#i don't know if ''female-coded'' is the right way to PHRASE that because it blurs the line between ''these things are feminine traits (??)'

[kayvsworld]

okay. like. giving it the benefit of the doubt, right, dipping my toe so slowly back into thinking about the mcu (piranha filled fish tank) as fictional analyzable media (cocks gun),

i just wrote like 3 paragraphs of an unrelated post about how iron man 1 is kind of weird because it puts so much focus on tony's internal struggles re: his social life and Image and Loss Of Agency, the gala sequence, etc.

and how obie's not the kind of villain/villain reveal i'm used to seeing in Superhero Brand Action Movies (family friend betraying you in a weirdly intimate dialogue-heavy scene on your couch in your dimly lit living room). and i had to delete it because like actually all of the iron man movies and their villains and their problems are just kind of Like That

obadiah is his dad's handsy gaslighty friend, hammer is some guy in his field who gets overly familiar when he's trying to avoid him in public, killian is a jilted stalker whose goons zip-tie tony to a bed frame this is not the kind of rogues gallery other guy-written dude superheroes are getting like that's fair i can nod at that i can get that i can see that

like i can't find the old article that went around about this (not the post not the post not the tumblr essay not the post) but insane literal interpretation of "tony stark is WOMAN CODED which makes him less privileged and hating him is misogynistic, losing your agency is INHERENTLY FEMININE" aside, flashbacks i'm having flashbacks, going "hey, they kind of give this guy the kinds of problems and narrative framing of those problems that you might more usually see from Men Writing Women TM during this time period" isn't altogether a meritless take

like we're walking a thin line here, but sure that's an interesting concept to try to dig into, if we're specifically like. evaluating tropes and structures in media that have been usually assigned to cisfemale characters and seeing similarities there and going "huh, neat". like i think that's fine. DOYLISTICALLY

to the anonymous person who helpfully sent me the tony stark is female-coded post when i said i was enjoying finding old tony meta: you are firing gunshots outside my home. through my window even

[fly-pow-bye]

DuckTales 2017 - “The 87 Cent Solution!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Bob Snow

Storyboard by: Stephanie Gonzala, Vaughn Tada, Brandon Warren

Directed by: Matthew Humphreys

The last part of the big catch-up!

The episode begins with Huey's concern for Scrooge McDuck's stuffed nose. It took him until now to realize that all of this adventuring must be taking a hard toll on Scrooge's, ahem, advanced age. Of course, Scrooge shoves him away.

Manny the Headless Horse shows up in what seems like another appearance just to prove that, hee hee, it's Scrooge's head on a horse, but there will be a point to this. It's quite clear Scrooge has more important things to attend to than putting away science waste, like taking a dive in the money bin!

After closing the vault, he dives in, swims a little, and realizes that something is horribly wrong. He looks to the left, he looks to the right, and makes a startling announcement to himself: he got robbed!

Anyone can see the joke in this: it doesn't look like he lost a significant amount. Unless this is the first episode of DuckTales 2017 you ever watched, and noticed how shallow the money bin is compared the original. Trust me, it's a different reason, and you should start with a different episode than this one.

After the theme song, we see Zan Owlson trying to give a lecture to Glomgold on how to run his business while doing _n_o _e_laborate _s_chemes _t_oday. She even has a acronym ready for it, and Glomgold desperately tries to find a loophole, only to suggest times that also start with the letter T. While the last episode continued the Louie Inc. plot, though there is a very, very slight nod to that later in the episode, this episode focuses on the bet made in The Ballad of Duke Baloney. I was waiting for that to continue.

Scrooge barges in, accusing Glomgold of doing this wrongdoing. It's a pretty good guess, considering that aforementioned bet, so I can't say he accuses him out of nothing. Glomgold starts gloating that he bested the richest duck in the world, though doesn't understand what exactly he did. Owlson tells Scrooge that he's acting the opposite of sane, as if it was any better than outright saying the antonym, and that doesn't make anything better. This will only be the beginning for Scrooge.

Leading absolutely nowhere, Scrooge decides he needs to amp up the security, only allow authorized employees at the bin, and find out who or what could possibly be behind this. He's going to need his top men!

Sudden cut to three children coming out of an elevator. It is a bit heartwarming to see that he sees his next of kin as "top men". Sure, it may be alluding to child labor, but try not to think too hard about that. Thankfully, he probably meant something different than what that cut suggested.

He walks into Gyro's security room, where Gyro shows off all of the new security features he has installed in the bin, complete with some test footage. This includes Donald Duck running into a force field of Gyro's creation, becoming a duck-blur while Gyro is standing by him. Besides the different victim, another big difference is that this Gyro is just taking notes, with no real shocked expression on his face like the original cartoon's Gyro.

Not the least bit comforted about this, and ignoring Huey's offers of chicken soup, Scrooge wants more. He wants Gizmoduck.

We get Gizmoduck in this episode, in a rare episode where we only see him as Gizmoduck and not his not-so-secret identity. Gizmo is able to give the location of all the villains, at least the ones that would be interested in stealing money. The most interesting suspect brought up is Magica De Spell, whose location is unknown. Her appearance has been teased since the first time they changed the opening to include her, and while it will remain a tease, it is interesting to see her nonetheless.

With all of the security set up, he still can't get over how anyone could just waltz in and steal his money. Speaking of waltzing in, Louie appears just as worried as Scrooge. Louie instantly loses all of his worry when Scrooge tells him the total value that he knew was stolen: the titular 87 cents. Louie and Dewey utterly scoff at this.

But, Scrooge tells them it's not about the money, it's about how the bin was compromised by someone undetectable! If he can't outwit his thieves, he wouldn't be "smarter than the smarties"! He spends a lot of time on this one saying. Smart and the opposite of sane aren't mutually exclusive, but his actions will cross that line eventually.

Huey tries to reason with him with a bit of realism: Scrooge couldn't have possibly known that those coins were stolen from him! They'd have to count every coin in the bin, and that would be crazy!

Much to the annoyance of everyone involved, this leads to the kids having to count every coin in the bin. Dewey even takes the time to insult Huey for this. Thankfully, the kids don't have to do the insurmountable task, because the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook ends up giving them a big distraction. He decides to look into what could make Scrooge so out there with this really minor theft...

...and the page was turned right to this rather large-print section of the symptoms of a fatal disease called Gold Fever. They look at Scrooge, who is walking back and forth in confusion, itching himself, and knowing fully well he's going to outlandish extremes, and Huey makes the one conclusion: he has it.

After realizing this, Huey puts on a surgical mask. This will be used to separate the "gold fever" believers from the skeptics. It's a neat visual trait that gets more apparent throughout the episode, though nothing in this page says it's contagious.

If he does have Gold Fever, it's only going to get worse from here, as Scrooge decides to record a special message for the news, offering a bounty of way more than 87 cents for the 87 cents. I get it, he loves his money so much, he will spend a lot of money to protect it. It's a good reason for Louie to put on his surgical mask. They happened to know when to carry those on them.

Webby's still of the opinion that this isn't too out of character for Scrooge. Yes, she does use that kind of wording!

He gets more and more coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs throughout the episode, even down to commanding Gizmoduck to shoot missiles at the invisible demon that was stealing. Yes, that ends up being his hypothesis. It's not too out of the ordinary for this series. Gizmoduck tries to open his copter, only to find that he can't open it.

This leads to him accidentally shooting missiles at Launchpad's plane, which almost lands on Dewey. It's supposed to be dramatic, but you just kind of feel sorry for everyone.

Thanks to all of this craziness, McDuck Enterprises's stocks start going to low levels, causing his investors to switch sides to certain other companies. Even Roxanne can't believe that Glomgold's company is getting the most of it. You'd think Waddle would have been the better choice; Mark Beaks at least has the courtesy of not being outright evil. Yet. I'm sure something like that would be his slogan if Disney can get it past Google's lawyers.

Scrooge doesn't even think about this news, as he's still staring at all the monitors. Suddenly, GizmoDuck shows up to tell him there's been a breach!

However, this turns out to be an intervention from his increasingly masked "top men." His actions are even harming his reputation, as shown with Dewey also putting on the mask. Apparently, Dewey only cared that his uncle's actions almost led to him getting hurt. Eh, I guess?

Sadly, that didn't work, as Scrooge has gone full invisible demon theorist, complete with the "strings around photos on a board" trope, and he plans to dive right into the gold to truly protect it from him. Even Webby, the honorary sibling that's the closest to him, decides to put on the surgical mask. She doesn't disagree with the demon hypothesis, but she knows that Scrooge needs his sleep. He ain't having it, as we see that he gets the strength of 10 Scrooges when he's kept from his money.

I usually don't want to outright spoil episodes. I spoiled the vast majority of the last episode, but left out the plot twist that may be important to the rest of the series. Unfortunately, because it would kind of weird if I just jump to my final opinion of this episode without talking about my major sticking points with it, I have to talk about two of the biggest twists, one happening right after the other.

Let's start with the first real doozy of the episode: thanks to those stock market investments, Glomgold became the richest duck in the world, with him winning the bet! He can't wait to gloat at his arch-enemy's face about this! A major breaking news shows up, and those plans have to change.

This episode goes for the ultimate amount of shock value and attempted tear jerker, as it turns out that Scrooge has succumbed to gold fever. I'll admit that, while I certainly never believed they would actually go through with this. They don't pull any punches, they say he's dead. They do have one joke, though: Donald runs crying saying that he died so young! Get it, because of his advanced age!

No villain decided to show up to see that their nemesis is truly dead. Right when Gizmoduck takes out his appropriate bagpipes, we see there is one minor exception, though.

Suddenly, Glomgold crashes the funeral, dancing to "All I Do Is Win" by DJ Khaled. No, not a generic rap song that happens to sound like that song, they actually licensed the real DJ Khaled song to play over this scene. The only recent cartoon I can think of that did that is that one episode of Rugrats that managed to get "Vacation" by the Go-Gos to play during the beginning of the episode. Oh, and the Super Mario Bros Super Show. Kind of easy to forget since they removed them from the DVDs.

This is probably the closest this reboot has ever gotten to the infamous literally-can't-even into butt-shaking scene from the other reboot...

...maybe a little too close to that scene! But, I actually don't agree with that for two reasons.

This action fits Glomgold perfectly. He would be the kind of person who would wear shades and a backward cap, invade a high-school, and say, "how you doing, fellow dude-meisters?"

His main goal is to win, win, win, so why not have a song about winning?

Regardless of anyone's opinion of this, nobody in-universe liked this crashing of the funeral...

...especially not Zan Owlson, who shows up to apologize for Glomgold's actions. Eventually, he's pacified with a lollipop. Zan Owlson also explains that this does not mean he won the bet he made in Duke Baloney, because that bet was Glomgold beating Scrooge, not a disease beating him. Glad that was cleared up.

They go back to being a heartfelt tribute to the fallen hero...at least that's what it seems to be when Huey comes up to the podium. Instead of talking about all the great adventures they had, or how he was a great uncle, he talks about how whoever did this must be a mastermind! If this wasn't some big scheme, this would be very inappropriate! "Yeah, he may have been murdered, but wow, that murder method was so impressive!" However, it was not a mastermind who defeated him, but gold fever.

Glomgold finally snaps, and decides to take the credit that was rightfully his! He's even going to explain exactly how he did it, because it would be convenient for the audience, because there is no way anyone would guess what exactly he did.

It just so happened that, along with all of the science junk Manny was carrying, there was a kind of stopwatch that managed to drop to the ground. Glomgold just happened to be in the same room as Scrooge at that point, and he decided to pick it up. Hey, he may not be able to get into the room, but he's got to steal something!

Fiddling around with that stopwatch, he hits a button, and everything becomes blue, not like him, inside and outside. He tries to talk to Owlson, but for some reason, she won't respond back. He yells at her, but still, no response, she just keeps that one expression that looks like she's still talking.

It's like that Twilight Zone episode with the stopwatch, except, thankfully for him, he never breaks it. The big joke is that he's a maroon and didn't get what was actually happening until a year later, the vast majority of that year trying to beat a time-stopped baby at a staring contest.

Finally realizing that watch's power, he caused everything that went wrong in this episode. I think this isn't supposed to be all at the same time, so I shouldn't complain about how he was able to predict, say, GizmoDuck using his head copter. I can also appreciate that he can play the part of Scrooge's money stealing demon. In fact, Glomgold is one of this episode's saving graces.

Unfortunately for Glomgold, a certain someone gets up, and it's not exactly who anyone watching this thinks it is.

Turns out, it was Manny that was playing the role of Dead Scrooge. Got to say, if nothing else, this was a pretty good episode for Manny getting involved beyond a cheap joke. If you actually thought that they were going to kill off one of the most iconic Disney characters...

...you get indirectly called an idiot by Scrooge, who is very much alive and was just in disguise at his own funeral.

But, how did he survive? We do get a few more flashbacks showing that, just before he jumped into the gold, he decided at the last second to get some rest, and, after regaining his sanity, he saw that page slip off of the book. Either everything Scrooge did before that was genuine, or he played an act that involved endangering his kin, spending a ton of money, lowering his stock value, and making himself look like he wasn't "smarter than the smarties" despite wanting to keep that title earlier in the episode. I don't buy the latter, and I don't buy the former. I just don't buy anything.

Outside of Glomgold and Zan Owlson, it appears that everyone in the room was in on it, judging by their expressions. It does makes sense for certain characters; while I don't think he wouldn't be crying, I'm sure Louie wouldn't be able to hide being joyous about any kind of inheritance. Especially after saying a line like "what happened to my, er, your money?" But one question that was on my mind constantly is how this affected the citizens of Duckberg. None of my screenshots show it, but Roxanne Featherly, the newsreporter that announced his death, was there as well. It's possible Scrooge paid for her to make a fake news segment.

Then again, we do see proof that being there doesn't mean they're in on it, as Donald comes back in the room and is shocked that his uncle is still alive! The only other explanation is that Donald Duck is stupid, which would not be very fitting.

Unless that stock price drop was fake too, how was that reversed? Now that Scrooge is now alive, does that mean Glomgold is the richest duck now, or did that not count? Honestly, I kind of stopped thinking at this point, so I might as well get to the end. The rivalry continues, and the episode ends with Mrs. Beakley saying that they could have just asked her to deal with Scrooge's behavior. Oh, and Scrooge gets his 87 cents back. I'm sure that would have kept people up at night if that wasn't resolved.

How does it stack up?

I just couldn't get into this one. It just wasn't funny, and the serious parts were just convoluted. We do get some good Glomgold parts, but that's about it.

The streak of Happy Deweys had to end eventually. People might disagree with me on this one, and that's fine. Maybe this catch-up week has given me DuckTales Fever, symptoms including bad opinions, but the better solution is to just skip this one and just watch that "A Sea Monster Ate My Ice Cream" scene from the original on a loop.

And that's it for the catch-up week. I'm going back to one DuckTales 2017 review a week next week, and it's a big one. See you on Wednesday!

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