Saturday, April 30, 2011

Ducktales, Season One, Episode Forty-Four: "Luck o' the Ducks"

Hey, you know how I said in my entry for "Double-O-Duck" that the opening was a good indicator that the episode was gonna be pretty kickass? Well, the opening here has Webby intoning the words "Unca Scrooge! Unca Scrooge! I'm having a few close toys over for a tea party! Wanna come?" Does any more need to be said?

Scrooge has a shipment of Irish linen coming in to sell, which seems a bit picayune to me, but whatever. And…in the shipment there is a leprechaun straight out of a Lucky Charms commercial. Really, Ducktales? That's what you've decided on? Alas, yes, and the result is one of the more horrid episodes in recent memory.

Seriously, I don't want to talk about it, lest I have a fit of vomiting. Scrooge and the kids go to Ireland and Scrooge displays heavy-handed EEEEVIL with his desire to steal the leprechauns' treasure and Webby sprays saccharin all over the place in her interactions with Fardoragh (that's how the closed captioning spells his name, at any rate), and in the end Scrooge learns not to be a dick for the umpteenth time, though in a much clumsier way than usual, and…gah.

This episode was gonna suck no matter what, but the fact that it comes right after the sublime "Double-O-Duck" adds insult to injury. Hey, you assholes--you've just shown what you're able to do when you deign to make an effort, and now you're trying to pass off this half-assed nonsense? Bah!

Stray Observations

-…and that horrible little Irish-ish Jig-ish thing they all do at the end--ugh.

-Okay, one funny line: "I've been robbed of my favorite two hundred dollars and twenty-six cents!"

5 comments:

  1. After reading of your reviews, I realize that a lot of Ducktales episodes simply are not up to par, but on balance the entire series is far greater than the sum of its parts. On reflection, the great moments far outweigh the bad ones.

    But this is certainly my least favorite episode episode ever. At the end, I wanted to scream at Webby, "Webby, this leprechaun stole from your Uncle Scrooge and then tried to condemn him to a long, slow death by starvation in an underground cavern. Had he done so, you and your grandmother would have been out on the streets. This leprechaun is NOT your FRIEND. If you take him home with you, he will rob you blind and probably try to kill someone else. Oh, and since you saved him and the entire leprechaun community from being tried for murder, they all owe you big time. Wish big, kid."

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  2. I didn't even consider that Chris when I ranted on the episode myself. That just makes the ending even WORSE now.

    And to think; this was the TEMPLATE for Polly Wants A Treasure for TaleSpin too. Replace leprechaun with talking parrot. Oh and they also did the leprechaun angle for Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers too.

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  3. "Unca Scrooge! Unca Scrooge! I'm having a few close toys over for a tea party! Wanna come?"

    Who genuinely believes anyone wants to watch a character like this? Did someone actually think this would appeal to little girls? (And if not to them, who?)

    Perhaps what bothers me the most about DuckTales' female characters is that they play like someone resented having to include them—so willfully made them into the most cliched, smarmy caricatures-of-female-caricatures that they could come up with, playing them absolutely straight—then sold these millstones on the basis that they'd be a powerful draw to someone.

    Disney Comics' DuckTales 10 featured a priceless letter from Janet Rebbecca Albarado that said what I suspect so many were thinking: "Don't get me wrong, it's not that I can't stand Webby, but you really overdo it with her, just because she's a girl. I'm a girl and I really don't like her. She'd be an okay character if she wasn't there all the time. Okay, I lied. I really hate her."

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  4. As an added note: Perhaps it's because other WDTVA series included such memorable characters of both genders (Kim Possible, anyone?) that the unimaginative nature of DuckTales' original female characters stands out as much as it does.

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  5. Yeah, one has to wonder. It looks to me--as you say--like they were grudgingly trying to appeal to a perceived demographic. I didn't mind Webby so much at first, but I have to admit, she's kinda grown off me. For all my predictable whinging about "canon," building from "Merit-Time Adventure" and sticking her in the Junior Woodchucks full-time would probably have been their best bet.

    Of course, to be fair, duck comics don't have a particularly exalted history either in terms of portraying female characters.

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