#basically they built up the whole don’t stop background with this story on the ep

[edge-oftheworld]

5sos really did be like ‘no there’s a better story for teens who might end up in incel spaces’ and wrote try hard

[popculturebuffet]

The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Dope-A-Cabana Review (Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Salduos Amigos! Since i’m covering a full series, i’d like to welcome any newcomers to the first part of the epic final stretch of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS! For those of you just joining us, a few months back WeirdKev27, easily my biggest supporter as the only one who comissions any reviews from me, asked if I could do a big project for him: a comission of EVERY major american apperance of those three happy chappies in matching serapes. Give i’ve ALWAYS loved the boys ever since house of mouse and had been sitting on Legend of the Three Cablleros for far too long, more on that in a minute obviously, I happily agreed. Plus the rather nice influx of cash from the comissions was very welcome. If your intrested in comissioning your own, hit me up via my direct messages. It’s 5 dolalrs an episode, though I do do discounts on orders of 3 or more, and 10 for a movie, with again discounts for orders of more than one. And yes that plug was very shamless, but again I have no other job than this.  Back to the point these reviews have taken me on a wonderful journey: I got to rewatch the movie and revel in the fun songs, acid trips and super horny Donald Duck, got to both revisit one of Don Rosa’s best story and read another all time classic from the man I hadn’t before, took a trip back to the house of mouse to hear some great songs and see some great cartoons.. and some not so great ones, took a small detour to Mickey and The Roadster Racers to be baffled and annoyed though I am proud to say it was my first review back after I came down with Cornovirus and lost a week of work time. And finally I covered the town where everyone was nice, and got to see the boys have a joyous reunion with Donald and be lushly animated while.. Dewey jackassed around in a B-Plot and Webby resisted the urge to throat chop him. It’s been a long ride and you can find all of it is so far RIGHT HERE IN THIS CONVIENT LINK ! CLICK IT NOW IF YOUR CURIOUS. Point is while this was well paid for.. it’s easily one of the projects i’ve been most proud of and while i’m sad to see it winding down, i’m proud of what i’ve done so far, and I just wanted to heartily thank Kevin for the ride and for being so generious as to fund the whole damn thing. Your a good dude man. 

Which brings us here, to the grand finale. The Legend of the Three Caballeros! As the boys first starring roll as a group since the movie, there was really no other way this retrospective could end, and since I have a terrible problem with procastination and really hated this series version of daisy I just kept pushing back watching the series until now. I’m not proud of it but I am happy to correct it and hope you’ll all come along with me.  Before we get started I could not find much background on the show. It was directred by Matt Danner who was the character designer for the utter classic Xiaoilin Showdown and currently works on the Muppet Babies reboot, so i’m happy he’s still getting work. Otherwise I couldn’t find much. The most I could was on tv tropes, claming the series was orignally meant for Netflix.. and while I have no proof and this could easily be conjecture.. i’m inclined to belivie it. The series was apparently done long before the Ducktales reboot, to the point Frank Angrones was only vaguely aware of it and it didn’t even remotely impact the series, with Panchito and Jose only debuting in Season 2 because the original idea for bringing them in was scrapped. So while I don’t have proof.. I’m inclined to belivie it since it makes sense: Disney DID have a healthy relationship with Netflix once, setting up the MCU shows and likely being happy there.. but eventually they wanted their own corner of the sky, and likely didn’t want one of their shows bolted to the network like all their marvel shows were.  The problem this created though is Disney was CLEARLY left with a show they no longer had a place for. But even with that the show was still done, they COULD have put it on the Disney Now app or just aired it on the Disney Channel. See if there was any fan intrest in season 2 or throw one into production to at least beef up the episode count. I mean the Cabs have a built in fanbase, kids would likely love it... it’s the logical choice. But this is Disney. They’ve had to be drug kicking and screaming into representation, to the point they had to be fought for the gay romance subplot in owl house to happen, try to hide that the Sparkshort “Out” is about a gay man struggling with coming out despite having you know reams of content on the service with either gay subtext or out and out gay characters, and their attempts at doing representatoin to score points in other little ways.. have been pathetic, easily missable bits in movies that could , and have been, edited out in more homophobic countries. My point is yeah i’m still sore about how they and a LOT of the animation industry have to be dragged into doing the right thing over profit, and they often make very stupid decisions for seemingly no reason. They are a good company a good chunk of the time.. but Disney has done fucked up quite a bit. This is one of those times.  Instead they dumped the show on the Disney Life app in the phillipines and slowly some other countries, basically the Disney Now equilvent over there, and then just sort of forgot about it until Disney Plus launched. And given how many shows they HAVEN’T put on the streamer for again, seemingly no reason, it is a nice suprise the show finally got a release on there in the US. But before that, and proving what a massive mistake just abandoing the show was, the show did gather a massive fanbase via people uploading the episodes online. So yeah the show was treated REALLY shittily for stupid reasons, but thankfully it still has a fanbase to this day and said shabby treatment, as it always does, just encouraged fans to support it harder. So naturally i’m more than happy to give the series some spotlight as fanbase or no, it badly needs it and Disney sure as hell dosen’t want to do it. So if somebody’s gotta do it, might as well be me. This is the Legend of the Three Cablleros.  We open on some narration from Xandra, Goddess of Adventure. Granted she hasn’t been identified yet, and won’t be till next episode.. buuuut it’s easier on me to not have to dance around her name so your learning it now. But Xandra narrates that long ago there were epic battles against the good and the evil and all that by epic heroes, and it’s all cumilated in the Legend of the Three Cablleros. Post title drop we’re treated to the boys, in cool looking armor and with neat weapons, fighting a purple monster man as you do in an really beautiful and epic sequence As this scene illustrates the animation for this show is GORGEOUS, a lavish update of the standard disney style with nice use of shadows. It feels almost film quality in it’s work, and it’s an utter treat to watch and opening at the end was a good call: it both ratchets up excitement and allows the first ep to have some action since this one, as part of a two part premiere, is mostly setup. It’s eyecatching, exciting and makes you want to know what the hell is going on. And since Xandra realizes MAYBE starting the story at the climax was a bad idea, she takes us back a bit.

Okay maybe not that far. No we open properly at Donald’s house, where it’s his birthday! And like the movie, it’s Friday the 13th, an excellent call back. Donald’s making his breakfast, boliling some tea and.. talking with the weird foced warped refelection in the kettle who can apparently only say “right back at you handsome, wink”. Seriously I have so many questoins and all of them are about what this guy is, why is Donald so calm about all of this, and is he still alive after Donald destroys his tea kettle later.  Donaldo gets a call from Daisy, whose visting to spend the day with him and is waiting patiently int he bad part of town. I didn’t know Duckburg had a bad part of town but given Glomgold has to get his sharks and bombs somewhere, i’m not surprised. Unless he special orders them, but even then what if he needs a shark or a bomb in a hurry? He’s gotta get them somewhere and now we know where. So there’s that. So all’s going well until Donald’s asshole boss calls and forces him to come in despite Donald having the fucking day off and it presumably being on the schedule. So Donald rushes to work, and we do get some great gags but as you’d expect for Donald it goes poorly and he botches a kid’s haircut despite the mother being very rude.. and also a female version of pete. LIke.. did he remarry after the divorce from peg or is that his sister? Does that mean PJ and PIstol have a cousin I never knew about? I want answers dammit.. and picutures of spider-man. Not for any slander job I just really like spider-man. 

Eh it’ll do.As i’m doing a full series this time i’m stopping to talk about the main cast as we go soooo.... Tony Anselmo is naturally Donald, even pitching in to consult the crew on Donald’s characterization here, as really what better expert is there? He’s voiced Donald since the original Ducktales and has stuck with the roll since, only taking a break for Mickey and the Roadster racers and that’s likely because between finishing up this series and the Mickey Mouse shorts, and moving on to Ducktales 2017, he likely simply didn’t have the time for it. Granted given how little he was used in the first season of the show, he probably still could’ve done it but regardless, he’s a legend.  Daisy is voiced by Tress Macneile, who not only has voiced the character since House of Mouse and is easily the best voice for her, but is also one of the most storied and legendary va’s in the buisness, having been at this since the 80′s with zero signs of stopping. Just to name a few of her more notable roles, in chronological order; Gadget Hackenwrench, Babs Bunny, Agnes Skinner, Charlotte Pickles, Dot Warner (Which as of last year she’s picked up again and will do the same for Babs, just in case you thought i was exagerating on the “zero signs of stopping” thing), Pookie from Hey Arnold, Mom, Hoodsey Bishop, and Queen Oona among MANY, MANY smaller rolls. I didn’t even realize Charlotte or Hodsey were here, she’s that talented and deserves all the praise.. and way better rolls as Daisy than this one but we’ll both get to that and thankfully much like with Tony, the reboot’s giving her character some depth to work with so she gets to reallys tretch her chops. The woman turns 70 here, will likely keep going until she dies, and is wonderful and deserves more respect. 

 So because this is Donald, life wont’ stop punching him in the face and it turns out his house burned down, the fire people are destroying everything because their assholes, seriously they destroy both a family heirloom and a picture of his parents despite not being on fire. I’d be genuinely suprised if their general strategy wasn’t scremaing “fire, fire fire” and then going “rock rock rock” while they throw rocks on it. Super brucey bonus prize for the first person who gets that refrence and comments on it. I’ll get back to this in a second but SOMEHOW, beisdes loosing his home, all his possesions and his job... it gets even WORSE and Daisy calls, refuses to listen to him despite him having VERY valid excuses and breaks up with him. Oh and then the fire fighters gladly talk about going home to their in tact houses  and partners. 

So yeah let’s talk about this. This first 6 or 7 minutes.. is why I didn’t return to the show for a while. My brain has a bad habit of glomming onto certain parts of things, so it remembered the rough to sit through and not very funny first act.. and not the rest of the episode which is very good and likely more indiciative about how good the series is. Thankfully it does get better but this first act .. frames things like it’s DONALD’S fault somehow. I mean yes he did burn his house down.. but even that really isn’t his fault. He was called away suddenly, wasn’t thinking and made a mistake. Hell he proabably woudl’ve had more left if the fire department hadn’t gone crazy with the axes. His being called into work? He took the day off, and his boss was just a dick. His screwing up at the job? he was genuinely trying his best and doing his best and the client was just wholly unresonable. Donald did nothing wrong but the episode WANTS to frame him like some sort of screwup.. which he is, it’s Donald.. but not in this case. It was just a string of uncomfortable to watch bad luck that cumilates in him having nothing left. It’s not funny, it’s jsust really sad and it’s REALLY hard to tell the tone their going for as they seem to awkwardly bounce from jokes to Donald being utterly devistated and alone. 

And the worst of this.. is Daisy. Daisy is EASILY the most infamous part of the show, as their portryal.. is pretty bad and apparently gets worse. We’ll see as we go but yeah.. her screaming at and breaking up with her boyfriend without listneing to his side and giving the claim we only have HER word on that he’s always screwing up, ON HIS BIRTHDAY no less, when he’s done nothing wrong, does not make a good first impression nor the fact the show seems to AGREE WITH HER. And look Donald is a trainwreck, this is true.. but the show dosen’t remotely portray him as one until AFTER this scene. As I said nothing that happened was his fault. Donald isn’t irresponsible or a screwup or dating a high schooler or anything. He isn’t Scott Pilgrim. He just has really bad luck. Again, we do see some foibles in the scenes to come.. but we don’t see any that would justify her claims, especially since she seemed perfectly happy earlier with him. Now if she’d say brought up some screwups in the first scene, and gently at that, then this would’ve worked.. but as it stands she just comes off as MASSIVELY unsymapthetic.. especially since Donald later calls her nieces over for help, which is objectively weird not gonna lie.. so she now KNOWS he had to move to a new house and his likely burned down.. yet still apparently has nothing good to say about him. 

It didn’t help this rubbed me the wrong way in a very special way. As i’ve made plain before I don’t like THIS version of Daisy, the nagging, selfish, vindictive asshole who will gladly try and cheat on donald, dump him at a moments notice and you know PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. Which just in case you think i’m exagerating...

She fucking upercutted him..and like here for something that isn’t his fault. I mean this Daisy isn’t physically beating Donald.. but that’s a VERY low bar to clear. And emotional abuse is just as bad, so there. My point is too often in the comics when written poorly, Daisy is a pretty terrible person and I REALLY didn’t want a screen adaptation of this form of Daisy. It took a WHILE to recover from not liking daisy over this version, with help from remembering house of mouse, some good barks story with her and the AMAZING Ducktales version and the suprisingly good Quack Pack version.. I did. But yeah.. this is not a good sign of things to come for the character in this show. 

So yeah Donald’s heart is in the basement and his week is at an all time low when a post man shows up and gives him a letter.. well puts it in the box for a good gag but semantics. But the letter turns around as his ancestor Clinton Coot left him an inhertance for his 3Xth birthday: a house of some kind in the swanky neighboring town of New Quackmore. And i’ll also say.. it’s REALLY nice that for once, we focus on the Duck side of Donald’s legacy, or rather the coot but semantics, instead of the McDuck part. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love the clanmcduck, always will and I love Ducktales exploration of it.. but it’s still nice to acknowledge Donald comes from two sides and while one of those may be humble farmers, they still accomplished a lot, including founding Duckburg in most continuities including presumably this one. It’s also a good way to seperate thigns from other properties including the reboot: focusing on a part of Donald’s lineage that isn’t usually touched on and making THEM just as badass as the other side. 

So we get a quick montage as Donald takes a cab there and takes in the rich and fancy sights. It’s also a brilliant way to set up New Quackmore and it’s attached instutite as a fancy, upperclass place.. and thus perfectly clash it with Donald. Donald ends up getting dropped off at a big mansion.. which is not his , but belongs to the insittutes head, Baron Von Sheldgoose, played by WAYNE KNIGHT. 

Hell. Yes. I freaking love Wayne Knight. In case you don’t know who the man above is, or at least don’t recognize his face, Wayne Knight is a very funny and talented actor and voice actor with a lengthy career primarily in side rolls, with the rolls that he broke out with being loveable asshole and Jerry’s enternal nemisis Newman on Seinfeld and Dennis Nedry, aka “that guy who got sprayed acid in his face by those horrifying frilled dinosaurs that will never not haunt my nightmares”. Seriously that scene fucked me up as a kid and I could not watch that part of the movie. For the most part he’s been a side character man but he has done a LOT of voice work, most notable Zurg in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Dojo for the aformentioned and excellent Xiaolin Showdown, and Mr. Blik for Catscratch and I wish he’d do more. He also recently voiced the penguin in Harley Quin so when I get to that you better belivie i’m looking forward to it. Point is while he may not always get the glory, and had to settle for starring in a mediocre tv land sitcom to get a steady paycheck once, the man is VERY talented, very funny and perfectly cast here. 

So Donald makes himself home, finds out it’s not HIS home and gets thrown out by the snooty rich asshole’s bodyguards. As you’d expect. Donald does find HIS home, a run down cabana next door to the mansion with caution tape all over. Still Donald takes it best he can as it’s better than no home at all> What he doesn’t take well is finding out from the executor of the will that he’s not the only one inheriting the house... which is  absolutley fair. The guy just had the worst day of his life, and this lady didn’t bother to put in the letter to any of them that they were sharing the house. The Sheldgoose thing was just an average Donald screw up. This is just this lady going...

But yes we meet our boys.. and the introductions are naturally given this series is about them the best we’ve gotten so far: Jose is thrown off a bus, having ran out of fair, and having wooed all the ladies on board, and quickly charms the executor and is perfectly cordial to Donald, while Panchito parachutes out of a plane and marvels at how he went from nothing to having two new best friends, a run down shack and a sleezy lawyer! In short the two make a great first impression, helped by wonderful casting.  Jose is voiced by Eric Bauza, a talented voice actor whose had WAY too many roles to list here, but two of the most notable are being the current voice of Bugs and Daffy, and his most notable role outside that recently has been playing Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But the guy is endlessly talented, seems really nice, and is easily one of my faviorite Jose’s so far after just one episode. He just.. gets the character perfectly and is thankfully NOT another white guy stepping into the role, so that’s nice. He easily oozes the charm and layabout nature Jose and was a natural in the role and i hope he gets to take it up again at some point.  Speaking of naturals we have Jamie Camil as Panchito, who easily steps into the guys boundless energy and the sterotpical bits are swapped out for making him a cloud cuckoolander instead, which I genuinely love and fits the character perfectly. He’s best known for CW Soap Jane the Virgin, where his charcter Rodrigo just sounds like a delight, but has recently picked up a pretty good voice acting career, vocing Don Karnage in the Ducktales reboot, Globgor in Star vs the Forces of Evil and Todd’s Stepdad George in Bojack Horseman. I only hope he gets more voice work as he’s really damn great at it and it’s wonderful to get to see him in a role that’s not limited to a few episodes at best for a change. 

So Donald’s less than happy about this, again it’s hard to really be that mad at him when he’s had a really, REALLY bad day and wasn’t told about this, but it’s kept to just the light level of grumpy as to not make him unlikeable. Granted after that intro it’d take a LOT to make him unsympathetic, but after their version of Daisy I really dont’ want to test this series.  Our boys also find out they have a groundskeeper, ari, aka THE ARCUAN BIRD! He’s just a delight any time he pops up, doing his usual “ya ta ta ta” bit, and being adorable and hilarioius as always.. and also hilariously failing to fix the boys door. So Donald ends up just accepting he has roomates now, nothing he can do, and the three explore the house finding all sorts of cool old artifacts, feeling they’ve stumbled onto something specail. And you know what that means: YARD SALE! Seriously it feels like a bit out of Wet Hot American Summer or Stella, a  series from the same creators you really should check out and that is high praise, trust me. 

I wish this series was streaming somewhere.. I mean we finally got Clone HIgh streaming Viacom, get on that. Anyways, it’s just.. fucking hilarious, and a LOT of this episode is once we walk back from the writers kicking donald in the junk and acting like it was his fault. Once Donald gets his inhertiance, the episode picks up immensley and we see the shows real charm and hilarirty fly, with jokes coming at a rapid and wonderful pace. The show really did impress me with the second half and made me utterly excited for tommrow.. or I guess today’s, look at the follow up.  But we’re still in this episode and being a rich asshole, Sheldgoose isn’t happy about a yard sale, though given this series standards, we not only get some great deliveres from Knight of an outraged “A YARD SALE?!”... but a wonderful gag where Sheldgoose out to white guy it up and yell at them over this..accidently takes a wrong turn in his massive house, and turns around, not loosing how upset he is once.  Meanwhile, we meet.. April, May and June. Yeah apparnetly Della isn’t dead or lost in this continuity, so the boys are MIA, and are instead replaced by Daisy’s Nieces, who I hope show up in the reboot before it ends. Especially since the show makes them WAY more tolerable than classic huey dewey and louie and instead enjoyable like Ducktales HDL. While not as indvidual as those three, the three are still idendtical outside of outfits, their voice actress Jessica DiCicco uses her consderiable talents and experince to give each one a unique voice, so while they all share a voice actress, none of them sound alike. And to round out our main cast for now, as our last members will be joining us fully next time, let’s talke about Jessica DiCicco. Jessica is a very talented and increasingly prolific voice actor and if you haven’t heard of her, and you probably have, you’ve defintely heard her voice. Starting out with Disney, hence why the probably called on her for this, she did the voices of Maggie for the Buzz on Maggie and Melina for Emperor’s New School before breaking out as Flame Princess on Adventure Time, whose both one of my faviorite characters from the show and one we’ll be digging into starting next month. And not one to rest easily she picked up a second set of iconic rolls vocing Lynn and Lucy Loud on The Loud HOuse, and funnily enough using those voices for two of the girls here. And along with Loud House she’s also currently starring in it’s Pony and is int he main cast of Close Enough as Candace. My point is she’s exceedingly talented.. as is this whole cast, as it’s a DAMN excellent cast and just further sells that this series deserves better.  We’ll get into the girls more next time as they don’t do much here other than get called in by Donald for help, with what I saw of episode 2 fleshing them out more. Point is Sheldgoose offers a million dollars for the cabana and all it’s stuff and the boys are glad to sell.. they just have to find something Sheldgoose desperately wants, a mysterious golden atlas encrusted with Jewels.  Our heroes head in to find it with Panchito finding it, and being very specific about it. We also get a nice call back to Ari destroying the door as Jose cleverly calls on him to destroy the lock. So our heroes open the book... and a goddess pops out and threatens to kill them all. 

Final Thoughts: Dope-A-Cabana is a decent intro the series, but as i’ve said it’s heavily hampered by a weak and mean spirited first act. But once it gets going it REALLY gets going and as part 1 one of a two part pilot, it does it’s job well once it does get going: introducing our three boys and one of our antagonists well and setting up the side cast and preparing for our last to major additions Next Time: The Boys go on their first adventure, Sheldgoose finds a boss and the girls find their voice. Thanks for Reading, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.