New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Three: "The Great Dime Chase"

Wait are ALL these titles supposed to have exclamation points?  No, I say!  You can't force me to act excited!

Um. Well, I liked the "Ottoman Empire" joke. But otherwise, man, I just can't fuckin' deal.

This episode though man, I don't know. I would not hesitate to call it the weakest of the three so far, and I'll readily admit that I may just be acting like a socially maladjusted, impossible-to-please comic book NERD, but this whole thing I do not like it and coherent sentences cannot I write dammit.

Okay, so I knew from comments here and there that Gyro's characterization would be, ah, distinct from the one we know and love. And yes, I have read this. But, uh, I mean, COME ON, do I really have to express my feelings here? I think it's not fair that this show keeps demanding I get mad as hell at its bullshit. I'm just trying to keep body and soul together here, man. I don't need this. Let me just quote this bit: "We have a lot of love for original, kind-hearted, absent-minded Gyro (who, in the comics, COULD go pretty dark or deadpan when an invention went awry)." I'm going to go ahead and say...no, you don't. Otherwise you wouldn't have DONE this. Feel the force of my ineluctable logic. And fuck that parenthetical, by the way. Yes, Real Gyro could get annoyed when inventions didn't pan out, but that has NOTHING to do with anything YOU'RE trying to do, so lay off the weak tea justifications. Dammit. I mean, I guess there's nothing to say, but, I mean, they try to pander in the most mortifying way to comics fans ("Dawson, Lillehammer, El Dorado, and Culebra" YES WE GET IT you've read some Don Rosa comics you want a medal or what), and yet when it comes to shit that ACTUALLY MATTERS...jeez. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ENJOY THIS? HOW?

I suppose I could also complain that it's kinda weird that Ms Quackfaster is deranged, but I don't suppose anyone has any great store of emotional attachment to the character, so WHATEVER. But the thing I REALLY don't like is, oh gawd, ALL the business with Della. It's like, motherfuckers, what the hell gives you the RIGHT to just clomp on in with your half-ass fan-fictional "solving" of something that didn't need to be solved? In what sense have you earned that? I mean, I could MAYBE see this as being borderline okay if the show went on a few years and proved itself, but this? BAH. BAH BAH BAH. And we KNOW Della's going to appear as a character real soon, considering that she's going to be in next month's DT comic.

Argh I can't, as the kids say, even. I mean, there's admirable shit about this whole venture, sure. Plenty of it (and okay okay granted the character arc with Louie was okay)! But it's all just mixed up with other shit that I CANNOT ABIDE. I guess it's the age-old problem: you get emotionally invested in characters and feel a sense of ownership that isn't at all supported by the facts of the situation and then when people do something you don't like you feel more upset than you should BUT SERIOUSLY WHO ARE THESE FRIGGIN PARVENUS MAKE THEM STOP FUCKING WITH MY CHARACTERS.

And FUCK ME maybe it's just an artistic vision that's different than what I envision but it's totally legitimate and I just respect them for following their muse and shut the hell up or at least try to appreciate it for what it is. But shutting the hell up is not what this blog is about! Nor is appreciating things! It's about intemperate moaning about stuff I can't control! So there!

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Two: "Daytrip of Doom"

I'll tell you one thing: I'm glad that--so early, yet!--they're willing to do an episode where Scrooge plays almost no role. That seems to bode well for the show's future.

You know, I have to admit, in many ways, this is really...good. But it's always something, innit? So let me get this out of the way first: HOLY EVERLOVING FUCK do I hate what they've done with Louie.  This whole fucking hustler thing is an ABOMINATION BEFORE GOD AND MAN. You FUCKING people. Jeez. You may have noticed my blog posts lately are a little bit toned down (not from any intention; it's just something that gradually happened) and I'm a bit less likely to say "fuck" than I once was and NOTICE HOW MANY TIMES I'M SAYING FUCK IN THIS PARAGRAPH. WHAT A FUCKING DISASTROUS MISCALCULATION.  Dammit. Fuckit.  

Ahem. Well, I guess that's not the main point of the episode. It's all about Webby, pretty much, and it's smartly done, too. The idea is that she's always all cool and hypercompetent, but in the context of being totally sheltered and unequipped to deal with the outside world. With a character like her, you sort of run into the problem that when pitted against HDL, she's kind of always going to win, and you can't exactly complain about it, but the deck does seem a bit stacked. So I think it's good if her character is tempered by naivete--it evens things out a bit.

So anyway, it's off to a place that may or may not be called Funco's Funzone, depending on whether I wrote the name down right or not, and Webby is amusingly clueless until the time comes for her to, inevitably, shine. And there's also Beagles! Um...whatever. I mean, you know what I think of the DT Beagles. I guess these are okay for what they are; I did kinda like their voices. Why do they just have B's on their chest instead of numbers? It's an abiding mystery, but they're so far away from the classix anyway that it doesn't much matter to me. Ma Beagle, on the other hand, somehow makes little impact; I was not impressed. I kinda liked her brassiness in the original.

And there's also a subplot where Donald and Mrs Beakley are at loggerheads but then they have to team up to rescue the captured children, which is pretty good. I like Donald's berserker rage at the idea of his nephews being captured. It fits the character as we like to see it--although I STILL can't be having with Donald's voice. Even when I CAN understand it, it just requires more effort than I feel ought to be necessary. Anyway, in the end, Beakley jokes that "I'm a spy," and everyone laughs uproariously and it's obvious that they're setting something up. Which is fine with me.

Also, a kid drowns in the ball pit while his mother idly messes around with her phone. Or so I choose to believe.