Quack Pack, Episode Two: "Island of the Not so Nice"

Uh, well, okay, here's this again.  The idea here is that HDL--after a really irritating intro about how exaggeratedly teenage and bored they are--get a great idea to take Daisy's pet echidna iguana, Knuckles, for a walk so as to, uh, give them an opening to talk to a girl they like but are too shy/awkward to approach under ordinary circumstances.  I suppose something like this is good inasmuch as, in theory, it makes them seem a bit more human, but they do it in a predictably douchey way that reduces one's sympathy.  Bah.

Meanwhile, Daisy, as a reporter, is taking a ride on this new automatic plane, and for some reason she's allowed to bring Donald with her.  Certainly, these parts are the best part of the episode, and not JUST because not featuring teenage HDL kinda makes them so by default.  Daisy is indeed a very palatable character--certainly more so than she is in the great majority of comics--and Donald is…well, Donald.  Point being, I like them both.  And there's some amusing business here with the automated flight attendant and automated pilot.

Anyway, the iguana gets lost, and in chasing it, HDL end up on an island ruled by a mad scientist who wants to use his special ray thingie to reduce all lifeforms to a prehistoric state (which, when you think about it, makes little sense, given how divergent evolution is--there isn't just one single ancestor for any given plant or animal).  And eventually Knuckles gets turned big'n'prehistoric and heads back to Duckburg to, like terrorize it and stuff, until he's stopped in a singularly dumb plot twist--see, the ray was powered by peanut butter, so obviously it can be reversed by means of jelly.  I know it's kinda meant to be dumb to an extent, but the dumbness overflows the boundaries of what was intended.

Also, there is a joke about enormous-prehistoric-pigeon shit.

The key to this show, I suppose, is trying your damnedest to just endure HDL as best you can--which is fucking hard, because it's not just their language; it's also their awful facial expressions: seriously, if that smug, heavy-lidded, shit-eating smirk they do isn't enough to drive you into a killing frenzy, nothing is.  I just think about how good this show could have been if they had maintained the current versions of Donald and Daisy and went back to the Ducktales iterations of HDL.  Probably woulda lasted longer than thirty-nine episodes, too.  A real missed opportunity.