and Toothless' lives are in danger. He persuades a more-panicky-than-usual Astrid that leaving Hiccup and Toothless behind in the caves so that they can send for help is better for the team than being trapped along with Hiccup and Toothless. The usually hypersensitive kid puts aside his cowardice to make the kind of hard decisions the absent Hiccup--and no one else in the group--would have made.

It's as if Fishlegs and Astrid have briefly swapped personalities, but like with the Raiders shout-out, "Portrait of Hiccup" somehow makes the moment work and not feel like it's so out-of-character for Fishlegs to toughen up and Astrid to panic like Fishlegs would usually do. In fact, what that scene actually does is show that there are many sides to these characters, and that kind of rich character writing is an example of why Dragons is more enjoyable than the lame and corny Annoying Oranges of the world.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (10/03/2012): Gravity Falls, Green Lantern, Young Justice, Adventure Time and Regular Show

The Kanye West/Big Sean/Pusha T/2 Chainz track "Mercy" isn't about Mercy Graves, but it ought to be. (Photo source: Young Justice Wiki)

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Lil' Gideon Gleeful (Thurop Van Orman), the psychic entertainer kid who didn't take rejection from his temporary girlfriend Mabel too well in Gravity Falls' "Hand That Rocks the Mabel" episode, returns to menace the Pines family in "Little Dipper." This time, the creepy, porcine-nosed Gideon gets his grubby hands on a magical height-altering crystal that Dipper's attached to a flashlight and shone at himself to make himself a millimeter taller than his twin sister Mabel (Dipper's been bummed out lately by Mabel's delight over the fact that she's the taller twin--by a millimeter).

This week's Gravity Falls cryptogram is "gsv rmerhryov draziw rh dzgxsrmt." The decoded result is "The invisible wizard is watching." (Photo source: Gravity Falls Wiki)

Gideon uses the crystal to shrink Dipper and Mabel and hold them hostage as part of his plan to take over the Mystery Shack, the tourist trap run by his business rival Stan, the twins' great-uncle (I like how Grunkle Stan is such a dick to Gideon throughout this episode). The pompadoured little jerk, who comes complete with a fawning stage dad (Stephen Root) who runs a shady car dealership to support Gideon's popular act, is shaping up to be a great--and original--Disney villain and is an especially relevant meanie in this age of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and similar reality shows where talentless and annoying fame-whore kids are let loose by scummy stage parents who live vicariously through them. I don't think I've ever seen a Disney villain before who scares his or her mother in the same way that Gideon petrifies Mrs. Gleeful (Grey DeLisle), who's always seen cleaning the house and avoiding making eye contact with her domineering and hot-tempered son. "Just keep vacuuming," mutters Mrs. Gleeful to herself repeatedly at one point.

(Photo source: Gravity Falls Wiki)

In addition to being a fun villainy-heavy episode of Gravity Falls (I hate the term "shipping," so I'm not going to use it, but I think Gideon and another villain on the show, mean girl Pacifica Northwest, are made for each other), "Little Dipper" is also a good Dipper/Mabel story. Dipper's climactic realization that he's been a jerk to his sister (she's been hurt by his tendency to gloat over how he's better than her at everything, and height is the one thing where she's discovered she has an advantage over him) exemplifies why his dialogue with Mabel has resonated so much with Gravity Falls' biggest fans. Gravity Falls creator/showrunner Alex Hirsch took the traits of his own twin sister Ariel and used them to form Mabel's sunny personality, her love of both quirky sweaters and pea-brained animals (speaking of which, I enjoy how this show animates the dumbness of Gideon's inattentive hamster Cheekums and Mabel's pig Waddles, who's absent in this episode) and her interaction with Dipper.

"I've read countless comments on Tumblr, on Twitter, on message boards where people are saying, 'Thank you, thank you for showing a sibling relationship where they're not just sniping and hating on each other all the time,'" said Hirsch in a recent A.V. Club interview where he discussed viewers' enthusiastic responses to Dipper's scenes with Mabel. "When I started the show, I didn't originally begin with a conscious effort to do that. My conscious effort was, 'Oh, I want to make it like me and my sister, and I'll make it funny.'"

And "Little Dipper" demonstrates once again why Gravity Falls never falls short at delivering the funny.

***

Diedrich Bader's most memorable--as well as his most personal favorite--voiceover stint was the three seasons he spent as Batman on the lighthearted and surprisingly good Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008-2011). He played the titular superhero not as a source of deadpan humor like Adam West's take on Batman, but as a straight man to the campiness surrounding him. Now Bader gets to take on a more comedic superhero role that's closer to his sillier work on The Drew Carey Show and Napoleon Dynamite: egotistical ex-jock Guy Gardner, Hal Jordan's replacement as the Green Lantern Corps member assigned to patrol Earth, in "The New Guy," Green Lantern: The Animated Series' amusing season premiere.

Bader excels at this kind of role, a 180-degree turn from his subdued and benevolent version of Batman. It echoes the over-the-top machismo of the first role I knew Bader from, his title role in "The Searcher," a spoof of the Lorenzo Lamas action show Renegade that was a segment on the short-lived '90s Fox comedy anthology Danger Theatre. The new Green Lantern, who, in one of my favorite moments of Guy Gardner dickishness, autographs a photo of himself for a hot female cable news reporter while she's interviewing him live on TV, could easily be a main character in any one of Will Ferrell's movies where Ferrell deconstructs--via characters like Ron Burgundy in Anchorman and its upcoming sequel--what he referred to in a New York magazine interview as "the macho American male or the overly confident person."

After fighting the Red Lanterns and preventing them from killing the Guardians on Oa, Hal returns to Earth to find his girlfriend and Ferris Air boss Carol has fired him from his job as a test pilot because, well, an employee who's been gone from the planet for several months is sort of a liability for a military aircraft company (this show's look at how intergalactic heroism can wreck someone's day job reminds me of Doctor Who a couple of weeks ago, when Rory got questioned by a hospital co-worker about why he's so often away from his job as a nurse). Hal also discovers that the Guardians replaced him with the publicity-craving Guy as the Corps patrolman on Earth and did so without informing him. Annoyed by Guy's cockiness and dismissal of Hal as a "helpless civilian" and "temp" who's butting in on his turf, Hal must put aside his differences with his oblivious rival when a group of Manhunters--the same Guardian-created robots that turned against the Guardians and slaughtered millions in the Forgotten Zone--arrives on Earth to purge the planet of its human population because of their human imperfections.

Speaking of purging things, I'm glad to see that "The New Guy" got rid of Guy's bowl cut from the '80s and '90s Green Lantern and Justice League comics. Guy's ability to charm the opportunistic cable news reporter wouldn't have been so believable with that ugly-ass bowl cut on his head.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (09/05/2012): Transformers Prime, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Gumball and Dragons: Riders of Berk

And then Jake floated an air biscuit right into Finn's mouth, which ruined Finn's date with Flame Princess later that night. (Photo source: The Adventure Time Wiki)

Every week in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. Beginning this week, "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner" is posted on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Dwayne Johnson is too busy rescuing troubled action movie franchises these days to reprise his one-episode Transformers Prime role as the easygoing Autobot Cliffjumper. So Billy Brown--who played the only cop character during season 6 of Dexter whose scenes didn't put me to sleep because the show didn't saddle his character with a soapy and tedious storyline about his personal life--takes over for Johnson as the voice of the deceased Autobot in flashbacks during "Out of the Past," the latest Transformers Prime episode.

Brown does an adequate job subbing for The Arsekicker Formerly Known as The Rock when the Autobot warrior Arcee (Sumalee Montano) flashes back to her first encounter with Cliffjumper. She recalls her fallen comrade (and flunks the Bechdel Test) while trying to comfort her Earthling friend Miko, who's been feeling depressed over the slow recovery of her currently disabled partner Bulkhead (Kevin Michael Richardson).

(Photo source: Draqua's pad)

The no-nonsense Arcee, who first encountered Cliffjumper when they were prisoners held captive by Starscream (Steve Blum) and Shockwave (David Sobolov) on a Decepticon ship, found Cliffjumper to be overly talkative and annoying but also helpful in both getting her off the ship and pulling her out of a funk similar to the funk Miko's currently experiencing. At the time of her imprisonment, Arcee was still bitter over the death of her partner Tailgate and had closed herself off from having another partner. But Cliffjumper's heroism during their prison breakout and his optimistic attitude restored her faith in humanity robotkind.

"Out of the Past" is basically filler, but it's decently written and surprisingly profound filler, with a nice little twist (for a kids' show, that is) in the mismatched partnership between Arcee and Cliffjumper. Here, it's the male who's the more frivolous half of the duo, while the female is the more sober-minded warrior type. The presence of Arcee (who's been part of the franchise since 1986's The Transformers: The Movie), the substantial writing for her character and the creative input of female staff writers like the ubiquitous Nicole Dubuc (although a man wrote this episode) are among the reasons why this show is superior to the craptastic live-action Transformers movies. The trilogy didn't feature Arcee and wasn't co-written by women, so just like how according to that line in The First Wives Club, the only ages for women in Hollywood are babe, district attorney and Driving Miss Daisy, the only kinds of roles for women in those Transformers movies (particularly the first two) were either "eye candy" or "Mom."

***

(Photo source: The Adventure Time Wiki)

If I were a world-famous actor, I'd want to be a guest voice on Adventure Time (or Regular Show or better yet, The Venture Bros.) just to see how really strange my role would be. Adventure Time had George Takei lending his baritone to an evil disembodied heart, it cast Donald Faison as a cookie and now, in "Who Would Win," it features Matthew Broderick as a long-haired, blue-skinned creature who speaks to Finn and Jake in their dreams and takes the form of a car salesman.

Through his Twin Peaks-esque dream-speak ("I have cheap cars. My cars are che-e-e-ap. But they drive bad when I turn out the lights!"), Broderick's Dream Warrior provides Finn and Jake with pointers on how to defeat The Farm (Tom Gammill), "the legendary fighter of the Shiny Isles" and a giant monster who wears a barn as a shirt and knocks his enemies unconscious by dumping farm animals on their heads. The Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Election star's vocal cameo is amusing (and I didn't realize it was Broderick until the end credits pointed it out), but the centerpiece of this episode isn't Finn and Jake's encounter with The Dream Warrior. It's actually an earlier scene: the epic fight that erupts between Finn and Jake while they train together to prepare for fighting The Farm.

(Photo source: The Adventure Time Wiki)

Jake becomes lazy during training (the jerky and apathetic delivery of Futurama's Bender, John DiMaggio's signature character, seeps into DiMaggio's not-so-jerky voice for Jake) and focuses his attention on a handheld video game he secretly brought with him, which pisses off Finn. He slaps away Jake's video game and damages it, and the upset dog and his human pal proceed to pummel each other for what feels like an eternity, much like Roddy Piper and Keith David in They Live--except David didn't have the ability to assume the form of a giant, multiple-legged caterpillar and repeatedly kick Piper in the face with his endless legs in one of my favorite sight gags during "Who Would Win." That crazy visual is the episode's biggest reminder of how much of an influence the rubbery and surreal animation in '30s and '40s Fleischer Brothers cartoons has had on the Adventure Time animators.

The '30s and '40s East Coast street patois of the Fleischer cartoons may not have seeped into Adventure Time like the Fleischer studio's rubbery animation style has, but Finn and Jake's dialogue--despite the post-apocalyptic setting--is as contemporary-slangy as much of the dialogue in the Fleischer cartoons was when those shorts first dropped in movie theaters. When The Dream Warrior gives Finn and Jake a cryptic clue about the other name for sweatpants, Jake explains his disdain for what he calls "give-up-on-life pants" in that unmistakable Adventure Time delivery that's loaded with present-day slang and is sometimes peppered with post-apocalyptic Ooo-ese euphemisms like "Oh my Glob!"

"Peeps need to respect themselves when they leave the house," says Jake about the wackness of sweatpants in public, "even if it's just for ice cream or T.P. or whatevs." It's nice to know that Jake's opinions about fashion are similar to some of my own. I wonder if he's also as critical as I've always been about give-up-on-life shoes, or as some people call them, mandals.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (08/14/2012): Scooby-Doo!, Dragons: Riders of Berk, Gravity Falls, Adventure Time and Randy Cunningham

Mrs. Bjorkland and her bjorkable daughters

Each Tuesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

I know using a phrase like "It's The Wire of lawyer shows" or "It's The Wire of space operas" to describe a serialized show's novelistic narrative structure has become a bit of a cliché lately. But Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated supervising producer Tony Cervone's recent tweet in which he asserts that his show "has always been a 52-chapter long story" and nothing more has made such a phrase unavoidable when describing why Mystery Incorporated is such a standout cartoon.

Cervone's tweet also confirms why there's no clamor from the show's staffers for another season of Mystery Incorporated. And I'm okay with the fact that after Chapter 52, this exceptional, Wire-esque-in-structure-if-not-in-scope incarnation of Scooby is dead and buried. I'd rather have Mystery Incorporated stick to its planned end date than wear out its welcome and turn into a shell of its former self a few years later (that is if it'll ever reach its final few episodes because after this week's batch of episodes, Cartoon Network is--*sigh*--putting the show on hiatus again).

So what's happened in the last few episodes of the second season of Scooby-Doo! Burnoff Theater? Daphne is apparently a chocoholic. Hot Dog Water resurfaced as a perp--and Velma let her get away with it, as her feelings for Marcy were again carefully hidden by the show's producers. Sheriff Bronson Stone (Patrick Warburton) and Mayor Janet Nettles (Kate Higgins) are now an item. The show channeled a cartoon that's frequently parodied Scooby, The Venture Bros., and revealed that Fred's trap-building parents are the Doo-niverse's equivalent of Hart to Hart (I love how their butler sounds exactly like Lionel Stander). Rough winter weather forced the team to spend the night at a secluded mansion and experience freaky hallucinations (one of them causes Daphne to make out with Shaggy, which shocks the hell out of both Fred and Scooby) during one of the show's most eerie episodes so far, a Shining homage/parody.

It turns out that the Professor Pericles-era Mystery Incorporated team wasn't the first team of mystery-solvers that consisted of four teen sleuths and an animal mascot. There were other precursors to Scooby and his friends, starting with Burlington's Benevolent Lodge of Mystery in the 1880s. Remorseful Mystery Incorporated alum Cassidy Williams sacrificed her life while taking a stand in the sea against her former teammate Pericles. But we never saw her body after the explosion, and in live-action episodic TV, we know what that means.

Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg

And finally, the series continues to sneak in amusing Easter eggs that are worth freeze-framing and perusing. From the "Gathering Gloom" episode, here's the complete text that was written on the rejected work permit that Velma read about Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg, the perp voiced by Chris Hardwick:

Previous job experiences
Scaring small children, being mean to the elderly, shaving kittens and painting them blue, building sewage treatment plants so they back up when used, driving busloads of innocent civilians into the middle of nowhere and then leaving them there, poking holes in the bottoms of all candies in a box to see what they are and then putting them back in the same box, wearing other people's socks and then putting them back in their drawers with extra foot stink on them.

References from old country
It is hereby stated that several individuals have come forward detailing that Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg is the meanest individual to ever walk the face of the earth. Too numerous to list here. The many complaints against his character have been added to this Work Permit application as an addendum. To summarize, Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg is one very mean and evil individual. One person testified that flowers wilt when he gets too close to them. The sky has been seen darkening as he approaches and it is said that his breath is most foul. The breath itself is due to the fact that Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg has never brushed his teeth since the day he was born. Several other references report that the applicant in question curdled milk by looking at it and made a cow climb a tree from sheer meanness.

Disposition of Applicant
Mean as an angry snake that has been hit by several rocks.

Appearance of Applicant
Mean and unpleasant. He has an aura of pure evil about him.

Overall Assessment of Applicant
It is hereby determined that Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg be denied this Work Permit on the grounds that he is too evil to properly perform any useful service in any possible position in the workforce. His sheer evil personality and dark disposition would only spread discontent and unhappiness to all his co-workers. This office hereby denies Count Evallo Von Meanskrieg. He is evil.

***

Based on a series of books by Cressida Cowell, the 2010 boy-and-his-pet tale How to Train Your Dragon is my favorite DreamWorks Animation film because of both the startling lack of lazy pop-culture reference humor that has made other DreamWorks Animation films instantly dated (the humor was more character-based in this film) and the chances it took with its storytelling. They included the initially controversial decision to end How to Train Your Dragon with its teenage hero Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) left disabled from battle (in a rare instance of test screenings actually being useful for a change, parents at the screenings requested that the film's producers leave the ending unchanged) and the clever way the film developed Hiccup's growing friendship with Toothless the dragon without any dialogue.

I'm so glad directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, who previously made Disney's above-average Lilo & Stitch, chose not to have the catlike Toothless speak at all. If DeBlois and Sanders weren't involved, I'm sure Toothless would have been voiced by Tracy Morgan or ugh, Carlos Mencia, and How to Train Your Dragon would have ended up being just another disposable and routine DreamWorks Animation film.

The choices DeBlois and Sanders made in departing from the DreamWorks Animation formula paid off immensely and have led to an in-the-works sequel and Dragons: Riders of Berk, a promising-looking Cartoon Network series that will bridge the two films and expand upon the Dragons universe, as well as explore the Viking villagers' difficult adjustment to co-existing with their new dragon allies. Last week, the channel sneak-previewed "How to Start a Dragon Academy" and "Viking for Hire," the first two episodes of Dragons, back-to-back, about a month before the series' official premiere on September 4.

Most of the voice actors from the 2010 film have returned for Dragons ("Jay didn't want anyone else to voice [his] character," said DreamWorks Animation exec Peter Gal at a Comic-Con panel for the series). Only Gerard Butler, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill and Craig Ferguson are absent for obvious reasons and have been replaced respectively by Nolan North, Julie Marcus, Zack Pearlman and Chris Edgerly, who does a passable CraigyFerg impression (it's passable enough that during "Viking for Hire," I keep expecting Edgerly's Gobber to say, "It's a great day for America Berk, everybody!"). Fortunately, the series has maintained the first film's sumptuous look, which was partly due to regular Coen Brothers collaborator (and now, Skyfall cinematographer) Roger Deakins, who served as the film's visual consultant, and its stunning dragon flight scenes, the result of the animators actually having done extensive research on aircraft physics and imbuing the dragons with aircraft-like movements.

If there's one beef I've had with Dragons so far, it's that it's talkier than the film version. Baruchel's voiceover narration as Hiccup feels lengthier here, although his expository voiceovers turn up only during the opening and closing moments like in the film. Now that Dragons has gotten all the re-establishing of the island setting of Berk out of the way, here's hoping the series finds ways to recapture the mostly dialogue-less visual poetry that made the film such a unique beast in the DreamWorks canon.