So as the episode opens, HDL are checkin' out Scrooge's ice cream factory, but their suspicions are raised when the premises are restricted and they see a bunch of non-responsive ice-cream-truck drivers headed away, and it's transparently obvious to me that Scrooge is using subterfuge to transport his cash, but not to them, apparently, so we have to drag this out for a while. He's transporting it by ship, but alas, the ship done got sunk. Fortunately, this DOES lead to the most hilarious thing in the series, as Scrooge goes completely nuts while repeatedly shouting "a sea monster ate my ice cream!" The fact that nobody seems to have done a techno remix of this has caused me to lose faith in the internet.
But anyway, yeah. Sea monster. "Nonsense, Webby," Scrooge avers, apparently having forgotten all about "Home Sweet Homer" and "Bermuda Triangle Tangle." "there's no such thing as sea monsters." It transpires--quelle surprise--that this is a Glomgold plot, and the monster's a robot (it's immediately obvious that it's a robot, but the ducks are apparently supposed to be extremely dim, so it takes them a while to figure it out.
The ship is being operated by a scientist name Dr. Bluebottle--a horribly annoying German who is kinda like a Mickey Mouse villain but, well, annoyinger--and Scrooge and Donald have to stop him. Yay! Donald! Aside from his brief cameo in "Home Sweet Homer," hasn't appeared since episode seven. I DEMAND MORE DONALD.
And it actually ends without resolving everything, which is sort of good, but the final sequence is pretty illogical: the robo-submarine sinks, and Bluebottle tries to stop Donald and Scrooge by claiming that ONLY HE can return it to the surface. No, Scrooge replies, and jettisons the money, causing it to float to the surface. Um…if Bluebottle was in fact capable of raising it--and the episode gives us no reason to believe otherwise--why not just let him do it and them subdue him? Going to all the trouble of salvaging the money again seems like a lot of work for what appears to be nothing more than a point of pride.
Well, in spite of all this, I didn't hate the episode. Didn't love it, but it was certainly better than the last one. If this trend continues, the final part may be something close to classic. Not holding my breath, though.
Stray Observations
-This is surely the nadir of the obsessive, nonsensical duck-punning: Bluebottle hopes to win the "No-Bill Prize." What?
-Glomgold isn't actually stealing Scrooge's money; he's just keeping it hidden 'til after the weighing. That seems uncharacteristic.
-The closed-captioning renders "I don't see any salvage ships around" as the substantially more meaningless "I don't see any sailboat ships around."
I always thought that Scrooge would worry about the water damaging his greenbacks.
ReplyDeleteBut I do love "A SEA MONSTER ATE MY ICE CREAM!!!!!!!!!" Check the internet– I remember that someone did some sort of on-line gag inspired by it years ago.
Of course, Don Rosa himself went on to write a Talespin episode about a sea monster eating ice cream. Perhaps he liked that line just as much as you did!
ReplyDeleteWhoa...Don Rosa wrote a Tailspin episode??? That can't be true...
ReplyDelete...and yet, the internet confirms it. Several of them, in fact. Good lord--how did I not know this?"