New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Nineteen: "The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck"

Look. I tried to go into this episode with open heart and mind. To appreciate it for what it is. To evaluate it as unburdened by preconceptions as possible. But it didn't work, dammit. I really hated pretty much everything about it.

Let's start with the depiction of Magica, which certainly isn't new to this episode, but which we see in a more prolonged way than ever. Now, comics-Magica is, of course, pretty variable, in terms of just how evil or quasi-sympathetic she is. But...this version of her is wholly unlike anything we've seen before, and I hate it. I must grant, on this particular point, that my opinion here is obviously highly colored by my background, and someone without it might appreciate her more for what she is. Still, I think it's a fair complaint: including all this annoying fan-service for comics fans doesn't really mean anything if you then proceed to alter familiar character beyond recognition. Really, now.

I have certainly said that the Lena/Webby business was my favorite thing in the series, but I am not sure how long and to what extent I will be able to keep that up. I mean, it may still be my "favorite" for lack of anything else, and I must grant, I guess, that Lena's dreamcatcher-induced vision is the best thing in the episode, if there has to be a "best thing." But it's wearing pretty thin for me, and the depiction of Webby and her ever-more deranged obsession with Scrooge is...well: "Definitely not collecting drool samples when he sleeps!" I mean...seriously? How is this appealing? Who is this appealing to? Why are you doing this to the character?

Of course, all of the above is focused on the A plot, which at least features some level of drama and, you know, human interest. I really cannot say the same for the wholly discrete, and very mean-spirited, B plot, in which the nephews have a yeti hidden in the house and Scrooge, for very dubiously-justified reasons, is stalking around with a rifle-crossbow thing (possibly just so, apropos of nothing, he can make a lame Jurassic Park reference?). Look, you're going to do your own thing with the nephews, and that's just the way it is. I know it, and I know I can't do anything about it. But FOR FUCK'S SAKE, are you trying to make them as repellent as possible? Why? What is this? Louie has a fake charity? His brothers blackmail him into silence? None of this shit is even a tiny bit acceptable, and I'm coming closer and closer to agreeing with the people who opine that, occasional sparks of interest notwithstanding, this show is basically irredeemable garbage.

And if you think that's too negative, well, hopefully it's nonetheless preferable to my apathetic non-opinions regarding the previous episode.

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Eleven: "Thanks a Camelot"

Apparently, the Caballeros need to train with King Arthur. They JUST DO. He's a lion, predictably enough, and he has four anthropomorphic-animal knights at his command--including, maybe interestingly, a gender-swapped Kay--though I guess her being an ostrich is a bigger change, really.

Unfortunately, it seems that Arthur these days is more into corporate-team-building-type activities than anything useful. But when April May and June use one of Owl Merlin's spells to summon a dragon...well, okay, I guess the results are fairly predictable.

This all makes for a pleasant enough episode, if nothing mind-blowing. Owl Merlin is fun, becoming obsessed with a game on one of the niece's phones (and also, on seeing a picture: "is this where you put images that disobey the king?"). Still, it is kind of anticlimactic how in the end, the nieces just destroy a picture of a dragon and that's that. Whee? Also, please explain to me why Merlin throwing the phone in the fire causes the random guy in the Apple Store to die horribly.

To tell the truth, even though it didn't take up as much screen time as I might've liked, my favorite part was Ari and the Bear fending off Sheldgoose's incursion into their house (turns out it's just Felldrake whom the barrier repels). That was the kind of absurd, slapstick-y stuff that I appreciate.

I could keep watching this indefinitely. Shame there are only two episodes left.

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Ten: "Mt. Fuji Whiz"

And now, this. We had the big cliffhanger where the caballeros, and also Sheldgoose and Felldrake, DIED last time, and now they're in the afterlife, which seems sort of dismal, to tell the truth. AMJ and Sandra try to help in their own ways. And also, hey, look Clinton Coot! That's pretty cool. I mean, it's not like he's characterized all that strongly aside from being generally cheerfully avuncular, but it's still fun. Unless I'm mistaken, he was only ever a picture on Rosa's family tree before, so why not? I can get behind this; it's a comics reference, but, like, a natural one; it doesn't feel forced or gratuitous as these things generally do in new ducktales.

Well, to tell the truth, this episode was maybe a little thin plotwise. A lot of lore, which is, eh, fine. But the actual story...well, it was fine too, I guess! I thought the yokai were cool, and I just wish they'd done more with the "ghostly" abilities that you apparently get in the afterlife. Still. A bit, to repeat myself, thin, perhaps. The AMJ stuff was particularly notable in its pointlessness; they don't accomplish anything except to mildly inconvenience the caballeros in their escape efforts.

Still, I don't want to seem too down on this episode. I liked it, and I wish there were more than just the thirteen of them.

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Eighteen: "Who Is Gizmoduck?"

Well...better get this over with. Boy, that's REALLY not the positive, can-do attitude that we need around here, is it?

I'm just kind of afraid I'm not the right person, in general, to say anything about this show, due to my intense apathy about the whole thing. Yeah, there are individual episodes that I think are okay, but just EVERYTHING about the conception rubs me the wrong way, so even if there are things to praise, I just can't help but have this background irritation about the whole thing. If that makes sense. And certainly no impulse to say much about it.

This episode...is what it is. I think the reason I liked Fenton in the original series was that he provided a comics-Donald-esque character in a world that needed such a thing. He doesn't really...do that here, thusfar, so it's hard for me to have feelings about him. Lin-Manuel Miranda is totally unrecognizable in the role, also too. Here we have his soap-opera-watchin' mother, who is now a police officer. I guess. Why not. Fine. Again: trying to have an opinion here; not having much luck.

So this is the one where Mark Beaks takes control of Gizmoduck and tries to make him part of an app. And...Huey worships him but then he doesn't but then he does. And...that's what happens in this episode. If I were forced at gunpoint to say something positive about this, I guess it would be that Beaks is sort of sinister here. But that's a lift.

Anyway. That's that. Oh, and is that title meant to be an Ayn Rand reference? 'Cause I am NOT down with that, let me tell you.

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Nine: "Mexico a Go-Go"

So according to conspiracy-theory-AMJ, "the Sheldgoose family line has a dark connection to every major disaster in history!" OMG. To illustrate this, they have pictures of: the Titanic sinking (it could be any ship, really, but the Titanic just seems like the best-known "major disaster), a mushroom cloud, a radiation warning (this shit could get REALLY dark if you went into more detail), a plane going down, a tidal wave about to hit a lighthouse, and...a thumbs-down sign? Okay! Anyway. So that is that.

Then! Off to Mexico for adventures. It's honestly not hugely clear what these goings-on have to do with the larger Felldrake plot stuff, but that's okay: fun's fun. The Mexican/Aztec chickens see Panchito as the incarnation of a god, or words to that effect, so they treat him all royally and stuff...BUT! Is there a dark side to all this? Impossible to say! There's a sexy lady parrot to distract Jose (certainly in-character) and a sexy human dude to distract Xandra. As for Donald, he's concocted a scheme with AMJ whereby he can go on a date with Daisy by having one of them standing on another's shoulders kids-trying-to-get-into-R-rated-movie-style, using the mirror. This makes Daisy look dumber than is probably reasonable, it's true (and the idea that she "never made the connection before" between her name and actual daisies--hoo boy), but this is a kind of humor that, though obvious, I can't help finding hilarious every damn time. So anyway, that's what he's doing, or trying to do.

Turns out Panchito, as a representative of Life, has to battle Sheldgoose as a representative of Death ("Well idiot, I don't see how you have a chance. That's my pep talk. Go get 'im," is Felldrake's inspirational speech). And, naturally, the luchador thing comes back. Though I have to say, I thought luchadors were supposed to hide their identities, or at least make some pretense in that direction--Panchito doesn't, even a tiny bit.

Well, it's all fun and games, but then it turns out that Sexy Dude was Death and Sexy Parrot was Life the whole time! It's genuinely creepy when they unmask, but it is wholly unclear to me what the purpose of this charade was in the first place it it's all fake, and it is further unclear to me why Life is declared to have "won" this...thing.

Still, it's bright and shiny with a fun cliffhanger. Not gonna lie: I'm still not seeing what you people saw in the last episode, but this one is back on track.

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Eight: "Nazca Racing"

So here's the one where they go to Nazca and become line drawings and have to fight Felldrake and Sheldgoose like that, and meanwhile April May and June infiltrate Sheldgoose's mansion to try to figure out what's up with the barrier. Does that about cover it?

I like that title, but it's no lie: this one is a substantial step down from the last few. The line drawing business is reasonably cool-looking, I guess, and it DOES come alive a bit in the aerial chase scene where everyone's drawing cannons and whatnot to attack everyone else, but eh. It's mostly pretty uninteresting. As is the infiltration sequence; it's great to give AMJ a more prominent role and all, but it was not done in a super-compelling way here. I didn't even care for the song; it felt forced and unnecessary in a way that previous musical numbers haven't. I guess I liked the intensely Midwestern Nazca guardian lady. She and the monkey look really strange in the "real" world.

Also: "If the earth is destroyed, he will be too! He's evil, not insane!" I dunno, man: he wanted to "cover the world in fire" back in the Easter Island episode. Are you sure you've thought this through?

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Seven: "Mount Rushmore (or less)"

I enjoyed the fact that the Mount Rushmore business--which anyone would assume would take up the whole episode--was dispensed with in four minutes. Good; I think that's all the time it needed. I enjoyed the fact that George Washington was so throughly invested in being a ghost, and I enjoyed the unusual thing of actual historical figures being portrayed as ducks (see also Francis Drake in Rosa's "His Majesty McDuck"), but I feel I would have gotten pretty bored pretty quickly if that had gone on for much longer than it did.

But no! Instead it gets all zany and shambolic in a fun way. The bearskin rug coming to life feels a bit arbitrary, but the bear is cute. I like it. I also like Sheldgoose being concerned with civic maneuvering while Felldrake wants to focus more on world-conquering activities ("You are the least important president of anything ever"). I have no strong feelings about Eugenia Ferdinand-Ferdinand (sp?), but it did make me think, huh. Has there ever been a peacock character in the duckiverse before? It seems like there should have been, but I can't think of one (okay, peahen, technically, and therefore shouldn't really have the plumage, but hey--nitpicking is fun!). I liked Xandra destroying the hors d'oeuvres at the party, even if it was a bit predictable. I didn't so much love Daisy trying to make Donald jealous by dating the unreliable Dapper Duck--"Love Trouble" was fine and everything, but these days, that can't help but feel pretty dated. I might be interested if Daisy becomes more involved with the main plot, however. Oh, one thing: I didn't understand why the Caballeros were unable to enter Sheldgoose's house when everyone else could. Please explain.

Here are some other things that made me laugh:

-Ari putting an ear of corn in a pot and tossing in a grenade to make popcorn

-"Stop right there, bear!" "We have chased you all over the square!" "In goblin jaaaaail!"

-"Poppycock! There's no such thing as The Moon!"

"Donald was Felldrake the whole time?"

Very good episode. More like this, please.

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Six: "Stonehenge Your Bets"

In ancient times...hundreds of years before the dawn of his'try...wait, did Leopold TALK before now? I feel like that's an new thing. Weird.

Well, as you know, this is the one where they go through a portal in Stonehenge to Goblin Land. I like the doorbell sound that the portal makes. "As long as they're leaderless, they're not a threat," Xandra says, and inevitably, hey, there's Gellfrake and Deldshoose. Our heroes are thrown in Goblin Jail, and yeah, the song put a smile on my face. The more elaborate the musical numbers, the better, is my feeling.

Large beast is summoned. Large beast is defeated via...pathos (I must disagree with the nomenclature here; making it all heart-warmed is by no means the same as "breaking its heart)? Endearing small goblin Worm (ne Vomit) becomes king...hooray.

I don't know; did I like it as much as the last one? Probably not; there was plenty to like, but it did feel a bit more peril-of-the-week-y. Also, I could have done without the goblin drooling and/or vomiting on Xandra's head, not to mention the fart jokes. Still, it is unpretentiously entertaining. Not all Up Itself like the last Ducktales episode. I could gladly go on watching this stuff. And, uh, I will!

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Seventeen: "From the Confidential Case Files of Agent 22"

Dammit, I'm required to have an opinion about this, aren't I? Um...can I phone a friend?

I feel like my opinions about these attempts to create webs of continuity with other Disney properties are difficult to articulate and not necessarily justifiable. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, I guess. It just...I don't know, feels like an effort to accrue good will without earning it, just by pointing at past stuff that we're assumed to like? Maybe that's it.

Well...I guess it's to no one's great surprise that we learn, omg, Beakley is or was (it's not quite clear) an agent of SHUSH. I mean...fine, I guess. It's certainly better than her original-Ducktales incarnation. And having Van Drake be the director is...fine, I guess. He doesn't really do much. But I DEFINITELY cannot abide the idea of Scrooge as having been part of the organization. That's the kind of thing that, upon being floated, the other writers should've been like no, dude, that's a dumb idea, what's wrong with you? All the "Scrooge is awesome at everything" stuff marred a number of Rosa stories, and "oh he's awesome at everything AND ALSO HE'S A SECRET AGENT!" is just so much bad fan fiction. I mean, even beyond the fact that it egregiously violates everything we know about him. It's too bad, because if it were just a peripheral thing you could more or less ignore it, but with him being so damn central to the plot, you know this is going to be forcibly rubbed in our faces in future.

Right, the plot is a lotta whatevs for me. Webby is obsessed with Scrooge suddenly; I know that's sort of been a thing previously, but it's just so obvious that they're setting things up so they can have her partner up with him. It's pretty clumsy. Beakley's kidnapped and they have to go...place. To do...thing. There's a FOWL agent, Black Heron, and I can only imagine the force of will it must've taken them to not just stick Steelbeak in there. Gotta save SOME hollow fan service for later, I guess. I was wholly unmoved by references to nutmeg tea and unicorns, and I refuse to say anything about any references to a show that was itself inspired (if that's the word) by bad candy. That's just too much for me to take. The end.

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Five: "No Man Is an Easter Island"

Ain't no party like a Moai party, 'cause...well, for obvious reasons.  But Let me repeat that: a MOAI party! They're called Moai! Not Moa! Jeez, episode.

That notwithstanding, this was an obvious, huge improvement on the last few. This involves lava lizards under Easter Island whom the Moai are supposed to keep down. It's a creative approach, and I enjoyed it, but what I really enjoyed was that it didn't devolve into the same kind of boring "stop the baddies" thing that the last few did.

Did I love the usual reductive Donald/Daisy stuff? Not hugely. Did I find the rationale for why DAISY MUST NEVER KNOW about the Caballeros a bit dubious? I did. But mostly, I liked it. Here are some other random observations about the episode:

-It's kind of disorienting when they're dropped off by Apollo, who had not appeared in the last episode.

-Love Ari cracking himself into pieces with a mallet and reconstituting as mini-Aris. In general, I think the less realistic the better with this show.

-And on that note, also love Sheldrake bursting into song to get rid of the Moai. The song itself isn't memorable, but it's great that it happened.

-Man, they sure do kill A LOT of sentient lizards. Does this have the highest body count of any episode of any Disney cartoon?

"You're like my brothers from a different mother and a different father from a different country that I recently just met!"

-Good Donald impression from Xandra.

-I know I said I like the unrealism, but I also like Donald trying to flush himself down the toilet and it obviously not working. Good messing around with expectations.

-"You hired my nieces to cook and clean for you." Well, now we know why they're hanging around for no apparent reason. Okay!

"And now they shall cover the world in fire!" I know it's pointless to ask, but one does have to wonder what exactly Felldrake WANTS, exactly. Just world domination? Destroying the world outright? It's a big hand-wavey in that "we need a bit villain, dammit" way.

-I can't say I care for the way they truncate the theme song and end on a crescendo that's not at all part of it and sounds jarringly out-of-place.

That's all! I'm keen to continue!

Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Four: "World Tree Caballeros"

So is that title a pun I'm not quite getting, or is it REALLY as trivial as "There's a World Tree and 'tree' sounds kind of like 'three?'" Can't say I'm overly impressed by that, guys!

Well, it's not a super-impressive episode, though I guess I'll take it over the last one. The idea is that Felldrake can't access the caballeros' house, so he needs to get special power, and I wonder: why can't he just send Sheldgoose? He was able to go in before. I don't get it. But, he can't, so instead he has to go to this world tree in Italy, where there are Roman gods. PRETTY sure you're thinking of Norse mythology here, guys. Or a number of others, but definitely not Roman. Weird.

Anyway, caballeros go after them, and Zandra fangirls out over the gods, only to find that they're old now. Well, Jupiter Venus and Mars, at least; no other are featured. Anyway. It's necessary to get them back into fighting spirit, which she does with the help of platitudes from April May and June. And...the good guys win. Sorry for the spoiler.

Well, there were some things I liked: I liked that it opened with the caballeros having a popcorn fight and Zandra knocking down the chandelier. I liked the way Italy outside the plane window had the word "Italy" emblazoned upon it. I liked "We're not birds! It's not like we can fly!" And then this exchange:

Donald: I'm freezing my tail off!

Panchito: That's because you don't wear pants!

Jose: Hey! Do not knock it until you try it, my friend!

It's a good point. But overall, again, I was pretty lukewarm about this one. We shall see what happens next. Obviously.

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Sixteen: "Day of the Only Child"

I think if you're going to appreciate this series at all, you really need to accept the fact that most of the characters have basically nothing to do with their comics-equivalents. This is true of HDL more than anyone, I'd say. The show makes this harder to do by including the odd bit of inept comics-fan fan-service, but you gotta. I mean, the "completely different personalities" thing is...a thing. That is nothing whatsoever like older things. In a way I can't say I care for.

But! This episode, for what it was, actually was not bad. We have them trying to be autonomous people while also being part of a triad, which, okay, fine, the character-building could be worse. Huey helping Beagle Boys be better outdoorsmen was fun, for sure. As for Louie visiting Doofus...well, I do think it's funny that the writers apparently realized that nobody ever liked Doofus and so didn't even make a token effort to maintain the original character; all that's left is his name and, sort of, his looks. Now he's a deranged, spoiled billionaire. There seems to be the potential for horror here--hard not to think of the kid wishing people into the cornfield--but eh, it's amusing enough.

Inevitably, of course, we then come to Dewey's segment, and uh. This is the part of the episode that decidedly does not work; seeing him try to enact this fake talk show all by himself with cardboard cutouts as an audience makes him look as crazy as Doofus if not more so, and not in a fun way. More in a bemusing, why-the-hell-am-I-watching-this-and-what-does-this-have-to-do-with-Dewey's-established-personality-such-as-it-is way. Oh well. As a wise man once said: though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night, I can see paradise by the dashboard light. Wait, am I thinking of something else? Whatever!

The Legend of the Three Caballeros, Episode Three: "Pyramid-Life Crisis"

Well, hello there! Time for more caballeros! At the end of the last episode, Donald had gotten tangled up with this flying bat mummy creature and was being dragged away through the air; at the beginning of this one, Zandra just shoots away the rope and he's saved HURRAH! The bit where José and Panchito can only find spiky things to break his fall is kind of funny.

Anyway, they go to chase after the thing, which is a minion of the bad guys. I haven't really said anything about the villains, because honestly I don't find them very interesting, but there's their neighbor Count Sheldgoose (sp?) and Lord Felldrake (sp?), a sentient snake staff who's the one who imprisoned Zandra back in the day. La. I find them pretty generically villainous, although I guess Sheldgoose's terror of his new boss has the potential to be amusing.

Right. Long story short, they can travel to different places using a magic map, which may be the most videogamey thing I've ever seen in a TV show, and which will clearly provide the jumping-off point for future episodes. So they chase the villains to Egypt (I like the way José give their water to the unrealistically-dehydrated camels) and there's some Chariot-of-the-Gods stuff where the pyramids are actually space ships so they go the the moon and fight "astro-mummies" and Felldrake's mecha suited army. Panchito has a secret luchador identity, which is definitely...something. April May and June actually help out a bit this time by decoding ancient writing, but my impression is that they're destined to basically play a background role, which I suppose is okay. The show IS called "The Three Caballeros," after all. Oh, and there's a mummy flight attendant who is perhaps needlessly grotesque.

To be honest, I found this one a bit boring. There's nothing glaringly wrong with it, I guess, but, I dunno, it felt kind of bland and uninteresting to me. I am still curious as to what the future will hold, however.

As you know if you've been looking, the series continues to leak online in a gratifyingly brisk manner. Predictably, Disney has flexed their power to get some of it pulled, but given how predictable that was, I've been sneakily downloading the episodes as they find them, so we should be good. I have up through nine right now. If you have later ones, hit me. I feel confident that we will be able to get through the whole thing in short order.