Ducktales, Season One, Episode Thirty: "Scrooge's Pet"

Apparently, the writers decided that "The Lemming with the Locket" just wasn't a sufficiently generic title, so instead they went with…"Scrooge's Pet." Pretty inexplicable; out of all the things you can say about the series' titles--and I've said many of them--"overly generic" isn't one of them. And yet, here we are.

This is mostly a pretty straight adaptation of the Barks story, otherwise, with the expected revisions to make up for the lack of Donald, and, as befits the series' more cartoony nature, a somewhat more anthropomorphized lemming. There is one thing that struck me as being a huge, obvious enhancement over the original: instead of putting the locket around the neck of statuette of himself, Scrooge uses one of Goldie: a natural, logical, and Barksian alteration. I suspect that even Don Rosa would approve. Another thing of which I made note is that in the end, the kids don't try to get a reward out of Scrooge, as they do in the original--as perfect a summation of the differences between the cartoon and the comics as I can imagine.

Not a lot to say beyond that. The episode follows the story closely as a whole, if not always in specific detail. There are some amusing gags (the lemmings make a jack o'lantern out of a giant pumpkin as they charge by), and there's some decent interplay between Scrooge and Launchpad. I can't exactly claim that it set me on fire, though. I dunno…I guess my nostalgic attachment to the original is just too strong. And I definitely miss Donald's presence, as well as the whole surprising but charming bit about he and the kids suddenly being big fans of imported cheese. Still, the episode acquits itself fairly well as Barks adaptations go.

Stray Observation

-Those cartoon Scandinavian accents--gah.