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bluepluto03 · 5 years ago

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mcu spiderman rewrite/au i may or may not do

ok so first quick disclaimer! i do not hate the mcu spider man movies in any way!! i actually enjoy them quite a bit and have seen homecoming like 4 times! and i absolutely adore all the actors in the movies, especially tom, zendaya, and jacob

but the problem w/ the mcu spiderman movies is,,, they’re just not spiderman. at least from a writing/thematic perspective, which sucks bc so much other stuff about them is great! like tom holland is the perfect peter parker, which is why it seems so close to being right, but with the way the script is actually written... it’s just. not spider-man.

i feel the need to explain all this/my problems w/ the movies b4 i get into the actuall au idea/plot, so please bear with me for a sec

for context, I’ve loved spiderman my whole life. i’d watch the cartoons when i was younger, and then went back and watched them all again when i was a bit older and figured out how to pirate stuff lol. i didn’t really know how to get into the comics, so i just kinda read wikis and got second-hand info from fanfics and the other movies

to me, spiderman, (at least, peter parker spiderman,) was always about like... a kid, who saw the world was broken and fixed it because he could. he had the power to fix stuff, so he did.

as a kid w/ mental illness and a not so great home life... that was something really really important to me. to see another kid out there, who’s been through some shit, but finally has the power to make stuff better, so he is! and it would make me think, maybe i can change stuff for the better, someday, if i just get my chance

but,,,,, the problem is mcu peter parker isn’t that.

instead of becoming spiderman bc he knows there’s bad in the world and wants to fix it, suddenly his motivation is impressing tony stark?? and don’t get me wrong i don’t hate tony, but the way they wrote his and peter’s relationship basically trapped peter. he could no longer be his own hero, bc he was tony’s successor. and that's never who peter parker’s spiderman was?? he was never a follower, he was a trendsetter. he didn’t become spiderman for approval, hell he had dozens of newspapers constantly slandering him.

honestly the following in someone else’s footsteps thing was always a miles morales thing. he had to step up to the plate and fill the shoes of a spiderman who had already existed for years and was beloved by the whole city. obviously thats not all he is and simplifying his character to that is incredibly obtuse, but i bring it up bc tbh alot of stuff w/ mcu peter parker is just straight-up ripped off from miles morales. like how peter now goes to a fancy private school, is no longer poor (which is a huge thing w/ peter parker’s character in like every other incarnation), has a living father figure, and is bffs w/ ned, who is a straight-up rip off of miles’s best friend ganke. (for the record tho i adore ned and jacob i’m def keeping him in my rewrite,,,, also i’m glad he’s in the movie bc having a plus sized poc protagonist thats not constantly mocked is incredible)

so, i’m complaining about all this stuff lol but ur probably wondering how exactly how i wanna fix it lol,,,,

first, give peter an arc thats more than just..... i want tony to believe in me. my idea for that is basically a type of thing where he learns to rely on others! bc like... peter isn’t good at working w/ others lol, he’d much rather do it all himself so no one else gets hurt. (like in the andrew garfield movies where he just,,,, webs his gf to a car so she can’t run into danger lmao)

the plot would start at a similar ish position to homecoming, though tony never recruits peter for civil war. tbh not sure if it even happened but we’ll disscuss that later

peter’s been spiderman for a few months, after a trip to oscorp left him w/ a radioactive spider bite. currently no one knows about it, and he’s doing a pretty ok job of dealing w/ everything on his own. until he takes down a big bad, lets say rhino for now, and gains a ton of publicity. after stooping a hudge disaster he’s suddenly in the limelight, and catches the attention of one norman osborn, aka the green goblin

now, quick sidenote. green goblin is genreally seen as pretty goofy, but there are comic versions of him that are legit terrifying. if im being honest i didn’t even know about that version until i read aloneintherains fic birds eating other birds so ig thats kinda ish how i’m imagining this version of norman? though alot more composed, like the man who could someday turn into that

so norman becomes intrested in my boy peter, and starts sending ppl after him. possibly the sinister 6, but uhh maybe not bc tbh i think this “rewrite” needs to be split into 2 “movies”/works and i might wanna save that for the hypothetical pt2 (btw if i write this it won’t b for a while cause i got other stuff going on but ig if ppl are intrested i might write some snippits/make more content for it)

so basically the main plot is peter dealing w/ all these big bads on his own, doing ok at first but later getting really fucked up, and eventually revealing himself to ned and mj which ends up being the only way he can save the day in the end. by relying on others! yay!!

thats it for the main plot, but don’t worry y’all we got other stuff going on too lmao

so, for one. my boy peter is realizing he has a crush and just,,,, freaking tf out. (i have yet to decide if it’s on ned or mj. or both. sue me) the crush isn’t definitely resolved in p1, but i imagine there’d be some cute thing of him suddenly realizing and freaking out and almost revealing his powers.

thing 2! tony stark! he is still in here, and still a mentor to peter, but in a pretty drastically different way. one, he doesn't know about peter being spiderman. he doesn't even suspect it lmao. he just gets involved bc of.... some sort of reason bc peter is so smart. do i know why just yet? no. does it matter? probably but i’m writing this pretty late after i had school all day so i’m too tired to care

bc tony basically gives peter a real internship/mentorship type thing, peter now has access to all this tech!! and all these funds!! fucking lit!! so he changes from his pajama suit to the fancy one, tho he actually built it!! which i feel like him making his suit is a really big really important part of his character. so it doesn't really have all those random things tony added, tho peter might add stuff himself. he gets Karan as a like assistant ai as part of his internship but she never gets put into the suit

for the fist part tony plays a super minor role but like,,,, the first part is about osborn taking an intrest in him, and him confiding in ned and mj. the second part norman is become progressively more dangorus and peter has to fight him and stuff, kinda proving he is strong enough to be spiderman/be trusted to the whole world, beyond just ned and mj. also him actually getting together w/ either one or both of them bc...... bc i want that.

oh btw idk if tony finds out or not in p2? if he does it’s either at the end or in a scene like the one w/ may bc like. please imagine the shenanigans of peter and ned (who both have high intellegence but low wisdom) in tony’s lab, obviously trying to hide the fact that peter’s spiderman. like he walks in on them and peter looks all frumpy bc he’s been trying to change real fast, and ned’s shirt is messed up bc he just stuffed the mask down the front of it, and mj is just. chilling behing them. so tony just like assumes stuff and is like....aight.... have fun....

oh btw the last big change that i didn’t really have anyway to insert natrually into this,,,, so remember how i said ned was kinda a ripoff of ganke? well, the writers claim he’s a “composite character” so i figured, why not give him traits from other famous spiderman side character so he actually is a composite character!

so like,,,, throughout p1 it’s referenced that ned has a kinda dickish estranged ish dad that he hates and his mom doesn't really like but kinda forces him too... theres some mentions of his dad wanting him to transfer to a private school and being kinda rich, bur he dosen’t want to bc he knows his dad is a total dickead,,,, anyway end of the movie we find out norman osborn is ned’s dad, and ned hates him even fucking more bc it’s like bitch?? u tried to get my (maybe) bf murdered?? tf?? and its lowkey bc he can’t reveal peter’s id, but then in p2 after norman takes matters into his own hands and tries to kill peter on his own ned just fucking yells at him while the man is in jail and is like fuck u lmao

soooo thats my really messy au idea!! i’m really tired sorry if this is hard to understand or rude! for the record i have nothing against the ppl who adore these movie’s, i just think they could be better!

#spiderman #spider man homecoming #spiderman homecoming #peter parker #tony stark #michelle jones #ned leeds #parkerleeds #spideychelle #peter x mj x ned #marvel #pls rb i worked p hard on this #my post #my writing #norman osborn #green goblin #mcu spiderman

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precenna · 5 years ago

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Season 7 Speculation (SDCC)

Alright guys I got some info for AOS. As you all know San Diego Comic-Con was last weekend, which was a big deal for AOS becuase it will be their last SDCC as they are now done filming (they informed us there that they were finishing up the very last ep and we all, as an audience, sobbed). I did get the opportunity to go and see their panel as well as observe both their meet and greets (I also sobbed there too, it was emotional for me). During their panel, however, something a lot of people forgot about was one of the answers to the speed round questions that hold a lot of potential for the final season conflict.

During their panel on Thursday, the fans got to do their usual Q and A, BUT since we ran out of time reminiscing it was forced into a speed round (and I was SOOO CLOSE to asking them my question! AGH!) The questions were reduced answers of yes or no which one of the last ones was “Why havent the cast experienced the snap” or “Why hasnt the show lined up with the snapture” to which the directors quickly responded, They just havent gotten to it yet...

We all guessed this was coming, the cast would experience the snap and deal with the effects, but now I believe we do have confirmation from the directors/ writers that this will happen soon. Which leaves the question, which characters will vanish?

Im gonna cover FS here specifically becuase I am the most interested to see what their outcome will be:

So in my mind this can only go one of two ways. I am not a fan of the idea that the writers will have one of them will snap away. Considering the fact that half of this season was finding their way back to each other and getting them back to where they left off, it would feel like half of this season would be redundant. All the emotional trauma they have been conflicted with the past 5-6 years has been confronted and they are FINALLY working on patching all of it up! Not only that, Fitz has already died! It is just not the logical move to have Fitz ash away because he just came back from being dead! And Jemma has spent a year trying to get him back! Would it really make sense for Jemma to dust away right when she accomplishes her mission? When they just started to resolve all their fears and traumas?! They would have gone through that whole arc for nothing! No pay off, not to mention it would make a lot of fans mad from using the constant ripping each other apart story line. (Still I would never put it past them...)

So we have two options left; both of them snapping away or neither of them. Honestly, as sad as it will be, I think that both of them are going to end up on the unlucky side of the snap. It makes sense when you think about it too. They have been consistently saying “I am never leaving your side again”. I believe the writers are going to FINALLY honour that promise. Even if they end up doing it in a heart wrenching way, with both of them snapping they will still be sticking to their “No matter what happens, I will be there by your side to comfort you. To protect you.” pledge! It would be a reassuring way for them to depart becuase we, as the fans, would know they are resting in peace for those 5 years TOGETHER! Not apart like all the other times, but finally together like they always should be. Jemma even stated this in ep 6 of season 6 when she finally was reunited with Fitz she proclaimed, “I don’t’ give a damn if we ever escape” because she is perfectly content with staying with Fitz in the mind prison for all eternity. All she needs is to be with him, and we all know Fitz feels the exact same way (after all they are “physically-linked”!)

On the other side of things, the writers could have them both stay. FS are the ideal agents that S.H.I.E.L.D was based upon. We heard Mack say this earlier in season 6 and Coulson say it MANY times. Mack originally wanted FS to work on rebuilding the S.H.I.E.L.D Academy, but with Fitz’s, ahem, incident, and Jemma leaving for space to retrieve him, he couldnt have them work on the project. At least, not until they got back. If the writers decide to have them stay, they would get a 5 year “head start” on rebuilding the Academy with Dr. Benson (assuming he dosen’t ash as well). To add on to this idea, it could also be the chance FS have to finally start their family. (Although this is less likely becuase we have less evidence for it.) We all know the secrecy of the last season has been BRUTAL, but they did it for a reason. It has been speculation that Liz and Iain were seen on set with a little girl for the last ep. That is all I have heard however. At SDCC Liz and Iain were not there for the last signing becuase that Friday they were filming their final scenes together (which A, confirms we have Iain on set, and B proves we have a FS finale of some kind).

The directors also answered that they will be giving this series a happy ending with everything that the fans imagine becuase that is what all these characters deserve, happiness. So I am sure by the end of the series we will see them with their family already made (Yes!!!), but as for all the previous eps, that is more of a clouded line. As I said before, I am not a fan of the one disappears trope. But there is some evidence for it as well... We all know Iain has not been confirmed on set for a while becuase of work elsewhere, which means, you guessed it, a chance for him to be caught in the snap. The absent timing makes sense ,unless they waited to do all his scenes later when he was available, and gives explanation to a missing Fitz in the action (I do have other theories on that as well). Although I pray this is not the path they choose to go on it can be backed by schedules and timing. It is always a possibility...

If you guys want to see all the questions asked I am sure there are so many vids on the internet that you can find to watch the panel; it was honestly one of the greatest moments of my life to see them all walk out on stage! To watch the banter they all have with one another while still staying strong for the fans, and themselves, as they film what will be the last of our favourite show. This post was getting long so I figured I’d end it here but if anyone has any questions about CC I am here to answer them! OMG I was there for EVERYTHING AOS!! I have a 13 min vid to prove it at their last signing... yes I am obsessive but sentimental!! I never knew what was gonna kill me/ be heartbreaking so I just kept filming😅 I have images of them from the panel and signing (I WAS SO CLOSE TO GETTING TO MEET THEM BUT ALL THE PEOPLE IN FRONT HOGGED SO I LEFT WITH ONLY PICS) so if anyone wants to see I can show :)!

(Not the best quality, sorry, but I got them both smiling so woooo!!)

Anyway, I’m sure a lot of you already put these things together or have already known this from the beinning cause we are all so smart! but just thought I’d put it all in a nice post for us to store the info on! ;) Thanks for reading and lets watch the rest of our series with the brightest smiles on our faces! Cause thats all the characters, cast, and crew really want from us as it ends with a bang!!!

#agents of shield #aos #fitzsimmons #leopold fitz #jemma simmons

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upperstories · 7 years ago

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Stargazing

Frankly, Bendy is sick and tired of nightmares. Sure, they’re still terrifying, but they’re also so common that he’s annoyed at the part of his subconscious that insists on recutting thirty years worth of rotten memories into stupid phantasms.

Tonight’s installment of Horrible Dream Theater was mostly notable in its persistence: he’s been up and about for a good 15 minutes, but he still can’t close his eyes for more than a blink without the thing digging its claws into him again.

Focusing on what’s real and actually good helps. For once in his life, Bendy is safe. Sure, hiding from almost everyone is still necessary, but politely indifferent neighbors are much easier to deal with than suspicious cops or nosy samaritans. Most importantly, he isn’t alone, either in general or in the moment. For both him and Henry, sitting in the kitchen talking beats staring at the ceiling or leafing listlessly through a book.

“Ya think talking about it would help?” Sometimes, if they’re lucky, nightmares sound ridiculous when described out loud, and both of them (all three of them?) can have a good laugh at having ever been scared of searcher-policemen or whatnot.

Henry hesitates before responding. “Probably not”. Another pause, a shrug, and then he continues anyways. “Drowning. We were trapped in a collapsed air duct back in the studio as it flooded with ink. I can’t remember much more of it.”

He’s implying that Buddy does, though. Which makes it hard for Bendy to help at all. Pulling them in front of a mirror would be overkill, and anyways, it’d probably be best to let Buddy hide behind Henry for now. The only remotely productive thing Bendy can do is find some sort of big sparkly distraction.

Skhrrch. Skhrrch.

“Wha’?!” Bendy jumps and nearly falls out of his chair. He glances around, looking for the cause of the sound that snapped him out of his thoughts. It’s too much like the raspy breathing of the demon from the studio for comfort, but the shadows in the room are normal, so that can’t be it. It isn’t it. It’s … it’s just Henry, shoving a stepstool to the window so he can look outside for something. “All right, what’re ya up to?” Bendy asks, doing a reasonably good job of sounding calm.

“Hmm, I think it’ll be better if I show you. Just wait here a second, alright?” He’s definitely up to something, and deliberately being vague about it. Bendy really doesn’t have all too much time to try and figure out what the plan is, because Henry returns pretty quickly, wearing a sweater and tossing one of Bendy’s ones to him.

“So, we’re goin’ somewhere? Where?”

“Just the backyard.”

“Why?” He follows Henry through the living room.

Henry grabs a blanket from the couch on the way to the door. “You’ll see.” He smiles, but loses a bit of his apparent okay mood when he looks up at the doorknob. It’s a good foot above his head. “Um. Could you get the door?”

Bendy nods and leads the way outside. After a few steps, he stops. It’s a nice night: cool and calm, with barely enough of a breeze to rustle leaves. The only other creature outside is the neighbor’s oversized puffball of a tabby cat, but she’s content to stay put, lording over her territory. There’s nothing to fear out here, and, anyways, if worst comes to worst, they could always hightail it up the big pine tree in the yard. “So, why’re we out here, anyways?” he asks as he sits next to Henry on the blanket.

“Look up.”

Stars. Dozens or hundreds of them, shining against the darkest night sky Bendy has ever seen. It’s nothing like it was back in the city, with four or five pale pinpricks in the perpetual pinkish glow. It’s competely new, but sort of nostalgic: he’d been fascinated with looking up at clouds and sunsets and how big the world was when he’d first escaped, but over time, skywatching had become a purely practical concern.

The longer he looks, the more nuances he sees. Some of the stars have color to them, yellowish or orange or blue, and there’s a faint hazy band across the sky. Once, a faintish star just wanders overhead in a straight line, which seems odd. The rest of them don’t do that. Actually, now that he thinks about it— “What are stars, anyways?”

“I don’t know. I think they’re the same sort of thing as the Sun, but, well, that dosen’t help much.” Henry shrugs, then goes back to staring at the sky. “Could find a book on it, though.”

“So, somethin’ ta look into tomorrow, then. Er, it’s past midnight, ain’t it. Later today, I guess.” If they aren’t too exhausted once it’s actually morning, visiting the library might be a good idea. Sure, there are people there, but not a lot, it’s easy to hide in the stacks, and Mrs. Finch is a reliable sort of human. The librarian had completely bought Bendy’s sob story about dead parents and being smothered by relatives at the funeral, and would often get the nosier patrons to leave him and Buddy alone.

Bendy shakes his head. He can put off planning until later, and really should. He pulls himself back to looking up, tracing patterns, and avoiding worrying about every little tiny thing that could possibly go badly. There’s as many of those as there are stars.

“Yeah, they do.”

“Huh?”

Henry blinks. Apparently, he didn’t notice he was talking out loud. “Stars have names. I can’t remember many of them or which name goes to which star, but they exist.”

Of course Buddy would ask that sort of question. And Bendy’s curious about it too. “Really?”

Henry nods. “For some reason, lots of them start with ‘A’. Alcor, Albiero, Algol—”

“Alice?”

“Maybe. There are a lot of them.” He pauses for a bit. “Do you think we should wake them up?”

“Nah. We should let her and Bo sleep. Besides, Al’d probably bug us about not wearin’ galoshes or somethin’.” He licks his finger and holds it in the air. “Should be clear for the rest of the week though. Hey, where’d you get the idea of doing this, anyways?”

Henry picks at the cuff of his mitten as he answers. “Remembered something. Visiting my grandparents when I was a kid. They lived out in the countryside, so me and my sister —cousin?— went out to catch fireflies. And when we looked up, there were too many stars to even see the constellations, and I sort of forgot about the lightning bugs.”

“So, what you’re sayin’ is that this—” he gestures up at the glittering darkness, “—is a decidedly second-rate night sky? If we ever haf'ta move, my vote’s on the middle of nowhere. Are you two with me?”

Henry snickers a bit. “Sure.”

Before he can think of aother bit of overdramatic clowning around, something bright yanks his attention skyward. It’s a shooting star, a big one, that arcs across a third of the sky before winking out.

“Wow.” Even after it faded, the faint greenish trail the meteor left hangs in the air for almost a minute. “Ain’t ya supposed to make a wish when you see a shooting star? Hmm—” He trails off, trying to think of a good one. Over most of the past thirty years, where he is now would be too much to hope for. Nothing big comes to mind that he wants. But— something vindictive might do. “I wish I’d’ve gotten a chance to sock ol’ Joey right in the nose.” He nudges Henry. “I know you got to do that already, but he— er, what’s left of him— still deserves a good wallop, ya know?”

Henry nods, just slightly.

“So, anythin’ you wish for?”

As soon as he says it, Bendy knows that’s probably the wrong question to ask. “I don’t know. It's— there are things I feel I want, but know I don’t want.” Henry slumps and curls up. “Like finding my family.”

Bendy dosen’t see much of a problem in that. It might be difficult to find any information, but whichever relative actually owns the house will probably find them eventually. And, even if he’s wary of humans, being related is reciprocal. Henry’s family is their family too. “It can’t be that much of a pain in the neck ta track them down.”

“It isn’t that. I don’t remember their faces. I don’t even know if I have siblings. My parents’d be 80, 90 by now, might not be alive still. And Linda— it’d be better for her if she thinks I’m dead and moved on with her life years ago. None of them’d recgnize me. And—” Henry tries to rub his neck, flinching when he touches nothing. “And even if we find them, I don’t think we could trust them.”

It seems nonsensical. Family should be on your side, no matter what. Bendy scoots a bit closer to Henry. “Why?”

“I used to be on okay terms with Sammy. I used to be friends with Joey.” Henry shudders like someone dropped a slug onto his back. “And, even if they aren’t like that, I don’t know if they’d stay quiet.”

“Oh.” Well, there’s a reason. For the toons, the best case scenario for people finding out about them is ending up stuck in the spotlight like those Dionne kids from the newsreels. Worst case? Some wannabe warlock copying Joey Drew’s methods for fame or immortality. It’s a real problem, and not one Bendy can even comprehend this late.

He can’t think of anything to say, either. Henry hadn’t ever talked about his family, really. He’d mentioned Linda once or twice, but never anyone else. It’s near impossible to tell what’ll be a touchy subject, and Bendy feels like he’s stumbled onto all of them. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t of said anythin’.”

Henry leans against Bendy’s shoulder. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s fine.” He’s still trembling. “If you need to blame someone, blame Joey.”

“I guess so.” He curls his tail around himself. It’s technically right, but still feels weird. Still, Henry wants to drop the subject, so pinning this on the murderous control freak it is.

It’s been months. Joey’s shadow should’ve stopped hanging over them when they’d escaped for good. But it hasn’t. Maybe it won’t ever go away.

He closes his eyes and tries to banish the thought from his mind.

_*_*_

Bendy blinks awake. He hadn’t realized he’d dozed off. It’s still dark out, nowhere near dawn, but it’s still probably time to head in. He nudges Henry gently.

Buddy wakes up and yawns. “Mornin’. Um, not morning?”

“C'mon Bud, up an’ at ‘em.” Buddy looks up at him pleadingly. “Fine. I’ll carry ya.” Bendy feigns grumbling as he hoists the pipsqueak onto his back and folds the blanket. Then, he drops the grumpy act. “You okay?”

Buddy dosen’t reply for a moment. “Dunno.” He shifts his weight a bit. “The stars are nice, but—” but it dosen’t outweigh the nightmares and other emotional turmoil, does it. “We’ll be okay, though. We’ll all be okay.” He tries to hug Bendy, as redundant as that is when he’s already clinging to him. “Just, eventually.”

Bendy looks back at the sky one more time before opening the door. It’ll still be there on a better, less stressful day. And he can almost convince himself that things will work out right.

Eventually.

Honey. HONEY.

I saw this in my inbox and my jaw DROPPED. This was absolutely lovely. Thank you thank you thank you so much!

#hatim au #hatim spinoff au #gift fanfiction #bendy and buddy #anonymous #get over here so i can HUG YOU #submission #long post

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Prince of Wishful Thinking (Tom Retrospective): Tough Love or The True Monster

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Prince of Wishful Thinking, what is usually my look at the life and times of Tom Lucitor but since I NEED to cover the season 3 finale as vital part of Tom’s story, we’re taking one last look at the tragic tale of Meteora Butterfly before the finale sends these two stories hurtling together. You’d THINK this would be the last detour of this already sizeable arc.. and you’d be wrong as i’ll also be covering Kelly’s World, as I feel it’s vital for both “Curse of the Blood Moon” and “A Boy and his hard to remember title”, as it provides extra context for Marco’s anguish in the former.. and provides extra evidence for why a CERTAIN MOMENT in the latter pisses me off to no end.. seriously even when as universe dies and the only people left are Frankllin Richards and Galactus, there will still be a little note reading “Fuck how they treated Kelly” written in all caps so Galactus remembers to yell it.

So sadly that DOES mean it’s been three entries in this retrospective in a row that either haven’t feature Tom at all or in the case of the last episode only had him in short cameos. I mean we did get his love affair for pie but we also got a creepy goblin man forcing his girlfriend and best friend to kiss each other, his best friend being WAY to eager to jump to that conclusion, and neither considering using Marco’s Scissors because the writers only remember he has those half the time in Season 3... and clearly I ddn’t either as I forgot to mention that plot hole, something @jess-the-vampire brought up to me. Sadly I DID forget to consult on this when we talked earlier this week , and she’s not online as I write this so I won’t have her insight for this one.

But if you want some Tom content, i’m happy to share my crossover ship for the boy with you. I’ve been shipping him with Octavia from Helluva Boss lately. Because of course it’s Helluva Boss, i’ve not been at all subtle with my obession with it and much like Letterkenny, X-Men and Dragon Ball Z Abriged it is a love I never plan to be subtle about.

But I just think they compliment each other well: They have contrasting atittudes, and tastes in music, but seem like they’d share hobbies. Like taxidermy.. I could see Tom buying this... demonic combination of a badger, a skunk, a deer and my nightmares Octavia is preciously holding up.

Granted I also feel tom would both animate them with their dead souls.. and then use his new woodland friends of the dammned as a chorus to sing “Can You Picture That” from the Muppet Movie, because that’s what my mind does on a regular day. I think the contrasting attitude creates great chemstiry and it made me also realize I have a thing for ships with directly contrasting home lives. Tom has two loving decent parents who deeply love one another and at worst simply didn’t reign in his worse behavior because it was standard for demon stuff. Octavia in contrast simply has two parents, one who DOES love her and tries his best, but his best includes calling his side piece “My big dicked blitzy” right in front of her and hiring said side piece to guard them, and her mother who clearly thinks so little of her daughter’s emotional well being she hired a cowboy to shoot her daddy dead in the middle of a large crowd. The point is I think they’d be adorable and they both badly need to be happy after being emotionally fucked over by people they care about.

But alas my new ship will have to wait as we marginally important things to get down too.. things that will impact both this season and the next’s endgame and utterly destroy Eclipsa and Moon’s relationship for good. Sound fun? Well if so join me under the cut won’t you?

We open in the Pidgeon Kingdom.. and things aren’t exactly great.. and by that I mean Meteora stomped a hole through it and ravaged the place and Rich demands blood.. and vengance.. and possibly blood vengance. But not Tekken Blood Vengance.. he already has like 5 copies of that on dvd. Still needs it on Blu Ray though, hook him up if you got it.

So Moon and Eclipsa are trying to smooth this over/find out which way did she go George which way did she go, and are angrily dismissed after they try Rich’s patience, not helped by Eclipsa not being familiar with the Pidgeon Kingdom because they hadn’t slaughtered everyone who used to live there yet. Look that’s what happened, Star outright mentions in the Big Book of Spells that htey suddenly sprung up where another kingdom was and no one knows what happens. There was some bird murders up in that place.. or birdur if you will. Some birds drank some human blood. This is what Alfred Hitchock tried to warn us about with his film built on horrifying actress abuse.

The point is with some more pidgeon-led murder stabbings on the cards our heroines are trying to find her since their attempts to convince Rich not to go on an Archer Style Rampage fell on deaf ears.

But it’s clear from the second the two are alone both have diffrent priorties: Eclipsa desperatley wants to find the daughter she lost and talk her down from what sh’es become, help her become better and hopefuly heal from the pain she’s been in. She’s lost her husband, her kingdom and centuries. She can’t loose her baby girl too.

Moon on the other hand... clearly has no intrest in helping Meteora or stopping this peacefully. Her first thought is stopping Meteora. Her living through it is not necessary. It’s also clear her racisim isn’t REMOTELY gone depsite Buff Frog and Star’s best attempts and despite learning just how deeply and horribly Mewni’s engrained racism has hurt eclipsa and destoryed Moon’s own family history. To Moon this is just a big monster to fight.. i’ll dive into this more in a bit.

For now our heroines encounter an angry mob. This time their not here for Homer Simpson, but for Meteora as her rampages have destroyd their towns, livelehoods and given some weird guy a hat. It’s the best bit of the episode and i’m embarassed I forgot it happened.

So with them being no help our queens back out but end up finding some actual help: Eddie! You know the guy from the episode I skipped over... River’s cousin or something like that. He dosen’t have a wiki entry, I do not know why. He’s voiced by Rhys Dharby of Flight of the Conchords Fame whose since made quite the career as a voice actor. No major roles yet that i’m aware of, but a lot of delightful minor ones like this. It’s good to see him he was one of the highlights of that show and not just because he sang this..

youtube

Eddie showed up in the Bog Beast of Boggabah and I honestly forgot he was in this episode.. but again, it’s Rhys Dharby. It’s not like suddenly finding out “Aw god dammit Pauly Shore is in this”. So Eddie agrees to help as he’s been tracknig Meteora.. and we find out something troubling: Meteora is getting BIGGER. Gradually, to the point the bog from said episode Is skipped over is drained because she DRANK IT. We also get a great exchange “I’d hate to see the size of her mother” “Actually her father more than helped with that”

Awwwww.... seriously Esme Blanco is a national treasure and has some great deliveries in this one.. and some heartbreaking ones. But before we can get to that it turns out Meteora sucked the powers out of Eddies family.. who he misses..e xcept one guy> That guy can fuck right off. Seriously Eddie is also a national treasure and I wish he’d shown up in season 4. I mean he couldn’t of HURT it. For one it’s Rhys Dharby and for another that season shot itself in the face, both feet, the groin and then the face again enough that I don’t think anything could hurt it as bad as the writers already did.

But sadly we say farwell to Eddie as he goes out how men have since the begining of time.. deciding to poke a strange creature till it murdered him. Or took his soul out in this case, speaking of which...

Yeah while I couldn’t get Jess in time for this review, she did bring this up in the past: Meteora’s ablility to pull a

Comes right the fuck out of nowhere with no build up and no explination for it. She DID drain personalites and according to this episode youth.. but that was with a big ole machine. It MIGHT have been intended to be one of Globgor’s powers.. but that makes zero sense, as if he COULD do that, as we saw with Toffee last season when he had that power, also out of nowhere but at least it made a touch more sense given his power was draining magical energy anyway at the time, so adding souls to that isn’t a huge stretch, but as we saw that would’ve been game over for the comission, especially since we DO see him fighting them one on three next season. If he had this power, he wouldn’t be in crystal and I think they realized that, but just tried to act as if his daugther COULDN’T do that and assumed everyone would casually forget. And I get not accounting for me writing about this years later, even I wouldn’t of thought that, but not counting on fans both young and old to latch onto a continuity error? Have you met fandoms Disney, have you? It dosen’t bring the story down entirely and I get WHY ti’s there, so she can nonlethally kill people so we’re not down most of the cast for Season 4, but it feels like an easy win button and one she barely uses despite it being eye beam activated. It should be easy enough to pull, boom, soul suck, win, rinse and repeat. It’s okay to have uber powerful tequniques but they have to have a drawback. For instance the Kaioken from DBZ. It’s a really damn cool technique that gives the user a neat red aura and amplifies poewr.. but the more you amplify the more strain it puts on your body and the more likely you’ll die, and Super later creatively explained why it hadn’t been used since Super Sayian was introduced because said form would’ve sped it up so much it’d be too much for a body to take. Here whie Meteora dosen’t use it in EVERY fight, she uses it enough that it makes no sense this isn’t just her first move for every fight she gets into, mental breakdown or not.

That being said Meteora’s current mental state as she talks to her mother, having regressed to talking in only a few words and acting like a child, makes perfect sense. Henious already wasn’t in great mental shape to begin with, having a slow sustained breakdown since Marco overthrew her. and now on top of this she remembers her whole life has been a lie, starts to mutate into her natural state at a rapid and likely unehalthy pace, and then finds out on top of all of this Mewni is rightfully owed to her. Given she ended last episode blowing a guy up for rejecting her, it’s not a stretch that given even more power and no time to process anything, Metora would deteroate further.

Esme and Jessica really knock this scene out of the park as Eclipsa presents Metora with her old doll Bobo and gently trying ot talk to her.. but you also get the fear Eclipsa feels as she tries to awkardly manuver around the fact her daughter is far more unhinged than she was prepared for, even threanting Eclipsa simply because Eclipsa wanted to be called mother instead of mommy. But despite this fear.. Eclipsa wants to help and Walter beautifuly captured metoera as a hulk like tragic figure:a being with low sanity and too much power desperate to be loved by the one person it cares about. And it makes it even more heartbreaking as Eclipsa explains what happened: bad people trapped her , a disfunctoinal society with a racist queen and even more racist subjects has taken hold in her absence... and it’s clear both want opposite things: Meteora wants what sh’es owed, her family back on the throne and Mewni back in her graps, but has lost herself so much to rage, anger and insanity she can’t see it’s not hers to take, while Eclipsa.. just wants her daughter back. She’d be happy just settling down with her and having a LIFE after hers was taken away. Eclipsa just wants a chance to be with what family she has left. It just HURTS to know that despite RIGHTFULLY hating the comission, despite having eveyr reason to take the crown from Moon by force and make the world better by force.. she dosen’t want that. She just wants some peace. It’s selfish... but it’s hard not to be when you havealmost nothing to hold onto. Eclipsa has lost her legacy, her husband and her crown... Meteora is all she has and all she wants and sh’ed of been happy if she just accepted that. If that was enough.

But the real telling part, and the thing that ultimately makes this go as bad as it does.. is Moon’s reactions to all of this. Sh’es CONFUSED by Meteora having a toy as if that’s foreign to her a monster would, and she’s cleaerly livid , if restrianing it, at both Meteora’s deire for the crown and Eclipsa RIGHTFULLY calling out the state of how things are, and mildly at that. Despite seeing how much damage Mewni’s inherent racisim has done, how it lead to her living a lie, ruined Eclipss, Globgore and Metora’s lives, despite how DESPERTLY her daughter struggles to fight against it, despite seeing firsthand that Monsters can have famiies and lives... she can’t let it go. She can’t see monsters as people. SHe dosen’t see a flawed person who was turned into a metpohrical monster by years of brainwashing and abuse and is slowly unravling under the weight of her true self.. she just sees a threat to her kingdom. She dosen’t see her kingdom as racist, just as it should be. And she dosen’t see herself as stepping down like hse damn well should’ve the MOMENT she found out everything. Because at her heart Moon can’t accept the truth and clings to her racisim.

And that my friends.. is what ultimately leads to Tragedy. Not Meteora’s unraveling mental state, not Eclipsa’s naitvite. What happens next is ENITRELY Moon’s fault. Whle Eclipsa was failing to get through to Metora, she was trying her best and might of gotten somewhere.. but Moon was already settling to attack.. and does so, making it look like Eclipsa set her own child up.

A fight ensues, a suprisingly even one... but Eclipsa breaks it up and PROVES her way could’ve worked. In one of Esme’s best performances sshe tearfully tells her daughter she loves her.. that ALL she wants is time with her to make up for what she’s lost.. she dosen’t need a kingdom or her crown or her wand, all things she DESERVES... she just wants her daughter. She just wants to help her baby girl before she goes so far down this path of hatred and vengance she’s alreayd well trod upon there is no point to return to.

It gets through to Meteora, makes her stop... and Moon TAKES ADANTAGE OF THAT. She then restrains metoera with a magical rock barrier and starts palpatineing her to death. It’s a horrifying moment that ultimately shows who Moon really is.. that when given the chance to let Meteora go, let her CHANGE and grow as a person and help the kingdom.. she instead tries to kill her. When she’s no longer a threat, hasn’t seriously hurt her in their fight, and could use her power to RESTORE the damage she’s done, fix what she’s broken and help the kingdom grow and mend the bridges racisim has torn down. But all she can see is a monster, and something to destroy.. not someONE to save.

So Eclipsa does what Moon would do if it were star about to die and saves her daughter, desperatly trying to stop mooon.. and allowing Meteora to get a clear shot and take half of moon’s soul. While Eclipsa is able to stop her from taking the full thing, Moon is left disoreinted and half alive and leaves on insticnt to parts unknown while Meteora escapes. Eclipsa is left alone, devistated and with her daughter truly lost. And the worst is truly yet to come.

Before we get into final thoughts i’d like to talk about how this scene impacts Moon’s betryal later. To me having rewatched this scene.. it only makes it work MORE making it clear Moon simply can’t fahtom racial equality and that she can’t fahtom that eclipsa had very good reason for doing what she did ... to me it comes off as her using Eclipsa betryaing her as a very flimsy justifcation to not validate her rule and to first retire and then try a coup. That “Well she “BETRAYED” me so i’m fine. “ But in truth... she betrayed Eclipsa first. She attacked her daughter TWICE when Eclipsa was close to getting through to her Her reasons are flimsy.. because i’ts not ABOUT eclipsa, but what eclipsa represents: equality with a race Moon dosen’t see as people. It’s about Moon’s racisim coloring everything tills h’es truly blinded and should have lost everything She didn’t because the ending is a fucking disgrace, but we might get to that at some point, the point here is for all that disgrace’s faults... it did get it right here, and Moon was always portrayed as being unable to let go of her racisim no matter what it cost her or how much her daughter despteratly tried to change her. Trust me as someone whose Dad used to argue that gay marriage meant he should be able to marry his cat, and who still argues against trans people using the bathroom of their choice, I get trying desperatley to change someone who don’t wanna. “Sigh”.

Final Thoughts: This episode is truly excellent. The writing is top notch as is the voice acting for all involved and the climax isa true, well led up to tragedy. The animation is also on point, with the characters emotions on perfect display. This is an episode I now realize is one of the series best and worth ar ewatch if you haven’ts een it. Truly amazing stuff that gets me pumped for the finale.. and disapoints me in how the series could reach these highs for one finale.. but would sink to it’s lowest point for next seasons. Next Time on Prince of Wishful Thinking: Star tries depseratly to find her mom, while Marco, Tom and a motely crew of misfits try to take down Meteora and Tom learns the awful truth from the photo booth and wears a zuko ponytail which weirdly looks good on him. That boy can rock anything let me tell you.

If you enjoyed this reviews, please consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As mentioned my 30 dollar stretch goal includes a review of the cluster fuck that is the series final arc, and the goals up to that , me making 20 and 25 dollars a month repectively, have their own nifty rewards: At 20 i’ll review Darkwing Duck once a month, the two remaning Ducktales 87 mini series I have not covered and the Danny Phantom film The Ultimate Enemy. 25 meanwhile gets you reviews of the Proud Family Movie, the theatrical recess movie and the Kim Possible almost finale movie so the drama. And 30 also gets you reviews of every episode of gravity falls season 1 at least one a month till I finish it at some point, so as you can see you get a lot of bang for your buck and these reviews will be public for everybody. Not only that but joining my patreon gets you a review a month if you pitch in 5 dollars and evne if you can’t swing THAT much just 2 bucks gets you access to my discord, a guarnateed pick in my shorts, votes for patreon exclusive reviews, and SAID patreon exclusive reviews. It’s a lot of bang for your buck is what i’m saying so please help me out so I can make a living off this and sign up today. I even JUST ADDED an exclusive and utterly insane scrooge mcduck review, The Great Wig Mystery. So throw in a buck to check that out.

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#star vs the forces of evil #tom lucitor #prince of wishful thinking #meteora butterfly #eclipsa butterfly #moon butterfly #rhys dharby #disney xd #disney channel #disney plus #reviews

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Lena Retrospective: The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck! or Why Does Lena’s Darkest Hour Have a WACKKKYY Bigfoot Subplot?

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Shadow Into Light, my look back the LIfe and Times of Lena Sabrewing. And we’re almost at the end of season 1. Woo-Ooo!. While i’ll have more season 1 episodes to cover for it’s sister arc, this is the last episode in this arc before the finale.. and i’m happy to repeat that next week will be DUCK WEEK as a result, finsihing up this arc and the Della arcs, as well as dipping into season 2 a bit for Lena’s return to celebrate the finale of this wonderful show. Full disclosure: I didn’t PLAN for it this way, I assumed the show would be ending in April, but sometimes serendipity just works out for you. So pitter pat er, let’s get at er.

When we last left off Webby went on a wild duck chase for her grandma in England and 87!Webby befriended that version of Magica’s niece and told off a grown woman masquerading as a child because her husband likes being called “Daddy”. When we last left the plot proper though, we learned Lena just wanted to be free, and was willing to do whatever it took, and Magica was getting more abusive and more impatient. And if you thought the end to Jaw$! was pretty sad and dark.... strap in and steel yourself as we take a look at one of the darkest episodes in the series.

The opening sets the stage perfectly as we’re in Scrooge’s Room in the middle of the night, when Lena comes in.. with a knife.

Naturally she dosen’t have baked goods, but instead is trying to cut the knife from around his neck while Magica won’t shut up while she works and keeps distracting her and BLAMING her for getting distracted. As for the knife it’s glowing and mystic because naturally, Scrooge doesn’t trust just ANY string but a magically woven one to hold his dime. Unlucky for her her girlfriend walks in at the exact moment she’s standing over her idol holding a mystical knife. I don’t think hallmark makes a card for “Sorry I was lying to you for months for my abusive aunt to earn my freedom and then looked like I was about to slit your uncle’s throat. I love you though. “ Yet.

Scrooge starts to stir so Webby pulls Lena out of there and back to her room... and flashes a lamp on her to interrogate her. Lena is able to bounce back, asking “what were you doing there”. Which NORMALLY wouldn’t last more than two minutes.. but since Webby was there to get Drool samples, maybe she wants to clone him I mean she does know a guy I think the why is something we’d rather not know about, Webby herself was a bit suspcious and Lena uses her starkerish ways to say she’d also gotten into being a Scrooge fangirl. This also allows her to ask about the dime.. but since Scrooge never takes it off, that means they have no access and both Lena and Magica are stuck watching Webby’s long presentation on Scrooge’s life story. I mean personally i’d love to see this in it’s full probably 8 hour glory but I’m not trying to earn my freedom or stuck as a shadow monster.

It was then when watching the episode this morning.. I was reminded it had a subplot. And the instant I saw Dewey folding Louie’s shirts... I started to piece together it was the bigfoot one.

As you can tell i’m not a fan of this subplot. It has a good core idea, riffing on “kid takes home sasquatch films” like Cry Wilderness, Big and Harry and of course the one that started it all, Harry and the Hendersons.

It’s just bogged down by one really obnoxious trait that trips it up and is in the wrong episode entirely. We’ll get to that first scene and the plot as a whole in a moment we just need the setup in the a-story first: Scrooge privately conferring with Beakly, which Magica snoops on. While Lena didn’t get far at all in cutting the rope of his dime, she still left a knick and the fact someone got into his house, let alone his bedroom and got THAT far, means SOMETHING bad is afoot. So while he looks for it he’s putting the dime in the Other Bin for safekeeping. We’ll find out what that is in moment. For now

Let’s Get This Stupid Sasquatch Plot Over With

We open with Louie having conned Dewey into folding his stuff for the “world laundry folding record”. I mean.. it’s greasy but I gotta respect game here. And it’s not actively harming anyone. Though we do find out from an irate Huey he’s done far worse, if in a hilarious way with Louie’s Kids, his obviously fake charity he uses to get money out of Donald. And so far into it, as Huey hid something he had in the closet and offered to Fix Louie’s stretched out hoodie, the reason he was mad at Dewey, I didn’t get why I hated it before. I wondered why I was so annoyed. Same when Huey while carrying Louie’s hoodies hears his uncle looking for something in the mansion.

Turns out he’s got a bigfoot hiding in their closet, that he found injured int he woods and brought back and all that good kid finding a mythical creature stuff. Dewey of course loves him on first sight and both want to keep him. But unlike most of these sorts of things where the creature’s damage to the room and what not is played off or the sibling doesn’t know, Louie does see it and isn’t happy about it and only agrees to hide the furry bastard because his brothers blackmail him with his schemes, and refuse to feel sorry for him as the creatures antics continue, including drinking Louie’s special pep and eating his snacks.

And this is where one of the plots two major issues crops up: The way Dewey and Huey act. Both just ignore any damage wooly foot does, any discomfort to Louie and any obvious downsides of this. Now Dewey being clinginly attached to a majestic creature he found and wanting to keep it? Fits perfectly, and him being mean to louie fits because louie tricked him. Huey however.. is horribly out of character, as while I could see him being charmed at first and not wanting his uncle to hunt his new friend.. he’s not an impractical boy. He’d of tried to get his new friend to the woods first thing because it’s where he’s safest from scrooge and his foot has healed. He’s also a Woodchuck and I can’t imagine the JWG says it’s okay to keep a wild animal person as a pet basically. None of it fits him and makes him into a moron for an episode solely for the plot to work. This still could’ve worked but just have Huey and Louie BOTH get suspicious, Huey later, and find out Tenderfoot is actually Gavin, whose sapient, has a phone and simply is taking advantage of them. it would’ve gone the same way: if they told Dewey , Gavin would kill them, as he threatened to do if louie told his brothers. The Gavin part though is brilliant and a really nice twist I didn’t see coming when I first saw this.

And it would’ve made the already great climax more interesting as Huey would’ve been forced to use the methods of Louie’s he’d derided to beat a far worse scammer. Instead it’s just Louie but he doesn’t take Gavin’s threats lying down.. and comes up with a clever way to use his scam against him. He shaves Gavin, hides the razor then claims to his brother that not being in the woods means he’s dying or some such thing. So our two idiots and our hero drag them out and while they run into scrooge, Louie still saves the idiots life by manipulating him with a schmaltzy speech and they let him go despite his best attempts to stay, with Louie getting a nice “I win in there”. Overall a bit of a mess with some good ideas, but Huey suddenly taking dum dum juice really drags it down.

So in any other episode this would’ve been fine whatever just mildly obnoxious. What makes it really, unintentionally obnoxious.. is it’s in the middle of a tense, dark, horror story that dives into the depths of Lena’s soul and ends on a really horrifying note. Case in point Louie shaves a bigfoot and gets his victory over his nemesis.. after an utterly spellbindingly horrific nightmare by Lena, easily the most terrifying moment in the entire show. Followed up with a shaved bigfoot.

Now I could buy Disney simply forced them to do this to keep things light... except Frank’s been pretty upfront about the production process, how Disney has treated him, what they’ve said no on. So if it had been something they were forced to do, he would’ve said it. No this is just not reading the room and not thinking things through and an otherwise stellar episode suffers for it.They could’ve waited till season 2 for it, they didn’t, and this was the result. It dosen’t ruin the rest of the episode it’s too good for it, but damn if it dosen’t create mood whiplash so severe I need a neckbrace.

The Good Part

So back at the plot anyone actually cares about, we found out what the “other bin” is when Lena asks Webby: While the Money bin is for well, money and precious keepsakes, the other bin is the stuff too dangerous to keep out in the world. And this is the guy who kept a mystical gold eating dragon, a pirate ghost, and a medusa gauntlet in his garage, and we’ll learn after this ep also keeps a giant golden aztec golem in there. NONE of that was deemed dangerous enough to put in the other bin. So Webby is understandably hesitant.. and it gets a bit unsettling when Lena manipulates her into it. While she has in the past.. she usually just nudged Webby into something she’d do anyway at worst, or showed her an r-rated movie or something harmless. While she did use her as an in she clearly cares.. so it shows how horrifically desperate she’s got she’s willing to pressure her into going into Scrooge’s most dangerous and secure location, pointing out this may be her only chance to see the Dime.

So she reluctantly agrees, and the two head into the garage. Turns out Scrooge keeps all his junk here for more reason than just shoving it wherever it’d go, as the entrance to the other bin is hidden here. The statue that gave Manny his head is actually a clue towards the painting hiding the second bin, which itself requires one of those things used to hold up ropes and such like you’d see at a movie theater... god I miss movie theaters.. I mean watching stuff in the comfort of home is very nice, but it was nice getting out, making a day of it. I mean their around, but I really don’t want to go till one till more vaccinations have happened and it’s a lot safer to go. Wait what were we talking about? Oh right gay ducks going into a horrifying nightmare vault. But yeah the theater thingy is the key, it unlocks the entrance and our heroines head inside.

In contrast to the modern, buisnessy welcoming bin, the other bin is basically one giant vault/prison, with everything in it securely locked inside identical doored rooms. It’s genius as it is simple: Only 6 people have likely ever had access to this place: Scrooge, Beakly, Gyro, Duckworth and MAYBE the twins. Even Della and Donald being allowed down here is an unknown. The non-scrooge people are only because someone besides him needs to maintain it, keep any creatures fed, that sort of thing and he’d only trust his butler and his housekeeper, who are also both extraordinarily badass, to do so. Gyro is because someone needed to design the cells. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Quackfaster was a 7th since season 3 casts her as Scrooge’s magic expert and he’d likely need specific runes for specific cells. He’d want as few people down here as possible, and even fewer knowing. I’m sure Bradford knew, and i’m also certain it’s the one thing he never quibbled about the expense as while he hates what Scrooge stands for and tried to curb his “chaos” as much as possible.. this is doing exactly what Bradford likes: locking it away where it can’t hurt anybody. Plus quibbling about it might make Scrooge want to show it off to him and that’s.. that's’ a whole lotta nope in a 2 pound bag.

So for once Webby is very hesitant and very cautious, though naturally Magica points out a door.. and Lena stupidly follows her advice as she knows her “aunt” is impulsive and has no regards for her safety. What did she think was going to happen? They instead find a unicorn.. or rather it’s angry murderous cousin the Sword Horse, which naturally tries goring them. I’d go with Spear Horse, but semantics. Point is Webby is soon tackled by the thing and Magica just wants to let her die. As seen before the tension between Magica and Lena has hit a breaking point: Magica is fed up with Lena’s clear feelings for webby and caring more about her than the mission.. while Lena is fed up with Magica not listening to her, respecting her as sentient being and dismissing her out of hand instead of listening to her often very valid criticism. So Lena naturally ignores her and throws her the knife, which Webby uses to get the Sword Horse back in it’s pen. And then wonders why her girlfriend has glowing painstakingly crafted magic knife. Whoops. Webby also wants to leave but Lena convinces her to keep going. but it’s also very clear that Webby’s getting more and more reluctant and i’ts very hard to watch. You can’t blame Lena for wanting to be free of Magica: she dosen’t see her as a person, and dosen’t value her life. But it’s still hard to watc her have to manipulate the only person that loves her and do so so.. effectively. It’s easy to imagine Lena’s done this dozens of times to other people.. but not to someone she actually CARES about.

Webby DOES figure out how the rooms work though: each one is labeled by the year Scrooge caught it. So she assumes one room she fine is the dime.. and Lena of course runs in and slams the door shut... they’ve found it. So we then get to the most terrifying moment of the series. With victory in her grasp magica roars for Lena to claim the dime, filling the room and Lena with shadow with Lena seemingly disolving.. until Magica is restored or at least partially, still a shadow. Magica has just one thing for her.. and Lena’s reactoin is terrified.. and says oh so much in just one expression it’s VERY clear Lena fears she’s about to die... if she’s lucky. Magica’s been so verbally abusive, tearing her down constantly, manipulating her constantly.. why WOULD Lena expect anything good? Why would she expect anything other than pain or death? So a hug is a surprise.. as is Webby who assumes she’s being attacked... and is clearly heartbroken that’s not the case and runs for Scrooge when Magica admits the truth... only for Magica to seemingly kill her, turning her into a doll resembling the original Webby

Yeah at this point it’s obvious something’s up.. but before we can get to the natural reveal at the end of this horror show, Lena demands Magica change her back... only for a fight to naturally ensue with Magica rubbing the way Lena’s treated Webby in her face: How she manipualted her, lied to her and used her. Even if it was for more noble reasons.. she never told her any of this or tried to and is now directly responsible for her death. She’s a monster.. and then Lena’s amulet activates.. and seemingly finishes the job.

Then Lena wakes up. This was simply one of SCrooge’s artifact, one Webby mentioned earlier off hand and Webby rescues her. It was all a nightmare.. easy to see given Webby was seemingly killed or turned into a doll at points.. but besides making Lena realize how while not as bad as her aunt, she ahsn’t been great.. it also gives us a painful look into her head and how she sees both Magica and Webby. With Magica.. it’s again VERY clear Magica verbally abuses her, depersons her and is in general a horrifiingly relastic depection of a domestic abuser. But it’s also telling Magica hugs her... while Lena didn’t expect it, this is all her subconcious mixed with a magical cursed artifact, it’s clear that deep down one of the things she wants most.. is for Magica to LOVE HER.

That is just... it hurts so much. She just wants a Mom.. and even then her subconcious can’t give her THAT because it knows the truth. Granted the nightmare thing might of had something to do with it, but still, the fact is deep down she knows Magica dosen’t care about her but she WANTS her to. As with Webby, she fears Magica is right, that all her gaslighting has had an effect and Webby would run away the second she found out. When as we’ll learn.. that’s not true at all. She’s deeply hurt... but she still belivies in her. But Lena can’t even see that. She’s been beaten down so much by someone constnatly telling her no one will ever love her she belivies it herself and all her mind and the dreamcatcher can do is pummel her over and over again with what she feels about herself, what she’s KNOWN about how she treats webby even if she had no way out otherwise, how wrong it’s felt. Just holy shit it’s a lot to take in.

But all this trauma has made Lena realize she truly does love Webby and this isn’t worth it.. she’ll find some other way out or figure out something, for now their leaving. She’s not dying for this.. not for her. They happen to run into Scrooge who, due to the WACKY BIGFOOT SUBPLOT THAT HAPPENED RIGHT AFTER THE ABOVE SCENE, no I will not let that go even going back to Frank’s twitter asks he outright said it was their darkest plot paired with one of their most insane, he knew what he was doing. Turns out cleverly he kept the Dime in vault one. As he puts it “They never think to check the first one”. Smart. He also keeps his worry room down here. Just a note I wanted to mention.

He does chide them, and Lena takes the full fall.. but suprisingly he dosen’t ban her from his home or anything, he just asks they be honest and would’ve gladly showed the dime off to them both if they’d just asked. Once Scrooge and Webby walk off far enough Magica berates her again..but Lena is done. She’s realized from her own horrifying nightmares that NO amount of freedom is worth what Magica will get out of this, that her own soul isn’t worth the death of the one person she cares about: Webby will fight her and she might not make it. She loves her more than she fears Magica. And even if it means loosing Webby.. she knows who can stop him. Unfortunately.. this is not a happy ending as Magica simply takes full control. And now has Scrooge’s full trust.

Final Thoughts: This episode is one half a masterpiece. The parts with Lena are to this day, as we approach the very last episode, some of the show’s finest writing and Lena’s nightmare is easily the darkest scene in the series, and only not the most gutwrenching.. because we’re getting to that next week. It finishes the first leg of her character arc, with her selfishness all gone, and the only thing she wants is Webby’s hapiness. Granted that leads to a whole nother character arc over her season 2 episodes, but we’ll get there. Point is she’s realized her manipulations are wrong and not worth the cost, and that she’ll never get anything good out of Magica. Freedom.. will take just a bit longer. It’s eerie to watch, uncomfortable as Lena sinks to her lowest point before climbing out of it, and with a very tense atmosphere the whole time, the bin having a smothering uncomfortableness as we know there’s tons of horrible things here.. but we don’t know what.

So on it’s own it’d be one of the series best episodes, and the plot itself is still one fo the series best.. but it’s weighed down by one of the series worst plots. Still tame compared to a lto of other series worst moments but being paired with something so dark and excellent really shows how fucking stupid this plot was and made it that much more grating. It just clashes badly. Thankfully the crew did learn from this fiasco to the point we got one of the series best episodes “Escape from the Impossibin!”. That one seemingly has two light enough plots, Scrooge, Louie and Della escaping from the bin and Webby stalking the boys, but in a comedic ic still messed up fashion.. but both take a sharp left at just the right time as to not clash: the full implications of what Webby’s doing and her physical fight with Bentina happen around the same time Scrooge breaks down and confesses he’s scared he can’t win this time. The episode gets really dark in the second half but it eases into it and slowly makes it’s way to it, building to it with some laughts to disarm it. But stuff like robo scrooge or the timeloop room, or the timeloop room, or the timeloop room, or the oh thank god i’ts broken. That stuff isn’t SO wacky or out of place that it detracts from the other plot. They compliment each other. Here it’s just two plots that don’t work together at all joined together for some reason. So yeah overall a very mixed bag of an episode and if you do want to watch or rewatch it.. just skip the bigfoot subplot> it’s not worth it.

Next Time on Shadow Into Light: It’s all come down to this. Magica finally ges what she wants. The Shadow War is Night.. but before I can tell you that story we have a bit of ground to cover so..

Next on this Blog: The family minus Beakly ends up in Greece. Dewey is forced to deal with his fears about his mom, Scrooge is forced to deal with his old rival Zeus, and Donald is forced to deal with an unwanted admirerer. Spanikopita!

If you liked this review, follow for more, feel free to contribute to my patreon, and feel free to commission a review of your own. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #lena sabrewing #webby vanderquack #weblena #magica de spell #scrooge mcduck #bentina beakly #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #tenderfeet #the other bin of scrooge mcduck #disney xd #disney channel

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Star Vs Tom Luictor Retrospective Detour: Skooled!

Dedicated to Jessica Walter 1941- 2021

Welcome back all you still mourning people to Prince of Wishful Thinking, my Tom Lucitor Retrospective... or at least a detour from it as I need to cover the Meteora arc to cover Divide/Conquer properly. When we last left off with Star she and Tom were going closer, but both are taking a break this time. We’ll get back to them in April... oh will we get back to them in april. For now we’re back to Meteora who I forgot was ABSENT for a while. not forever, but while her parantege, the cover up related to her and all of that has been vitally important, Meteora herself vanished after Monster Party and hasn’t been seen till now. But i’ts a good storytelling engine.. it ratchets up tension for her inevitable return, and gives us time to find out what happened with her and let that sink in.. granted i’td also be the last time it sunk in but I can dunk on the series decline later... I still have season 4 episodes to cover after all. So join me under the cut as we get the welcomed Return of Henious, an unexpected hero.. and Ponyhead because this series clearly hasn’t hurt me enough. And as usual for my Star Vs Reviews, i’d like to thank one of my Best Friends @jess-the-vampire for her insight on this episode. It’s always welcome and she always manages to find something I didn’t think of .

So we open at Saint O’s with Ponyhead returning to the school, having previously run it post rebellion before leaving because.. I don’t know. She probably got tired of being a leader, and out of universe they needed her to be around star more. Look the series has far more important things it never explained and never will, not explaining why a recklessly irresponsible asshole left a position of authority and responsibility I can let slide.

She’s come for brunch but things have changed... the school is still a warm, free environment for princesses to better themselves and party hardy, no longer an oppressive brainwashing gulag run by someone who as it turned out was horribly brainwashed herself.. it’s just now it actually has rules and structure.

It now also has an actual leader, Princess Patty Arms who showed up in the school’s previous appearance this season here and.. that’s it. I think she showed up in the background of the original st o’s episode. And it’s a shame because she’s a really fascinating character. No really she’s calm, dosen’t take Pony’s shit, and while a brunch exam SEEMS like a waste of time... it really isn’t. A good meal can loosen up a dignitary and some rulers have sticks up their keisters about things like this, so being able to do it just right can win them over. It’s still a touch ridiculous but given the world of star is a touch ridiculous to start with, it works.

Pony naturally leaves in a rage over this especially when no one backs her up.. but soon the School has bigger issues and we get to why we’re actually here: Meteora is back. And while she has changed, now having grown larger and stronger, easily scaling the wall, she still wants payback and we get a damn fine battle sequence as the princesses all unite against their former tormentor. It’s also sad in hindsight.. because as Jess pointed out to me almost NONE of these characters show up again. And I only added the almost because Penelope is in there. They all seem interesting, the setting of ST O’s itself is interesting, and the idea of a school for princesses of various types is a cool idea. I’ts something the show could’ve come back to to see how they bounce back from this attack.. but like most cool background elements in the show they forget about it. It was intresting to see the schools slow evolution from horrible nightmare to princess ran utopia and like many things coming up it feels like a lost opportunity.

That being said the fight is awesome, with Meteora proving to be a juggernaut in strength and outplanning her enimies, having brought an overide switch for the robots (Patty reprogrammed them to work for the school) and having them throw their hearts/ power sources as bombs. It’s a damn fine sequence as she finds way after way to keep going, with a now restored rasticore helping them simply portal in.

Pony meanwhile.. is hiding , as Patty find sout when she finds her, and Pony assumes this is about her... though for once i’ts not JUST ego.. but because she was one of the two who started the uprising at the school in the first place and THE person who tossed her out. We also get a nice character moment as while Pony tells patti she still hates her.. she puts the princess behind her when Meteora approaches. She may be a selfish twit whose massively unlikeable.. but she has a good heart.. and not just the one she keeps in a jar she got from one of her boyfriends.

But Meteora has more important buisness and finds her way to the depths of St. O’s.. where we meet the Schools namesake and her adopted mother a robot played by tress macneile.. another thing the series never bothered to care about as where did these robots come from and why?

Turns out Meteora came to find out her own personal history, with the remote from before used to find the real dirt.. and what we find .. is heartbreaking as we slowly journey back through Meteora’s childhoods as Henious.. and it’s fucking heart breaking with Tress voicing her younger versions, hence why I didn’t use this as the jessica tribute as while walter’s good in the episode, she isn’t given much.

We see her as a teen, forced to hide her tail and insulted over it by her mother.. and it only gets worse as when her cheeks glow as a kid St. O tries to wash them off and we get the poor child desperately begging that “she can be better”

We do finally get the answers Meteora saught as we see Shastacan dropping off the baby meteora, calling her “Henious”.. which St. O took as her name. Proving the spiderbites minus penelope’s dickishness is indeed genetic and why I have no sympathy for the prick getting eaten later... and hopefully globgor will do an encor with penepople’s parents. Here’s hoping.

So Meteora now knows she’s the rightful queen, and decides to go take it back.. though Pony does try to stand up for her friends... and while we don’t see it hte next episode confirms she got her horn ripped the fuck off. And this horribly traumatic injury.. is magically fixed via 3d printing next time we see her after an episode grappling iwth it instead of having pony deal with not having a horn, or her prostetic not giving her magic powers again. Because this show again really likes to leave good ideas out to rot in the sun like that package of hamburger I left out in the sun yesterday. And I actually had a reason there: I need a lot of Racoons for an elaborate scheme involving a map to tex cruz’s house, a used apache helicopter and a bulk order of tiny parachutes.

We do get some payoff to things though, as Henious comes on to rasticore who not so politely rejects her for being nuts.. before it’s revealed Gemini, her loyal servant is also a robot and she uses his heart to blow up rasticore and take the arm with her... which is ALSO never brought up again. Seriously this episode is so full of loose ends i’m suprised it just dosen’t end with Zuko asking his dad about his mother. Gemini’s death is genuinely tragic as his last words are “If you wanted my heart.. all you had to do.. was assssskkkkk”. God damn. So with that Meteora heads out to reclaim her birthright.. no matter the cost.

Final Thoughts on Skooled!: This one is decent.. but like the last episode I covered, the lack of payoff off for almost anything here, excluding the Meteora plotline and the Pony thing which instead got a BAD payoff, is really starting to rear it’s ugly head as the series greatest weakness. Yes bigger than the romance plot. And given that romance plot after this season can be best discribed as...

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The show just.. forgets a good chunk of things happened to keeep things chugging along. It sets UP plots, what happens to st o’s from here, buff frog and a small caravan of monsters leaving forever, the message from shastacan, who built the st o’s robots, and on and on.. but it never PAYS them off. It dosen’t care to. It just does things so the plot can move but never bothers to think about the fucking consequences. It just gets more and more irrtating to think about as other shows throughly DO: Amphibia has the fact the characters get into shenanigans become a commented on running gag and something they grow past, and everything that happens matters. Every episode of Owl House builds on the foundation of the previous episodes. OK Ko dosen’t forget one episode had the characters not be able to turn back into humans and implies their wearing human costumes for the rest of the series. Which is fucking weird, but it was their memory. My point is other shows around the same time or right after didn’t magically forget things happened for convience sake. While it’s OKAY to loose some things in the shuffle, it happens to the best of us, it’s not okay to do it SO fucking often and with no clear care for the audiences desire for payoff. The show just ignores what plot points, like the huge cliffhanger of Star telling marco how she felt at the end of season 2, it dosen’t care about till it needs them and ignores the ones it never does. You can’t just.. bring shit up like it’s important and then try and forget it ever happened. People remember stuff, we are NOT stupid. KIDS are not stupid. When I was younger I REMEMBERED things that happened on KND, Danny Phantom, Xiaolin Showdown, TMNT 2003, because those shows, which are from decades ago, knew I would and trusted even if I missed something and was thrown off i’d tune in for the quality.

And in an age of streaming and more story based tv you can’t just.. ask kids to act like something they saw didn’t happen because your fucking lazy and frankly YOU never should have. Kids deserve better, my niblings deserve better and frankly the adults your clearly also writing for.. deserve better. This episode is eh, but the problems it represents are so fucking worse.

Next time on tom. If you thought I got angry towards the end of this one, just you wait. Next time i’ts Booth Buddies. Yeah.. yeah that one. Stay tuned.

#star vs the forces of evil #skooled #lilica ponyhead #meteora butterfly #gemini #rasticore #patty arms #rat princess #penelope spiderbite #saint olga #saint olgas #disney xd #disney plus #disney channel

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales: Jaw$! or How Lena Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Webby (Lena Retrospective Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Trigger Warning: Part of this review contains discussions of abuse which can’t be avoided but I still want to be senstive to my audience and any trauma they’ve gone through. Welcome back weblena world to Shadow Into Light: My Lena Sabrewing Retrospective. And Jaw$ is here, long live Jaw$. Tiffany was a shark who bites the law she was in an episode i’m reviewing called Jaw$.

And it’s the money shark before the storm as next month i’ll be going from two Ducktales reviews a week with the Lena retrospective and the last few episodes.. to three, as i’ll ALSO be covering the Della arc from season 1 in the build up to shadow war. And if your wondering if I expertly planned this to coincide with the finale, to the point the shadow war review and those leading up to it will be on the same week as the finale.... nope. I just got REALLLLY lucky as I already had all of that planned out, and the schedule for the new episodes happened to synch up perfectly, ending just in time for me to revisit the series start and having Magica’s big in person appearance reviewed a week after we get her backstory in Life and Crimes. Though I am VERY happy it worked out this way as I get to properly celebrate the series end with more ducks than ever, and get to cover the pilot the same month as the finale, all things i’d of loved to do anyway and probably would’ve rejiggered my schedule to do. Point is lot of Ducktales content coming for this blog if you like that so stay tuned, but for now join me won’t you under the cut as we dive into a money bin of gay ducks, shadowy machinations, and Bad PR.

We open as Lena and Donald awkwardly sit on the couch, waiting for Scrooge and the Kids to get home. Understandably it’s just.. dead silence.Given their a cynical teenager secretly working for and forced to obey a horrifying shadow monster and a 35 year old man who dosen’t like living in this house due to painful memories of his presumed dead sister.. and painful memories of pain in general, you have a huge awkward bowl of chips and “I really don’t want to be here right now”.

Our heroes return though, and Louie tries to take some of their haul for himself but Scrooge stops that “It goes in the bin not to next of kin. “... Man in a Hurry if you would please.

Thank you. Man in a Hurry everybody. He has to go now, he’s in a hurry.

As you can probably guess I do not like this, as it reminds me WAY too much of Scrooge’s worst “quirk” in the comics: how he’d barely pay his nephews, who are often hard up for cash mind you and one of whom is supporting three children ALONE, take them around the world and reap all the benefit for their hard work. It’s not like he did nothing, he did, but it’s way to exploitive for my tastes and can often sink a story if taken too far. It’s not AS bad... but they all went on the mission they all deserve at least something. I DO get keeping the rarest and most dangerous stuff for himself, as he is bankrolling things and does have two bins and a massive garage to safetly store them. But this just comes off as douchey for this version, who while liable to make mistakes with them, is far more nurturing towards his boys and girls.

Thankfully this was course corrected next season. While Scrooge’s greed was properly restored.. this sort of treatment wasn’t. “Treasure of the Found Lamp” had him undergo character development and realize simply hoarding his treasures isn’t right or fair, and set up a musuem wing so both duckburg and his descendants can see them and get the stories behind them. And on not getting to take things clearly he’s eithe relaxed or stopped the policy as our heroes do have souveneers from time to time. Not a LOT mind, but little things like Dewey having a giant sword or Scrooge outright giving Louie one of his things show he did soften up. Though Della’s return and likely lack of tolerance for this stupid policy in the first place probably helped a lot, I also like to think he did change a bit and realize it was deeply unfair they didn’t get more than a few treasures of their own. So the writers did realize they kind of went overboard here. I suspect this was more to setup for the episode’s subplot and to make Scrooge’s karma at the end feel justified. Speaking of which we get the start of said Subplot as Beakley comes in with a money cart and the news the board called. Why they called his house instead of his phone I don’t know, some things slip through the cracks when you running both a billion dollar company an da trillion dollar fiendish organization for world larceny. I mean they clearly worked themselves so hard the other two apparently died between seasons. That or it was the diet of whiskey, orphan tears and grease in a wine glass both had. Bradford always told them it’d kill them though to his credit he only said I told you so twice at their funeral.

For once no their not mad Scrooge is spending all the money they use to buy fowl jetskis, but because the Company’s having a bit of a PR nightmare now that Scrooge is back in the adventuring game. And we cut to the beanstalk they just adventured on having tore up a good chunk of the town and destroyed large swaths of it just to sell the point this isn’t their normal old man yells at other old man for spending all me money schitck, but a serious problem. As such they’ve booked him an interview with Roxanne Fetherly to improve his image and the companies.

Scrooge scoffs at this, baffled why he has bad pr as his adventuring is GOOD for the city in the long run: He pays for any damages it causes, and likely at a cost no less which is a LOT coming from scrooge, and puts most of the money he makes on these adventures back into the city and his company, creating more jobs and better living conditions. He does get a wakeup call via truly hilarous gag as Launchpad pops his head up to say “Good news mr. mcdee, it missed the orphange!” before getting ready to chainsaw the stalk for him. He quickly realizes MAYBE he needs some PR and agress to the interview.

This whole subplot really plays into one of the series main themes, one Frank brought up a few months back: Risk vs Reward. Adventuring is entirely about this, that adventure is dangerous, can cost you a lot as we see with Della and the aftermath of her terrible decision making, and can hurt people.. but it can also help people, bring money to those who need it, free those who are being oppressed and open new worlds to everyone. This subplot distills it down great: Scrooge is right that his adventures do bring in money, and as seen with the first episode brought in clean water and power with no drawbacks and only asked to be paid for it, which is fair given he still has to run machines and likely help relocate any workers whose jobs are now redundant to other parts of the company and retrain them. But it costs people their homes and jobs, not forever but still as long as it takes to construct, tears up roads and puts people in danger. It’s plots like this that make Bradford the perfect final boss for the series: He’s someone who blinds himself to the reward of all this and only sees the risk, and raises valid points even if he himself is deeply wrong. He’s right Scrooge causes a lot of danger and threat to the world.. but wrong in that he dosen’t see it’s all worth it for the good of everyone.

But enough about future story arcs let’s get back to this one, as Webby excitedly greets Lena and hugs her, realizes she’s not hugging her back then gives her another squeeze anyway after claming to hate hugs when just a LOOK at Webby would tell you that’s false. The two are having a sleepover, Webby’s first ever.. and given Lena’s essentially an Emo Hobo and the closest thing she has to home is that starlight ancient amptheater that’s never properly explained. Seriously ancient ruins near Duckburg dosen’t suprise me, but at least tell me what they are and why Magica chose them. And why Louie hasn’t tried to sell tickets to Dewey boxing a gorilla in them. Or probably a possum I mean their on a budget and gorillas snap necks, but still i’d pay to see that as would we all.

Point is it’s their first sleepover and naturally Webby’s first bit of smalltalk.. is how tucking in can be used for interogation techniques. I’d be more suprised if earlier this season it hadn’t already been shown Beakly regularly enrolls her daughter in the no murder, unless you really want to, hunger games every year. The fact Webby hasn’t become the bat is only because she hasn’t found a costume that’s the right combintion of pinks and purples to instill pantswetting terror yet. That shit takes time.

Lena goes to the bathroom.. to talk to Magica who we properly get to meet. She did speak last time, but this ep is the one that properly establishes her personality for the reboot: she has clever plans, tons of power, if sealed currently, and is a genuine threat.. but she’s also a bit of a ham, in love with the old ultra violence and really short sighted in her plans, something we got hints of last time as her best solution to the Beakly Problem was to just leave her to die and hope scrooge and webby, two people who love solving mysteries and unlocking puzzles, don’t investigate the horrifying death, accident or not, of their only friend and grandmother, and that neither, especially the 12 year old spiraling with grief, would suspect a former spy died. Thoguh in fairness on the spy thing it’s plausable Magica didn’t know that, but still it’s a bad plan. Magica has good ideas but is just so obessed with the brute force way of doing things she forgets the subtle approach works better.. and so far it has well for Lena. Problem is it’s VERY clear by this point that Lena likes Webby, maybe not romantic styles JUST YET but it’s getting there. Webby on the otherhand has been in love with Lena from the freaking concept art which showed her blushing around her.. and that was in her 87 design.. which they thankfully changed. It’s not terrible but it just dosen’t fit well with this universe. Point is Lena is catching feelings and Magica realizes this and tries to gaslight her telling her she’d never acccept the truth abotu her and so on. As we all know and as we’ll see that’s bullshit but it’s an effective manipulation. We also find out Magica’s plan: she had Lena sneak a jewel into the treasure going into the bin, and it’s going to turn into a monster that will seek out the Number One Dime for them. She also vaugely hints that there’s something Lena needs from Magica.

Once Lena returns, and Webby let’s her rabbit know the interogation isn’t over, she gives her possible future girlfirend a gift: friendship bracelets! They both put them on and it’s really fucking cute.. and will be both a tangible symbol of hteir friendship and a plot point several times, something I honestly hadn’t thoguht about till now. Lena, put off by the gesture not because she dosen’t aprpciate it because of the crushing guilt of lying to the one person who cares about her under the insucrtions of a sociopath, goes to Webby’s big old corkboard which is always fun to look at.. especially since it’s clearly the ONLY glimpse at Hortense we’re going to get all series.

We’re not getting Grandma Duck either. Though at least Frank actually regrets that one. But the important part is one of the posts mentoniing Scrooge hates magic, something Webby elaborates on: He hates spells, hexs curses and what not and feels them a shortcut. From the man who has a garage full of them.

I do kid as I did realize there’s a valid expliantion for this: Scrooge will use magical items, protection spells that sort of thing.. but he uses them like anything else as needed. He’s too pragmatic to not say, use the jewel of atlantis to give a city clean energy and water he can montizie, or the split sword against FOWL.. but more often than not he just dosen’t need them. He collects them because it’s fun, oftne profitable.. and their simply SAFER in his museum wing, garage and second bin will get to in two weeks. He’s seen time and time again how people misuse magic, forget it has a price, or just rely on it instead of actual skill. He’s also clearly been on the bad end of a LOT of evil sorcerers and soreceresses, especially magica. Magic isn’t inherently bad, which in itself is a BIG message of Lena’s arc, it’s just somethign that’s the OPPPSOITE OF everythign scrooge is: sacrifcing others for power, relying on something besides yourself, distance attacks versus up close and personal phsycial attacks.. it was never going to be for him and tons of bad experinces with it only cemented it. He’s just not so stubborn outside of the santa thing to avoid something if it’s going to net him a profit or come in a pinch.

So naturally Scrooge has banned any magic books from his house, as he has no use for spellcasting and any he’d need to keep for saftey or history’s sake are likely at the archives, but just as naturally, Webby smuggled one in and wants to try it with Lena ducking it and asking to play some games. I”m sure Huey has a few yugioh decks in his room go bug him. But before they can decide on one, the boys attack for a PILLOW FIGHT.... which is a sweet gesture and them just wanting to hang out, but ends with them all eating the ground and questioning why they thought attacking the duck equilvent of cassandra cain was a good idea. Louie decides to salvage it with a swim.. but since their pool has a boat in it he has a diffrent location in mind: the bin.

So while they head off to get head injuries, Beakly tries to prepare Scrooge as the Media are vultures and looking for the next scandal with public figures and it’s accurate. But given Scrooge’s natural mood is grumpus, this dosen’t go well at all and even a spray bottle dosen’t exactly help.. I mean it is the best method to deal with grumpy old men but it can only do so much.

At the bin we get a lovely bit as Dewey prepares to dive and his brothers treat it like an olympic one, with both doing commentary, Dewey’s apparently response to if he was worried about brain damage was Nerp, and we get the wonderous national anthem of dewdonia. Just nice as well as lovely to see the brothers just having a crack and enjoying each others company with their own weird injokes but without the injokes feeling as forced as they were in “Beagle Birthday Massacre”. Things take a turn though as we see just what magica created with the stone... a giant shark made of scrooges money who eats that fucker in a single bite.. in this case Dewey. Louie and Huey naturally run off panicked.

So while Huey and Louie gain another scarring memory to tell their therapist when their older, Scrooge begins his interview with Roxanne Fetherly who.. honestly just weirds me out. Not for any personality stuff but because she has green feathers. And it just.. really feels WEIRD. I mean green ducks are a thing in real life.. but it just looks off to have such a pastel color on a duck when the other colors are white or tones meant to invoke real world races, allowing ducks to be black, latino, asian and so on and so on coded. That’s fine and blends in fine.. but with that metaphor the green just really dosen’t fit well at all. It feels like an early decision they made, but decided not to retcon or go with for anyone else which makes it all the more weird. We’re 3 seasons in , almost at the end, and the only other green duck we’ve seen was like that because of magic and the offputting nature of it WORKS for magica. Here I just don’t get it and I never well. But naturally Roxanne starts in on invasive, gotcha questions with no real good answers or time to respond, so fox news level questions, and then asks what part of ireland he’s from.

Naturally that sets him off so while that rant goes on, literally next time we see him he’s still going on about it, we cut to the girls playing truth or dare.. and given Webby’s first question is about deepest darkest secrets the boys once again save her by running in... to report on the monster she created that just ate their brother. Lena brushes it off but does get them not to go to scrooge claming he’ll throw them to the shark himself. I mean he’s not comics scrooge so he probably woudln’t but their also two scared 11-12 year olds so it works well enough. They just need a way to go after the money shark. Enter launchapd who in the second best bit of the episode, says he sensed his best friend dewey was in danger. Beck’s delivery is what sells it.. and I’m not going to question it. He’s somehow alive despite presumibly living off a diet of spaghett-o’s, barely avoiding a car accident on his best days, and as we’ll find out later believing children in costumes are monsters he summoned when he was 8. The fact he suddenly has spider sense specifically related to people he cares about is honestly less of a surprise than the fact he’s not in heaven crashing God’s Speedboat into God’s Golden Castle with God’s Golden Lion riding shotgun.

So they do the natural thing and.. steal Donald’s houseboat while he sleeps. He has no more involvement in this episode other than noticing it’s back and not in great condition at the end. I bring this up because this is one of Donalds ONLY apperances this season, and it’s part of the larger more irritating problem that he’s hardly ever used.. despite promoting him as a major part of the series.

I will talk about this more during the Della arc as i’ts more relevant there, but needless to say it bothers me a lot and not knowing how to ballance it’s massive main cast was a constant struggle for the series even up to the final episodes going on right now.

So our heroes head out on the bin late at night, where could the Jaw$ be she’s nowhere in sight. So they decide to use other treasure as a lure they either fished out of a bin or out of scrooge’s bathwater. How bathing in coins gets him clean I don’t know and frankly I dont’ think we want the answers to that and the idea of scrooge fully naked is so horrifying I forgot what I was talking about.

Ah yes our heroes are playing bait the money monster and find out it’s a shark, and Lena.. is not okay with that and goes to talk to Magica inside the boat. Magica tells us she has a name, Tiffany. Awww what a lovely name for a money shark. I would of gone with Rags to Bitches, but I may have brain damage. Lena understandabily does not like the idea of getting eaten by a shark, asked to be informed and while Magica is mad at her for going after the thing, Lena reasonably points out that it was this or Scrooge got involved. Up top Huey tries catching it with a bit of treasure on a rope.. after not shutting up about shark facts because “Facts comfort me when i’m nervous!” Precious angel. But Huey’s leg gets caught and he and Louie, somehow on the latter get thrown up in the air and chomped. Back bellow Webby has a suggestion: using magic. Lena naturally not wanting to blow her cover or really liking magic period is against it for now.

Back at the interview, Roxanne brings on a special guest to prove people don’t like scrooge: GLOMGOLD!

Glomgold may create some issues for the subplot and we’ll get to those in due time, but damn if it isn’t always a pleasure to see him. He’s also on good terms with Roxanne... are.. are we sure this is local news and not fox news? Taking the word of a conservative greedy billionare over a progressive one seems like a fox move. Though I might actually watch fox news if glomgold was a commentator. “I propose a red new deal instead of this blasted green new deal, I throw Scrooge to a tank of sharks connected to a generator, the tank turns red with his blood and that somehow creates power! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT MCDUCK”

So we get the best bit of the episode as Glomgold tries to complain about his building being destroyed which would be fair... if he hadn’t tried to blow up Scrooge’s bin twice this week, with Glomgold going for THREE.. for threee.. for three... it dosen’t go off but it does get scrooge to say he’s glad the building was destroyed. Which is fair but NOT super great PR.

Back at the shark things don’t get better as Webby and Lena argue over the use of magic, I mean as much as they can argue Webby just wants to know why she’s so cagey about this while they go with plan “Launchpad crash into it”. Launchpad also gives a hell of a monologue. Good on you bud. As you can see launchpad’s gotten 100% better since his low point in our last episode. That’s because it’s clear the writers had some struggle ballancing his amped up stupidity with actual competence, making him primarily jokey comic relief in the first few episodes and I wouldn’t be shocked if Terror of The Terra Firmians was written before a lot of the later episodes despite airing around the same time. But by mid-season he’s got his much more lovable charactersation of a dangerous moron..l but one who CAN be competent and is genuinely charming due to how much he cares about his friends and his job. They also dialed down the stupid down to an acceptable homer simpson level: still a danger to himself and others but hilariously so. Point is they fixed it and while i’ll complain about mistakes the show made I will give this crew all the credit for course correcting time and time again and actually listening to fan feedback.

So Webby figures they tried the Jaws option and lost the boat and launchpad, time for plan Magic. They hold hands, EEEEEEEEE, and try a spell.. and it clearly starts working but almost works TOO well, as Lena starts glowing first purple.. then blue. Hmmmm... intresteing. Lena breaks it off and Tiffany breaks out of the bin.. just as scrooge says on the news his adventures aren’t dangerous.

Scrooge naturally goes to face it while Webby wonders why Lena didn’t go for it. To make it a triple Scrooge shows up in time to distract tiffany.. with the number one dime, which as lena found out earlier is on his person rather than at the bin like the public thinks. So while Scrooge puts up a good show.. seriously it’s really awesome and really neat looking, though he also gets VERY upset that people are naturally holding out buckets for the cash shark, which he’s not happy about because well.. he did EARN that money. Most bin money is stuff directly earned by him so fair enough. But while he’s you know, Scrooge Fucking McDuck, and thus puts up a good fight the monster eats him.. and gets the dime stuck in it’s tooth with Magica wanting Lena to grab for it, forgetting that minons, while mildly disposable, aren’t really replaceable when your SOUL’S ATTACHED TO THEM. That’s where Magica’s weakness is. her plans aren’t half bad but as I said, she’s far too bloodthirsty and short sighted. She has better ones than glomgold but ironcially they share the same problem of not thinkign them through. And Magica cares so little for lena she’s blinded to the fact her own personal saftey is tied up in her.

Lena naturally dives for her future girlfrriend and heads into the belly of the beast. And it’s here her REAL moment of truth is. While the one last episode was noble.. it was also easy enough to brush off internal as pragmatisim. Letting Beakly die would’ve brought too much heat and been too easy to quickly go terrible, while saving her got her off Lena’s trail and gave her free reign of the manner. But here? Webby is about to slip into Tiffany’s stomach and whle she hasn’t digested anyone yet given who made Tiffany with it’s likely just because she hasn’t had enough mass to create chainsaws to carve them all up. It’s the Dime or Webby. Lena’s own freedom or the girl she loves. Nothing good comes from saving Webby.. other than Webby. Other than the one person whose truly loved her. I mean think about it: She was created by magica, abused for a good decade and a half. No one but Magica has had a chance to care about her and as we’ve seen Magica only sees her as a weapon to get back at scrooge and not as a person. Webby was the first person she’s ever made a genuine connection with, that’s been there for her, that loves her unconditionally and woiuld be there for her no matter what. And it’s in that moment Lena realizes she can’t sacrifice her for her own good... that after years of having to be selfish to surivive being chained to that monster... she can’t be this time. No mastter what it costs her.. Webby is priceless. So Lena recites the spell, growing bright blue and blowing up tiffany. Lena gladly hugs webby who reciorpates, awww gaybies, and Launchpad hugs dewey. Awww... what it’s still precious he’s a good surrogate uncle. The wacky kind who sleeps in a van on your lawn.

So Scrooge is glad.. though it’s here his subplot falls flat. Him getting attacked by the media and getting a compupance by loosing tons of money from tiffany is fine. Evne if he earned it, his lack of care did bring this on him.. hte problem is they take it too far by having all his nemies show up, him unable to say anything and glomgold blatantly doing so just to steal from him. Otherwise the subplot is fine, a bit heavy on scrooge being a dick but it has to to work and puts him in an awkward situation. But this ending just feels to over the top to realy enjoy. And the series does do over the top humor well so I don’t know what happened here. But having a bunch of outright thieves steel his money instad of a bunch of citizens who didn’t know better and deserved it for the damage, feels wrong and it tastes wrong.

Speaking of feels wrong and tastes wrong we get an INTEINTONAL dose of that as back at the amptheater, Lena and Magica argue about the situation and Magica trying to kill her. Lena tries to walk away but can’t.. phsyically. Magica won’t let her. And this is honestly a very crushing and very well crafted metaphor for how abuse victims sometimes CAN’T escape their abusers. Magica is verbally abusive, treats lena like she’s disposable and constnatly downtalks her self esteem. To Lena magica is nothing but a tool.. but like MANY children caught in horrifcally abusive situations Lena can’t get away. It’s a literal metaphor, an da good one, for how you can’t ALWAYS escape abuse easily, and this especially true for kids who have nowhere to go and hte law on their abusers side more often than not. It’s hard to escape an abusive parent and even harder when they dont’ consider you a person. I thankfully have no personal experince with this but it dosen’t make it any less of a problem nor any less noble of this show to tackle the subject in a frank, if fantastical, way, and a good chunk of Lena’s arc is overcoming this abuse and not letting her abusive past drown her. But for now.. all she can do is agree to do what Magica says till she can hopefully be rid of her. But the light at the end of the tunnel’s coming.. there’s just a whole lotta darkness first.

Next Time: We take a break from the episodes to cover some Lena related comics for a double feature; The first Spies Like Us has everyones faviorite lesbian ducks go on a spy adventure that was never printed in the us for silly reasons we’lll get to and then the 87 ducktales comic dime after dime which features Lena’s predecessor Minima.

Later Today: Close Enough Season 2 is here! I”m going to talk about it! Exclimation Points!

If you liked this review feel free to follow for more. And if you have an episode of Ducktales or another animated show you’d like me to cover just hit me up via my asks or direct messages on here and comission it. And if you’d rather just support me on a monthly basis, head over to my patreon. THE LINK IS RIGHT HERE. Even a buck a month would help and the more of you that donate the closer we get to my Duckcentric stretch goals. The current closest ones are 15, which would lead to reviews of The Goofy Movies and Treasure of the Lost Lamp, and 20 which would lead both to a review of the Super Ducktales mini series, and monthly darkwing duck reviews! So if you like me talking about ducks and want to bolt some duck reviews to the schedule, even a dollar a month would inch me closer to that goal. Eveyr bit helps. But money or not, it’s been a pleasure and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #weblena #lena sabrewing #webby vanderquack #scrooge mcduck #bentina beakly #donald duck #launchpad mcquack #dewey duck #huey duck #louie duck #magica despell #tiffany despell #jaw$#jaws

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Star Vs The Forces of Evil: Is Another Mystery (Prince of Wishful Thinking) or Wasted Potetial

Happy Valentine’s Day Lucifans! And while I originally intended to cover this along with the much worse Booth Buddies I had too much to say about both to try and clown car both together so here we are. And just in times for V-Day we have a StarTom episode.. that isn’t as focused on thier relationship as I thought because I hadn’t seen this in a while because every time I think of things in this series I think of all the wasted potetial and it gives me a migrane. I’d also like to thank @jess-the-vampire for talking this one over with me as usual, and helping me think through some stuff. And as with last time we’re picking up about where we left off, so no real exposition to get through. Join me under the cut as we solve a mystery and marvel at HOW much potential from this episode the show squandered.

We open with Marco chasing Glossaryck.. and it’s only now I realize I have not talked about this subplot at all. Or Glossaryck really. As you probably know Glossaryck is the tiny man who lives in the big book of spells, created the magical high comission and is a colossasl assshat whose likeablity plumted this season. For starters his voice actor Jeffery Tambour was outed as a massive creep, making him harder to stomach even if the show had reduced him to stock footage of one line. Speaking of which he came back from the dead... and despite it being revealed he was fully sapient the whole time and just saying Eclipsa’s husbands name without context a twist coming up int he finale that i’ll give out about here as while clever when you first hear it. makes NO sense in hindsight, as Eclipsa might of mentioned it before now especially since Glossaryck was around her quite a few times, had no reason not to, and you’d THINK Star, Marco or Moon, especially the latter two, would be curious why he can only say that and has seemingly been reduced to an infant. It’s an annoying subplot tha’ts just casually part of the series and no one seems to care about despite Glossaryck being a big deal and the spellbook revealing there IS a way to make copies, one that would be used next season.

But what really just made me HATE him.. is how he contributed to how bad things on Mewni are, by doing nothing. Being omnicent and powerful does not mean you do nothing.. it just means you have to be VERY careful. Power is a responsivity not an excuse to say “Wheelp my kids were a mistake going to just let them overthrow the government, become far more entriched in mewni politics, and boss me around without EVER questioning them or trying to replace them”. His apathy is never really called out by anyone but Marco, and he’s treated with all this undue importance despite not doing anything but train the queens, which even then i’ts questionable how good he was at that. Just an asshole, not the worst character in the series, he’s coming up in a few episodes, but just wholly unlikeable. And I get he’s supposed to be comically douchey but after what we learn about eclipsa it just passes into unforgivable and it’s never brought up or talked about. Which is a trend for this series and I don’t know why i’m even bothering being annoyed at this point when I could easily COUNT the number of potential plot threads the series half finished, dropped or wasted and it’d probably hit 50+.

So Marco is chasing after Glossarcyk and ends up in Buff Frog’s office. Buff Frog was Ludo’s former second in command, who reformed, and became close with Star and Marco, and who Star gave a position as Royal Monster Expert in order to have an ACTUAL MONSTER doing their job since the previous person was a crazy lady who thought of htem as less than sapient and tried to drown them all for reasons I don’t quite remember. This.. has not come up since and this is the first time we’ve seen his office since and it’s empty.

Marco finds a note for star but accidently reads it before he can get it to her, and we do get a glimpse of the old Marco as he’s disgraught over “reading someone’s mail without their permission!” I missed this.. I think I blocked out the GOOD times with marco in my brain behind a butter-like wall of all the stupid shit he did this season and the next and the whole resolution to the starco thing that left a taste in my mouth not unlike sardine juice mixed with vinegar, aka what causes Mitch Mconnel’s face to look like delfated and to sound like the ghost of Michgian J Frogs Condederate Uncle.

Meanwhile Star is with Tom and is distruaght after finding our her life is a lie and feels there’s no one she feels she can talk to about this, and Tom’s face when she says this just...

You can tell the poor guy is just hurt. HIs girlfirend is hurting.. and she dosen’t even CONSIDER talking to him about this or think she can trust him despite him being RIGHT THERE. This expression is only on screen for half a second but it says so much. And another thing it says is that he dosen’t know HOW to help her, as evidenced by the fact his offering to is very awkward and sitlted, that he’s clearly HURT she dosen’t think she can confide in him, but is so awkward in general and out of his depth her ehe dosen’t know how to help he just wants to. But while Star eventually seems receptive.. Marco busts in and we get a seen of EVERYONE involved being a canoe filed with dicks and old vhs copies of biodome. After of course Marco tells Star, Buff Frog is gone. To wit

Star: Immediately plans to take off with Marco and only Marco despite tom being right there, that he could help even if he has no stake in it, and the fact that cloudy can both grow, and Tom can you know.. FLY. That’s a thing we’ve seen him do a lot. So space isn’t an issue, sh’es just forgetting tom exists. Which WOULD work if it was an intentional issue but is sadly the beggining of Star being a pretty terrible girlfriend to tom. This example is lighter since you know , one of her closest friends and his small children are missing, and this is the day after her entire world got flip turned upside down, so I can forgive her a bit since she’s probably not thinking clearly.. but it’s the start of a LONG pattern fo her forgetting tom exists when it’s not coinvent and not thinking about his feelings.

Marco: When Tom asks to take Marco’s place, Marco says, not that he’s buff frog’s friend or he’s worried again about the fact he has kids that could be in danger but “I’m her squire it’s my job”... BEFORE you know the fact his friend WITH YOUNG CHLIDRNE WHO COULD BE DEAD VIA HATE CRIME, is missing.

Seriously it says something about how far Marco has fallen by this ponit that even in an episode wher eh’es largely his old self.. he STILL make this about him and star to her boyfriend’s face. HiS FRIEND’S FACE. There will be worse from Marco soon enough, and far worse we won’t be covering, but it does say something that they did him so wrong this season that THIS is minor in comparison to some of the other shit he pulls.

Tom: The only INTEITONAL one of these, as Star’s neglect feels like it was an accident, as he insists on coming along as her boyfriend despite this being a fairly serious situation and him clearly just wanting alone time.

OH and if you thought the writers you know ACTUALLY cared about STar’s anguish over finding out her whole life was a lie, her newly found grandma who actually relates to her and treats her with respect unlike her mother isn’t biologically related (Not that blood relation matters but I can see why finding out the one family member besides your dad who was anything like you in recent memory.. isn’t related to you would hurt)..

This highlights the show’s biggest flaw, and yes folks it’s bigger than the ending with the accidental genocide and the horrible implications. That was bad.. but what really tripped the show up long before that.. is the lack of payoff. Now sure some plots get payoffs, especially the Metora one, it’s one of the series best arcs.. but TONS of other threads are just outright ignored, casually dropped or never really pulled. Look I know that every show has things we wished they’d done more with, and most of the greats of this generation have stuff they dropped the ball on by dropping it or never really getting into it: She Ra never really had any closure with Catra and Scorpia, despite Catra hurting her the most out of anyone and that could’ve been a good thing for her character developent and Scorpia’s own character development. Ducktales had NO intention of going into Della’s reaction to Scrooge and Donald’s feud and quitely ignored or retconned the fact Scrooge clearly erased Della’s long history from the web and wherever else he could, as why else would the kids have never known. Did they just not use google? Steven Universe, if partially by design as it turns out, skipped over a LOT of things and ignored a lot of intresting characters human and gem. It’s the nature of writing seralized teleivsion: Sometimes you just forget to take care of something or simply don’t have the space to. That is fine. The problem is star does this.. for major plot points that really CAN’T be ignored. Starting with this season they flat out ignore Star telling Marco how she felt for pretty much the entire season. They only deal with it in booth buddies.... THREE EPISODES before the season finale two parter. Despite it having massive impliciations, doing so IN FRONT OF JACKIE, who was her friend, and Jann who is both Jackie and Star’s friend and is not subtle. We never get any fallout from this and the show weirdly acts like Marco can’t easily visit home. I mean yes he’s star’s squire but she’s not a heartless monster> The DIazes were her parents for a while too. And that’s not even getting into Marco Junior... “Shudders”. But that part of the cliffhanger was just the start after that the pile just kept getting larger. Before it was basically JUST the monster arm and it possibly being involved with the blood moon. So to prove my point i’m making a list of EVERY dropped plot point or storyline from the series, most of which are from season 3 onward. And naturally I asked jess for help with this after the first 25.. and the list DOUBLED. One or two of these are nitpicky.. but the fact the vast majority AREN’T .. yeah.

1. Jackie’s reactoin to Star’s feelings for Marco 2. Janna’s Reaction to Star’s feelings for Marco 3. Buff Frog being head monster expert 4. Buff Frog and Co fleeing this dimension and where they WENT exactly 5. Tom being a Monster 6. Star not being a Butterfly by blood 7. Moon’s reaction to not being a butterfly by blood 8. Rhombulus feeling guilty 9. Marco’s reaction to hekapoo being a terrible person 10. Marco and Kelly’s Relationship (Technically resovled but done poorly) 11. Tad not being over Kelly 12. Hornanne never getting a horn (I know minor but it bothers me a lot) 13. Eclipsa having to win over the other kingdoms 14. Related, the Johnasons being the hardest one of those to overcome 15. Related to 13 again: Why Tom’s Parent’s didn’t suppport eclipsa 16. What the Jaggy Mountains are or are like at all 17. WHy Glossaryck was worried about Globgor 18. Why Glossaryck faked being feral for a season 19. How Star had a piece of the spell book 20. What Mr. Candle’s Deal is 21. The Pie Folk knowing the true lineage of the queen 22. Was the commission conspiracy ever made public. 23. Meteora possibly having memories from her previous self 24. Lobster Claws 25. River’s reaction to moon’s betrayal 26. Toffee’s Past and Motivations 27. Marco’s Cheekmarks 28. Any reaction by Star and Janna to said cheekmarks 29. The kingdom’s reaction to the book being stolen is never brought up again 30. The Past Queens (Never brought up in show itself, but Jess feels there was supposed to be more there and I agree) 31. The Septarian Painting in ST.O’s (While i’ts a hint at who meteora is WHY it’s there and why ST. O would even allow it and why it’s of septarians is never explained) 32. Monster Arm 33. Relicor’s Wife 34. Why the dance memory was different 35. How do people in other dimensions get dimensional scissors? 36. How Did Toffee Know of the Whipsering Spell? 37. Where did Toffe, Ludo and Rasticore’s dimensonal scissors/chainsaw come from? 38. Toffee’s Damage to Mewni (Never gets brought up aagain after silver bell) 39. Why Globgor eating Shastacan was “Complicated” 40. Upwards Waterfall Unicorn 41. Star spying on Marco and Jackie 42. Any Explination for Green Magic 43. The photo’s of star and marco’s kiss (To quote jess, into the void they go) 44. How Metora Learned Soulsucking and why she can do that 45. Metora taking Rasticores arm with her. 46. The Neverzone’s weird time dialation 47. Star’s Neglect of Tom 48. The Spiderbites reaction to globgor being freed 49. The “Big Surge of Dark Magic” 50. Eclipsa “gets into your head 51. Star learning wandless magic with no effort 52. Where did Brian Go? 53. Star and Marco Never apologize for the kiss on screen 54. “I know how this all ends 55. Why Lekmet was never Replaced and why reynadlo didsn’t replace him

55 in the span of an hour.. and that’s not even getting into the fact Jess was thinking these up off the top of her head and probbaly coudl’ve kept going, but I didn’t want to overtax her since I was asking a favor of her, and fifty goddamn three is more than enough to say ya done fucked up. Just.. holy shit. MARVEL has less dropped plotlines than this, and that at least has the caveat of changing writers and some writers being dipshits who don’t CARE about resolving what happened before. The Star team has an excuse for maybe 10 or 20 of these.. but 55! Fifty Goddamn five! And that’s stopping as we could probably have found more and just tying this paragraph we did, hence 55. How much do you have to NOT care about your audience, your plots and your characters to miss this much? The three I mentioned before all have understandable explinations behind them: She-Ra had a set episode count and only so much space and it made more sense story wise to have scorpia be taken over by the horde. Ducktales is on a kids network and Disney isn’t at all supportive of adult plots to the point a courtroom episode was deemd too confusing for kids... which first off , no, and secondly you see what they were dealing with. and Steven Universe again did this slightly intentionally, with things happening offscreen because that’s how life works, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn’t.

This is just incompetence on a MASSIVE scale that boggles the goddamn mind. I have seen shows do worse, but i’ve never seen a show flush most of i’t spoteital drama nad character development down a goddamn hole again, and again and again in such a consitent manner. There’s no wonder I didn’t see this at the time. This is a level of messed up you have to see from helicopter view! The show just stopped carring about finishing most of it’s storylines and just brought shit up when it was convient and threw it out on a scale that just... just..

It sucks. It sucks to see a show that had so much potetial squander it, it sucks the show ended up like this, as only a handful of those are from pre season 3, and it sucks that the clock is ticking on how much good I have to say about the show without having to add the button “And then this was never properly resolved.” Good. Fucking. Grief. And Jess wanted to find MORE, and probably could, but I didn’t want her to dedicate her life to this. It’s monuentally frustrating, and saddening to see waht a waste of potetial this series was by the end. All of this is one big list of what if and most of it shoudl’ve been resolved in some way. “Sigh”.... let’s move on.. for my sanity’s sake. I made myself very sad.

So with Marco out of the way Tom and Star start investigating and Tom is a bit of a dick about it, suggesting they abandon the search for her friend and his CHLDREN to go get a corn shake and that the monsters just went out grocery shopping.. the former is just horribly out of character, as even if he would WANT to leave he woudln’t be so cavialer about it when sh’es this upset just a few episodes AFTER monster bash, where he learned you know.. not to do that. The other is just ehhh... like you think he’d react to an entire town being missing and Star’s JUSTIFIED fear mina did it , after she easily swatted both of them aside, with more than “eh maybe their doing pesant stuff I don’t know” Thankfully the “Tom is a huge dick and also star is grossed out by him liking monster food revealing she might still be a touch racist without realizing it, which itself is nver touched on, let’s call that number 54″, portion of the episode ends when dark gets a little something on him

Star gets one in her arm, and the two pass out and wake up with sacks over them. We do get the best part of the episdoe where both try to run around blind, and Tom realizes he’s claustrophbic and starts panicking, which results in him falling around and kicking in a circle, while Star takes a guy out and while she can’t see assumes she did something cool. Eventually we find out their kidnappers are related to the buff frog thing and tell her to stop looking and just to be serious are going to break tom’s horns... before Buff Frog arrives wondering what the fuck their thinking and stopping them, and he and his kids are fine. Turns out he’s leaving Mewni and Katrina, his oldest daughter who has giant legs now, wanted to make sure they got to say goodbye, so she left the note in his name knowing Star would come and find them. Before we get into all of that, just a quick aside.. okay so baiscally these monsters who threatened are either fleeing mewni or running some sort of underground railroad to cover up the monster exodus. Which begs the question... why did they tihnk breaking the horns of a crowned prince of one of their allied states and kidnapping and threatning the princess of mewni, who is PUBLICLY pro monster and thus only makes them look worse, was at all a good idea. I get wanting to hdie this but breaking Tom’s horns is only going to lead to a fight at best and two kingdoms coming down at them with their full might, putting innocent people in the crossfire at worst and most likely

But yes the Monsters are leaving.. and this is part of where the episode misteps as the scale is kind of hard to figure in hindsight. On one hand the montser villiage is abandoned , meaning that the episode implies ALL the monsters are leaving.. but not only are some left, once Eclipsa takes over plenty of monsters come back or may of never left, making nit very vauge just how many actually left, especially since the party leaving that we see is just about 10 monsters not including buff frog’s babies.. where did they come from by the way? Ludo just kinda stole them but from where? Jess brought that up but i’m not sure I got it on the list so 55. The show is entirely too vauge on if this is a mass exodus of eveyr monster at long last or just a large migration of them wanting a better life. Instead of explaining any of this when it’s a very intresting and engrossing idea, the monsters leaving the predjuicde outright, the possible hateful reactoins of the commission given how paranoid they are, how star would combat this, a possible divide in monsterkind with one half going back and the other staying put, WHERE they went exactly.. there’s a lot of great questions and stories here.. but as the list the size of my gut should make clear, none of them get answere dbecause this series just didn’t care about it.. and if so then WHY bring it up. That’s why I brought up the list in the first place.. because this is one of MANY times they bring something up and just.. do nothing with it. Then why did you bring it up in the first fucking place?! As I said I can abide by dropping a plot point for time or beacause Disney is kinda dumb or you just want to get to other good stuff and you had to make a cut. And while a portion of the list is that. i’ts mostly things like this: really fascenating stuff.. that’s ignored because htey just stopped caring.

So before they all can leave despite Star’s best efforts, TOM steps up and calls them cowards.. and admit’s he’s a monster too. And while one.. WEIRD looking guy points out he’s rich, so should he count, Tom counters with the fact that sure he’s rich.. but when he gets in an elevator he’s a monster. He may be part of a diffrent “catageory”.. but to a stranger he’s just the same as them. While it dosen’t feel quite earned by the episode, it is a moral that needs to be taught: prilvage dosen’t insulate you completely from prejudice. You can still be discrminated against no matter how much money you have or how far you get because the system sucks. And once again this is a waste of potetial: tom technically being a monster and being the son of a human and a demon is never brought up again.. despite you know also being a massively powerful monster child of a monster and a mewman.. like a certain someone who’se the big bad for this half of the season. It just never comes up... and I get it’s a categorical bullshit thing, that the comission werne’t worried about a lucitor doing any of this because “Well demons are okay and we have a treaty and stuff”, but the show had no trouble pointing out categorical bullshit before.. why not now?

The ending however is good as Buff Frog.. isn’t convinced. HE admit’s tom’s speech is good.. but he’s been dealing with this stuff for too long. It also works because him leaving the job they never focused on.. isn’t framed as him being ungreatful or anything. He’s genuinely appricative of what Star is trying to do and gets her heart is in the right place.. but she doesn’t have the power to fix this. She’s just a kid, and while she has some power her mother has no real intention of making things better for them. And he has to think of a better life for his kids.. so we get some tearful goodbyes as Buff Frog promises to return when she’s in charge.. even though he does because she’s in charge in the season finale and we never see him , 56, and he has to be talked into coming back in the last season... so they leave but Tom promises her it can work out because their a monster and a mewman and they hug and I sigh a little knowing how this relationship ends and the accidental message it sends.

Final Thoughts: This episode is DECENT on it’s own but in hindsight.. it’s just depressing, bringing up some good ideas.. that end up going nowhere and the ending REALLY isn’t great in hindsight when he leaves star so she can be with another human-type person. Also tom’s charcterization is a bit lopsided starting off worse than ever and being fine in the end, and while that COULD just be that he felt he coudln’t admit he was a monster... it honestly just feels liked they wanted the moral without having to work for it as him being a monster has nothing to do with how he acted earlier. Till the next rainbow... UUGGGGHHHh.

#star vs the forces of evil #star butterfly #tom lucitor #buff frog #marco diaz #disney #disney plus

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Final Four: The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck Review! or The Batman Trial Episode but with Ducks, Sharks, And the Fonz

Hello all you happy people and welcome to the penultimate Ducktales review... for season 3 anyway. I still have most of season 1, all of season 2 (I did cover one but I’ll probably redo it), the tie-in comics, the 87 series, and even then i’ll never really be done with ducks between all the scrooge comics and other duck related shows like Darkwing Duck and Quack Pack. But as far as covering the show as it comes out as i’ve done for the past year, that’s’ts almost done. It’s honestly just starting to hit as I type this: this is the second to last episode. After next week while there’s always fan fiction (And I certainly aim to contribute to that), a possible Darkwing Duck Reboot under frank (though that’s in doubt) where they could show up, and a movie down the road given what we saw with Phienas and Ferb and the show’s popularity it’s still not the same as getting these well animated, well crafted adventures every week with breaks or the ocasional entire week of them. The show won’t go on, and whatever happens with the property next is a mystery no amount of ducks can solve.

So with all that in mind naturally this episode is a breather episode: It’s not unimportant: like the rest of the season it ties off a lot of loose ends, adds in some stuff we didn’t know we wanted, and in general feels necessary like every episode this season. It’s something I credit the season for immensley: They knew this would probably be it so while they had more stories to tell, they made sure if these were their last, to leave no loose ends. And outside of ones they just never wanted to address in the first place like “What happened to Donald’s parents”, “Why was every trace of Della missing despite Scrooge’s search for her having just ended”, and “What did Della thing of the decades long seperation”, they’ve tied up pretty much all of them except for FOWL and what Beakly was lying about, and I feel both are about to ducktail into one another int he finale. Could be wrong but I applaud them for tying off almost every loose end and character arc by this episode that isn’t related to FOWL in some way. Not every show can do that: She Ra was a masterpiece but still had a few things like Scorpia and Catra’s broken relationship, Hordak’s reformation and Adora’s Parents just left up in the air due to time constraints, Steven Universe ONLY got to go back and answer a lot of questions because they were lucky enough to get an epilogue mini series, and Star Vs... was not as good as either show by the end and by the finale about 80% of things it’d brought up all had the following answer:

My point is it’s VERY hard, even when you know the end is coming to tie everything up in a neat bow. And I can’t know how good the finale be or how satsifying it will be but given how well this season’s wrapped everything up so far, i’m betting on immensely. But we can talk about that when it finally comes around next week. For now we have a trial episode to talk about that’s mostly good.. mostly. See why the mostly under the cut as I discuss and recap the episode with full spoilers. Count it down!

We open in the Mansion, where a bunch of tribble like Fuzzy creatures are running amok. Unsuprisingly, Scrooge bought one for Louie as a pet to teach him responsiblity.. again. And once again he instead turned into a get rich quick scheme, didn’t read the manual and now they have an infestation.

ONCE AGAIN, Louie is written like he’s barely changed at all in the past three seasons. Anyone whose been following my reviews regularly knows this has been a pet peeve of mine for the entire season. Despite having an ENTIRE arc about Louie growing as a character and learning the human cost of his scheming and to use his angle seeing talent’s wisely, the writers keep writing him as if he learned nothing. I went back to track it and while not as often as it felt I noticed a few things. The first is that it WASN’T like this for the first half of the season. No really. He even learns brand new lessons in The Trickening and Louie’s Eleven. Granted he also exploits his uncle in Louie’s Eleven but that’s mostly played for laughs.. still not a great bit but not a major part of the episode.

So he was fine for the first act of the season... but then for whatever reason from Let’s Get Dangerous onwards (Again I don’t count the Christmas episode as both of those are meant to slot in anywhere and chronologically take place before this season for the timeline to make any sense), he’s just...

He’s utterly insufferable in his small parts of the first half of Let’s Get Dangerous! as he berates Huey for daring to look a gifthorse int he mouse.. even though everytime he’s seemingly got something for nothing or minimal effort it’s backfired and it’s something that seeemd to stick with “The Richest Duck in the World!”. He’s fine in Impossibin and alright in split sword as while he clearly hadn’t learned lying isn’t the best policy we at least got a good story out of it. He then went right back to obnoxious with New Gods on the Block where he, EPISODES AFTER THE SOLEAGEO FISACO again thinks an easy way out is the right way, and has NO guilt over possibly killing a bunch of people with his gold powers and in fact is disapointed he dosen’t get to keep a living being turned to gold!. He spents all of Fight for Castle McDuck being a huge dick to Huey AGAIN iwth no lesson, and now has yet another family endagering get rich quick scheme he feels no remorse about.

I will admit when I”m wrong and I DID think it was in way more of the season than I thought. And let’s face it in real life personal issues don’t just go away and you can sometimes slide back, i’ve done it way too many times and i’m not proud of it. We’re only human. But this isn’t real life, this is cartoon ducks. And cartoon duck wise most character development has stuck or if a bad trait’s come back it’s been in a new way. Webby is still trusting, but knows how the world works now and while idolizing scrooge dosen’t think he’s perfect anymore. Huey is no longer a skpetic towards the super natural and hasn’t forced a party on anyone. Dewey hasn’t craved other people’s love or thought he needed to earn his mom’s love again. And that’s just the other kids. They aren’t the same people theyw ere going in, neither is Louie. So it’s grating when an episode acts like h’es exactly the same, let alone almost a fifth of the season.

What makes it even worse though is that he had an ENTIRE STORY ARC dedicated to learning some of these lessons already. With the others if one episode were forgotten i’d let it slide as it happens with tv, i’m used to it. It’s not a great look but it happens. Mistakes happen again we’re all human. But you can’t act like an entire arc of a series didn’t exist. While they ignore Della’s history somehow being hidden for the rest of the show they don’t ignore that Dewey spent a whole season looking for her, as he never hides something like that from his brothers again nor do they, and he’s out of them the biggets mama’s boy. While they did take a while to adress Lena, partly because the episode got pushed back, they didn’t act like season 1 never happened and she was still working for her aunt. Della still isn’t on the moon and Owlson still isn’t working for glomgold. Actions. Have. Consequences. That’s the whole point of this episode, but they act like none of it got through to louie and it makes his arc feel like a giant waste in hindsight. This episode even feels like it was SUPPOSED to be in that arc: Louie is back to his season 2 characterization, Scrooge is actively trying to mentor him again.. it just feels really out of place as our second to last episode in that way and drags it down a bit.

Thankfully after Scrooge bars the door, and possibly leaves everyone to their deaths but he presumably has enough faith in the kids, the twins and Beakley to take care of it, he gets a summons to court.. and gets kidnapped. He and Louie are whisked away to a mystic court presided over by a giant statue of justice holding scales, that judges someone based on Karma. Scrooge’s foes have brought him to court, blaming him for being evil and if he looses he looses EVERYTHING. And their proscutor?

Sadly not Droopy, maybe next continuity, but searing the same Hannibal-Esque Getup is Doofus Drake to Louie’s horror. As for why he’s like this.. he thought iht was fun. Great gag.

After the credits we find out why he’s doing this: He’s still pissed about Louie taking half his inheritance and giving it to his family, so he’s going to take LOUIE’S inheritance. It’s.. honestly a great setup: Doofus was already a villian I liked, being a nice weird evil mirror dewey instead of a walking fat joke like last series. So I was glad to both see him pop up one last time to make it a full trilogy of apperances as an angonist and to see him take a step up from his passive roll in the past: in his first two apperances while he was evil and abusive, and still is, his evil was mostly due to his own warped logic, feeling he could put shock collars on and control people and that Louie lying to him was enough to warrant making him into a pinata. He’s still a bad person mind you: kid or not he ensdlaved his parents, tried to enslave louie and goldie and in general REALLY needs some help empathizing with people. But my point is that before he didn’t come after anyone.. so it’s a nice capper to have his final turn as antaognist be him going after our hero.. and at his most dangerous. Before someone would’ve come for Louie eventually in Doofus’ first apperance and Goldie would’ve found a way out or Scrooge, despite grumbling about it, would’ve helped.. if nothing else than to lord having to save her from a 12 year old over her. Here if he wins the family is out on the street and three of their greatest enemies are now infinitely more well funded.

So while naturally unnerved by his rival Louie offers to defend Scrooge who denies it despite the fact that Louie is REALLY good with words, and Scrooge, while not bad with them, can’t stop shouting and keeps pissing off the baliff, played by my boy Henry Winkler whose done a lot of voice work and also played Fonzie on Happy Days, is currently on the HBO series barry and in general is just a fucking delight. The irony is also not lost on me that he’s not playing a lawyer here despite being one on arrested development.

We get our first witness: FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Hell. Yes. It’s nice to see him in his full glory one last time, as I don’t know how much he’ll be in the finale. Scrooge blows of the Duke Baloney thing, which is fair given that while Scrooge screwed up there, Glomgold still stole money from him right after and then spent his whole life trying to one up him. But Glomgold has a different tale in mind as he stole something else from him: the limelight.

It was 1980-something and Glomgold was a bonified celebrity in Duckberg for his hot dogging, grandstanding and treasure hunting loved by all and took Baba Wawa, a nice mix of Barbra Walters and the parody of her on SNL by the late Gilda Radner, to a shark shaped cave to get the gem of the shark god, a ruby tooth at the end of the cave. Naturally Scrooge popped up and easily made his way through and stole the spotlight. As it turns out he wasn’t always well loved and it makes sense: he dismises Baba asking him about how disliked he is, and dosen’t care and even in the current story, or rather season 1 of it, he dismiseed PR entirely in Jaw$. He was rich enough and enough of a job provider he just didn’t see the need for fame or glory, that just came second so it’s logical no one liked him. Fortunes naturally reverse as you’d expect though: Glomgold dashes forward and ends up putting Baba and her camerabird in danger and being Glomgold he irrationally assumes she’s working for Scrooge and leaves her to die. Scrooge however, after getting the rock, goes out of his way to save her because it’s the right thing to do. He can be selfish at times, and as we’ll see monstrously so, but at his core Scrogoe is a good man who will do right when the chips are down. So this leaves Glomgold trapped and Scrogoe getting his good press instead and realizes he likes the attention.

As the flashback ends Glomgold fills in the gaps, pointing out he was stuck with the sharks for days, but slowly bonded with them learned from them and they became family, helping him with traps, joining him for thanksgiving and even getting a heart taatoo with a shark on it. Awww. Look I didn’t really need to know where Glomgold’s love of sharks came from, nor that he had some weird tarzan origin story with them.. but my life is 100% better knowing all of this so thank you Frank and Matt. Thank you. I’m also entirely convinced the two have had this whole part of his backstory ready to go for three seasons and were waiting to use it, along with the other two bits we’re about to get to. This episode as you can tell is also a vingette episode, but one where the wraparound is way more improtant than usual.. but it works given the setting and allows the stories to be as long as they actually need to be, and it addds some nice stakes instead of just having Scrooge’s villians gripe about him.

Scrooge protests and the Bailiff puts a clamp on his beak, so he has no choice in the matter when Louie steps up for the defense. Louie also proves that irresponsible he may be.. he’d be a damn good lawyer, as he easily picks things apart, pointing out Glomgold was ALREADY bad by then, Scrooge had no intent to steal the spotlight and Glomgold is currently planting dynamite under his chair, with predictable and hilarious results. So he gets put on the “good” side of the scale. Next witness.

Next up is Ma, and I was delighted that as I’d hoped and theroized this episode wrapped up one little plot point that while not major, was something I was curious about: Ma’s claims Scrooge stole Duckburg from her family. This was also likely the backbone of the episode at one point as Frank pitched a beagle trial episode at one time, but Disney nixed it. Likely the magic stuff was added both to justify it better and to distract Disney Channel’s higher ups because they constantly underestimate what a child will like. It was for the best though as the beagles are just a bit weaker here: While Character Actress Margo Martindale is a delight and was specifically cast for the role, overall it just feels like they ran out of ways to make the beagles a big threat and releigated them to muscle when needed, to the point they only appeared in one episode besides this one this season as with FOWL about, they didn’t really need villians of the week and what ones they did use like Glomgold and Mark were far more entertaining villains who needed a coda to their stories.They aren’t bad characters, but in a series where their breaking into the bin or mansion wasn’t a story the crew was interested in they served no real purpose.

So we finally get answers about the whole Deed thing: It was sometime in Ma’s childhood, good look guessing when, and the Beagles owned Duckburg having clearly overwhelmed Fort Duckburg at some point in history between Clinton’s defense of it and now, with Grandpa “Pa” Beagle finally making an apperance. In the comics he was basically what Ma is to both series: the scheming brains behind the beagles who showed up on occasion and it was a good idea to use him as the past version of her.

Scrooge naturally comes a calling and unsurprisingly Ma was lying: Scrooge offered to buy the place first from Pa, he refused outright, and then when Scrooge showed off the money he was offering, Pa bet the deed for it in an arm wrestling contest. Not only that but as Scrooge finds out as he almost looses, Pa was cheating having a smaller beagle boy operate pull a lever in a device attached to his arm to give pa extra force. Scroooge simply dropped a few coins to distract the guy and claimed victory and the deed.

Little Ma is left dejected though and Doofus claims he ruined his life, but Louie steps up, at this poitn Scrooge has learned to reign himself ina nd accepted Louie as his defense without saying anything, a nice subtle bit. He probably realized that while irrepsonsible.. Louie has everything to loose her and no reason to slack off and dosen’t even relaly have to lie for his uncle to get him off: he’s simply using his ablitiy to see all the angles to poke holes in their story.

Case in point, he orders the “tape” to continue and finds Little Ma berating her dad for his failure and forcefully taking control of the family. LIke Glomgold, Scrooge may of cost her something.. but it was something she and her family hadn’t earned and they were still on a bad road. Scrooge just made it worse.

But suprisingly, its MAGICA, who we’ve established is an uncaring monster, who has a story Scrooge genuinely feels bad about. Like the rest she was not a good person: Long ago she and her brother Poe were extorting a villiage, and lording over it as gods, changing the population into goats, toads and other things. The only diffrence from what Magica would do to the blot and presumiibly others later, is that Poe reigned in her manical tend ices, trying to get her to think things through. The goat transformation was so they’d have milk and at least get something out of it and as to not waste all their slaves. Poe is voiced by Martin Freeman of The Hobbit and Black Panther fame. Great actor, does amazing work here. So like the others Scrooge changed things, and fought someone with bad intentions for his own self. He talked Magica into fighting him with both amulets by playing into her ego and Poe trying to talk her down, and easily deflected her bolt with the dime to turn her into a crow with her own spell. So far it’s just like the other tales in a nice mirror.. it’s what comes next that makes Scrooge into a bad guy too. Not as bad as Magica and Poe.. but sitll not good. Poe dives selflessly in front of the coin.. and shockingly while she cared nothing for Lena.. that wasn’t the case for Poe. Magica is truly devastated, desperatly trying to put the amulet back on and begging scrooge for help while he just ignores her and fills up his sack. And while they both deserved it... Scrooge and Louie both recognize he was wrong as the flashback ends with Poe escaping and Magica sitll haven’t having found him to this day. And props to Catharine Tate here a she takes a normally hammy terrible person who was wholly unsympathetic and manages to make her painfully human.

What makes the act so terrible is not who it happened to, they both desrved it, but Scrooge’s attitude, utterly callous to magica’s pain with not a drop of sympathy. While she deserved it as did Poe.. he’s not doing this to her as some justice for her crimes, or because she did something horrible to him or any valid reason.. he’s doing it because he’d rather get more of her and poes gold than lift one finger to help someone who had , for all his evil, selflessly sacrificed himself for his sister. For all Poe’s evil and tyranny.. there MIGHT of been a good man in them, in both of them.. and Scrooge could’ve cared less. He shut the door on Magica ever becoming a good person, ever getting her brother back to line his own wallet and to satisfy his own ego. See that’s the true mark of a hero: how they treat others, even the worst of them. And in his lowest moment Scrooge could’ve cared less about anyone but himself.

Scrooge feels bad and Louie does finally get the responsibility thing and this is where things start to go off the rails: he apologizes to Doofus and admits he dosen’t want an enteral rivalry and h’es sorry for any pain he caused. The off the rails part is because Doofus is genuinely not a good person, ahs done very bad things and is trying to bankrupt Louie for the crime of “taking half your fortune after you used it to torment and enslave your own parents’. It just.. dosen’t play as well as they’d like. That said I DO like both Louie deciding to bury the hatchet instead of just avoiding him and Doofus showing some nobiity in accepting it. Maybe he’ll change.

He goes off into the night, and Scrooge genuinely apologizes and accepts repsonsiblity... and here’s where the plot finishing going off the rails and into someone’s living room: the bailiff AWARDS THEM SCROOGE’S FORTUNE BECAUSE HE ADMITTED SOME CUPLABLITY AND WAS HUMBLE.

This just.. it makes no sense, it will never not baffle me and it hurts my brain> Yes he admitted some wrong doing and apologized for it.. but it was also THROUGHLY proven the other two weren’t his fault, and he was simply being a good man which should get him some good. Thankfully the conclusion is a bit better, as Louie points out while they made him, he made you so who made who, who made you... okay i’m getting into the AC/DC of things point is these incidents all shaped Scrooge into a better person. His mistake with Magica. is clearly learned from. He’s stopping a group of bullies in Ma’s story and saving a life without a second thought in the second. He learned to value others, to value family all because THEY showed him what happens when you don’t. By seeing the worst person he could be.. he became the best. So the trial’s thrown out his assets are returned, and their teleported out before magica can hit them with lighting. Lesson learned.. well kinda Louie tells scrooge to do it because he got the pet.

Final Thoughts for The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck:

Great title aside.. this one is a mess. It’s not a terrible episode: the flashbacks are genuinely engaging, each one helping flesh out the villians and in Ma’s case pulling one last dangling plot thread. Glomgold’s was just entertaining , clevelry using his 80′s origns for an 80′s style news special and giving us the origin to his love of sharks that we didn’t know we needed., Ma’s tied up a loose plot threat with a fun flashback and Magica’s was genuinely heart wrenching and did the tall task of making us feel for someone that terrible. The wraparound.. was a bit weaker. Doofus was the best part, playing an excellent manipulative bastard lawyer, and being a genuine threat and his walking away peacefully was a nice touch, and Louie having to defend scrooge was great and showed him off better than ever. And Louie did get some moments to shine.. it was just wierldy bookened with him acting terribly AGAIN, in a way he should know better than in an episode where he acts fine for most of it and even then he thinks lying to a judge is a good idea! I know he’s 12 but he’s not this stupid and while as I made very clear i’ve seen this shit before, I haven’t seen it flip flop in the same episode. Louie deserves better than this.

But it’s also in service to a responsiblility aseop that just.. dosen’t work as presented. Yes you should take responsiblity for your past, yes you should learn from your mistakes and own up to them, I have, and yes it’s all too easy to slide back> That’s all fine.. but him apologizing to Ma, whose family was terorrizing a town, and Glomgold, who he did nothing to, and having Louie apologize to Doofus, who while he tried to exploit him still enslaved his own parents and deserved to loose half his fortune AND loosing half his fortune wasn’t even the main thing Louie wanted to do as his main goal was getting BOYD a loving family.. it’s bullshit. Just pure Grade-A bullshit. Why are you booing them their right. It’s a good idea for a moral but it’s executed so overwhelmingly poorly it bogs down what was otherwise an exceptional episode, into just passable. It’s just mind numbing and saddening to know the next to last episode wasted so much good ideas on a clumsy moral. Thankfully I have hope the finale will be better, and again at least we got some good out of this one.

Next Time: Endgame Baby! Clan McDuck and their Amazing Friends Vs F.O.W.L. for the fate of adventure itself! One last ride! I can hardly wait!

This week on the blog: Ducks Ducks and more ducks.. and a top 12 list of my faviorite superheroines later today’s for international women’s day. But after that we have more of the Della arc, the last step in the Lena arc before Shadow War next week, and the 87 ducktales pilot treasure of the golden suns!

If you liked this review, share it around, follow for more, and you can comission your own for 5 dolalrs an issue or episode, or kick in some money on my patroen, link on my blog. Even a dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal is 5 dollars away and if we reach it i’ll review both the super ducktales mini series introducing gizmoduck AND a darkwing duck episode a month. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #the life and crimes of scrooge mcduck #scrooge mcduck #louie duck #doofus drake #magica de spell #poe de spell #FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD #ma beagle #the beagle boys #disney channel #disney #ducks #uncle scrooge

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Blacksad: Somewhere In the Shadows Review

Hello you beautiful people! I have a WEIRD relationship with Noir. It’s weird because i’ve never really dived into the films of type, though I really should, But as a kid I absolutely LOVED the tracer bullet arcs in Calvin and Hobbes, where everyone’s favorite hyperactive and imaginative six year old would plant himself as the hero in a noir pastiche.. ironically like myself Bill Watterson was also not a huge noir buff and just relied on Cliches but hey, it worked.

Still love these. So from fourth grade on it imprinted a lifelong love of a good bit of detective noir. Not enough to you know, get me to read any traditional noir books or watch any noir tv shows or detective procedurals but I still love a good mystery from time to time and some of my favorite comics such as Howard the Duck by Chip Zdarksy and Peter David’s second run on x-factor run on the genre while having fun with it’s cliches.

I also love anthropormphic animal stories. Dunno why, I just do, so once I found out about Blacksad, a comic that combines disney quality art from a former disney animator with gripping, adult noir that rips your heart out... I couldn’t resisit trying it. Telling the tale of John Blacksad, a cynical private detective and the cases he steps into via gorgeous, straight out of a disney storyboard art, the series is by Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist), the latter a former Disney artist who worked on several Disney films, meeting in the 90′s while working on licensed works and hitting it off, leading to this series. That’s.. really all I could find about the making of the series in English. The only other fact is the series is designed for first release in France, which has a huge comics market, hence the various volumes being called “Albums”, with them later being released in Spain and then english, currently in the latter through Dark Horse Comics, who last year collected the current 5 albums and some side stories into one big volume. And with Dark Horse having infrequent sales including Blacksad on comixology it’s easy enough to pick up all 5 volumes in one complete package on digital for 9 bucks, as it is right now. Seriously I’m not trying to shill for Comixology or Dark Horse, I just love these comics and suggest picking them up. The creators DO intend on new volumes... it’s just both have been busy with other work so they’ve been stuck in development hell since 2013. However given there have always been, if much smaller, the biggest being 5 years, gaps between the Albums, I don’t think the series is dead quite yet and with Dark Horse fully backing it, taking the series from only two volumes getting translated to both translating the first four AND translating the fifth within a year of it’s release, we’ll undoubtly get the next one quickly. The series has also spawned a game, Under the Skin, which i’ll probably also cover some day as i’m dying to play it, but i’m waiting for a sale because it’s around 30 bucks and I can wait. It’s also been nominated for an Eisner three times to no suprise and has had fans in Stan Lee, Jim Steranko, Tim Sale and Will freaking Eisner. Yes the GUY the awards were named after liked the series. So yeah, I love this series and highly support it, but the thought of covering it hadn’t occrued to me.. in part because I already had three comic retrsopectives going, my looks at The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Scott Pilgrim and New X-Men, and simply because I just hadn’t thought of it till Kevin, frequent patron and comissioner of the blog whose paid for tons of reivews, suggested covering the second Album, Arctic Nation, which has our hero searching for a missing little girl he feels has been taken by the titular white supramacist movement.. and if your wondering “Wait how the fuck does that work their animals”, John is black coded due to his black fur, while the white suprmacists are all Arctic Animals.. a touch I really like as I’d honestly never thought of that as a metaphor but it fits like a glove, especially given that most white furred arctic mamals are pretty agressive looking. So yeah I’ll be covering that one next month for Black History Month, among many other things, but I felt I wanted to cover the series in order and since again, it’s only the second of five and I had a free space on the schedule. So without further adew, join me somewhere in the shadows and under the cut as we enter the world of one John Blacksad.

We open as you’d expect for a Noir with a heady narration and a murder. John was brought in by Smirnov, the chief of police and an old aquantice who serves as his Commissioner Gordon. Since the victim is John’s ex, he was brought in to see if he knows anything and as you’d expect warned not to look into it further, as John dosen’t buy this was a simple robbery. His response is exactly what you’d expect.

I mean.. what did you expect? You called him out of bed to see his former lovers corpse, KNOWING he’s one hell of detective, dosen’t give up on things easy, and would probably be curious. For him to say “Cool gonna go smoke some reefer and take in a looney tunes short at the theater, call me when you find the murderer?” Also this series takes place in the 50s. Because of course it does.

So John goes back to his office to brood, reflecting that the office feels like the remains of an ancient civlization because “It seems to be all that remains of the civlized person I used to be”. Hell of a line.

We then get his backstory with the victim, Natalia. She’s a famous actress, who John first as a younger man when hired to investgate some death threats she’d received with a boquet of flowers. John shows off just how good he is at his job in just a few panels.

IT not only shows in just a few panels just how ferocious our hero can be when needed and how good he is at his job, easily having tracked down the man responsible and scared him shitless without breaking as sweat, but how fucking gorgeous the art is. I meant it when I brought up the old disney comparison, as Steranko even mentioned in his introduction to the collection of the first three volumes how it looks like animation cels on the page. IT’s utterly breathtaking and ONLY gets even more lush and beautiful as the series goes on and perfectly fits the noir stylings with it’s realisim, making it’s animal characters feel utterly human and real while still keeping their animal traits in perfect detail.

John impressed her, and as we see in the next page under his narration they not only had really steamy passionate sex, and why yes we do see them naked even if the bits are covered it’s still very much nsfw and we saw Natalia’s naked corpse earlier, so that ship had already sailed anyway, with Natalia taking him on both as her lover and her on staff detective and the two were much in love.. until the fame apparenlty got to her judging from the visuals, and the realtionship fell apart.

Before we move on i’d like to talk about the narration which CAN be a bit overwrought here or there and is a bit overused.. but does have it’s mometns of being utterly effective as with above, contrasting John’s statments about a sucessful job and being hired on.. with the beginnings of his and Natalia’s relationship and their passionate lovemaking. IT’s not BAD and it works for the setting, but it can be distracting, but thankfully the series levels this out as we go and they learned from it so no harm done. Just the kinda thing that happens early in a series life when the creators are getting a handle on things, so no harm done.

But naturally John isn’t going to take the love of his life, responsible for the happiest days of said life, being brutally murdered lying down and is going to find the bastard who did this. So he goes to an old friend, Jake Ositombe, a championship boxer and Nat’s former bodyguard who he recommended to her. Given we see him knock the shit out of his opponent without the slightest effort, yeah good call. Also yes we share the same name and no it’s not weird to type about another Jake, adventure time sorta.. knocked that out of me. Jake dosen’t know much since she fired him a long time ago as one of her lovers hired private security, and the last one he knew of was a guy by the name of Leon. John, naturally, easily finds the guy’s apartment, Leon Kronkski, a screenwriter.. but also rules him out as the guy lived in a humble apartment and clearly didn’t have the cash to hire his own hired goons.

He does find a clue, a matchbook for some place called the Cypher Club.. and another when the man’s sweet mouse landlady shows up, who John charms by pretending to be Leon’s friend and flashing a big smile, finding out a msyterious man with “big bulging eyes”, took him. This scene also to me is great in subtly showing off John’s skill. While the previous flashback showed how badass he is, shoving a gun down the throat of a stalking wannabe murderer with pure rage in his eyes.. here we see a lighter approach, how despite his serious and dour nature.. he easily slips into being cheery and looking like an average joe off the street. He bluffs the landlady not because the plot says so.. but because like any PI he’s just that good at slipping into whatever roll he needs to get the info he needs. He can be his dour self or a charming happy go lucky guy without missing a beat.

So with that he goes to the studio leon worked for where his boss.. is a walrus j jonah jameson?

But yeah J. Jonah Walruson wants pictures of spider-man.. moving pictures.. but he can’t film them with his star dead and his screenwriter indefintiely gone, with the same bulging eyed man having told JJ he’d be gone indefintely. Nothing suspicious about that!

So naturally John’s next plan is to find the guy.. who is already after him as you’d expect with both a knife to slash at our hero with and the fog covering him so he can hit and run. But unluckily for him .. well i’ll let john say it...

John headbutts the myserious snake, who only managed to get his coat before and tries to interogate him.. but gets a quick jab to the gut and the guy gets away.

We soon meet our big bag, who has a big speech about insects and things being usefufl.. and once they stop being useful.. they become dead and collectable, telling the snake man to back off John.. and sending his right hand man to go take care of the Snake who apparently took something from the office. Realizing his numbers up the Snake Man goes to a lizard bar, picks up a package from a friend and runs out the back, knowing he’s being followed.. and we get some hints there’s also racial tension between lizards and mammials here as the bartender, said friend, has the entire bar circle around the guy preventing him from following our mysterious bulging eyed man.

Meanwhile John goes to the Cipher Club, a wretched hive of scum and villiany. Given Nat was a glamorous movie star, it’s very clear she was here to hide from something or someone, and the bartnender, a wild pig.

No not you sweetie. The wild pig tells John leon was indeed here and a local rat, in both senses of the word, offers to take John to him.. though understandably John is supscious of the guy he just met in a seedy bar taking him anywhere except to get some heroin. Did Heroin exist yet? Questions for later. But he’s got a case so he follows. Though suprisingly the guy DOES actually come through and it’s not ENTIRELY a trap: he takes john to a tomb for Noel Krinsok.. an anagram for Leon’s name. Unsuprisingly he’s dead. And also unsuprisingly, two hired goons

Show up. As I said not ENTIRELY a trap but it’s obvious given the rat split moments before that our mysterious big bad knew where john would be headed next, and thus while giving him a clue, also set him up to get his head knocked in. And while John is badass.. these guys are a bear and a rhino, both stronger, bigger, and with suprise on their size, as well as a tombstone to knock john’s head into. They easily beat him senseless and hope he got the message, though john gives a defiant fuck you before being punched out for it. He returns home, feeling like he’s aged 20 years “But no one respects the elderly anymore”, PFFT, and heads home to his rathole, not literally this time, apartment to lay on his cot and think as he gets some rest.

And while the trail for Leon is cold. our mysterious murderer accidently tipped his hand: only someone with a LOT of money and influence could make a man disappear like this, and it tracks with what we’ve seen so far. The guy has multiple henchman and despite being a big star with plenty of clout, Natalia had to hide in a dive bar just to get away from him and even THEN clearly wasn’t so lucky given she and her new lover both wound up dead. But Blacksad has bigger problems.. he wakes up in a jail cell.

Turns out Smirnkov had him arrested.. but for his own protection as the case is getting too hot and while he was late on that front given John’s face is hamburger, it’s clear from his tone and demeanor that while he may of been harsh with John earlier.. the two are old friends, and the Chief is simply worried about him winding up dead, and John takes you know being thrown in prison in stride. Which while not a bad scene it is a BIT suspect that a black coded character was thrown in jail for nothing and it’s treated very lightly and as a simple protection between friends, though given they wouldn’t think of coding john like that till next volume, I brush it off as accidental implications in hindsight.

Smirnkov though also called John here.. because he needs his help. Since Natalia’s Murder Case is pointing very high up, so his superiors have ordered him to bury the case and as he puts it “the bastards know where to squeeze”. And given in volume 3 we learn Smirnov has a wife and children, it’s very obvious where they squoze and to the volume’s credit while we don’t know that yet it’s VERY clear from Smirnov’s body language they went after some form of family. So while he has to give it up.. John does not. So he brought him to jail to offer a proposal: John goes after this son of a bitch and nails him to the wall.. and Smirnov will FULLY protect John no matter what he has to do. Now naturally given the rightful reckoning for police that’s been going on for almost a year, this SHOULDN’T play well. You have an officer outright telling an outside party that he and his boys will cover up his crimes. But.. honestly even in that framework.. it still works. That’s because.. the system has failed here. The higher up and more corrupt cops put pressure on the honest and hardworking family man Smirnov to stop a legitimate investigation into a horrible murderer.. because the guy is rich. And even now we’ve seen time and time again how rich assholes effortlessly escape the consequences of their action: How our own president who actively asked other nations to interfere in our election escaped his first impeachment trial, but hopefully not the second, aquitted. How Jeffery Epstien took YEARS to bring down with his years of ellicit parties involving innocent women and children he fucking enslaved. How Bill Cosby got away with all kinds of sexual assault for decades. The rich are often literally above the law in this country, so having a down on his luck detective, who retroactively himself is a minority, go after him with the full support of an actually GOOD police officer who genuinely believes in these people being held accountable but is held back by his family’s safety.. it works. John isn’t able to skirt consequences BECAUSE of a corrupt system.. but because the system’s so broken and slanted in the rich’s favor, that the ONLY option an honest officer like Smirnov has is to go outside it. And when asked WHY he’s doing all of this, Smirnov merley replies

... I got chills, their multiplyin. So John plans to find the bulge eyed snake after a hot shower.. only for the guy to hold a gun to John’s head, having been waiting for him and wave the murder weapon, in a baggie around, the item he had retrieved, feeling John’s trying to replace him as number two. However before he can do anything our snake pal is shot full of holes by the rat from before, who John dispatches with his own gun.

So the Snake starts to expire.. but feels a kinship with John “We are nothing right cat? Spent so much time waiting for the right chance and when it happens it all falls to pieces”. The Snake explains his roll in things: He was one of the private security our big bad hired to guard Natalia. But being supscious he also hired the rat to follow her around, and thus found out about her affair, brutally torturing and murdering Leon and shooting Natalia in the head. And we finally get a name as our snake friend tragically expires.

The snake’s death and tragic dying moments are something I forgot about.. but damn if their not really good writing, taking a character who before was seemingly just a murderous goon.. and comparing him to our hero. Another working class joe, and one who just caught up with the wrong asshole at the wrong time. He easily could’ve been john in another life and vice vers and it’s a good parallel.

So John’s nightmares finally have name and he naturally goes to confront the guy since he has an almost literal get out of jail free card. Turns out Smirnov is the richest man in town, and has his own big tower. Huh.. sounds familiar, and John simply sneaks his way up and once Statoc’s guards from before hear him rustling about.. sneaks up on them and clocks both one at at time with a fire extinqusher.

Statoc warmly welcomes our hero inside, and has the fucking lizard balls, as he’s some sort of lizard himself, to offer John a JOB

I mean he’s clearly lost a lot of his goons and most of them were incompetent. He fails to realize that John can’t be bought, is here for vengeance and has no intention of selling his soul to some rich asshole who killed someone he loved for the creepiest and most asinine reasons imaginable. He says john’s Concisence is why he can’t pull the trigger and that he lacks “cold blood”.. before we cut to the next page, where John’s shot the fucker in the head and left a gaping hole where his lack of a brain was.

And again what makes this work is the aftermath: John is clearly shaken, having ONLY been able to pull the trigger beause of Statoc’s smug grin and clearly not taking the sight of Statoc’s dead body bleeding out well. And while Smirnov keeps his word, covers for him despite the two guards clearly providing an iron clad argument against john and knoiwng thier blatantly covering this up.. he’s not happy about it.

This is WHY the narrtive still works. Statoc stacked the law against the bad guys. .but despite this being a necessary evil.. it’s still an evil and subverting teh law at this rightly leaves him not in a great place mentally. John himself isn’t even if he plays it off as otherwise, as we get our final bit of narration and one hell of a closing line.

Final Thoughts:

Somewhere in the Shadows is a bit rough around the edges, leaning a bit too heavily into the noir pastiche and Blacksad being a harboiled detective, something the next volume would ease up on. That being said.. it’s still a masterpiece, with gorgeous art and masterful pacing. While it’s the shortest of the stories, like those after it the pacing is sublime and never feels like it has any down moments or stuff that could’ve been cut, and the mystery keeps you on edge the whole time. Having forgot a lot of the details since last read I was on the edge of my seat the entire story and loving every second of it. Somewhere in the Shadows is the perfect starter for the series, introducing an important charcter in Smirnov and the noir nature and giving us a case personal to John so we can see who he was before, what he is now.. and what he WILL be for the rest of the series. The moment that MADE him into an even harder man than the one we follows here.. when he took a life in cold blood. A masterful story, seriously check it and the other volumes out, on comixology, in stores, great stuff. Next time we look into john and as I said, he’s taking down some racists and we also meet his sidekick weekly for the first time. As for me tommorow I dive back into my Tom Luictor retrospective but hit pause on our boy for a bit to take care of some of the larger plot. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#blacksad #john blacksad #Smirnov #noir #anthropomorphic #anthro #funny animal #somewhere within the shadows #comics #dark horse comics #france #french comics #igor statoc #Natalia Wilford

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Della Arc Reviews: The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!

Hello all you happy people. I’ve been dreading this one.. not because it’s bad. Quite the oppisite. In fact on rewatch I was marveling at how brilliant this one was and remembering why it was on my best of list. But because the ending, as you all well know, is the most gutwrenching part of the entire series. Three seasons and lots of other heartrending moments.. and the ending of this episode from the big reveal to that final shot above tears you the fuck apart. It’s hard to watch even know it all works out in the end and that i’d be watching the conclusion the next day instead of having to wait a rather painful week like I did at first airing. It’s just that good. So join me under the cut for a review of one of the series finest half hours and some of David Tennant’s best work as we crash the Sunchaser one last time.. for this season... and i think Launchpad crashes it again in the finale so I don’t get that title.

So our plot for the episode is that

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Yes Clan McDuck is taking their version of a vacation. It’s off to Monocrow for the E.X.C.E.S.S. Expo! Yes it’s the EXCESS Expo! With the latest in racecars lasers and many more! The EXCESS Expo! With booths from such welcome guests as Stark International, Muppet Labs, S.T.A.R. Labs, VenTech, The Franklin Sherman Memorial Fishmobabywhirlomgig Institute, TCRI, Gryzzl, Sumdac Systems, G-Heavy Industries, Tylerco, Lexcorp, Wayne Enterprises, Quickstart, The Gizmonic Institute, Alchemax,and Baintronics! But that’s not all! We also have huge paneeellls! Hank Pym’s “The ethics of dating your robot grandaughter”, Reed Richards “How to Dispatch an Evil Council made up entirely of yourself!”, Victor Von Dooms “CURSE YOU RICHARDS I’M SMARTER FOR I AM DOOM”, Stanford Pines with “How to Kill a Godlike Demon and Get your Smile Back”, Dr. Bunsen Hondedew with “How to abuse your assitant in 2020″ Dr.Light with “The Ethics of helping your robot child fight an evil albert einstein”, Profesor Henry Hidgens with “The incoming apocalypse with songs from Working Boys: A New Musical” Ray Palmer “Welcome To Pain”, and you know our friend Ass Dan will be in full effect> yeah bitch you know he’s going to live forev... what’s that? He’s dead. oh shame. Someone call rusty venture. Yes I know i’m typing this. Shut up. THE EXCESS EXPO. BE THERE OR WE’LL SEND OUR ROBOTS AFTER YOU.

... Where.. Where was I? Oh yes, big vacation. Monocrow.. which sadly is not just a big field with just Crow T. Robot in it. Someday you’ll get MST3K/Ducktales Jake, someday. Point is our heroes are excited, and Scrooge is also there to find the Maltese MacGuffin, a mysterious artifact no one’s ever seen. And the kids and Scrooge have their own specail guest joining them: Bentina! Yeah turns out she has hundreds of vacation days built up, and simply hasn’t used them so she’s using a few to join them. It also once again shows how much less of a heartless money monster this Scrooge is as any of his employees asking for a vacation, paid or not, in the comics would result in this:

So their off on their greatest adventure.. with Louie having’ bought something mysterious along with him he’s only telling the other kids about. On with the intro!

Beakly.. is intstantly not at ease as they take off after driving their jeep into the plane. She feels launchpad is reckless, rightfully so not helped by a lack of seatbelts on the plane or his cheefully saying the closest he’s got, a floatie, will help “When” we crash. She’s also equally annoyed by Scrooge’s cavalier attitude, having intrusted the kids to him only to find out what the adventueres are really like. And this is the only part of the episode that REALLY doesn’t work. She KNOWS these two idiots too well for this to be beliviable. Launchpad wrecks part of the mansion at least once a day, and before Duckworth she had to clean that shit up. He’s there all the time.. and more damingly HE DROVE YOU AND YOUR KID, YOUR KIDS BEST FRIENDS, AND YOUR KIDS GIRLFRIEND TO THE FUCKING MOVIES. I can’t buy given how bad a driver launchapd is she didn’t wrench the wheel from him to prevent their early graves. Scrooge meanwhile is her BEST FRIEND. And until season 2 for her and 3 for him ONLY friend. Sure she works for him, but outside of one incident in this episode he treats her as his equal more than his housekeeper for the entire series. They trust each other more than anyone else at this point. And the only other two people Scrooge ends up trusting as much are Donald and Della. She’s been around him enough to know how he is. What did she THINK he was going to be like with the kids? She’s met the twins, and even mroe so is on good terms with Donald even into the pilot and they only got off on bad terms due to clashing over house rules. So she KNWOS this is what he does with children. You can’t be shocked Scrooge took children on death defying adventures in a barely secured plane after all this time. It’d be like giving Donald a turkey to carve and being suprised when it ends in this...

It just dosen’t work especially with a professional spy! Her job is reading people! And yes I know many of you are going to say “Well she misread Bradford”... but so did Scrooge and so many others. NO ONE suspected him. He’s that good. So her suddenly having a complaint about all this stuff when she could’ve come along anytime to check it out or just looked at the plain bothers me a LOT. Thankfully it’s only really present at the start as while it sets off her concern their back and forth soon has a far deeper meaning. But Scrooge insists Launchpad take her on a tour to ease her worry, seems like a contrdictary set of sentences there, while he flies. How hard could it be. Somewhere on the Moon, Della has the sudden urge to kick her uncle’s ass.

So meanwhile in a secret base set up in a cargo box, the kids are working on the Della mystery. Turns out what Louie smuggled aboard was the documents shredded on the date the boys found on the Spear of Selene plans. Louie got them by smooth talking Quackfaster who even he found nuts. It also once again shows Dewey was only holding things back by keeping the other boys out as in jus weeks, since chronologically there were two other episodes between this and the last Della episode versus just one, their almost to the truth as one document from that day is simply torn into pieces and simply needs to be re-jiggered like a puzzle. Like most puzzles though naturally once they get it all together they find there’s one goddamn piece missing and it ends up loose int he plane flitting around... just as Scrooge majorly screws up and bumps things, leading Beakly to wonder where the kids are and them to scramble out.

So yeah Scrooge seemingly crashed the plane.. except Launchpad notes that if they crashed.. why are they still airborne? This leads to everyone finding out their precariously perched on a VERY narrow rock that’s skewered the plane. Orignially the crew decided to strictly adhere to the concept that any movement would rock the thing.. but realized i’td make things boring visually so they allowed themselves some artistic license.

So yeah our heroes are stuck in a hard place and Scrooge stubbornly digs in insisting he can fix this and turns on the plane.. which sends it spinning and prevents Dewey from getting the piece which ends up wedged in the jeep. Huh I think we need some appropriate music for going in circles.

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So yeah all Scrooge did was blow up one of the engines... I mean the blow up the engine button is right there, would’ve saved you some time. So Beakley berates him for not calling for help and digging in and for it’s next plan it’s time for Handyman Corner where he’s going to show you how to jumpstart a plane with a jeep’s engine. Beakly is not impressed and Scrooge’s case is not helped as Louie feigns fear , with Huey and Webby following his lead, so Dewey can get the piece. Unfortunately pointing out the very REAL dangers they face, with Huey giving the odds and Webby pointing out unlike most dangers they face there’s no easy way out and no villian to fight, sends Louie into an actual panic, jumpstarting the car and causing the cargo bay to open, leading to one hell of a sequence: From Bentina driving a butterfly knife into the ground to hold the kid’s secret base crate (and wondering why it’s so heavy), to Launchpad desperatley platforming his way to saftey to scrooge swining in with his cane to rescue them. It’s some whopper animation that really shows off how damn good the team was and how gorgeous this show truly was at it’s best.

The results aren’t good: the plane’s ballnce is now off so even a slight movement can move it, a holdover from the original idea simply saved for when it’d create the most tension. As a result Dewey can’t get the last piece as he can’t move and Scrooge berates the kids and has thems tay still watching the end credits of darkwing duck (It’s launchpad’s inflight movie and the tape is jammed to that section.

IT’s here the Scrooge and Beakley stuff went from poorly written to “oh shit” in one line. Scrooge is getting more and more desperate to prove he can take care of the kids on his own but Beakely’s demeanor has turned from annoying scolding.. to genuine concern and PLEADING with him not to go through with another dumb stunt that will leave them in a worse situation, int his case using the parachutes as counterweights to fix the engine. He refuses both rebuffing her as “your boss” (Which gets her rightfully pulling on the cord too tight) .. but then that one line comes in “I can protect her”. Beakley is confused.. but it instantly makes clear this is about Della and on rewatch now knowing the reveal at the end.. it makes it that much more heartbreaking. Part of his refusal to backdown is his natural nature as a stubborn ass. It’s been well displayed throughout this season and the ones after it: HIs refusal to backdown from nevverst, his jealousy of Dewey for being better at him and his refusal to accept it.. the man just does not back down and while it’s good in tight spots and against bad guys, as he finds a way out for him and his family with sheer grit and badassery... it’s a massive character flaw when dealing with people, as refusing to actually talk to them like a ratoinoal adult only makes things worse. And boy oh boy is he about to make things worse. But the other part is he can’t admit to himself there’s a risk in his lifestyle and that he can’t keep everyone safe constantly.. that theres inherent danger. He’s bought into the “because i’m scrooge mcduck” mantra here not out of his ego, entirely, but because he can’t let that not be enough again. He can’t LOOSE someone again like he lost Della and he can’t fail again. So his worst trait and his greatest trauma have mixed to make him act so rashly even Launchpad takes some shouting to agree to give him the other parachute. It’s clear he’s endangering EVERYONE to prove he can save them.

Eventually though things reach their head as Dewey CAN’T take the wait anymore. He’s waited his whole life to find out about his momma, and the answer’s feet away... and he can’t let it sit any longer. He HAS to know what happened. So he goes for it, though the rest of the kids are against it since i’ts highly risky and they can wait Huey ends up agreeing to help using his Junior Woodchuck knowledge (Where Newton apparently got the idea), to counterbalance hsi weight and guide him via walkee talkee. It’s a really nice moment, not only showing off Huey’s skill and intellect but also how much they care for her. Dewey may of screwed up last time but their still the duck boys and if he can’t talk him out of being sucidially reckless.. Huey’s going to at least give him a fighting chance.

Unfortunately Scrooge spots him mid argument with Beakley and naturally wants him to give it here... but once the ship buckles when Dewey tries we get the scene that makes the episode. Up till now the tension has been top notch, ratcheting up by bit, not knowing if the kids would get caught, if something would happen with the plane all building to this. Scrooge and Dewey’s final chase. Dewey uses the distraction to make a runner for it with Scrooge following.. and Launchapd using the fact he’s still attached to the airbag to stop him. It’s a small but excellent character moment, showing that as much as Launchpad loves his boss.. he loves his best friend and eveyrone else’s saftey more. SCrooge of course uses it to knock him back while Beakley and the kids counterbalance. We also get the best joke of the episode as Beakley tells them to stop running.. only for them to simply start tip toeing, with Bentina’s reaction being a perfectly resigned “That’s not what I meant and you know it”.

It’s a tense chase, with both sides using the enviorment to their advantage from the parachute to the crate.. and it’s breaking open reveals something’s gonig on and causes Beakley to notice Webby has the blueprints in her pocket and once she unfurls them and finds out what they are.. she can only give a sad, remorseful “oh children, what have you been up to” She’s not even mad like they seem to think.. she’s just sad, knowing the wound that’s about to be reopened for her closest friend and the one that’s about to be inflicted on those poor children, and knowing that they’re ALL made it worst by hiding it. Toks deserves all the praise for her delivery here.

Eventually the piece blows outside of the plane and Dewey refuses to give up and go after it. Things get their most tense as everyone BEGS him not to come back, it’s not worth his death to get this. It’s not worth all of this. But he simply chucks the walkee away and ignores them. We then get Scrooge going from scolding grandpa.. to dearly begging Dewey to come back... David’s delvery here is just heartbreaking “I can’t protect you. Is that what you wanted me to say. Please lad just tell me what it will take to come back inside?” And Ben Schwartz meets it with an utterly emotional “Tell me about the spear of selene”. The animation here is once again some of the series best with Dewey’s determined face and Scrooge’s heartbreak as he realizes he has to finally stop hiding this from them and he’s not ready. So he takes his uncles hand.. and if you thought all of this is painful.. oh boy.. we’re just getting started.

So back in the plane, with Launchpad setting up a table and a proper counterbalance so they can all sit, Scrooge finally explains and the boys, webby, and us int he audience all get the answers we desperately wanted: It was 10 1/2 years ago. The Original Trio had journeyed the world, having all sorts of adventures and making themselves into legends. But eventually you hit a wall and they’d realized they’d been just about everywhere. They could still globetrot of courser and as Season 3 would bear out there were some places they didn’t know about.. but the earth was about used up. So Della, being an aerospace wunderkind, thought of the next logical place to go. The stars. The Spear of Selene was a rocket, her pet project to give her kids, who she was expecting at the time the stars.

Thing was Donald wasn’t on board with this at all. And the clash between the two, which we see in the flashback but don’t hear since Scrooge is narrating all of this over some cool looking semi-still images, was inetiviable. As I coverd in the spear of selene review I feel Donald was burnt out at this point. That he was tired of adventures and just wanted normalcy even before Scrooge forced his hand with what was to happen next. So to him Della should just settle down, live a regular life and raise those kids. The problem is... Della WASN’T burnt out. She didn’t need a break to live a normal life like Donald badly needed. She wanted to keep going and it was her choice. While Donald ultimately was right about the risk, he was wrong to try and force her into a life she didn’t want and project on her like that.

What happened next though was all on Scrooge and Della. Scrooge simply did the thing that’s likely part of why Donald resents him so much and it took so long to fix thing: He ignored what Donald felt and thought, sided with Della and built the ship without telling either of them. His selfishness, thinking he knows what best and treatment of donald.. all backfired horribly. Della sussed out the ship.. and I still feel she was suspicious on her own.. and that Bradford telling her was him simply handing her a lit fuse knowing it’d go off and WHATEVER happened as a result of this would break scrooge. Even if the rocket had gone off saftely and everything was fine.. he could easily claim Della threatned him,k which she probably did and he simply went with it, and either way Donald would be unable to forgive either SCrooge or Della for the deciet. It just went better, and worse than he could’ve anpiciapted: much like the fantastic four she took the ship in the dead of night and hit a cosmic storm, with Scrooge only finding out in time to try and help her.. but the storm hit the ship.. and unlike the ff instead of gaining the power to turn invisible, she simply disappeared. She was lost. He and Donald didn’t speak again after Donald found out till 6 months ago.

If that wasn’t heartbreaking enough.. it gets worse. The kids, full of fresh pain and anger over Scrooge’s part in things, their mom abandoning them, and their uncles hiding this for decades.. take it out on the one person there. Frank and Matt recently said in an artcle detailing the best 7 episodes from one site, or at least what the site considered to be the best, that Donald was absent because he also knew and would’ve told them sooner. I also feel it’s because he would’ve disarmed this conflict, at least admitting what scrooge did alongside beakley. As mad as he was.. his own anger had started to disapate. The wound was fresh to the boys and thus they lashed out.

Dewey blames him for it outright, Huey tell shim he should’ve called her back, and Louie tells him he shoudl’ve sent a fleet of ships to find her. As we find out in the somehow even MORE crushing ending he did the last two and as I made clear, and the show does, this was Della’s horrible decision. She took an unfinsihed rocket, she left her kids, she did this. While she regretted it and I don’t hold it against her because she spent 10 years away from the mon the moon, she’s suffered THROUGHLY for it and I don’t feel I need to pile on, Scrooge wasn’t wholly responsible. Still partly. Dewey makes things worse by impling scrooge GAVE UP ON HER because it cost too much.

Look the rest of it is valid, if misguided, as Beakley tries to chime in on it and correct them knowing the full story. But claming, no matter how greedy he is that Scrooge would ABANDON HER.. that’s just wrong and he knows it. It’s why Scrooge gets so upset.. and why he pushes the last two people in his corner away. Webby critisizes building the rocket and Scrooge belts out “This is a family matter, your not family”. runing his position and poisiong his one ally by lashing out at someone who DID NOT DESERVE THIS. Make no mistake, this is present day scrooge’s WORST action. The past scrooge did worse, we saw that, but this is almost worse than the goat thing. Telling a child h’ed basically adopted, ignoring the finale twist for this as it’s irrelvant and all it does is twist the knife deeper, that “she’s not family” just because he wants someone to be mad at besides his boys... that’s fowl. Everyone’s against him except launchpad and tha’ts where his stubbornesst ragically comes in: he digs in his heels refuses to explain.. and the plane crashes due to it. though safely. Their safe.. but the family is broken.

So we get our hell of an ending scenes. Donald cheerfully announces to the boys, who earlier had no intention of leaving anyway, the boats finished.. only for Dewey to inform him “We know abotu the spear of selene” . Donald is heartbroken, not only that they know.. but that he didn’t tell them.

But since “it gets worse” is this episodes motto, we end on Beakley, Webby and Duckworth all leaving on vacation. How a ghost does vacations I dunno, maybe he’s going to go to Amity Park. Point is Webby, despite EVERYTHING , is crestfallen he’s not even going to say goodbye and still worried. As I said in my review of the finale.. it’s her heart that makes her and while Scrooge may be a dick right now.. he’s family. So we get the final lines of the episode Beakley: Well, you've successfully pushed your family and everyone who ever cared about you away... again. I hope you're happy. Scrooge:I AM

It’s just damn heartbreaking.. once again he’s lost everything and is too bitter to admit it and try and get it back. And as we see between the lines.. the boys were wrong: He drained his bin and his buisnesses creating a fleet to get Della back, and kept going despite the expense. He did everything he could to call her back. Nothing worked.. and he only stopped because the board yanked him away, Bradford sneering with pride as his plan, which backfired HORRIBLY, had at last finally gotten him what he wanted: a broken scrooge tired of adventure. And as Scrooge sits in his chair seething.. he’s broken again, angry, with tears in his eyes, loving nobody.. and nobody loving him, eerily mimickcking his first appearance in comics.

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a masterpice. It’s perfectly paced, with only a minor flaw tha’ts qwuickly snuffed out for a gripping drama. This was a gamble, taking 9 minutes where ther’es almost no jokes and just pure tensino and heartbreak.. but it paid off. This episode is one of the series finest and leads to one hell of a finale but on it’s own.. it’s nigh untouchable. This is the series at it’s best, and the finale and later information (More about Della and the spear, WEbby’s true origin, bradford’s role in all this and role as head of fowl), only make it better, with all those things being aware to the creators but not us. They really made us wait for this reveal but damn if it wasn’t perfect.

Next Time: Webby, Bentina and Launchpad try to desperatley piece the family back together before the boys and donald leave forever.. and Scrooge’s darkest hour leaves him vunerable for his greatest foe. It’s finally time to get back to Lena as the Shadow War descends over our heroes.

If you liked this review, follow for more and you can comission your own reviews by paying me 5 bucks to review any episode you like. Message me to talk it over. And if you’d rather get a gaurantted review every month, hit up my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. For 5 bucks a month you get a review every month and as of now special thanks in each review. Even a buck a month gets the thanks and helps and my next stretch goal, which is 5 bucks away nets everyone a review of darkwing duck everymonth for my lovely patreons to vote on. Special thanks to my patreons Emma and Kev, and I will see you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #scrooge mcduck #dewey duck #della duck #the last crash of the sunchaser #della arc #huey duck #louie duck #webby vanderquack #bentina beakley #launchpad mcquack #donald duck

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Final Four: Beaks in the Shell! or JESUS WEPT!

This.. this is a big occasion for me. It’s a return to regular Ducktales coverage.. but it’s also the first episode of the LAST four of the series. It was thanks to Ducktales my blog got a following, first through in character chat things, then through my reviews of this very season. It was starting this last year that took my blog from something I was passionate abbout but did ocassionaly to a vital part of my being and my source of income via one lucky boy who just wont’ let me stop! I kid of course, I thank kev for it, though i’d gladly welcome any other review comissions from you fine folks and fit them into the schedule. There’s a page on my blog for how and if your on mobile you can simply send me an ask or submit to ask about comissiong an episode or episodes of an animated shwo you like and i’ll give you my prices and what not. But it’s thanks to these Kev started comissioning in the first place and thanks to you all clicking on these reviews every week I do them that kept me doing them early on. So I wanted to thank you all.

Covering the last four episodes is really bittersweet for me. It’s not the end for ducks here: I have most of seasons 1 and 2 to cover, and will be covering a lot of season 1 next month so I can properly cover shadow war for my Lena retrospective, not to mention continuing to cover life and times when I have the space, various birthdays, including Carl Barks Next Month!, and so on and so on. But this is not only the first show I covered on a weekly basis but it’s the first show i’ve covered like that to end. To put it in perspective, Loud House won’t be leaving until it WANTS to and even then nick will probably prepare a second spinoff to follow it up in some form, Amphibia has both the rest of season 2 to go, starting next month!, and a third season renewal meaning while that probably WILL be it i’ll have had two full seasons to cover by the time it’s over, and I went into Close Enough FULLY expecting it not to make it past season 1 as it’s long and harried production cycle lead me to belivie Time-Warner was just going to dump it on HBO Max and be done with it.. and to my utter and everlasting delight the opposite has happened: It didn’t just get renewed but it’s become one of HBO Max’s most popular shows, the flagship of it’s adult animation lineup, and been given THREE more seasons, two of which are coming very soon, and likely will get as many as it wants for the forseable future.

The point is.. I went into covering Ducktales expecting at least one more season and genuinely not knowing if i’d make it thorugh covering this one, and once this started to really work out for me, to the point from doubting i’d EVER be able to set up a Patreon to having one that nets me ten dollars a month, feel free to contribute if you enjoy these reviews even a buck a month helps, honest. Plus thanks to that ten bucks a month i’ll be covering the five part 87 Ducktales pilot in April and if you get it up to ten i’ll cover super ducktales. But I wouldn’t even had one without these reviews giving me something to start with, and I figured they’d be around for a few more years, at least one more season. I didn’t think the show would just.. end with this season and while the season IS a proper final season of the show, wrapping up arcs, introducing long overdue cast additions, giving us the biggest and best overarching plot thus far.. a good final season dosen’t make it hurt any less. But as a wise Synthizoid once said...

It hurts it’s going.. I wasn’t prepared for it.. but it’s giving us one hell of a last act, and if this episode is any indication, just because the end is in sight dosen’t mean the last few eps before the finale are phoning it in. This is the end... so now i’ve got my emotional stuff and the weight behind it out of the way, for now i’m defintely going to be bawling come the finale and I’m not ashamed, we can dive into the begining of the end. Counting down.. because really when else am I going to get to use this...

We’re at four and under the cut it’s beaks in the shell. Let’s get dangerous.

We open with a crime in progress as Gandra is stealing a thing for FOWL and Fenton has shown up on the scene to stop her as you’d expect.. along with Huey the boy wonder! He’s finally Fenton’s Sidekick!

Seriously it’s just so sweet to see this little payoff, to see Huey, after talking about it and clearly wanting to assit Fenton however he can, actually participate. Granted he dosen’t have an armor, yet, of his own, but still he’s been through enough stuff to be helpful> plus, Gyro’s reaction to Fenton trying to ge the resources for another gizmosuit was...

Gandra trips up his wheel, and im with 87 Scrooge in Ducktales Remastered, which I finally got to play recently! Horay!, what WAS gyro thinking with that design. Regardless she gets away, and our heroes return the loot off screen. Good day’s crime fighting.

Except something’s off with Fenton as he’s been working extra late lately and lying to both Gyro and Ma’Ma about it with both suspcious, Gyro because he dosen’t like not knowing things and especially not knowing what his former intern’s up to because he’s a bit of a control freak.. and because he probably can’t go visit his new clone farm and work on speeding up the process of his replacement bodies after moonvasion used em all up without Fenton finding out as he’d tell Scrooge and Scrooge would be like “Stop playing God in ways that could get me a steep fine!”. It’d be a whole thing. The fact Fenton’s also using their now shared intern in Manny and neither is telling him why probably isn’t helping and i’ts only that workplace harassment seminar that keeps him from trying to strangle either of them again. That and Manny dosen’t have a neck.

Ma’Ma is more upset that not only is he lying to her again, more on that later, but .. that she’s figured out he has a new girlfriend and understandably thinks there’s some dark reason he’s not telling her, and unlike Gyro turns out she’s two for two. I mean she is a detective while Gyro is more worried about his clone army, his man horse and his robot son. I mean the last two are valid but still Mama just has to worry about her job and her socially awkward adult son. She has more time to focus on this.

But yes, not only is Fenton seeing someone.. but it’s Gandra again. A bit abrubt but honestly this isn’t the first Fenton episode to move his life fast.. and frankly i’m more lenient on final seasons, or seasons INTENDED to be the last ones in terms of offscreen stuff, as your trying to get everything you can wrapped up in the span of 13-24 episodes depending on how lucky you get, if not less. Sometimes you just gotta use a reveal and some exposition to hurry things along and if presented right it works.. and here it is a while the summary for this episode spoiled the reveal, i’ts still subtly dramatic that not only has hef ully forgiven her.. but their together.. despite the fact she still works for fowl. Wuh-oh. After the credits we get an idea of what their working on, as Fenton used the gizmoduck suit to enter some kind of VR scape. This is the Gizmoscape! It’s a vast virtual reality landscape.. that looks like a fancy version of the VR Interface from community. Marble pillars, flowing water falls. Though ironically enough Jim Rash’s character is NOT a part of it and despite Fenton suggesting letting him in to help with their glitch problem she’s reluctant as it’s THEIR baby and she wants it to be perfect first before they allow other people in. Though i’m also sure part of it is that Gyro would start screaming JESUS WEPT! over and over.

Meanwhile Mark Beaks is having a big flashy press confrence to announce the new Waddlephone. Only a 50% chance of exploding! And that’s not my dig at Samsung but the shows as that’s really Beaks sales pitch. Unsuprisingly only one VERY bored looking nerd is there at the confrence. As for why he’s finally fallen so low part of it is explalined in the episode: His attempted thefts of the Gizmoduck suit have gotten stale. As the bored nerd puts it he’s tried to steal it four times already, two that we’ve seen but i’m VERY unsuprised he’s tried again off screen. He’s made it PAINFULLY clear he has no ideas of his own, constantly steals them, and the public’s tired of it. As for why it took THIS LONG.. this is sadly realistic. As the throngs of “hardcore gamers” defending Cyberpunk 2077 before it was released can attest to, internet nerd culture can often be toxic, stupid and defend big personalities even when they’ve CLEARLY done something terrible as long as their doing something they like. Beaks was clearly pilfering enough good products and doing enough antics on social media to still be liked and for them to ignore his blanat and douchey crimes and had enough money on him during said crimes to walk away from it.

Problem is.. while people can be awful and defend someone despite them not deserving their loyality, being a douche in public and doing VERY terrible things.. you have to have something to earn that loyalty. Waddle had that at first iwth project ta-dah, Waddleduck, various aps i’m sure... but it’s clear from context by this point Beaks has nothing left and no cult of personality to insulate him. Unlike say Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos he dosen’t HAVE some big product to mask his shadier wealth hoarding actions, he just has rampat supervilian attempts to steal someone else’s power armor and a hired hyjacking to get back at his cold unloving mother. Even when he does supervillian stuff like that.. he can’t be bothered to do it originally. The public will, and very sadly, defend you from terrible stuff, we’ve seen it with people supproting Gina Carano even though she’s actively spreading harmful disnfermation and then had the GALL to compare herself to jews hiding from the nazis, and one journalist trying to defend her had the gall to compare this to the hollywood blacklisting if the 50′s instead of you know, someone who woudln’t shut up about harmful dangerous shit finally getting fired for using teh platform said job provided to spread said harmful dangerous shit about masks and the vacine. But if you have nothing to offer.. thieri just going to forget you and move on. He has nothing to offer so they’ll gladly gravitate to some other jackass who can at leasat given them a neat phone instead of trying to steal a superhero suit for the 8th time. Mark realizes if he can’t steal something soon.. he’ll be forced to go with the Nuclear option: MAKE SOMETHING HIMSELF.

Back at Fenton’s toilet lab, Huey finds Fenton having some cyber makeouts with Gandra... which translates to him kissing the air and Huey feeling evne more awarkd than usual. As for why Huey’s here despite it being late, he got a piece of Gandra’s nanotech during the robbery and figures they can track her. Fenton is.. less than enthused about that for obvious reasons but things soon get worse for our hero as our other hero notices the linkup. And while sidekicks are a good thing in my eyes; They allow young heroes to get proper training, help nuture their talents and prevent assholes from telling them to stop it instead of you know helping them. It’s.. a more common trope than you think let me tell you.

But Fenton’s discovered the Downside is they can show up anytime, want to hunt your criminal girlfriend down not knowing the full story, and if their a genius like you, figure out what your up to with no effort and really want to try it. Seriously Huey’s almost as smart as you Fenton and will no doubt surpass you one day, this was a matter of when not if and you shouldv’e been more prepared. But Huey wants to try, and while Fenton tries deflecting since he only has the gizmoduck helmet and it only works for him now... Manny comes in with a bunch of vr rigs and Huey dives in. Naturally, Huey soon running directly into Gandra dosne’t go great.. and given this is huey his natural instinct is to have a panic attack over his best friend, mentor and the only person besides maybe his family, boyfriend and girlfriend that really gets him possibly betraying him and his entire family. Gandra is of course mad Fenton invited someone in when she didn’t want that, and even more someone whose clearly not happy with her and will likely tell on them because that’s basic hue-man nature.

Fenton explains he didn’t ask for this, so we get easily the best part of the episode: Gandra’s solution to the child having a mental breakdown.. is to summon a weighted blanket and throw it over him, which Huey mistakes for a trap and she explains helps with Anxiety.. and while he struggles.. it really does. Damn gotta get me one of those. Also while his Autisim remains vauge, likely on puprose, Huey having anxiety disorder, while obvious before, is now 100% confirmed.

So now he’s calm, though his Anxiety meter shows he’s still not happy and Gandra doubts he’ll listen, Fenton can at least try and explain: The two have been seeing each other and working on this in secret.. but it has NOTHING to do with FOWL other than Gandra embezzling resoruces to make it happen. Gandra also explains why the project is so important to her and Fenton via her own backstory: Super Science is a dangerous, unrpedictable field and accidents happen a lot, and given people tend to hate what they don’t understand, hence why the X-Men founded their own island after getting spat on one too many times, it often gets an unfair bad wrap.. and she shows she’s had to put up with this her whole life, making an intresting lazer thing as a kid that lost to a volcano and getting glared at for it accidently destroying said volcano. And as an adult due to her work’s dangerous and experimental nature, no one would take a chance on it and like many a super villian she had to experiment on herself. It’s also why she worked for Beaks last season and works with FOWL now, only supervillians with thier grandiose ambitions and lack of care for property damage would fund her.

That’s part, at least, of why this is so very important to her: The Gizmoscap eprovides an invorment where scientests and others can experiment unabated, where the only limit is imagination and those glitches they keep having and any accident can be frozen , dragged and dropped away with no damage. There’s no risk but all the reward and they plan to give it out for free, to let the public use this and let the world grow from it.

It also fills in a lot of Gandra’s character and gives weight to her last apperance: Her working with Beaks, while hypocritical, now has a tragic edge as he was simply the only one who’d fund her work. Her hatred of Fenton’s corprroate job and people like Scrooge.. is that in general billionares like him usually aren’t good people, and even SCrooge has his clear faults, and she assumed he was just making Fenton shut up and do things just to beniefit him and make him more money.. when Scrooge was instaead paying him to do a genuine public service as gizmoduck, and gives him and Gyro a LOT of leway and a pretty bottomless budget and only turns things down if their way too dangeorus for public release. The tragedy here is if she’d gone to Scrooge.. she never would’ve had to work for FOWL. He wouldd’ve genuinely supported her and likely given her a full ride and a spot in the lab of her own, maybe as an intern but probably on her own merit given how game changing her tech is and how he of all people understands a ballance of risk and reward. It turns her from a very hypcoriticla techie who works with the very people she scorns.. to someone who has no choice and desperatley wants out. And this is her way out: something new and bold that’, while not hers alone as Fenton co created it, could change the world and make it safe for people like her to do what they do without ridcule, scorn or risk. It’s everything she could’ve dreamed of and more and once it’s done she promises to leave fowl and as the end of the episode bares out, and as her tone makes clear, she’s genuine about it. She also TRULY does love fenton and vice versa and both are desspearte for Huey to keep a lid on things from Gyro till it’s ready, as she rightfully worries if it gets out unfisnished they’ll just be mocked agian. Naturally being a good soft boy Huey is now entirely on board, because he loves science, and he loves love and this is both. And frankly given what we saw way back in Astro BOYD... .he knows more than anyone what its like to be laughed at and mocked for being diffrent and simply being smart. And even though his family lvoes him.. only one member is as smart as him in the same way, his mom whose still a very diffrent person, and it wasn’t till this season he really got to connect with people his own age like him. And both Violet and BOYD could benifit form this.. everyone could. So he’ll keep it secret for now. This proves problematic as both Gyro AND Mama are there and both have questions. And while Huey ducks gyro, Mama.. interrogates a small child who she’s defintely met and likely knows has anxiety over something as trivial as her son having a secret girlfrined. You.. you guys might’ve wanted to remove this bit given last year. I”m just saying. Does not play well. The most Huey can come up with is a girlfriend in Canada which fenton plays along with... but given neither her nor gyro are really buying into things, though Mama has a check done on seamstresses in canada just in case because this bit was clearly written years ago and not rerecorded for whatever reason, Huey uses little bulb to fake a gizmo emergency so Fenton can get out of there, go home and work on this himself while Huey stalls and lies. But since his best on the fly lie was “a girlfriend in canada”, which is somehow worse than “who’s Dewey”, and while our boy is many things: excellent at opera, a good friend, a wonderful wingman, excellent at setting a mood, a good son, great at panic attacks, a genius, an expert woodchuck, knowledgeble on quantum mechanics.. the list goes on lying is not one of those things and he seems to be in a pickle.

Meanwhile Mark is struggling to create, can relate, because he’s entirely creatively sterile. And that’s probably why out of Scrooge’s foes.. he stopped being a threat. He has no vision. And while true the Beagle BOys also don’t besides steal stuff and maybe get our deed back, that’s by design as Ma knows they can’t take scrooge or gizmoduck so why cry. Stick to petty crimes and stuff he isn’t aware of or dosen’t care about. But Magica and Glomgold do. Magica is cunning, if not subtle, and manipulative and when on full blast horrifyingly powerful, and it took everything Clan McDuck had to stop her at full, and she still nearly won without any powers when she came back, and even if Lena can keep her in check now, she still GOT her powers back and got her new arch enemy to defeat her old one. Glomgold while only slightly more comipitent than beaks, and even then VERY slightly, he at least has vision. His schemes are entirely stupid.. but he dosen’t stop coming up with them. They may be his first draft but damn if they aren’t entertaining and damn if one or two haven’t WORKED. Simply stealing a few cents from scrooge and gaslighting him in a devil costume NEARLY drove him insane and cost him his fortune. Beaks.. has no ideas. He has ambiation.. but it’s to steal the same tech that even if he got it, he woudln’t know what to do with. The ONLY time he’s been a full on threat has been using someone else’s scheme, that Gandra clearly came up with and STILL required piggybacking on the gizmo suit. He has nothing and while it was fine for a while.. eventually h’es left iwth nothing. Glomgold at least has money, magica at least has power... Beaks HAD both.. but had no idea what to properly do with it and now is on his last legs. Even his idea for a coffee cups with aps is taken because of course “even the dumbest ideas are taken”, this is america. Making dumb shit for rich morons is our primary export. But he sees the fleeing fenton, has a breakdown and declares FINE if that’s what fate wants i’ll steal the armor I’LL STEAL THE ARMOR ALL DAY.

So Fenton heads home to recharge in both senses of the word, and to tell Gandra the timetable’s moved and Huey can hold them only so long. And he seems to be wrong as Huey confidently prepares to answer their questions.. but is seemingly thrown when we get the real reason Mama is so upset: She’s just worried and still a bit hurt from Fenton not feeling he could tell her he was gizmoduck and it breaks her heart that her son feels he has to hide from her again. However while this is genuinely sad and emotional.. the reason he’s thrown is it’s NOT huey, but Louie, whose a bit miffed as he DIDN’T know Fenton was Gizmoduck, and can’t properly bullshit without full info. it’s also really nice that bit FINALLY came up as the rest of the four main kids have known for a while now. But Huey convincnes him to do it.. for 6 months allowance. Frankly the real shocker here is that they actually GET an allowance.

However Mama.. is again a cop. One who REALLY needs to rethink her ethics.. but a cop, and the best one on the force, and thus has easily guessed this is not Huey, and given she’s probably ran into his schemes before, figures out which one he’d bring in to buffer for him and easily gets rid of Louie by asking him to tur informant on himself, since the REAL Huey would under pressure and Louie instead flees in terror not wanting to get arrested and leaves both the lab and the episode. Though I’m pretty sure i know where he went

So yeah things are not great and only get worse, as Mark breaks into fentons house via the open window and upon finding out abotu the Gizmoscape naturally plans to hack into it and take it for himself. Before he does Fenton talks to Gandra and admits they may have to let other people in and we get another reason: She’s worried she’s not good enough. He reassures her.. and this tender moment is interupted by Beaks who imprisons them, hyjacks fenton’s security system aka a gizmo armor, and while still a creatively sterile douche, does have a decent if horrifically scummy way to profit all of this: use the open coloabreation concept to get the legal right to steal all this and say it’s his.

Fenton bemaons the fact that Gandra was right, one bad apple spoiled the bunch and unveling it too qiuckly would’ve gone bad as she feared.. but Gandra’s grown and realizes Fenton was also right, and that they needed more people. While the wrong people can ruin a project, collaboration can help, finding perspectives you didn’t see and helping fine tune ideas. Huey, whose collapsed at Fenton’s due to the exustion of lying, wakes up to find Beaks crimes and being unable to just unplug him, as while Beaks is VERY dumb, even he’s not THAT stupid. But Fenton gets out an SOS over morse to tell everyone So Huey does.. and the calvary arrives, as Huey enters the Gizmoscape with Mama and Gyro. And while Mama is pleased to realize she’s right about the girlfirend thing they don’t really have time for that, so once Huey explains the basic concept, he uses it himself to give himself GIZMO ARMOR. AT LAST.

He also has extra long legs, because of course, just.. of course. Naturally Beaks steals it, and everyone else takes a stab at their own gizmotech armor: Mama daawns a stunning police themed one, Gyro goes for a bulb mecha based on the giant version of little bulb from the great dime chase, an idea brought up by LB, and Gandra goes for a sleek tron esque nanotech number. Beaks take sa bit from each and our heroes wonder how to beat him.. but Fenton realizes that’s simple: Beaks can only copy and steal... they can create. And Gandra uses this against him by pointing that out so he drops his super armor.. to look like Andross from Starfox.. which shows that EVEN when trying to come up with a cool final boss form... Beaks has to steal from something. The rest of the Gizmo Corps, my name for them I own that, Gizmo Legion would also be good, after Iron Man’s iron Legion, suit back up and kick beaks ass as a team. I smell second spinoff.. or first if darkwing ends up hyjacked by Seth Rogen.. who I have nothing agianst he’s just not the one who put in the work for a reboot.

So our heroes win in an awesome sequence, seirously spinoff and Beaks is knocked the fuck out and presumibly will FINALLY go to jail for good to this as he can get away from a lot but directly breaking into an officer’s house and stalking her son, they can omit the gizmopart and even if Fenton went public.. no one would care and he and Mama can take care of htemselves, as can Huey, Gyro, Gandra and Manny, so it’s not like anyones in danger. Beaks is well and truly defeated: he has no idea, an imminet jail sentence, and no one to back him up. Fenton’s finally got the little boil off his back

So now the big fight is over, Gyro can actually process the Gizmoscape.. and is genuinely impressed.. he tries to hidei t because of course he does.. but it’s clear for someone who himself has constnatly been called crazy and had his ideas blow up.. this is paradise to him. a place where he won’t be judged and has unlimtied funds to experiment with his ideas without having to get yelled at when they destroy a city block or nearly choked to death by his own robot son, daughter or nonbinary person. He also easily fixes the problem and proves Fenton right for wanting to include him, as he points out they hadn’t been DELETING anything, simply downsizing it and it naturally caused stress on the server. Fenton talks about Gandra and defneeds her to Mama.. whose just happy he’s happya nd someone can take her son. Alls well that ends well right.

Final Thoughts: So this was a... wait.. why are we cutting back to fowl.. why is bradford there.

Yeah turns out megalmanoical diabolical msterminds kinda monitor their employees so he knew she intended to quit and stole resources, and while she plans to leave, he simply calls in a bunch of eggheads who overwhelm her with sheer numbers and has her fined two weeks pay.. and taken to the lost library to indefintely lock her up. What’s that she asks “You have your secrets, I have mine”

So yeah a bit of a downer ending

Actual Final Thoughts:

This was an excellent capper to Fenton’s character arc. While the Gandra relationsihp is a bit rushed the rest is a masterful capper to his character arc: This episode shows off how he’s changed from EVERY one of his previous three focus episodes, while a major part of astro boyd and how he got his docterate it dosne’t quite contribute to his character arc, and grown from them: From beware the buddy system! he’s learned to colaberate properly and taken his desire to WORK with other people, like he always did with Gyro but was constnatly shut out, and found a proper and brilliant way to that allows people like him, gyro, gandra and huey to really express themselvs. He’s grown from a niave rookie trusting the wrong people in who is gizmoduck.. to someone whose STILL fully trusting despite constant betryals, but now knows who to trust, and an experinced hero who once freed easily counters his nemisis. And finally from Dangerous Chemistry, he’s finally got a ballance in his life: inastead of running from gizmo or treating his alter ego as something else.. he’s found a way to use the gizmotech for science, and FINALLY found his world changing invention one so good and so practical even his mentor, despite trying to walk it back, is genuinely proud of him and genuinely in awe.

Every step lead to his happy ending.. well okay his girlfriend still needs to be freed from her insane ex-boss, but that’s just a few episodes away. Fenton has everything he wanted when he started: his boss finally respects him and treats him as an equal, his mom not only knows who he is but is proud and supportive of him, he has a loving partner creatively and romantically.. and a best friend who while a good two decades younger, is there for him and who he genuinely apologizes too for putting so much on him. LIke all the endings so far this season.. it feels like a throughly satisfying end to the journey we’ve been following. This fits in nicely with Penny realizing earth could be her home and that she dosen’t have to constnatly fight to have a purpose, Lena finally accepting magic instead of running from it and thus gaining peace of mind and power to stop her former abuser from hurting anyone else, Goldie finally accepting how much she cars about Scrooge and his family and that she CAN change... all of this, except penny obviously has been built up through three seasons and while I DEFINTLY could see frank and matt returning to all of them.. i’ts nice to get some closure. It feelsd earned and impressive. The episode is also.. REALLY fucking funny, from the weighted blanket gag to Beaks in general, to Huey yelling at fenton about Mama “She somehow broke Louie!”. It’s a masterful and throughly satisfying end to Fenton’s story. And again we’ll likely see him in the finale but character arc wise.. its a good place to end his.

Next Week: FINALLY, AFTER 10,000 YEARS, IT’S THE TAILSPIN EPISODE. OWEEOOO, OWEEHHHH.

Tommorow: We return to the noiry furry world of John Blacksad as everyone’s favorite panther detective battles white supremacists to find a missing girl and we’re introduced to your faviorite sidekick and mine Weekly.

Later on this week: The Lena retrospective continues with Jaw$, we celebrate Tex Avery’s birthday, and I tackle the awful original tom and jerry movie.

So if any of that tickles your fancy see you at the next rainbow

#ducktales #beaks in the shell!#beaks in the shell #fenton crackshell cabrera #gandra dee #huey duck #mark beaks #gyro gearloose #mama cabrera #little bulb #manny the headless manhorse #gizmoduck #ducktales spoilers

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Della Arc Reviews: The Great Dime Chase!

Welcome back all you happy people, to my look at the series first arc! I covered the pilot last week and this week i’m going full speed ahead with two more review for this arc, one more for the Lena arc all leading up to BOTH finsihing up next week for DUCK WEEK, my huge celebration of the final episode of Ducktales 2017. So with all that in mind when we last left off the kids moved in, webby gained friends, Donald and Scrooge made the first steps to patching up.. and Dewey found out his mom was also invovled with their adventures setting this arc off.

This is also where the airing order reshuffling started as this episode was pushed up by two replacing impossible summit as the third episode... and where said order reshuffling for both this arc and the Lena arc really bit Disney in the ass by giving fans the wrong idea about the series pacing. See the original idea was to have a few episodes as a buffer, since this arc itself is only about 5 episodes long, so the pacing would be more spread out and fans while likely getting impatient for the della mystery to be resolved, would expect it to take about that long after a while. The same was clearly planned for the Lena arc.

The problem is Disney didn’t give one shit about proper airing order, story pacing or any of that at the time despite their most popular show at said time having the same pacing structure and having been aired in the right order. So as a result and as most of you already know, season 1′s structure was a mess: The globetrotting adventure episodes were off ballance with ones set in Duckburg itself, Scrooge sometimes felt like a supporitng character in the first half due to his two focus episodes being crunched to the back for holidays... it was bad. And it was worst here as by having both the Della and Lena arcs progress pretty quickly in the first 6.. it was thus jarring and grating that there was zero progress for either in the rest of the first half, and they had to move the spear of selene up a few episodes when they came back just to make up for it.. which still messed with pacing as that arc wouldn’t be picked up until the final three episodes solving nothing. This made fans blame the creators for sloppy pacing and for taking too long to get to the Della thing when they’d done nothing wrong and HAD staggered it out. It wasn’t till Frank later revealed the order was a bit bungled we got the message and until a few months into the series being on Disney Plus we got a proper order for the series. And again, the arc has pacing issues we’ll get to without this.. but they were made so much work by Disney blatantly disrespecting and ingoring their creative team.

I will give credit where it’s due though: Disney learned from it. While Season 2 had a few episodes shuffled around, this time it was due to trying out that binge airing strategy they were doing to get shows on Disney Plus faster, airing DuckBombs (Woo-Ooo!) frequently, so they wanted the airing to flow properly with that without screwing up the flow fo the season more than they absolutely had to. They were being careful and delberate this time not to make the same mistake and with season 3, they simply havent’ shuffled the airing order at all> The only two episodes aired out of order were holiday episodes purposefully made to air at the right time and detached from the season as a whole. This stretches to other shows too: Amphibia is two seasons in and Owl House got through it’s whole season with at worst minimal changes to the airing lineup and the arcs all being properly spaced and aired as intended. I give Disney a lot of shit, rightfully so, but I will give them all the credit when they learn from their mistakes and they REALLY did here, learning to trust their creators to know when to actually make an episode and simply having them set aside holiday episodes if they want one.

Otherwise not a lot of lead in for this one: It introduces a bunch of the supporting cast, reintroduces the board in full, and in general is a pretty good episode. Find out why under the cut.

We open with the introduction of the shows go to Show Within a Show Ottoman Empire. And what I’d forgotten was Louie wasn’t always into it but there’s a subtle arc to it: he gets into it, slowly obesses over it, by the end of the season he’s got his brothers into it, it’s not a huge thing but it’s a little detail I can’t help but enjoy a hell of a lot. But him not liking it is part of a larger problem Scrooge has picked up on: Louie’s laziness has reached godlike new levels: he’s opened about 7 cans of PEP! and only taken a sip from each, won’t change the channel because the remote, which is right next to him and would only take him hopping slightly to the left to get to it or incnching over a bit is “too far”. Scrooge finally blows up at the sight when Louie tosses his phone away for not being charged and assumes he can get another one because “We’re rich”. Scrooge corrects him “I”m rich!” and then drags him off by the hoodie with him to the office so he’ll learn the value of a hard day’s work. And really.. the scene is a good showcase for Scrooge: Louie is acting like the embodiment of all deadbeats and Scrooge is still VERY patient with the boy until it’s very clear he needs a wakeup call. Given Scrooge has a temper on the best of occasions it really shows he’s trying with the boys, and only really snapped when it was clear Louie NEEDED someone to snap at him and snap him out of his bullshit.

Meanwhile Dewey sneaks into Webby’s room to read her secret file on the McDuck family only to LITERALLY be caught red handed as she put glitter on her outside.. because it looks pretty. And as a security measure. Given she lives with a trained spy who likely has riffled through her stuff at least once, or would at least solely try to check her files just to make sure their secure, and lives in a place that gets broken into or nearly blown up, both by Glomgold, on a regular basis, i’d expect no less. But she also points out the obvious once he explains he’s looking for information on his family: He could’ve just asked. As we saw back in Woo-ooo! like yours truly webby will gladly go on about things she’s obsessed about at the drop of a hat and has likely been dying for someone to share her vast conspiracy board with. As for why he didn’t do the obvious, keep in mind he doesn’t know Webby well this point, so he dosen’t know what questions he asked might set her off and also doesn’t know WHY his uncles don’t talk about her, so he’s being cautious and it’s a nice foreshadowing for his secret keeping throughout the arc.. and how it’s an inherently dumb and selfish idea that only slows down his investigation.

So naturally given the sequel hook at the end of the pilot, he asks about Della. And after drawing the curtains and making sure Scrooge isn’t around to listen Webby asks what HE knows. Naturally given this is a whole story arc he only knows what she looks like from an old photo of her dunking donald’s head in his birthday cake, and Webby.. knows even less. No one talks about Della and the last time anyone did, a mailmain brought some junk mail with her name on it, Scrooge bought out the post office and they never saw that mail man again. Webby naturally thinks Scrooge murdered him... and while I don’t think he went THAT far, I pity that poor shcmoe and whatever ice floe he’s been banished to. And not a small villiage in the arctic mind you like an actual ice floe scrooge left him on with a lifetimes suply of beans.

This also admittedly answers a question i’ve been griping about for some time that turns out had a logical answer: I thought he’d somehow wiped her out from public record and the internet and then magically put her back. I was wrong and simply hadn’t rewatched this episode and connected the dots. He likely didn’t do.. any of that, but the triplets likely never thought to internet search her with Donald because as far as they knew Donald was an average person, and thus their mom would be too and looking her up wouldn’t tell her anything about them. It still leaves the plot hole of how they knew about Scrooge and not the Della search, I have no answer for that one, but hey sometimes these things happen and it’s a good enough show I can ignore it. Point is they had no reason to research her before then and Donald likely went out of his way to hide anything about her when they visited places. Likewise Scrooge was likely so miserable and consumed with his search, and once that was called off his failure, he likely pulled every archive and artifact for his own personal collection to pour over them in sadness and loss and simply put most of it back into the public once the boys helped him heal by the end of the season and the truth was out there. Likewise while the internet info was likely there after this episode too Dewey, as foolish as he can be, likely wasn’t stupid enough to look up his mom’s name on his uncle’s wifi. While Scrooge likely isn’t tech savy, given how paranoid he is and how much of a sore spot this is, it’s not a stretch to have him ask gyro to monitor his wifi for certain key words. So yeah i’ll admit when I was wrong and there was a logical explanation, if still with some holes, all along.

Anyways Webby has one place she hasnt’ been able to get into that might have the answers: Scrooge’s Personal Archives. And as it turns out, both parties are heading to the bin: Scrooge since, much like the comics, that’s where his office is, and Webby and Dewey for the same reason The bin being Scrooge’s buisness center, where his office is where he has meetings where a lot of his emoployees are is very accurate to the comics, as while the layout was never entirely consient apart from “Scrooge’s office is the only way in and out of the bin itself” and said office having a very consistent and iconic look that the series didn’t change. But as we’ll see they added two extra parts to it that in the comics scrooge would Balk at the expense of but this scrooge, whiel still probably not happy about the extra money, knows are vitally necessary.

Speaking of which the plot splits in two pretty cleanly once we actually get to the bin: Scrooge has no real issue with the kids going to the archives and no glimmer of their real intention, so the plots don't’ meet up again outside of when Louie’s literally crashes into Dewey and Webby’s for a second. There’s some thematic connections, cutaways and an intercut montage, but nothing outside of that. So as is tradition for me i’m covering them seperatly and since it’s both the reason why i’m covering this episode and our B-Plot, let’s start with the archives Webby and Dewey in The Mad Archivist of Scrooge McDuck!

Webby and Dewey head to the archive where we meet Quackfaster. In the comics she’s scrooges long suffering secretary, emphasis on suffering. He barely pays her, takes expenses out of her paycheck and she generally seems once minute away from a nervous breakdown at any given time. What i’m saying is the character and the “gag” have not aged well in any way shape or form so instead here she was revamped. Frank and Matt leaned on Scrooge’s love for adventure more than his greed at first, and had his thrill-seeking be his vice more. It does make sense as greed isn’t nearly as good as it was to people in the 40′s and especially the 80′s, but they eventually clearly realized they made it a bit too subtle, as it’s still an iconic part of the character and played it up a bit more in seasons 2 and 3, to the point two of his worst moments in backstory, both revealed in season 3, come from his greed. They found a nice ballance and I do think having his adventuring also be a vice was a nice change of pace. As such, they came up with the idea that he’d hire people who like him are exceptionally talented but also a bit reckless and unhinged. The kind of people most employers would unfairly shut the door on but Scrooge sees their true talent and worth and treats them with the respect they deserve. People who in most other works would be super villains, but here are kept from that by being given honest jobs for their talents and a boss who has no intention of ripping them off or undermining them. IT’s a great concept and I wish we’d saw more than two people hired with that in mind, but the two we got are great.

So with all this Quackfaster was reinvented with this idea in mind to someone entirely different but infinitely more entertaining: She’s now a ham of the highest order, not literally, and slightly unballanced. She also refuses to help Dewey until he completes some challenges for her, sorting out a code in the dewey decimel system

And in sorting the books to get to know the archives. Webby is all for it naturally as this is a dream for her: she’s likely tried to access the place for years and couldn’t as a non-relative, something Scrooge hopefully relaxes in the future, so a giant pile of books about adventuring, Scrooge (including an apparently 7 volumes on his favorite smells one of which Webby gives a happy “I knew it” upon finding out it was fresh baked cookies), and places he’s been, including a sly nod to Plain Awful. This is a hallmark of the show making smaller nods to the past incarnations without going into them or doing those adventures again and while I was at first disappointed those tales already happened in some form, I now get they simply wanted to tell NEW ONES, and were a big as fan of the olds ones as most of you reading this and myself. Though between you and me I was never a big fan of the square eggs story. Good idea just a weird and not all that funny execution.

Dewey however has the patience of a coked up ferret who also took some shrooms and being Dewey tries simply demanding she tell him. Naturally yelling at the weird hammy lady intrusted to guard the private library of someone whose a certified badass.. is not a smart or correct move and Quackfaster decides if they can’t respect the archives they’ll become PART OF THE ARCHIVES and pulls out a crescent shaped sword to apparently murder them.

So a chase ensues with the two trying to simply throw books at her, escape her and only narrowly doing so for a minute when Louie pops up being chased by a giant robot made by a smaller robot using a giant change machine. I love this show.

Eventually their backed into a corner while Dewey defiantly demands info on his mom. And his impatience and anger is understandable: this is the first time in his ten or so year old life he’s had ANY chance of learning anything on her.. and he’s having to do various fetch quests. While he could use some tact, may not get him stabbed so much, his viewpoint is understandable.

Thankfully it turns out Quackfaster was just doing a Mr.Miaygi and secretly testing them, having chased them to the book Dewey wanted, and said code she had them find earlier is the login for the vault. Granted it also has them put away some books (”How much of this is us just doing your job for you?” “About fiffttty perceeennnt”), but she works for scrooge. While he thankfully pays her a living wage here he still can’t be paying her much. Still they find their way to a secret vault and Dewey gets stabbed a bit to verify he is a mcduck.. and let into Scrooge’s secret room, full of treasures Della likely gathered. As I said, he DID put them aside somewhere, and likely just wanted them to cry over and donald didn’t fight it since the last thing he wanted was the boys learning their legacy. D

The telling part here though, despite accusations later.. is that Dewey’s first instinct upon finding this is to tell his brothers. Keep in mind Dewey’s all consuming need for attention and validiation, all of which he could possibly get and only have to share with Webby. He has every selfish reason for not telling them.. but he wants to. He knows they deserve to learn to. The only wrinkle is webby finding a note saying “Scrooge i’m taking the spear of selene, i’m sorry”. He decides to hide it for their sake right then and there. But while part of this as we’ll get into later in the week is him simply being afraid of what he’ll find personally.. it’s fair to NOT want to tell them. To try and protect them from the horrible truth whatever it may be. He has no way of knowing the betryal was nonexistant here and neither did we. It’s not the right course of action, awful truth or no they deserved to know too and both would say as much later, she’s their mom: good person or bad they know.. but like his uncles he’s not hiding this out of malice but because the truth might genuinely hurt them.. and as we’ll learn.. it will.. oh boy will it ever. But more on that next week and more on the arc itself later this week. What about the rest of the episode?

Louie in The Great Dime Chase! and Scrooge in The Boardroom Full of Heartless Assholes!

Winding back a few hours, Scrooge drags Louie up to his office, where the boy is genuinely impressed.. before naturally trying to take a swim in the money while Scrooge tries to tell him about his number one dime. Scrooge stops him before head injury occurs explaining that yes, even the money thing requires proper training: Louie would’ve just cracked his skull open and this would’ve either gotten really dark really fast or turned into a horrifying and hilarious child death version of weekend at bernies. It’s what Louie would’ve wanted. Scrooge can do it because he’s built up the muscle and resistance over time, strong enough and skilled enough to travel through the solid metal and dive into it. It’s a nice nod to life and times: While Scrooge didn’t necesarily train to swim in money, he bathed in it at first and when he needed to during an adventure discovered he could swim through it going from one barrel of his cash to another. So tweaking that slightly to an earned skill, and one Louie will have leanred by the end of the season, was a billiant move..and a way of silencing all those head injury jokes.

But their soon interrupted by the board, who Scrooge dosen’t recall having a meeting with and likely pull this kind of shit all the time when they can get Scrooge. It makes even more sense after the Della reveal, as he likely has to be forced into dealing with the men who, while as far as he knew were trying to help him, still pulled him away from Della.. and in one case, had a shit eating grin about it. Seriously Bradford you smirked evilly about your nemesis not being able to rescue his daughter how do you NOT get that your the bad guy?

The meeting ends up being boring with Louie asleep and Scrooge almost there, as let’s face it most board meetings probably are, until Gyro barges in! It’s our first apperance of 2017 Gyro and a lot of people were upset by how much more of an ass he was. Me, while I like the kind and gentle original, like the more mad sciency version here and feel Jim Rash did a good job with it, and I only really hate it when he’s around Fenton, and the show eventually addressed how fucked up that was in Season 3 after downplaying it in Season 2 by having them barely interact and have Gyro genuienly show some pride. Otherwise I like my insane prideful version even if I get why some don’t like it as it is nothing like the comics, but as we see with Donald not being a lot like the comics version isn’t a bad thing.

IT’s one hell of a character establishing moment, as he barges in, is rude to everyone and has to read cue cards to properly intro his latest invention Little Bulb, Gyro’s most iconic invention whose made here to help people not do work. The Board is skeptical though as most of Gyro’s inventions have turned evil, a nice nod to the fact that most of Gyro’s robots in the original series, who are in fact on a list of previous inventions.. turned evil and tried to kill people. IT also shows his warmer side as he insists they aren’t evil just misunderstood, or at least half were anyway, and tries to cover for Little Bulb shaking his fist at them and doing a throat slitting gesture... which while Bradford plays dumb about what that means.. he’s worked in organized Villainy for at least 55 years. He knows what that gesture means. It’s Heron’s favorite. And even if he didn’t he’s also worked with Scrooge for around 30. It’s also Scrooge’s favorite. So it’s rejected though Scrooge encourages Gyro who vows they’ll understand one day and they’ll all pay. Really should save that for outside.

Scrooge vouches for the board to Louie who questions such a slam dunk, pointing out he trusts their judgment.. mostly because he dosen’t know they’ve been embezzling from him to fund an evil spy orginzation the whole time but still, he usually trusts them. He would’ve found a way to fire them if he didn’t on the Della thing. But sometimes they overstep and they undermine that statment by suggesting cuts to the Bin’s budget, starting with Magical defenses “Do you know how many curses I have on my head?”. And props to the creators as they apparnetly had the whole Bombie idea in mind this far back, and as Bradford later shows towards the end of next season when he lures Louie into cutting it, he KNOWS where that money goes. He just was trying to feign ignorance to get Scrooge killed if he could. Clever bastard.

So Louie goes to get a drink, and naturally scrooge’s drink machine in his office not only charges but requires an extra ten cents. Louie assumes the dime in his office is an emergency Dime only to walk in on Scrooge giving the full story. As you all likely know, it’s his number one dime, with the origin taken straight from life and times: He was a poor shoe shine, and he worked hard to clean off a ditchdigger’s muddy boots, working himself to the bone.. only to get an American dime which inspired him both to work harder and smarter than anyone and to go to America to seek his fourtune. There’s some extra steps in the original material, and another bit that the show would also adapt later that we’ll get to next week, but point is it’s his symbol of all his hard work.. that Louie just sent into the vending machine. So said great chase insures as Louie follows the dime, as it’s emptied from the vending machine.. by a gull janitor we only see this season. And he’s a really likeable guy I wish we’d learned more. He then faces his and Charles Xavier’s greatest enemy THE STAIRS. There’s a runner about Louie having to constnatly run up and down the massive amount of stairs the bin has as someone else takes the elevator and by the climax it’s been taken out entirely. It’s pretty great. So Louie’s seemingly screwed and instead looks up how to pick a lock on YouTube.. no really. That’s what he does. Frank outright mentioned this in an interview, pointing out they wanted the kids to act like a kid would.. and props to him that’s what a kid would do. Hell that’s what I would do if I were locked out of a place and time was of the essence. Either that or look up a step by step instruction on google. He then runs into Gyro though, and gets the idea to use LIttle Bulb, convinces Gyro he has money and would like to invest and just needs to borrow the little guy and Gyro is happy to agree to it.

Naturally though, Louie’s laziness and a volatile machine who only likes one people just like his daddy, do not mix and Louie leaves sorting the coins to it while he watches Ottoman Empire, actually getting really sucked into it. IN fairness he did start with the Glomgold episode. Little Bulb meanwhile shows just how awesome he is by turning himself into a giant coni sorting mech by rewiring and reconfiguring the coin sorter.. and naturally given who made hi going mad with power. So while he did get the dime out.. he’s not horrifyingly obessed with chasing it and the real great dime chase begins.

Back at the meeting Scrooge continues to debate the Buzzards who now want to cut staff, both of whom Scrooge rightfully defends. While Gyro is a bit unhinged, his inventions have likely made the company millions and saved them billions, and while Quackfaster is the same as we just saw, there’s a method to her madness and her laziness. And given Quackfaster works two additional jobs to afford a nice retirement, it’s clear that while he pays them decently he’s likely still not paying them gobs. With the power of hindsight i’ts very clear Bradford just wants to try if he can to eliminate two sources of chaos and backup for Scrooge and when Scrooge sarcastically suggests just getting rid of the bin, Bradford goes with it with a shit eating grin, but it’s very clear by that and Scrooge’s frustration this is a non starter, and Bradford’s likely doing it just because he frankly knows it’ll piss Scrooge off.

So Louie runs for it working harder than he has in his whole life, with Gyro eventually trying to talk little bulb down, to no avail.. though we do get a nice moment of it registering him as father. Awwww. So the chase naturally eventually leads to the bin and Louie stuck in it, slowly swimming across, until Gyro gets to LIl Bulb, and realizes he’s in the wrong time of wattage and has literally gone mad with power and puts him back in his tiny old body fixing the problem. Gyro also crashed in with the bulb mech earlier, and while it disproves Scrooge’s point he’s stable.. he simply rolls with it and points out his staff is dangerously insane, and would likely swear vengeance on the Board if they were fired. And while he dosen’t say this part of it directly given Scrooge treats BOTH Quackfaster and Gyro exceptionally well, he knows they’ll know EXACTLY whose idea it was.. probably even tell them. So the board agrees to keep things as is to not die horribly as supervillains or not they have limits.

So the day is one, Louie finds the dime, replaces it and passes out with Scrooge none the wiser. it also turns out the Dime isn’t even the real deal, to Louie’s frustration. But Scrooge is proud he clearly worked hard, and gives him the fake dime as his own number one dime, a nice setup for their bond and a nice showing that Louie really has the potential to be as rich as his uncle one day, and it’s clear by this setup there was a lot of potential here for an arc.. which is why we got one. More on that some other time. Louie accidently spends it while Gyro ends realizing if he put himself int he robot it wouldn’t go mad with power.. and thus Project Blatherskite is born. And we all know where this is going.

Final Thoughts: All in all a decent episode. It has great pacing, some excellent world building, and some really good gags. While the series would do better episodes as it went, for an early episode helping set things up including Louie’s charcter arc, Gyro, Gizmoduck and the board as proper characters, it’s still very good and one of the series early standouts.

Next Time on Della: Donald is forced to confront his adventuring past when he runs into his old sorta friend THE INCREDIBLE STORKULES, Scrooge is forced into games of the gods by their resident Douchebag Zeus, and Dewey is forced to confront his own fear of whatever it is his mom did. Confront this review later this week.

Next Time on This Blog: It’s Lena’s Dark Night of the Soul as she and Webby head into “The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck!”

If you liked this review share it, feel free to commission your own and feel free to join my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even a buck a month helps, and helps me reach my stretch goals, the current one being just 5 dollars away, and netting you reviews of the super Ducktales arc of Ducktales and a Darkwing Duck Review every month. See you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #the great dime chase #louie duck #gyro gearloose #emily quackfaster #scrooge mcduck #dewey duck #webby vanderquack #bradford buzzard #F.o.w.l.#reviews #animation #disney channel #launchpad mcquack #little bulb

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Shangri-La-Di-Da and Sheldgoose Squaredance Reviews: The Last Ride (Comissoned by WeirdKev27)

SALUDOS AMGIOS.. THIS IS IT! The finale review of my retrospective on the Three Caballeros THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. It’s the final ride. While there will be, as i’ve said the last few time, a little epilogue to celebrate finishing this, as clocking in at 15 reviews, one best of list coming next week and covering a film, two sizeable comic book stories, and 18 episodes of television, this has been one of my largest projects and one of my proudest. But there will be time to look back next week. For now i’m amped up, excited about this series and excited to finish. So after the cut join me for one last full ride as our heroes face their final hour!

Shangri-La-De-Da: Our penultimate adventure begins with the Cabs returning home after training with King Arthur, where they apparently got a years worth of training in a day.. because apparently Camelot is one giant hyperbolic time chamber. But the training’s paid off as our heroes are now at their most skilled and most powerful: As a result Jose skifully and perfectly cuts an orange in seconds, Panchito ropes an apple from a nearbye stand (and the owner’s really cool about it since Panchito gives him the money for it “Thanks magic rope!”) and Donald.. breaks everything but in a really impressive ways. Our heroes are at their best and ready to take on Feldrake when the time comes, while Ari and the Bear.. are hiding what happened last episode with the girls investigating. Hey can’t win em all. Meanwhile Sheldrake is leading Sheldgoose into the Manor.. after a few goofs on him running into the barrier because he’s a petty asshole. They decsend into the depths bellow leaving Leopold to guard.

Back at the Cabana Donald just wants one more thing... Daisy.

I’ve.. gone on about why he shouldn’t do this last time. He deserves better. Xandra is right there and while she’s treated him shabbily from time to time. it’s more human error versus... everything with Daisy just everything. This plot point has been nothing but pain and suffering for me and it’s not changing that track record in these last two episodes, though thankfully it’s barely in the finale, so my own track record of screaming about daisy in text form every time she shows up will also remain in tact. He does this because Xandra offered them a vacation so he won’t be distracted.. again why isn’t she the love intrest? I dunno maybe sh’es more into Jose. And Daisy sucks on arrival, phrasing, as her response to Donald’s call wasn’t to just.. tell him no but to go to his place to clearly tell him no to his place saying “Let’s recap, you abandoned me in a bad part of town, spent our date in the bathroom all night in a hula skirt, then brainwashed my nieces into helping you trick me with a dummy”. Okay Daisy, you want to recap, you insufferable, pompus, selfish, self absorbed, overly demanding, overly haughty, golddigging rose colored shrew?

Let’s fucking recap: He left you in a bad part of town because he got FIRED from his job and found out his house burned down, something you REFUSED to let him explain. You found out about this and then proceded to berate him over dinner, saying he couldn’t possibly help people. While he did spend a while in the bathroom with a hula skirt nad never explained it the ONE point you have.. he LEFT to go help his friends, with you once again leaving instead of letting him come back and explain later or leaving but going to his place to hash this out or just dump him. THEN, something you CAREFULLY omitted, you moved on which is fine.. as a way to make him jealous, bringing the guy to his door to rub his beak in your new relationship with not a hint of shame,a nd ran off whie he was fighting for his life clearly. Now seeing things were more complicated, you asked NO follow up questions, imposed a date on him and while he did lie your nieces WERE NOT FUCKING BRAINWASHED. This was of their own free will you unbleivible she demon. You are so up your own ass you can’t even see the obvious. And then you came here JUST to say all this and be mean to Donald one more time. While Donald shoudln’t of called you up it’s not because of all that it’s because your a heartlress, selfish, shrivled husk of a person. You care about NO ONE but yourself, and that includes Donald. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

So Xandra just zaps them away and says she’s perfect for Donald.

Donald and Daisy end up in the himlayas.. cue the music.

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Why isn’t this game on Switch? Questions for later. Point is our heroes find a cave to duck in and a yeti.. who after clearing their throat reveals Xandra left them at the entrance for Shangri-La, and the inside is intorduced.. with a very lackluster musical number. A weak note for the songs to go out on but not bad, though Donald is pissed off because that’s his schtick here.. though credit where it’s do: Since I didn’t know everything and hadn’t finished it turns out his anger was delebrate.. but we’ll get to that and why it dosen’t work in a moment. Back at the Cabana the boys fence with bread before Panchito gets a flash as Sheldgoose puts the first amulet into..some kind of melting pool... and the girls confirm what happened seconds later. Feldrake has the amulets, which were used to seal him last time as revealed in last episode, and is melting them into his own power. The final battle is nigh! So Xandra goes to fetch Donald.. and comes back as she CAN’T. Donald and Daisy signed a contract and they can’t leave till ALL their problems are solved. And given Donald is carried off after his anger issues not only are evident when, given a pillow representing his frustratoins he destroys it, but he DENIES having anger issues, he’s dragged off to some extreme thereapy.. i.e. a Self Reflecting reflecting pool that manifests his anger as a giant, sausgey, pissed off version of himself and he reacts as you’d expect and gets flattned. Back at the Cabana, Xandra breaks the bad news.. and whie Jose TRIES to reassure them, his amulet is next to go so he gets a flash of it being destroyed and our heroes now have to scramble to take on Sheldgoose.. WITHOUT Donald. Back at donald’s inner hulk.. man I love this fucking job, Donald is pounding away until his own flash breaks things for a moment.. and sends him into his own head. We’re then treated to an acid sequece, an homage to Donald’s surreal reverire from the original movie that while not as wild, is still gloriously bizzare. Donald rencounters the teapot ghost thing that’s apparently part of his psyche from the first episode that gets him to consider why his life is like this and he goes through a lot of moments of the first episodes.. conviently eddting out daisy’s questionable behavior and the fact some things had actual catalysits. See the idea of Donald FACING his anger issues and growing from them is fine. But this has two faults. One, it assuems you can just.. cure anger issues. You can’t. Anger is a normal emotion and as someone with them I hope to generally work thorugh mine with a therapist.. but I know they just don’t magically go away and therapy is a process and your mental issues are lifelong things you have to grapple away. It’s not the MOST insulting treatment of emtoinal issues i’ve seen, as Total Drama you know had someone with MPD cured with a fucking button press, but it’s not great. And the second is this was poorly set up. Donald was an angry asshole all series yes and it was an issue.. but it wasn’t really FRAMED as a character arc. Just Donald being donald. So while having that be the source of his issues is a good idea for a character arc for im it comes off sloppy and forced because it’s been treated more like a joke or a character trait and less like a SERIOUS issue or the problem with him and Daisy. Hell they put the whole Dapper duck thing in there when he was fine that episode and is rightfully angry about that if at the wrong person. This whole thing just feels rushed, forced and unsatsifying and is a hsame for such a good idea

The payoff is good though, as when Donald awakens and let’s his anger wash away.. he just stands as the anger donald tries to beat the crap out of him.. but can’t do anything to him since he’s calm. He’s fine, and he’s released.. and his shock collar is disabled. Good quick gag. Meanwhile our heroes aren’t sure what to do despite having tons of magical items.. until they think what would donald do.. and he’d just at least try and thus corm a GIANT FUCKING MAGIC CANON OUT OF THEM. Very nice. They blow the doors off.. and through the back.. and into the money bin where we get a scrooge cameo.

And he’s voiced by Eric Bauza.. which is sadly not great because it’s far from his best work and dosen’t even really attempt a scottish accent.

But our heroes storm the gate.. after Xandra easily disposes of the dog guards.. who Sheldgosoe apparently raised to do this... still not entirely over that. They find the staircase and the triplets op to go back while the rest charge in and prepare to fight leopold.

Back at the Cabana, Donald and Daisy return via tub and Donald, seeing the swirling vortex of darkness outside sheldgoose manor, tells daisy he has to go his friends need him it’s his destiny, gives her one hell of a kiss she dosen’t deserve.. oh and earlier he told her “Thanks for being patient with me” and she tells him it was worth the wait. Ha ha... I hope you get hit by a rusty tractor you unfathomable blight on duck kind.

So part one ends with Donald heading for the treasure chamber to armor up.

Sheldgoose Square Dance: Part two begins with Sheldgoose putting the staff in place, and an egg emerging. Weird.. and as a result of that Leopold sense his ‘Daddy’ and leaves, and before the cabs can charge in donald shows up, now confident, at full strength and after tripping as you’d epxct, with the other cabs armor and in his. The guys suit up, and we get to see both jose’s.. amazing.. toned.. stomach.

And Panchito’s big belly.. which I have one of those so we’re twinsies. And Xandra of course watches Jose change slyly. Eh i’ts a bit creepy but I can’t blame her for sneaking a peak as long as she didn’t linger.

So our heroes are suited up, look awesome and have their trademark weapons Let’s fucking go!

Back at the ranch, the Nieces talk to daisy and having grabbed a weird document last time, are trying to piece it together. Daisy.. is suddenly really good with puzzles and helps them with it. They reform it and.. don’t really do much until after the danger has passed and I avoid another cornary yelling innterally at this unpleasant pile of hippo excrement.

So while the Cabs dash to stop feldrake feldrake awakens.. as a demon baby. And Sheldgoose has about a minute of mockery before feldrake smacks him around with telekensis and agrees while his mind’s affected by his current state, he’s still fully aware and can talk and seeing the cabs are coming gives him a bit of power, i’d say about as much or a little more than what feldrake had as a staff, and sends him after the cabs.

So we get one of the most awesome moments if not THE most awesome moment in the entire series as something from EVERY episode makes a come back as shelgoose, after trying some zaps, back in full robe and cloak, MAKES HIS OWN ZOOM POINT. Thus it becomes an utterly awesome back and forth as sheldgoose summons one thing from the past and xandra summons another to counter. And it avoids reptititon as the sheer sight of characters from each episode battling it out, and never knowing which ones next, keeps it intresting.

In order: Sheldgoose summons the moon bots, Xandra summons the roman gods to hack them to pieces, after the boys get some shots in too. Sheldgoose blocks the way with lava lizards, the cabs respond with a goblin army who block the lava river and use a cat launcher against them, courtsey of king vomit. Sheldgosoe unleashes the tengu, the cabs unleash king arthur.. and we get the immortal line from donald “Thanks king arthur!”. Sheldgoose summons his ancestors, the cabs summon the ghost presidents! And in a call back that had me clapping Sheld summons the termintes.. and xandra summons THE MINOTAUR! And Sheldgoose thirsts over him. .huh.. so shledgosoe is bi good for him. And for a final distraction sheldgoose summons.. the dragon.. that was from the adventure they just had he had no way of knowing about.

So with that out fo the way our heroes and villians both reach feldrake.. whose awakened and is.. this

Really.. weird , if still threanting, deisgn aside, Feldrake now at full power turns new quackmore into the psycadelic starry battlefield we saw in the intro to the series and thus the final battle begins. We see the fight from the start.. but it’s now even MORE beautiful and glorious with context. Before we saw three strangers, if ones we knew from other works fighting some evil we never met. Now we’ve seen our heroes grow, both as people, and as heroes, learning from every encounter, getting stronger with every fight and slowly getting noticably more compitent: going from falling all over themselves just to work a ship, to defeating dragons, tengu, and other horrors as a team. And we’ve seen jus thow petty and cruel feldrake is.. and how serious the stakes are and what our heroes tand to loose should they fail. It’s not perfect.. we could stand to loose daisy and new quackmore dosen’t mean much, though Sheldgoose gets to zap regina into a worm, but it’s still AWESOME and feels like a tremendous payoff and Donald’s predator bro fist thing with Panchito has more weight. Our heroes have risen to their peak and now they face one last obstacle to becoming legends. The fight is fluid, awesome and gorgeously animated and utterly epic in every sense of the word and we catch up to their seeming defeat.. only for something we DIDN’T know about last time to help.. Xandra who gets htem out of the way. It’s a long and fantastic fight, with our heroes eventaully getting knocked over to a pool while Xandra tries her best to hold feldrake off, but is clearly wearing down despite doing her best.

Yeah while itw as established Feldrake was melting down the amulets and we saw a pool of resdiual magic, so teh magical pool of stuff the cabs find them at WAS set up.. but what happens next remotely wasn’t. The cabs fall in and commuincate with blazebeak the creator of the amulets who embues them with their power. Where he came from, why he’s just showing up n ow.. I dunno, it comes off as a really badly setup deus ex machina.. but it still dosen’t hurt the finale that bad. A little yes, as everything else is so well paced and feels like so much payoff.. but the awesomeness of our heroes glowing with their signture colors, rushing in to save xandra and then ari, who swiped the rest of the magic goop, giving it to xandra to reivvie her.. overrides it. Sometiems somethings too stupid to be awesome.. and sometimes it’s so awesome it overides common sense. So yeah poorly set up yes.. still fucking awesome also yes.

Our heroes tear feldrake apart and realize once they see the now empty staff floating in the void they can simply reseal him. Sheldgoose interupts it.. but the nieces arrive riding on humphrey and knock him inot a golden toilet... again I fucking love this job. Our heroes then try ghost bustering him back into the staff and SHeldgoose tries saving him by breaking it. And it seemingly fails.. new quackmore is restored, Sheldrake’s gone and the town remembered EVERYTHING, cheering at their new heroes and saviors. Sheldgoose finds the staff gone and bemoans his lost master.. and soon looses his presidency as regina strips him of it. With his own powers gone Sheldgoose flees on Leopold, and while Regina tries to take the presdiency for herself.. the girls reveal the document explains if a sheldgoose is absent.. a coot takes his place. And since Donald is the only remaning coot apart from Della and she’s busy actually raising her kids in this continuity apparently, Donald is the new president. While Regina vows to beat him in an election.. our heroes are now happy, with the lawyer from the first episode backing Donald’s claim up. So Donald now has a new job, a new purpose in life, his girlfriend back, which is negiably a good thing, and a new family he dearly loves and tells them as much. Awww. Also he gets the mansion, which our heroes promptly plan to move into. Donald and Daisy fight, of fucking course, our heroes claim roms and Xandra and Jose share a moment. The series gets a truly satsifyign and happy ending.. and a sequel hook as it turns out feldrake is now in sheldgooses body and the tow are going ot have to share it as Sheldgoose has leopold take them to a house with legs.. so the baba yaga then. Sadly we’ll probably never see with this leads.. and this is the end.

Final Thoughts on the finale two parter: While the first half is a bit weak in the yeti stuff, the rest of it is incredibly strong and Sheldgoose Square Danc,e while having the worst name of the series.. is easily it’s best episode, tying everythign together greatly and being one, tense and epic finale the whole way through. A true masterpiece and a clear sign the series would be even BETTER going forward had it actually been allowed to live and a true shame.. but even with the sequel hooks aside.. it’s still an utterly sastifying, joyous note to go out on and i’m GLAD I saved this one for last, as it provided a great capper for both the series and this retrospective.

Final thoughts on Legend of the Three Cablleros:

This series.. was excellent. While at first I wasn’t sure it’s rep was warranted, as the first three episodes were good but had flaws and four and five were not great.. everything after that is sublime. The series has it’s flaws, the character devlopment is uneven, the characters can be made into caractures of themselves once in a while and the writing on Daisy is horrid and i’ve said enough on that to last me a lifetime and is easily the worst part of an otherwise fantastic show. But yeah.. as I said OTHERWISE fantastic, as while the daisy stuff is very bad, it’s for the most part in the background of a VERY good show with great voice acting, fun pacing, and beautiful animation. It’s a loveletter to clasic disney animation, holding tons of mythology gags and refrences and having humphrey as a main character, but with unquie touches like letting the nieces have a starring roll and everything about xandra and sheldgoose. It’s a unique, wonderful and awesome addition to the disney animated canon and deserves a second season or some other sort of revivial. This was a wonderful note to go out on and I’m throughly glad I finally watched it. So with this the Ride of the Three Cablleros is almost over.. but come back, let’s say next week, for one last party as we count down the top 12 cabs moments and celebrate these happy chappies in matching serapes one last time. Until then.. it’s been a pleasure.. and Kevin.. thank you.

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