New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Ten: "The Spear of Selene"

Somehow, putting an exclamation point on that title feels very superfluous.  I mean, for most of the other episodes you can at least get where they're coming from, but here...

Yeah yeah, four episodes behind...WHATEVER, mortal. Let's do this, eh?

So this is the episode where they go to the Island of Greek Mythology ("Ithaquack," which is apparently a mythical place; this may be nitpicking, but it kind of annoys me that, although Ithaca is mainly known as Odysseus's home, it's a real place; it's not any kind of myth) and apparently Donald and Scrooge have a history there. While Dewey and Webby go to try to find out what the deal is with Della (who we may recall went off with the "Spear of Selene") in whatever previous episode, the others play games because of this thing where Zeus is pissed off that he can't beat Scrooge. Mmm.

WELL...what did I like? I liked the "Storkules" character, and his history with Donald. Um. I like the idea that Louie's full name is Llewellyn. I like that Donald doesn't try AT ALL in the "games" part. Hmm.

So it's not that I, like, despised the rest of it, exactly. Well, okay, I don't like the whole "let's toss random Greek mythology things in here even if it doesn't make any sense because this is Greek Mythology Island" mindset (bag of winds, golden fleece, siren). And I really didn't like the business with Zeus being jealous. Yeah yeah, Scrooge is the awesomest forever, blah blah.

Nor did I like the whole Della thing, though that may just be me not being down with the whole concept of making her into a big plot point, but whatever it is...it is. "Maybe the sphere isn't an artifact. Maybe it's something else." Yes, maybe it's the fond memories we made along the way. Blah. The whole thing felt confused and forced.

Also, the ending where accidentally dropping the unrelated ball in the game area apparently automatically makes Zeus lose makes zero sense. Oh, and I didn't like the "Scrooge obviously lets him win not even trying to hide it" thing either.

Huh. Looking at all this, it becomes pretty apparent that I really <i>didn't</i> like it, even if "despise" might be going too far. What to the evs, kidsz!

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Nine: "The Impossible Summit of Mount Neverrest"

Okay okay, I watched it. Leave off, you vultures!

So there are things I liked and things I did not like about this episode. Here's what I liked: the fact that Scrooge has a more-or-less believable motive other than financial to climb the mountain. The trippy-ass portals at the top with no explanation. The fact that Mallardy's corpse is wearing an "I didn't survive Mount Neverrest" t-shirt. Okay, and Huey's motive was fine, and so was Dewey and Webby's.

Right. So all that is reasonable enough. Here's what I didn't like: the fact that Louie is just going to decline to go on this trip. And Launchpad's nonstop excessive stupidity with the "ice fever" thing. Admittedly, those are fewer things than the things I claimed to like, but did I say "didn't like" above? What I actually meant was "found just absolutely fucking intolerable." Especially the Launchpad stuff. Somebody needs to wire the writers' eyes open Ludovico-Technique-style and force them to watch the Launchpad-centric episodes of original-Ducktales' first season to teach them that that's not all there is to the character. Fucking hell, man. Oh, and I also hate Louie's personality. And the fact that only Huey is a Woodchuck. But that's neither here nor there. This could have been a servicable mini-episode shorn of all the stuff down-mountain, but as it is, bah. BAH, I say.

Random Observations

-So Scrooge is apparently in his nineties in this continuity, if we're accepting that he really tried to climb the mountain seventy-five years ago. A bit hard to buy, really. He was seventy-five in that one Barks one-pager where he uses a lightbulb instead of candles on his birthday cake. That seems a lot more reasonable to me.

-"Louie put it on his corporate credit card!" "Louie doesn't have a corporate credit card." "Oh. Louie gave me your credit card."

-It's kind of weird that there were seven episodes in quick succession, then a month-long pause, then one more episode, then...an even longer pause. What's going on here?!?  

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Eight: "The Living Mummies of Toth Ra"

I'll tell you why it took me so long to get around to this one: because the title and premise filled me with apathy, that's why. Blah blah mummies, blah. Blah! Makes me think of Original Ducktales in a nonspecific but kind of boring way.

Anyway, now I've seen it, and...I'm STILL kinda filled with apathy. I mean, I guess it's not awful, as these things go, but it kinda feels like an Original Ducktales episode. The character stuff with Webby and Louie is fine, I guess, and the whole set up is at least potentially interesting, but the reality is a bunch of lame jokes about burritos. And then the mummy's real for no reason except that we need to have some kind of climax to all this nonsense? Bah. Seriously. Generally, the whole thing's pitched a little too dumb, the writers are a little too willing to sacrifice character in the name of lame jokes, and I really hope the next one is better.  Otherwise, I may lose faith.  Do we know when the show's returning?

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Seven: "The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks"

Oh wow, this one was remarkably shitty. I, as the kids may or may not say, can't even. Let's just start with the number one thing on my--and surely everyone's--mind throughout: Louie is the only one who, given his given personality, would be likely to actually idolize Beaks. So why do they instead fling the personalities they've given Huey and Dewey to the winds for the sake of a really lame plot? Mystifyingly ill-thought-out and half-assed.

Mark Beaks. Unless that name is a play on "Mark of the Beast," I don't know what it's meant to be parodying. Fortunately, I don't care. What I DO sort of care about is that he's incredibly grating in a non-fun way, and all the social media/tech billionaire satire is just incredibly limp.  I WOULD say "Good thing he's apparently going to die horribly soon after the episode closes," but that whole thing just feels jarringly tonally off.  There's the germ of a good idea buried somewhere in here: Scrooge is, after all, quite the anachronism in this day and age, so why not have a more modern kind of plutocrat? But the way they've done it in this episode really isn't good at all. It's boring and risible and bad. Easily the worst yet. Bah.

Oh, and let's not forget about that abortion of a subplot with Scrooge and Glomgold (actually, let's). The episode ALSO amply demonstrates their inability to do Glomgold in a remotely interesting way; I have ACCEPTED that the Barksian version of the character is not really a thing anymore, but in that case he should at least be formidable and menacing. Here he's just bumbling and useless. Though I suppose I must admit that their glowering contest at the beginning was slightly amusing. Also, is the fact that Glomgold's beard is fake actually mean anything? Another question I don't care about!

"Where did the sharks come from?"
"I've got a great shark guy."

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Six: "House of the Lucky Gander"

Welp. I'm not gonna lie to you people: for whatever reason, I just found this more boring than anything else. I mean, there's nothing egregiously bad about it, but eh, whatever.

Gladstone's fine, I guess. On the whole not as insufferable as in Barks, but...it's not a bad portrayal. I'm a fan of Paul F Tompkins, and I was worried before watching it that his voice would be overly distracting, but it was actually less of a problem than I feared. It's good casting. I won't deny it.

Um...what else? So is the idea that Gladstone was ever actually a casino owner, or was he a slave right from the start? 'Cause I'm definitely not buying that the former is something he would ever be. WAY too much work.

Also, what the heck is the deal with Donald repeatedly shouting TWENTY-SEVEN when trying to guess how many fingers the guy was holding up? How dumb is he meant to BE, anyway?

Shit, I wish I felt I had more to say about this episode, but I'm afraid I don't. Okay: I guess Louie's inspirational speech to Donald in the end about his endless persistence was pretty good, as was Gladstone's flash of self-awareness at the end. But really. No one's done anything wrong; I'm not mad at them. I'm just...blah.

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Five: "Terror of the Terra-Firmians"

So, like, the kind of surprising question that immediately comes to mind is: so are we ever going to get an ACTUAL terrie fermie episode? 'Cause this one wasn't it, was it? I mean, okay, the depiction of them seems fine (though why no ties?), but still. They're more a macguffin than anything else.

Again, there's a lot to like here. The episode works well as an ensemble piece, and I'm definitely all about Badass Magic Lena and her evil shadow.

Still...here are the issues I had:

1. The whole conflict between Lena and Beakley doesn't really seem to be either here or there. She's just mad at her due to fairly mild teenage-rebellion-y stuff. The episode description says "Beakley does not trust Lena," which kinda makes you think it's going to be because she suspects The Truth, but far from it. Lena is cool for sure, but that seemed a bit mishandled.

2. The idea that the existence of the Junior Woodchucks Handbook has the effect of making Huey dull and incurious? That...kinda seems like the opposite of how a Junior Woodchuck should be portrayed, ever. And, for the record, I'm still not over the idea that only ONE of them is part of the organization. A big part of the whole POINT is TEAMWORK, dammit! I mean, it's okay if they want to have diverging Woodchuck philosophies, but there should be a basic commonality here.

3. Launchpad. I liked him in the first episode, but although he had amusing moments here, I feel that the episode went overboard in emphasizing his incredibly stupidity. I re-ask the question that I asked before: is he ever going to receive any of the surprising depth that he did in Original Ducktales' first season?

Still, the episode was basically fine.

-"Hey! You know what we should talk about? Another subject!"

"And then I can hunt down your attackers and avenge your death!" So...apparently it's okay to specifically reference death, but the word "kill" is a bridge too far? Am I correctly understanding this?

-Even though this show is a bit wobbly (still trying to find its footing, we could optimistically suggest), I still like the fact that we get to discover it together. Obviously, it's a significantly different dynamic than when I was watching Original Ducktales, which everyone else was already familiar with.

New Ducktales, Season One, Episode Four: "The Beagle Birthday Massacre"

Okay...well, yes, okay, as cynical as I want to be, I have no choice but to give in to this episode's considerable charms. I like Lena the hipster, and I REALLY hope that the last-second reveal doesn't mean that she's going to be an unambiguous villain. Probably not. The show is, I would hope, a little more clever than that. Her interactions with Webby are consistently charming, and this gives the show an opportunity to show us something that we have, like, NEVER EVER seen in the Disneyverse, and that is FEMALE FRIENDSHIP. The milieu is, let's face it, sufficiently male-centric that we've never really had the chance, and I don't think you can, in good faith, really count the occasional Minnie/Clarabelle or Daisy/Grandma bit. They're very attenuated and mostly written by chauvanistic male writers. This is something genuinely different and positive and cool and furthermore there are HELLA dramatic possibilities for a Lena torn between family and friends. Whether they'll actually be able to do that EFFECTIVELY...well, that's a question for another day, but I have to admit: for the first time ever with this show, I'm actually sorta kinda excited to see what happens next.

The Beagles! Hmm...well, what the hell, I'm just going to go ahead and say it: I like these Beagles, with their incongruous groups. I wonder whether we'll actually see more of the more outre ones, or whether they were just one-offs for this episode. Admittedly, there are a lot of one-note jokes, but what the hell, the Sixth Avenue Friendlies crack me the heck up, and the Tumblebums--the grotesque circus-themed ones--add a totally unexpected but upon reflection welcome element of horror to the proceedings. Here's the difference between these guys and the Original Ducktales Beagles: the old ones were close enough to the originals that I could only ever read them as tacky, badly-done burlesques. But these new ones that we see this week are so utterly removed from anything Barksian that I don't make the instinctive comparisons and can enjoy them in their own right. Though, granted, they could easily return to much-less-weird form in future.

-An entirely Scrooge-less episode. How about that?

-Huh--I didn't even realize that Ma Beagle was voiced by the great Margo Martindale. Not that she really makes that much impact in the role, and okay, it's not the MOST creative casting, but WHATEVER.  This does raise the question, though: is getting so many relatively high-profile people to play recurring but not regular characters (I know Paul F Tompkins are Lin Manuel Miranda are coming up) really the all-time greatest plan? Like, they could be BUSY, and you have to plan episodes around their availability. Difficult to say.

-"Are you saying Dewey would rather eat US than hotdogs?"

"I DO hate hotdogs."

-Webby's vision of continental sophistication: "I've always wanted to go to Paris...crawl around in the catacombs...maybe touch a skull..."

-"I didn't hear an American accent until I was like seven." ...and she's STILL exposed to UK accents on a daily basis. So what possible justification can there be for her not even having a trace of one herself?   Don't bring up linguistic concepts you don't understand, show!

-"I promise we'll never leave you off the boat again. We'll leave Louie--he's bad at most things."

-WHO CAN FORGET the powerful story told by the acts in Pac-Man Jr where Jr falls in love with Blinky's daughter Yum-Yum, in spite of both their parents' disapproval, and then they elope together? Yup, that happened. Here's a Wiki page describing Yum-Yum as "beautiful," though I have no notion of how you'd tell. Anyway, that came to mind when seeing Webby and Lena. Except, presumably, their relationship lacks the romantic element. Wouldn't THAT be a helluva thing, though?

-Let's just hope the show doesn't squander the good will its earned here with its portrayal of the Terries and Fermies this weekend.