"This episode features the return of Donald!"
"Epic!"
"But he only appears at the very beginning and end."
"Brutal!"
So what happens is, from a photo that Donald sends to his relatives, Scrooge recognizes the gateway to "the lost city of Ithaquack," but oh no--their boat gets sucked into the past by Circe's time warp magic thing (that's what you call descriptive detail!). They rescue Ulysses' nephew, Homer (???--I suppose the idea is that the Odyssey is meant to be his biography of Unc?), and they have to get back to Ithaquack (sigh) in order to stop Circe from doing evil-sorceress-type stuff.
On the way back, they have a few Odyssey-ish encounters. Two of them have what strike me as pointless and somewhat irksome name-changes (Aeolus is "King Blowhard," Scylla is "Yuckalinda"), but it's all good fun, and the sirens--purple mounds with duck heads on top--are super-creepy in a somewhat Lovecraftian way. I actually think this is one case where the creators could profitably have gone two-part: the distinct lack of Cyclopes is notable, and an underworld jaunt could've been cool, too. And hey--if there'd been a lotus-eaters segment, we could've gotten the valuable lesson that Winners Don't Do Drugs!™ You can't put a price on that kind of moral edification.
The business once they actually get to Ithaca (sorry, but typing that alternate name is just physically painful) is a bit less interesting; Circe makes an okay villain, but really, there's not much to the encounter with her, and our heroes get transported back to the present in a sorta deus-ex-machina-ish way. All in all, though, this is certainly the best episode since "Top Duck."
Stray Observations
-Don't know what to make of the odd, tilting mailman at the beginning. I find him entertainingly absurd, however.
-"Baseball hasn't been invented yet. And neither has ice cream. Neither has school! Heh heh heh!" I'm not some sort of expert on education history, but I have my doubts about that.
-Gooslysses? Ulysswan? Ulysseagul? Yeah, I'm grateful they decided to keep it classy just this once.
I always wondered why the Sirens sang a song specifically tailored to lure Scrooge– this is not a compliant at all, just a question. Did they somehow know that he was the only one who could hear them? It doesn't seem like any of the others would've been particularly attracted to that song.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea with the sirens is that you hear whatever's the most alluring to you personally. So the kids probably would've heard something about Junior Woodchucks merit badges or something.
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