Monday, March 7, 2011

Ducktales, Season One, Episode Twenty-Six: "Bermuda Triangle Tangle"

Seems another of Scrooge's ships (carrying peanut butter--crunchy peanut butter) has gotten lost in the Bermuda Triangle (what, not the "Bermuda Triquackle?"), so he and HDL take a ship to investigate, helmed by the seemingly mentally-disabled Captain Foghorn, who is apparently meant to be comic relief but who is really pretty annoying and doesn't do anything significant in terms of plot. Cut that guy out, I say.

Anyway, they reach a stretch of thick seaweed, not referred to as the Sargasso Sea but obviously inspired thereby. A bunch of ships are entangled, and there are people living there. There is also a sea monster--a big ol' fish with tentacles--just straight-up chillin' under the water.

The captain--Captain Bounty, to be specific--makes dopey jokes and laughs a lot but also has somewhat authoritarian tendencies, as he keeps everyone pretty well under his thumb and doesn't want anyone to leave. He's also good at what he does, however, and looks after his people; he's generally a well-drawn character, and eventually, reluctantly, he agrees to work with the ducks to get outta there.

Yeah, the captain's definitely a high point, but the episode as a whole didn't grab me especially. It's not that it's poorly executed--aside from ol' Captain Foghorn--but I dunno...the central conflict just didn't feel especially compelling to me. Shrug.

Stray Observations

-When I saw the expanses of seaweed, I flashed back to the old Gregory/Strobl story "Secret of the Sargasso Sea." It has nothing whatsoever to do with this episode's plot. But I did anyway! Aren't you grateful for such penetrating insights?

-"The Bermuda Triangle? Gosh, that's the scariest triangle in the world!"

-Lighting hits the can of worms that the kids' were planning on fishing with. The worms make their escape. Only…instead of earthworms, they're inchworms. Who fishes with inchworms? Or are we to assume that the lightning effected some sort of transformation?

-"Do you smell what I smell?" "Peanut butter!" "Chunky peanut butter!" Impressive olfactory distinction, that.

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