Oh boy--who hates opera? Pretty much everyone, if lazy cartoon tropes are to be believed! Certainly not excluding this one! Boy oh boy...
So Scrooge and the kids are forced--forced!--to watch Mrs. Beakley star in a charity performance of Die Walküre. They get all somnolent 'cause opera amirite? until some, uh, vikings invade Duckburg and take Mrs. Beakley as a prisoner 'cause they're enchanted by her singing--not that Wagner has anything in common with any music actually vikings would be expected to know, but whatever! Anyway, I hope they really like the opening to "Ride of the Valkyries," 'cause that's the only thing Beakley seems to know how to sing (with "la la la"s for lyrics).
The premise of actual medieval vikings invading Duckburg is so utterly cockamamie that I really thought the whole episode was going to turn out to be an extended dream sequence--Scrooge and HDL falling asleep would have been a good transition point. But nope! Real thing, and the gang has to travel to the vikings' hidden island near Greenland to get Beakley back. To do this, Launchpad has to beat the vikings' hero ("Thor"--that's right, the best viking name they could come up with was Thor) in a ram-chariot race. The vikings try to sabotage the race in several ways, and the upshot is, Mrs. Beakley ultimately has to take Launchpad's place--it's actually pretty cool to see her in an action role like that. And that's about that.
Did that summary seem a trifle snide? Well, it's actually not that bad an episode, really. There's just not a whole lot that stands out as especially exciting about it, aggressively absurd premise notwithstanding. At least it's better than "Superdoo!" even if that is setting the bar a trifle low.
Stray observations
-Didn't even mention the good viking shepherdess or the bad viking queen--the latter especially makes essentially no impression; her purpose is questionable, aside from screwing up Launchpad's voice and requiring Beakley to race.
-"Gee, Greenland isn't very green, is it?" Well, duh--Greenland is a barren land, a land that bears no green.
-Calisota, as we know, is on the west coast. So the vikings either sailed all the way through Nunavut and the Northwest Territories (okay, it was just the Northwest Territories at the time), around Alaska, and all the way down the west coast of Canada; or all the way south past Tierra del Fuego and up the other side. Though granted, they could have cut that second route down substantially had they been able to get permission to use the Panama Canal. Or they could have gone aaaall the way over Asia and crossed the Pacific, but gimme a break--that would just be silly!
The derpy leaning mailman from "Home Sweet Homer" makes an appearance in this episode, on stage next to Vacation and Gyro (I didn't watch in chronological nor production order). I remember thinking how weird it was that he was leaning but then I just assumed his bag was heavy. Apparently his name is Quacky McSlant and was originally intended to be a recurring but only appeared a coupl'a times.
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