Darkwing Duck, Season One, Episode Fourteen: "Trading Faces"

Mmm, okay. Let's try to get this thing back into gear. I could blame my month-long pause on that whole L&T marathon at 'tother place, and you'd probably even believe me, but let's face it: the reality is, it's just laziness on my part. "Too lazy to watch cartoons?" APPARENTLY, YES. Well, also, I was binging on Homeland, which is a problematic show in some ways but still pretty riveting. But now I'll try to get back into a regular schedule.

This is the show's body-swap episode--with, you must admit, a singularly uninspired title. Whee! Specifically, DW gets some sorta machine thingie that's supposed to transfer data from his base to his ship thing the name of which I forget, only somehow, it actually switches his mind with Gosalyn's and Launchpad's with Honker's. That's science for you. Whatareyagonnado? Unfortunately, this comes just as FOWL, as represented by Steelbeak, are cooking up a new plot: to hold the world ransom and destroy it by stopping it from spinning unless the world's governments fork over one hundred trillion dollars!!! You know, guys, that money's not actually going to be of much use to you if you've utterly destroyed every economy in the world to get it. Or maybe that's the idea? Who knows what motivates FOWL?

I do like Steelbeak here more than in his first appearance. Still…well, I know there's not a lot of currency complaining about diabolical plans to Destroy The World™, as that's just kind of par for the course, but really now: for this threat to have any force, Steelbeak would have to be quite literally an insane, suicidal nihilist, which I don't get the impression is meant to be the case.

So anyway, the various people in various bodies gotta work to fix things. DW is pretty adorable in Gosalyn's body, though it must be said that, pigtails notwithstanding, when he's in costume (which is most of the time) he basically looks more like Young Darkwing than a whole different character. Honestly, I would've been happy to see more time spent on the characters trying ineptly to adapt to their new situations. But hey, it's all good--not in the ranks of all-time great episodes, but still pretty good. I think Honker's fast becoming my favorite character. I really like his sort of fatalistic acceptance of being involved in crazy hijinx that are way above his pay grade.