#i know scrooge is the billionare but STILL

[angry-neverland]

Guys I think I'm onto something

[popculturebuffet]

Of Moons Millionaires and Mothers Part 15: The Richest Duck in the World or This is the Difference This Kid Is Out (Commission for WeirdKev27

Hello all you happy people and welcome back , shortly as I intend to publish this one Sunday just a day after the other MMM review this week, to of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my EXAUSTIVE look at the Season 2 arcs of Ducktales. And we’re almost done folks Yes counting down to 2

We’re almost to the FINAL episode of this retrospective. Just one more next week, in time to celebrate the series anniversary. Then it’s on to other projects. if your curious what i’m doing weekly for Kev, my colaberator, backer and friend, next welllllll in order...

So keep an eye out at this space if your curious, check my schedule for more details and let’s move on to the retrospective that’s STILL GOING shall we?

As I mentioned last time, these last three episodes each tie up one of the seasons arcs. While Moonvasion touches on the Louie and Glomgold arcs, it’s also an episode that really feels like a cumilation of EVERYTHING up to that, so it made perfect sense. But story wise the arcs both reach their logical conclusion before that with Louie and Glomgold’s bits feeling more like epilogues to their stories. 

It’s not only Louie’s story that reaches it’s natural conclusion here though.  Zan Owlson makes her penultimate apperance on the show and finishes her own character arc, directly impacting Louie’s in the process. It’s also the LAST episode with her I have left to review. I already covered “Let’s Get Dangerous!” back in season 3 so this is the last time i’ll be covering her. It’s been a real treat. 

So on that bittersweet note let’s send off Louie’s story in style as we finish off his arc and set up the end of this retrospective and this season with “The Richest Duck in the World!”

As usual for the show there’s two plots, KINDA three but Scrooges is more a supliment to Louie’s story than it’s own thing honestly. Unusually though i’m NOT covering the shorter plot first. I normally would as Della’s plot is breif but since it leads directly into the finale we’ll be doing our main feature first. 

A Better Billionaire Than Me:

We open in 1960, Mozambeak. Scrooge sells an invinsiblity cloak thing to a rich man.. and thus becomes the richest duck in the world. Said billionare is’nt remotely bothered though as “the curse is yours now”. Aka the Bombie.. he can’t be caught , he can’t be bought, he can only be sated by the one thing you hvae not. We don’t see him and i’ll get to who bombie’s a reinvetion of later. cue the opening credits. 

In presnt day the day after the bet and Louie is waiting for Scrooge at the table, flanked by Owlson and Manny. to declare he’s keeping the fourtune after his grand plan yesterday since he did win it square. I love this scene mostly for how both react: Louie TRIES to play it calm but is genuinely worried about his uncle and mentor’s reaction... but not only is Scrooge keenly aware what’s happening..he laughs heartily. Scrooge is throughly convinced the hard work of running a trillion dollar multinational company is WAY too much for the kid. Which I do like: Scrooge knows he COULD guilt it out of him.. but there’s a lesson to be taught in letting Louie learn for himself just HOW hard the job of being the richest duck in the world is and showing Louie just how hard it is KEEPING your wealth.

I was a bit bothered he left Louie to his own devices.. but I did realize as I was writing it he really didn’t. He saw Owlson in the room, he probably figured she could handle it and would keep the company long enough for Scrooge to retake it when Louie inevieibly gave up. He also knew the Board would be around to counterballance Louie’s shenanigans and any reckless spending the kid does.  Granted this still goes HORRIBLY wrong, but it doing so feels intentional: Scrooge didn’t think Louie would causes so much damage but he SHOULD HAVE from past behavior and was simply trying so hard to be clever and teach a lesson he forgot to think first and thus it nearly cost hi ma nephew and the world. But we’ll get to that

Anways Owlson TRIES to keep Louie on schedule.. but he’s even worse than her last employer at that, as he instead has a morning swim then decides to live out his dreams by reuniting the stars of Ottoman Empire. Yes that plot comes full circle as Louie lures both Randy and Johnny there and gets them with the oldest trick in the book:

Specifically a hundred million dollars for a custom Ottoman. Cue Louie int he board room with the board annoyed he spent a million dollars and telling him the company isn’t Loui’es personal bank account.. it’s Bradfords but shush don’t tell no one. Granted he COULD just say , have Louie pay it out of the bin.. but with the power of hindsight and the finale i’ts VERY clear Bradford is leading Louie: he knows what move Louie will make next, suggesting they get rid of some othe rbudget stuff to make up for his embezlement, and then suggests a small island in the middle of nowhere.. aka where the Bombie is kept. Not only does this instantly put Bradford’s current pain in the neck in the path of danger, but it posisbly gives bradford the company if Louie dies as the kid likely didn’t fill out a will. And bradford isn’t stupid enough to shout out loud about being richest in the world. 

So Louie plans to celebrate.. only for something to happen to the island meaning he can’t enjoy it and he goes to investigate/plan for a makeover, taking launchpad, Manny (who he’s given a golden louie head) and Owlson with him.

The island turns out to be creepy, desolate and was removed from any maps.. something Owlson TRIED to get Louie to prepare for but given this is what his thoughts look like on a given day

It dosen’t sink in. So they go in and SHOCKINGLY Scrooge wasn’t throwing giant gobs of money away for no reason and our heroes find a THIRD bin.... this one clearly containing something dangerous that just broke out... and that something is THE BOMBIE which we finally see as a horrifying frankenstein zombie. 

So for those unaware of the comics or who haven’t read life and times, it’s time for a History Lesson.. the hard kind. Bombie is a reinvetion of Bombie the Zombie, a character from Disney Legend Carl Barks story, Voodoo Hoodoo.  Bombie the Zombie.. was a racist characture of a black man. 

Yeahhhhh and it gets worse: the story was centered around Donald being stalked by Bombie, who though the was Scrooge.. who had Bombie sicked on him not because he was the richest duck in the world, but because he’d used a bunch of men to forcibly take a villiage from i’ts rightful people because the person in charge, also a racist caracture named Foola Zoola, refused to sell. 

Yeah I haven’t read much of the story nor do I ever intend to. It’s one of the worst things Carl Barks did as a creator and proof that even the best.. can still fall into their time periods racism. Don Rosa considered skipping over this entirely for life and times, but ended up cleverly finding a way to recontexualize this: using Scrooge’s horrible actions as a low point, the one moment he let himself be as bad as Glomgold... and the moment that convinced him never again. Zoola and Bombie were likewise drawn like actual black men instead of horribly racist bullshit, in line with reprints of Voodoo Hoodoo. 

So yeah I NEVER expected to see Bombie, nor for anyone ot sucessfully reinvent him, keeping his juggernaut like persitance but stripping away all the racial conotations. Instead he’s now some zombie sent by someone to eat the rich, as evidenced by the fact Louie’s bribes do nothing. 

Louie ends up pulling a move that would later be copied by the greatest of all mutantkind: drop a bunch of satlites on him. This move WILL come back to bite everyone.. but for once there was no way Louie coudl’ve known that and facing an impossible monster he unleashed on himself, the kid didn’t have a ton of options. 

Louie escapes and parties down.. only for Bombie to show up and tear the plane open because if tha twould’ve worked scrooge would’ve done it already. 

It’s here Zan Owlson gets her finest hour.. as she fucking quits, finally fed up with all the bullshit of the past year: Despite making SEVERAL other companies a raging sucess she’s been reduced to reinging in a selfish manchild who dosen’t value her as a human being and has been undoing everything she tried to do through sheer incompetence and then a LITERAL child because said child’s guardian thought i’d be fun to teach him a lesson by letting a CHILD run a multi trillon dollar company without any safe guards. The fact she didn’t quit from Glomgold alone is a testiment to her will and fortitude. 

But this is enough, and I do like that frank let’s her decide that, let’s her get one big moment of cathariss. While i’ts really more of a two weeks, she’s a professional, Owlson is tired of cleaning up white dumbasses messes, not directly said but man is it implied, and decides to make her own way. And with that she parachutes out of the series till season 3. The season would give her a happy ending though, taking over as Mayor of St.Canard, having sovled crime till Darkwing shows up and even then still being a responsible authority figure who rather than resent the hero or blame him for this or any other stupid shit comic book mayors get up to WAY TOO MUCH, she accepts his help and sees him for what he is: a needed crusader of justice and an ally to her office. She gets a happy life after so SO much bullshit thrown at her and i’m proud of her. It’s a fitting sendoff for the charcter and I hope we get that DW spinoff for more. 

So back to the child being hunted by a monster out to skin him alive.. or something.. we don’t know what Bombie’s actually trying to do here. Point is a chlid’s gon die as the plane crashes... right near Scrooge. 

So yeah Scrooge’s plot: he watches some tv, decides he can’t take not working, becomes a shoeshine again and gets stiffed by Gavin, who I was dismayed to find out all over again had shown back up. 

So Scrooge is SHOCKED that Louie somehow fucked up royally in the span of a day. Like.. dude.. you have a board that’s constantly trying to cut your defenses and whose head dosen’t care if your family lives or dies, something you do actually know even without the whole FOWL thing. And a nephew whose irresponsible on a GOOD day and that’s without BILLIONS of workers livelyhoods at stake. The sheer EGO an act like this take boggles me to no end!  I love scrooge but his actions here are depolorable and even the series goofy nature dosen’t erase that: the series likes to show the realistic consequences of things. Louie could’ve done SO much worse. And while the show tries to have that, they also place it firmly on Louie’s feet when his ADULT CARETAKER left him in charge wtihout at least remotely ATTEMPTING to reign the boy in to teach him a fucking lesson!

Gah let’s just get on with it. Scrooge offers to take the money back so Louie doesn’t have to die.. but unlike last time these events actually sink in for Louie. He realizes he can’t just foister this problem off on scrooge it dosen’t solve it.. and that Owlson was right.  So he admits he shoudln’t be the richest duck and.. that stays Bombie’s hand. 

For all this episodes flaws i’m only now noticing.. this ending is fucking perfect, easily one of the best scenes in the show. Louie FINALLY realizes that his own ego and hubris won’t fix a problem... again... and admits humility. It’s something even Scrooge can’t fathom doing at first. But Louie, who just a few days ago coudln’t be arsed to apologize for nearly causing time to implode and wipe his family from history, admits he was wrong and offers Bombie a shoeshine, finally showing how to break the curse. The one thing other millionares had not.. was humlity and compasion. The strength to not see that being the richest made them some kind of god and the compassion to use that wealth for others. 

So Louie slowly cleans the Bombie’s boots, with Scrooge pitching in. Louie admits he wasn’t a good bilionare and returns the money.. but Scrooge dosen’t restart the curse, admitting to Louie the boy has the potetial and that in one day he was a better billionare. It’s a touching end to the plot. 

Before we get into the Louie arc as a whole we have one small bit of buisness to take care of. 

Why Are You Even Friends?

This one’s simple enough. Della is trying to send a message to Penny.. and finds out in the process none of her messages ever got through to the boys. 

How.. how did she not know that already? The fact Donald was still raising them and Scrooge never came for her SHOULD’VE been a big hint. If they’d GOTTEN to earth, then someone would’ve came for her. This joke makes no sense and peppers over her pain. The hell. 

Anyways her camcorder breaks and she laments she needs a video setup. And let’s face it even if you haven’t seen the episode.. you know where this is going. IT’S THE FIRST EVER INTERGALACTIC EPISODE OF DEWEY-DEW-NIGHT!

Della is naturally confused and we get the best exchange of the episode

Della: Dewey has a talk show? Huey: Mostly in his own mind. 

I mean he’s putting it on youtube, i’m sure someone would pick this up. Anyway I love Dewey Dew Night. It was a great concept and not only were the web shorts fantastic, but I love how they worked it into Seasons 2 and 3. Not much else to say there I just love a good fake talk show. Just ask me about Space Ghost Coast To Coast or that episode of seinfield where Kramer puts the set of the merv griffith show up in his apartment. Good stuff. 

But while trying to talk to Penny, Dewey asks about his mom’s girlfriend... and slowly unravels things without meaning to, making quips about how they probably WEREN’T friends. Which would be facepunchingly callous if it weren’t Dewey: he has the tact of a blunt object going through your window. 

So naturally della leaves distraught.. also she clearly has ptsd. I mean that’s not relevant to her running off and Dewey realizing he screwed up, but she needs therapy. They all do. 

So Della goes to pack it in.. only for Penny to call, calling Della her best friend. “Ha take that family” Dewey makes a face but boubala.. you brought this on yourself. Just take your mother’s sick burns like a child. But we get to the reason she called and the reason this subplot was saved for last: Penny warns of the invasion. Their coming for earth.. and “For your family!” 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is .. eh. It wasn’t that great when it aired and when I noticed just HOW badly scrooge comes off in this episode this go round, it only made it worse. it’s not a TERRIBLE episode it has some really funny moments, the reinvention of Bombie was unexpected and brilliant, the subplot is pretty fun and the finale truly is poginant and awesome, overall it’s just .. okay. Louie has STILL learned nothing from the past season and Scrooge is criminally neglegent even by his standards. It bogs what shoudl’ve been a good episode down.

So with that we’ve finished Louie’s arc.. and it sadly hasn’t held up great. Most of the episodes themselves aren’t bad, even the weaker ones in these last three aren’t bad. As indivdiual episodes, the arc is fine and worked fine watching it week to week or day to day. But when you look into them as a whole..it’s the same damn plot over and over with a few pieces change. There ARE two exceptions, GlomTales and The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck, but EVERY , and I mean EVERY episode in the arc follows this formula. I’ll prove it. 

Louie Gets an Idea for a scheme: To stay home for once, to catch harpies, to use Goldie as a mentor, Time Treasures and to keep Scrooge’s fourtune

Louie dosen’t think it through and it backfires: His attempts to hide gyro cause a revolt from the gyropudlians, he runs out of harpies and tries to set them free, he underestiamtes Goldie’s ruthlesness , he nearly destroys all of time and space and he learns being a billionaire is harder than it looks. 

Louie Learns a life lesson: He can see all the angles, you have to give people they want or something, he can’t hack it as a con man, absolutely nothing and he’s not ready to be a billionare. 

IT DOSEN’T STICK

None of it STICKS with him or forms any sort of an arc: he just learns a lesson because the episode tells him too, forgets it and goes back to being a reckless little jackass. In contrast Lena’s arc in season 1 has actual progression: She starts out manipulating webby but clearly drawn to her, slowly bonds with Webby and as a result chooses to save a life when said death would , in the short run, benefit her, grows past Magica valuing Webby more than her, and finally stands up to her, first getting possed for it then dying for it, before coming back this season, and tackling her insecuriteis in both episodes. There’s an actual ARC and craft to Lena’s story. Louie’s is just 

Nothing sticks and it’s just FRUSTRATING. I thought the issue with his writing was only in season 3 but overall it just seems like the writers struggled to write a more nuanced version of him in contrast to the other kids who did have slow but noticable growth over the series, as did the rest of the cast. Louie just seems stuck in place, doomed to be this little tricky bastard instead of a more naunced version of that. It’s this kind of bullshit that made me get tired of rick and morty: refusing to let a character actually change because your too scared as a writer to actually let them grow and move the stories to work around that. I expected better from this show... but them’s the breaks. 

Next Time: It’s all been leading to this. MOONVASION. The war for earth! Elaborate schemes! Christmas! Mickey Mouse! See you thursday! 

[luxshine]

I have a mental list of things that I would do if I suddenly became a multi billionare, like say, George Soros or Elon Musk. I’m pretty sure everyone does, and most probably, most have the same ideas about making sure our family and loved ones are cared for, and making sure people who need the money more than us have a place to live, and so on.

However, until this quarantine, I didn’t have a real idea of HOW MUCH money the .01% has. Like, I knew the quantity, but between the real amount they’re worth and saying five trillion million quillions? It’s the same. There’s no difference between their money and, say, Scrooge McDuck’s vault. 

So I realized... my list was thinking small. I was still thinking “What can I do, before I run out of money” when the whole issue of a company like Amazon? Is that they’re NOT going to run out of money. That’s a situation that is not going to happen, not with the rampant capitalism, not even if every user in tumblr boycotted them. Because even if they didn’t make a cent ever again from tomorrow on? They still have enough money to live a luxurious life for at least six generations.

And that’s so horrible, because, for example, in one of my flights of fancy about suddenly finding myself the only heir and owner of Amazon, I thought, ok, my first action would be rising every single non-executive worker’s salary about, say 500%. Like, right now you make 10 dlls an hour? As soon as I am in charge, you make 50 an hour. And get full medical insurance, including dental, and paid vacations, and maternity leave, and paternity leave. PAID leave, of course. 

I would also cut down everyone’s hours, not to pay them less (See the previous point about rising salaries), but so that they can rest and have hobbies and free time and that life that was sold to us in 50′s sitcoms.  Which, in my head, would make perfect sense as it would ALSO mean I’d need to hire more workers (at the same 50 USD an hour rate) to keep giving people their packages at a right time, so that would mean less unemployment rates. 

I would either build  or buy some apartment buildings. Not very luxurious. You know, small apartments like hotel rooms, or maybe two rooms for families, just with a kitchen and a full bathroom. And would let homeless people live in them for free. No conditions, No need for them to pay for utilities. No “you need to clean your act or else”. Perhaps ask not to do drugs outside, but really, just give people a roof over their heads, privacy, a bathroom and a place to cook warm food, at least while they get on their feet again. And then I’d offer them jobs at the warehouses, and also help them move out to other, better buildings that would have to be rent-paid, but logical, affordable rents. Near their place of work, so they don’t have to spend extra on transportation. If Elon Musk has the money to explode rockets to mars, he has the money to do this. 

I would sponsor local artists, small business and local libraries and schools. Create community gardens. Re-take abandoned malls to create better places for communities. Create specific shelters for LGBT+ youth who are thrown out of their homes by bigoted parents, sponsor their education, their transition if they need it/want it. 

And you know what’s horrible? That THIS pipe dream? Is me going low-ball. The richest men on earth could, easily, end homelessness, unemployement, and people dying from  preventable diseases.  And STILL be the richest men on earth.  It would probably not help their great grandkids to be stupidly rich, but their children would still be set for life. 

But they don’t think like we do. (Because I know my pipe dream is not mine alone, that many, if not all of you who are reading this, also want it). They are just greedy, even if they think they’re not. Because when you have enough money for five lifetimes of luxury? just giving money to a charity or a hundred is not enough. It’s the bare minimum and it’s horrible that most of the rich people only give to charity because they want to save on taxes.

[an-aspiring-jester]

I... completely forgot about it? It was supposed to be a part of a bigger project, but since I have no idea when or IF I ever finish it, I decided to post it as a standalone. It kinda goes with the Scroldie Week “Family” prompt... (I recommend to click on the picture and enlarge to see the details)

Basically it’s a giant Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck fluff AU, WHAT IF he read the darn letter. I imagine him rushing back to the Blackjack Ballroom and finally making his move, too overjoyed to care about his reputation. ;)

Then it pretty much spirals into a world of undisturbed happiness - he’s still very much the same daring adventurer and gold addict we know and love, but much happier, less ruthless, and with a healthier and closer relationship with his family. I just love the idea of Goldie actually helping him find his way in the upper class, working with him on making better business deals, utilizing both her charms and cunning skills. Together they’d be unstoppable. ;)  The pictures are kind of recreations of the most important moments - him becoming billionare and coming home to Scotland with his supporting new wife, moving to Duckburg, traveling around the world (Goldie’s fond exasperation at his stingness - she loves gold as much as he does, but she actually likes to SPEND it XD Guess they reach some kind of consensus eventually... Separate bank accounts? :D), with the grounding from his sisters he actually makes honest deals with the natives... (Does that mean that without Bombie the Zombie Titanic doesn’t sink in this world?... The mental image of Scrooge and Goldie doing the flying scene CRACKED ME UP, but I guess they’d settle for admiring the candy striped ruby together) Becoming the Richest Duck in the World is a family celebration, as it should be - and Scrooge of course is present in Donald and Della’s lives since the beginning (he gets to KNOW Della...) and they happily spend every Christmas on Bear Mountain together. :)

Yeah, it’s as cheesy and fluffy as you can get with this old miser and the ice queen...

[sleaveheralone]

Now guys,I know this will shock you but...the old Ducktales wasn't perfect too

Let's really think about it : you guys constantly complain about how Scrooge having to raise Della and Donald would be out of character...yet you guys are totally fine with Scrooge raising Huey,Dewey and Louie in the old Ducktales and being a perfect parent to them,exept for the first episode: he wanted to see their grades,he told them not to get into fights（yeah,because HE never ever got into fights,not even once...）, he wanted them to be polite etc...guys...that is COMPLITELY out of character for him! Remember what Don Rosa Scrooge told the triplets when he first met them? "You'll excuse me...I'm not used to children! I never had time to be one myself!" Scrooge,aside from being a person that alone most of his life has always had a hard time adapting and doesn't know how some things changed since he was young! There is NO way that he instantly adapted perfectly to having three kids in so little time! Reboot Scrooge had the advantage of having had a little experience with Donald and Della but he still needs to adapt and we saw it several times! It makes sense! Donald was extremely dumbed down in the old Ducktales: he only did things right by accident,he never seemed to take offense when Scrooge insulted him,made SCROOGE look like the voice of reason every time they were together...yeah,that totally seems in character. Also Scrooge living in a mension instead of the money bin it's extremely weird yet again none of you complained. What about the fact that in the episode "Send in the clones" the Beagle Boys told Magica that they got life sentence,yet we see them free running around in several episodes,which makes no sense since it's impossible for criminal like them to be absolved. Since you guys always like to point out every logical flaws in the new Ducktales,it seems only fair for me to talk about the flaws of the old one as well,especially since there are so many that are waaaay too bitter towards the reboot. Let's talk about Magica: now, they changed the reason why she wanted the number one dime...at least at first. In the earlier episodes she wanted it to rule the world（no idea how the dime would allow her to do that） and needed to put it inside an amulet but since the episode with Gladstone she wanted it to get rich...yeah they retconned it which I'm sure it left several fans confused on what she wanted. Also,this is something that I have always wondered even while reading the comics: why isn't Magica considered a global threat both in the old show or the comics?! She either wants to take over the world or gain the Mida's touch,that would make her destroy the world economy...yet no one,aside of Scrooge is afraid of her. In fact...she doesn't seem to care that she would destroy the whole economy and therefore she wouldn't be rich anymore（she literally tells Scrooge that she doesn't care if the economy falls apart in one comic）. And what about Poe De Spell? Magica's brother: in the orinal Ducktales her crow Ratface was called Poe and was actually Magica's brother who got turned into a crow. Now THAT would have been an interesting story...if they did anything with it! But no: after the episode "Send in the clones" they never talk about this again. Even in the episode "Duck to the future" , where Magica sent Scrooge in the future and she finally gets the dime we never see Poe's true form. Heck,we don't even know he was turn back to normal because I think that the writers retconned Poe being her brother as well,since she always treated him like he was simply her pet. Or what about the episode "Return to the Klondike" where we learn that the triplets hate romantic mushy stuff...yet at the beginning of the episode we see them happy as they help Webby and Beakley preparing cards for Valentine's Day...wait...what? They don't even look like they don't like it but they have been forced to do it: they look like they are having fun. Or when Goldie told Scrooge that she didn't want to go with him in Duckburg because White Agony Creek was her home? In the episode "Ducky Mountain High" she says that as soon as her claim ran out of gold she left and got another job...way to be consistent. And rember in the episode "Till Nephews do us apart" how Scrooge instantly fell in love with a woman he just met to the point of trusting her more than his own family? And how the episode made it seem like he would allow her to fire Beakley and Duckworth and send the triplets away? Yeah,totally in character,especially on how long it took him to realize that she only wanted his money...even AFTER she told him that to his face😑 And how he never even for one second thought about Goldie before marrying another woman but when she shows up at the end he says "Goldie! My true love!" Yeah right... And how about some of the morals that often resetted in later episodes? In the episode "Home Sweet Homer" the moral was that kids grow up to be themselves and it was Scrooge who told it to the triplets...yet in the episode " Working for Scales" hegets mad at them for messing up,saying that he hoped that they would grow up to be like him. Or what about in the episode "Duck to the future" where he told the kids that it's wrong to make money at other's expence...I repeat it again...a billionare...a capitalist with his own company just said that is wrong to make money at other's expence...which is exactly what he does for living...look I know it's a kids show but really? And in the episode with Gladstone? At the end Scrooge agrees with Gladstone on how important luck is to the point of accepting Gladstone's charm,which is an awful lesson for kids: "Remember kids,never actually try anything in your life,you just have to have good luck and constantly depend on a lucky charm"...yeah... Again,you guys point out every flaw in the new Ducktales but ignore the ones in the old Ducktales. And the old Ducktales has several animation errors as well: in the episode "Send in the clones" in some shots Scrooge is tall as the triplets,while in others he is taller than them; in the episode "A whale of a bad time" Donald ,while pressing random buttons,accidently burns Scrooge's top hat but few scene later,while they were still in the submarine with no way of changing clothes...his hat gets fixed; and what about the several times where some duck's bill would disappear? Or when they miscolored the triplets' hats? Or when in the episode "Ducky Mountain High" where,while Glomgold and Scrooge were throwing each other out of Goldie's house and they colored Scrooge's sideburns brown? Yeah,funny how you guys constantly look for every single frame in the new Ducktales to find animation errors but you ignore the ones in the old one. In short: both shows have flaws,none of the two is perfect and it's complitely fine to like either just one of them or both. But stop calling the one you hate shit or saying that it ruined your childhood（for people who constantly complain about Scrooge not being mature enough for his age,you guys need some growing up yourselves）and let others like it.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Treasure of the Golden Sun: Three Ducks of the Condor or Now with More Racism!

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to my look at Ducktales: Treasure of the Golden Suns!, the pilot episodes that started it all. This look was one of my patreon stretch goals. To explain them in case some of you aren’t familiar with patreon it’s essentially like a kickstarter stretch goal: every milestone I reach in my monthly earnings means a crop of reviews for you guys, with this being 10 and my review of the movie, and the goofy movies in two weeks and September respectively, being the 15 dollar one. So if you want reviews of the OTHER Ducktales mini series Time Is Money and Super DuckTales, then hop on aboard and help me reach my 20 dollar goal so I can keep making these reviews for a living and give you all more. Said goal also includes a Darkwing Duck review eveyr month AND a review of teh Danny Phantom special The ULtimate Enemy so hop on board HERE AT MY PATREON.  Patrons also get exclusive reviews, access to my discord server (Though if anyone would be more intrersted in me making that public let me know), and to pick a short each time I do a birthday special for a character from Looney Tunes, Disney and Beyond. And next month is my boy Donald’s so since you all already sat out goofy NOW is the time. 

So now my very necessary plug is out of the way, i’m very poor, we can get to the review proper:

When last we left off Scrooge and the Boys went on their first proper adventure together, heading to Central America to follow the map from the first episode and running into Dr.Claw  El Capitan and his new best buddy Glomgold. Mild racisim, moonsoons and much better pacing ensued. 

So join me under the cut as my boy Donald returns, some iconic characters are introduced in Webby, Launchpad and Beakly, though this series only made one of them iconic to be fair, and we get some more mild racisim because fuck my life. Onward to the cut! 

So yeah as I’ve mentioned a few times now this episode had a content warning.. which was fair as there is some pretty cringy stuff in here but it had the side effect of me holding my breath until the racisim came up and whapped me in the face. So i’m keeping that tension up for you guys so I don’t have to suffer alone. 

We open at the Mansion. Scrooge is trying to find a governess for the boys, but they keep scaring off all the clients because they don’t like the idea. And for once.. i’m on Scrooge’s side here. Yes I know there’s a sterotype of rich people hiring a nanny to not have to parent. and it’s sadly often true and it’d SEEM like Scrooge is doing that.. but really he just wants the boys to be safe. He’s fully grown to care for them and just wants someone cheap and responsible to look after them while he’s busy and clearly still makes time for them. As someone who is a former nanny, albeit for someone working class, I get that as much as you WANT to spend every moment with your kid you often can’t. I say all this because SO MANY kids movies and shows villianize parents for not spending time with their kid when their clearly just working to support them. There are nuanced exceptions to this and refreshingly Craig of the Creek has outright avoided this: JP’s mom is gone almost all the time due to working as an airline pilot, but while he clearly misses her he never resents her or guilts her over it, he understands sh’es supporting him and goes out of his way to make sure his friends can meet her. It’s really swee.t And while again I get it, this guys a billionare, most examples aren’t, Scrooge still really CAN’T stop working: He has more money than god and like most bilionares REALLY should give most of it to charity or to help with programs instead of hoarding it in a massive bin.. but he’s also got tons of companies, factories, investments... people COUNTING on him to make sure these are working correctly and keep their jobs. So yeah i’ts nice that the show isn’t demonizing scrooge for this or dosen’t even consider it: he’s getting help beacuse he needs it, that’s what’s important. 

So while the boys widdle down the nannies, Scrooge talks to a renowned coin collector. He does show off his collection to the guy, but his main goal is naturally to show him the coin from last time. Turns out that naturally for a five part episode the treasure they lost last time was just a fraction of the real thing and the real titular treasure is a mythical horde even Scrooge, who normally has proved something out of myth is very real 5 times before breakfast, didn’t think existed. 

Something I do love about this five parter is how every treasure hunt has ended up being important each piece of the puzzle leading to the next like any good treasure hunt. As for where this one leads the collector HAS heard of only one other coin like it, up in the Andes Mountains in a mysterious fortress whose mountain habitat and being a fortress makes it hard to get to and the owner is apparently a real piece of work.. but Scrooge isn’t afraid of a little hard work and is ready to go after it.. he just has to find a Nanny first. 

And he does as there’s only one left: Mrs. Beakley, who we FINALLY meet after two episodes. Yeah for some weird reasont his episode choose to cram the rest of the major main and supporting cast into one episode.. it still works, they all still get great introductions it’s just weird to me when you have five episodes to not say introduce Launchpad last time. 

But regardless as I said it’s a good intro.. despite the boys wilding a lasso and a snake.

 Beakly is unphased and even dosen’t remotely fall for them trying to say she got the wrong name. And while Scrooge is a little impressed, he’s even more when she states she’ll work for free... with one condition: Free room and board for her and her grandaughter, Webby, who has been there the whole time and looking cute as a button. Scrooge is unsure but one minute of Webby being adorable later and he’s agreed. She can’t eat much right? He also hopes she’ll help the boys not be douchebags, unaware that their inherent poorly written sexisim means that was never going to work. And why yes I will call it out eveyr time it happens because it happens every time they have an episode together and only gets worse. 

He goes to Gyro for help and Classic Gyro.. is utterly delightful. While I clearly have issues with Classic Scrooge, whose a greedy poorly aged asshat and the boys, who are sterotypes of male children, Gyro? He’s nice, friendlya nd eccentric, using a delightfully wakcky pogo hat thing to think and takes only a mintue to figure out how to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem and only needs a few hours to build his cool looking bird ship, using bird legs to offset the hard to sort out landing conditions. But since it’s a fancy bitch, it needs a pilot and i’m sure we all know where this is going...but since Carol Danver sis busy he has to go with Launchpad. 

Launchpad’s intro is great, cheerful as he does a job testing a plane and naturally crashes it, and when thought dead walks out seconds later unharmed and jolly as ever. Scrooge is naturally terrified of the prospect of flying with him but dosen’t really have another choice “I hope my insurance is paid up.” Scrooge it’s you.. of course it isn't. 

So with that our hero bids a farewell to the boys and ends up unteitonally coming off MASSIVELY unlikeable. No really he leaves them behind for their saftey despite needing help... and then upon finding out Donald is going to be on leave soon in the andes, and just assumes that YOU KNOW, he’d LIKE to go on a dangerous exausting adventure instead of actually get some rest after working in the goddamn navy and STILL dosen’t take the kids along despite having a very tearjerking farewell IN FRONT OF HIM that happened at most a month ago. Granted i’m suprised Donald is getting leave this soon.. but since I genuinely like to look into this sort of thing and the last time I didn’t I was correctly reminded Gulliver’s Travels was a satire.. and found out someone HAD actually watched the Jack Black movie. I only vaugely remember a trailer.. I thinkn it was a trailer? Maybe it was the middle part of a juinor novelzation where htey have all the photos? I really don’t know. I know almost every pokemon on sight but not where I saw pictures of a forgetable jack black movie, what a shock. 

So long story short I DID google it. Here’s what I got

So given clealry more time has passed than we’ve seen on screen, enough time COULD have passed for Donald’s three day pass to kick in. So credit to the crew for actually thinking that out. They still get all the blame though for not only not seeing how bad not taking the kids to see the uncle whose like a father to them a month after he left when he CLEARLY can is bad, but how worse it is that the first break donald gets ina  month.. is spent helping scrooge against his will on a life or death treasure hunt. 

And I get WHY they wanted to try out having Donald on an adventure: he was in most of the carl barks material.... but I also dont’ get it as Launchpad was deisgned entirely to fill in for Donald when needed, we’re only three episodes into the series and this gives the wrong impression Donald will guest star a lot more. In practice while he still did get a meaty 8 episodes on the show including this one, 2 of which were cameos and the pilot only dosne’t count because of the exnteded slapstick sequence, and dosen’t appear at all after season 1, likely because Fenton’s introduction made him reduntant as he was an even more blatant Donald stand-in. It just feels weird to shove him into the pilot movie when we should be focusing on our main cast, epsecially with so many getting intorduced this episode. It woudl’ve made more sense for Gyro to be the third man instead and it woud’ve elmaited Scrooge’s uttelry horrible actions here of depriving his nephews of their surrogate father. 

So Uncle Dickstick leaves with Launchpad to go abduct donald.... and tha’ts not me being funny, that’s what actually happens. Donald is singing out on leave.. with his superior... weirdly doing paper work outside on the flight deck. 

And is angry at Donald because of him taking pictures and stuff and threatens him if he’s not back exactly in time... because look he’s on a boat with a bunch of sweaty men but as the most superior officer he can’t enjoy that so he has to get off SOMEHOW and ruining donald’s life just happens ot be a thing for him. 

So yeah Scrooge straight up naps Donald via claw and Donald is angry, wondering, as you’d expect “What’s the big idea”.. and once Scrooge clairfies he did it.. still asks that because what the fuck. And the episode treats this as comical, as it does Launchpad not understanding Donald.. and don’t get me wrong you CAN make a good “I can’t understand Donald Duck” joke, the 2017 series made PLENTY. But said series also spoiled me as they did it with far more effort, while also still showing just how much it would suck to have everyone around you struggle to hear what you say and never listen to you. They actually cared abotu Donald’s well being where as this one thinks “Gee you knwo what would go great iwth a hard month’s naval work? MORE WORK HELPING YOUR UNCLE GET RICHER FOR NO PERSONAL BENIFIT AFTER HE KIDNAPS YOU”. 

So our heroes.. and scrooge, head to Andes and find the temple and it’s here “Sigh” we met our antagonist. A Conquestador Douche who DOES have a name and it is on the wiki.. but is so generic and unlikeble I’m just going to keep calling him conquestador douche, whose introduced waving his sun coin around while the natives all bow to him because of the coin.

Welcome to the racisim! Admitely it’s not as bad as Treasure of the Lost Lamp, that’s a high bar to clear, but ti’s still not great to have the racist cliche of “character conquers a civilization because of they belivie he’s a messenger for their “silly” god”. And the saddest part is not that I didn’t notice this trope and how bad it was as a kid watching shows like this... but that as an ADULT about 4 years ago when I watched this episode how racist it and this trope in general was didn’t register to me at all. That.. really bothers me that it took me this long to pick up on things like this and i’m sorry for it. 

That’s honestly WHY we need these warnings and WHY i’m so hard on this racisim: it wasn’t necessary, it could’ve been removed and you clearly just didn’t care or didn’t realize it was racist. And even acceptable for the time dosen’t work for anymore: I learned recently that the creators of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, both white, hired black writers..and actually LISTENED, looking to them for personal stories and to check them if one of the white staff wrote something that wasn’t true to the black experience. I know that sounds like the bare minimum but this was the early 90′s, that kind of thinking wasn’t hte norm like it is in most writer’s rooms now.. and sadly not ALL writer’s rooms. Not only that but just today I ran into a MST3K skit that lampooned this kind of bullshit from not long after this episode. People clearly knew better, the writers of this episode just didn’t’t care

 So yeah, I get this was a kids show in the 80′s, I get the writing staff being almost all white.. but they still coudl’ve avoided cliche sterotypes and done something diffrent. It was was still wiithin white people like myselves power to actually think about something other htan themselves and we did not. So i’m never going to stop holding my own people accountable for just how BADLY we’ve fucked up in ways great and small because it still hasn’t stopped , likely never will so I won’t. 

But yeah.... the tribe here are portrayed as ignorant, mindless dumbasses who blindly follow tradition and a clearly corrupt leader. It’s patronizingly stupid to assume just because a belief system is diffrent than yours a person will belieive anything. Religion CAN make people act stupid, the fact many people are homophobic simply because the bible, a centuries old document written and distrbuted by humans that could of been altered by people with a clear homophobic agenda, says they should be. But there’s the very clear very gross implication here that any god but the christian god is invalid and simplifies wonderful and well thought out myths and beliviefs from various cultures into “well they belivie in da sun god because of the shiny coin”. It’s gross, i’m glad it’s stopped and it’s VERY telling that the closest Ducktales 2017 came to this was the most dangerous game night which while a tad cringe inducing at least showed the tribe it used was clever, disposed the person they mistook for a god after it was clear he wasn’t one , and were wholly sympathetic. 

Naturally Conquistadouche orders the tribe to attack Scrooge and it works briefly , though Scrogoe prepares to take on the ENTIRE villiage.. and given this is Scrooge and on this blog we’ve seen him take on an entire town before, and that was a more inexpericed less bastardly scrooge yeah their fucked, and only escape death because the coin falls out of scrooge’s coat when he tries to help donald who naturally injures himself trying to help. 

And since as per white dumbass racist logic, the villiagers thought Conquistadipshit was a messenger of the gods because of his coin, they think the same of Scrooge, this causes them to stop and bow instead and protect scrooge when Conquistadumbass tries to attack our heroes. Their given a room for the night naturally. 

Conquistadick demands they give him the coin and leave, but Scrooge has none of that: he has no reason to leave and has all the leverage so he instead demands to know wha’ts going on. 

Turns out Conquisineart is the decdendant of one of the crew from the ship Scrooge found: their captain rain off with it, leaving two of his men behind, though both had the map to the rest of the treasure and split it: one left for the Arctic, the other stayed and did the whole racist god bit. And somehow despite all the time passing Conquistadoodoohead still has his half and Scrooge aranges a trade for the coin. And why yes their is the obvious problem of “what if Conquistascoobydoo say tells them he’s the true god and attacks scrooge like he ends up doing in the climax”. And Scrooge’s plan.. is to have the plane ready and to run to it, despite Launchpad not being a mechanic and saying as much. Instead of you know... stealing the guy’s coin while he’s asleep or something or just having launchpad, whose bigger and stronger and donald whose not bigger but is also stronger hold the guy while Scrooge steals his sun coin, then simply walks to the plane with the map, the coins and all the leverage. at worst the guy tries to do the same scheme without any coins and as the end of the episode shows, that wouldn’t have worked. He was stupid. Oh and the cherry on  top of this shit sundae is scrooge objects to the guys tyranical rule.. but is okay with letting it keep going if he gets his coin and DOnlad, whose there for the deal, never call shim on it. 

We then get a bit of Launchpad being forced off a cliff to ride a giant Condor...

Look this episode is filled with racisit sterotypes, a generic villian and Scrogoe being awful. I’ll take a fun sequence of Launchpad riding a condor, with Donald providing an assit with his camera  by blinding the beast so Launchpad can ride him properly giving them more leverage now Launchpad is popular. And a deadline to fix things by tommorow. 

The next day Launchapd and Donald have defied logic and their own tendency to screw up and fixed the bird, while Scrooge makes the deal.. and naturally it goes EXACTLY how you’d expect and Scrooge runs, though our real heroes get thigns running. 

That’s when the people arrive on condors to persue, a fight insues yoru standard hero stuff.. not bad but given the racist context I can’t really enjoy it like Launchpad flying a condor.. which had some mild racisim in them making him do that as a ritual clearly deisgned to kill him but i’llt ake mild over pretty damn obvious. Eventually douchebag looses his coins, his ctizens abndon him. Happy end. 

So with the map Scrooge decides to do the logical thing.... have launchpad drop him in the middle of the ocean in a raft and steer there

Launchpad takes Donald home in time and his superior is mad he dosen’t give him a proper salute.. even though he CLEARLY just got home and is diisorented from a crash. Launchpad makes a quip and this episode mercifully ends. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode starts out okay.. but quickly goes downhill fast and steep. There are massive bits of racisim, massive leaps in logic, and massive amoutns of scrooge being a dick.. not his WORST in this series but it’s still bad. It’s just not very good. It’s the second worst episode of Ducktales i’ve seen, only held up by my boys Donald and Launchpad. This was miserable.

Next Time on Treasure of the Golden Suns: Our heroes head to the arctic for another offensive episode to rescue scrooge from his own stupidity.  Next Time on this Blog: We return to Green Eggs and Ham and hop on a train as our raging bitchcanoe mother and daughter duo meat our ambigiouslyg ay duo at last. 

See you at the next rainbow.

[popculturebuffet]

Of Moons, Millionares and Mothers Part 2: The Ballad of Duke Balloney or “I’m Flintheart Glomgold and I Always Will Be!” (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people. I”m Jake, I review stuff and today continues my look at Ducktales season 2 story arcs, of Moons, Millionares and Mothers. And while this arc as a whole is paid for by WeirdKev27, due to the Arc’s length, 17 parts including 15 episodes and 6 comics (2 of which will be in the same review), this one’s special as he’s using his patreon review every month to do so. If you too want me to review something of your choice simply hit up my ask box or join my patreon at patreon.com/popculture buffet. You get access to my discord, to pick a short when I do a group of them for characters birthdays, help me hit neat stretch goals like my next which is reviewing a darkwing duck episode a month, and best of all EXCLUSIVE REVIEWS. And I just added one this saturday of a carl barks story centerting around wigs, legal battles and attempted murder, both by our villian.. and by our heroes...

I will never get tired of that panel nor the boys inexplicably finding a blowgun. Point is it’s there if you want it at THIS LINK, but enough plugging so I can help pay the streaming bills and keep doing this... let’s get to the meat of things shall we?

This episode begins the second arc of this retrospective, The Glomgold Arc. And this arc was inevitibly going to come to this blog for two reasons. The first is that I have made no secret, in fact i’ve shouted it as loud as I can the neighbors are concerned, that I fucking love the 2017 Version of Flintheart Glomgold. 

Glomgold is Keith Ferguson’s best role, tied with Lord Hater obviously, but it is indeed a tie. No one but Keith could’ve pulled off glomgold’s combination of ego, ham, and batshit insanity. He just makes the utterly stupid and wonderfully ludicrious things that come out of the mans mouth sound so damn natural with such an unearned confidence. It’s very clear that Frank had Keith in mind when putting this version of everyone’s faviorite South African Billionare pretending to be a Scottish Billionare and wisely built the characcter around him and his immense talent. I was not familiar with Keith at all, wasn’t even aware he voiced hater before this show but damn if that hasn’t fully changed. 

Glomgold was also just in general a brilliant update of the character: While I know a lot of duck fans weren’t happy with this version at least at first. As the action figure sitting on my shelf that once road in a car with my david hasslehoff baywatch funko pop I have entirley due to my love of baywatching,  this insane music video hoff did in the early 2000′s, and just in general how gloriously rediculous the man’s life is when you stop and think about it for a second from a pay per-view concert that ended up falling on the same night as The OJ Chase,  to his kung fury cameo , to his weird insetence they never had sex on baywatch desspite mounds of video evdience and the fact the show was buit around the bulk of it’s cast’s sex appeal, to the fact the model of his pecs used for the spongebob movie was sold in an auction and on and on... I was going somewhere with this...

Oh right as the action figure, and previous praise, shows I am not one of these fans: The original isn’t bad, in fact one of my faviorite life and times chapters that i’ll be covering this week and talking about later in the review has him as the main antagonist and a pitvitol figure in Scrooge’s life in the worst way possible. Rosa GETS what’s needed for Flinty to feel specail: to have him be an evil mirror to scrooge, what he could’ve been had he kept down the path he started down in Africa. A ruthless, amoral asshole who will do ANYTHING to get rich. 

It’s just often that isn’t emphasised enough and he’s instead just another one of the millions of generic assholes trying to get scrooges money sometimes with hired goons...

Not only that but Frank really COULDN’T have him at full effectivness. See an arch enemy in the Silver Age, which STARTED the same year Glomgold Debuted no less, wasn’t a big deal. They were still considered your deadliest foe but they’d often, much like Flinty be shuffled into the rogues gallery, show up for an issue to meance the hero, then either escape, get thrown in jail only to escape from that easily later, or be presumed dead. The last one I bring up because it happened to Magneto a LOTTTT pre-claremont. For Fuck’s Sake Charles have those teenagers train to look for a body once in a while!

Original Flinty was built for that, and brilliantly so as Barks had a talent for it , as seen by the fact The Beagle BOys, Flintheart and Magica have stuck around ever since and even in comics overseas where Flintehart is replaced.. it’s by Rockerduck who Barks ALSO created. The 87 Show followed the same formula, which was just as standard for 80′s cartoons. It’s why Megatron took until his toy was canceled the movie to shoot starscream in the face. 

The problem is villians evolved and the expecation became more that a true arch enemy had to be a true threat. While Frank and Matt COULD’VE made Flintheart a real and honest threat, he also would’ve had to make him a Big Bad. The probelm was those seats were clearly taken: while i’m pretty sure some ideas came as they went, the main story beats were clearly planned out well in advance: Webby being a clone was always the plan, as was FOWL, Darkwing being a fan of a fictional Darkwing who became the real thing, and Della being on the moon. So he presumibly carefully choose each season’s big bad... and thus Season’s 1-3 would be full up wise. Season 1 had Magica, who he made into a TRUE threat, yet left the door open for her to return as she did, Season 2 had Lunaris who even if they hadn’t fully thought him up, they probably had thought up the moonvasion, and Season 3 was what they’d built the series towards with FOWL. 

Details probably changed, it’s very clear to me they were likely going to have all three buzzards be important and ended up deicding to pivot to it just being Bradford over time. But given how well they though tout the general framework, I highly doubt Flinty was ever considered as a seirous big bad.. and I know i’m saying this in an arc that tried to set him up as one, but i’m getting there simmer. 

So they could wait for a season 4 that might not happen.. or make him a recurring villian. So Frank and Matt decided to do that and leaned into comedy. Centering him around keith who Frank worked with previously on Wonder and thus knew he could play a hammy manchild like no one else, they simply leaned into the goofier aspects of his personality. His being similar to scrooge became him being an intentional and blatant knockoff. As Scrooge himself perfectly summed up in episode 1 “The poor man’s version of me.. which to be fair still makes him insanely rich”. 

It’s another reason to really love this version as while yes, they did make him a bafoon.. he’s a wonderfully, redicuously layered bafoon: He still contrasts scrooge perfectly, manically hammy to Scrooge being calm, especially around flinty, blantatly crooked to Scrooge’s died in wool honesty, and wasting money on revenge instead of spending it on his actual company. There’s more obviously but some i’m saving for the review. 

Not only that but his insane schemery has a rhyme and reason to it: He attacks Scrooge every week like the saturday morning cartoon villian he is, but his schemes are always unwieldly and massively stupid, and he always goes with the first draft. It’s something the team enforced: the first version is what they role with because that’s how his sad brain works. He also is obssed with sharks and explosives, the former being given a suprisingly heartfelt and unsuprisingly insanne origin story towards the series end, and works them into every plot no matter how much itm akes no sense. He’s pure ego, pure stupid and pure fun. 

So yeah circling back to him being the big bad, I felt he was made one for this season for two reasons: the first is while a lot of fans (raises hand) enjoyed this version, some didn’t like how inept he was, so this would give them a breif bit of Flintheart being a genuine threat again. The other was frankly... they didn’t want to play their hand. Lunaris WAS the big bad... but fans would get supscious if there was seemingly no true threat on the horizon. Magica popped up in episode 4. We didn’t know her full plan yet true, but all we needed was lena SAYING HER NAME and fans of any other version of teh Disney Ducks would instantly go “Oh shit there she is”. So fans would now have the expectation of a main antagonist.. but would be instantly supscious of Lunaris and Penumbra if there wasn’t one for the first third of a season it took to them, and it’d leave a gap in the story to not have someone driving the plot on earth. 

So Flinty got an upgrade.. a slight one and we’ll talk about the eb and flow. And thus he got a proper origin. Now granted they could’ve planned this too, but this one’s harder to tell as the curse you me gag could’ve been a clever setup or could’ve just been a one off gag they somehow turned into an entire episode. So Flinty got an arc.. and a comedic foil, the other reason this was inevieble, and Kev’s faviorite character, Zan Owlson. So how did it work out for them? Well we’ll begin that journey under the cut. 

We begin our story a few months ago.... on every level really: the months ago shadow war aired when this episode originally good, the months ago I reviwed Shadow War (which via counting I found out was my 200th episode not counting Patreon. Nice), and most importantly for this story, the four months ago before the present day of Season 2. 

Glomgold saying curse you me as he fell into the bay during the Shadow War.... only for once in his life he dosen’t somehow get out of it unscathed and instead passes out, almost drowning. He’s found by Fisher and Mann, two fisherpersons... Mann is specific about that due to being a woman despite the obvious irony. It’s a good gag. Flinty acts like he normally would.. hostile, demanding that they know who he is.. and while they don’t.. neither does he. 

Cue credits and cue present day. Via a newscast with Roxanne we learn what I mentioned earlier: It’s been four month and Glomgold’s been missing. The general mood.. has been about what you’d expect. 

Yeah Roxanne turned on him real fast. I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if it was because he later openly bragged about stealing scrooge’s money during the shark thing on live tv at some point, making Roxanne look terrible for enabling him and for blatantly supporting him earlier. I mean.. how else do you get a corrupt journalist to do anything decent. 

But with Glomgold gone SOMEONE’S gotta replace him.. and that someone is Zan Motherfucking Owlson. Top of her class at Mouseton Univesity, Owlson is the show once again updating things: previously they added Mark Beaks to the Rogue’s Gallery as he contrasts the 50′s (scrooge ) and 80′s (glomgold) idea of billionares from previous versions of the property being a modern tech weasel. Though instead of just one thing Owlson represents a few: The most obvious is she’s a woman of color: Having a black woman in such a high position of power is something disney would’ve outright vetoed in the 50′s and 80′s. Here it’s well accepted as it always should have been. It also feels like a delebrate move on Frank’s part: There weren't’ any major african or african american coded characters in season 1, despite the show being very open and accepting, so that needed to change. The other is frankly outside of Brigtaa MacBridge, whose also weirdly absent from this series for some reason and has taken Fethry and Rockerduck’s place as the most major overseas duck character to never get adapted, there are hardly ever any females on Scrooge and his richer foes level. He’s had the occasional female rival or suitor, but only Brigittta had staying power and while I love the idea of her, another person as rich as scrooge whose willing to spend more and has a crush on him, she badly needed an update as she’s essentially Adventure Era Amy Rose in a grown ass woman’s body. 

Owlson also provides a diffrent dynamic in that she portrays the ideal of what we’d want from a ceo: She’s honest, works hard, earned her way as square as scrooge did, gladly donates to charity and is extremely charismatic and intelligent. Granted most CEO”s are nothing like this but still, she’s what we WANT them to be. Using the money not for themselves or taking big paychecks but to help people. She also provides something Glomgold needed: a straight man. While he has one in Scrooge at times, Owlson unlike both of them is a fully functional resonable human being. Scrooge, while a good person deep down, can be reckless, impulsive and greedy, and Glomgold had a tarzan like experince with sharks, goes on to name his dummy son sharkbomb, and tried to murder Scrooge on live television twice that we know of. She’s the calm, snarky, put upon sane person trying to reign in the crazy shark explosion man. 

Owlson dosen’t get a ton to do here, but that will change and she does get a decent amout in the final scene. But what she does here establishes who she is and how sh’es FIXED Glomgold industries; She’s shut down the vast number of money sinking scheme related departments, set ups everal charities, and is even setting up a new one with Scrooge, Dimes for Ducklings. In short she knew exactly what was needed to fix the company and it’s image and did so in FOUR MONTHS. Probably even less given they had to be sure Glomgold wasn’t coming back right away. I guarantee he’s faked his death like 10 times just to try and kill scrooge. They have to make sure it’s real first.  As one last note before we move on, Owlson is played by Natasha Rothwell, a producer and writer who i’ve only seen outside of this in Love, Simon and Sonic the Hedgehog.. that is a weird combo of things that mean a LOT to me I haven’t been able to bring up here again. 

We find the tv this was all playing on on the docks with a non-anthro segull pecking it while a bunch of fisherpersons go about their day. We also get this guy. 

Add him to the list of spinoffs I want THE LIST OF SPINOFFS JAKE WANTS: 1. Darkwing Duck 2. Donald, Daisy and the Kids 3. The Sabrewings 4. Tailspin Reboot 5. The Flintheart Glomgold Show 6. A Sequel Movie 7. This Guy Punching A Fucking Fish 

So you might be wondering when any of our main cast are going to show up.. and why the fish puncher isn’t in said main cast. Well that’s about now as Webby and Louie are fishing. Well okay more acuratley webby is fishing because she genuinely enjoys it and Louie is tagging along so he can nap on a boat while Webby paddles him around. That plan is threatnned by her spear fishing and he suggests using rods instead, but they need bait for that. 

Naturally, given we need to get this plot going our heroes run into Duke Baloney, aka an amnesiac Glomgold. Understandably, both of htem think this is some sort of scheme at first because waiting for someone related to Scrooge to stroll by his fish stand for some sort of shark themed trap, especially since he’s right near the water so he dosen’t have to worry about keeping them hydrated like that time he dropped one from a plane onto scrooge’s board meeting with two chainsaws strapped to it. But .. it’s not. While we the audience saw him amnesiac, and at first I thought that spoiled the episode... it really dosen’t. He still ACTS like himself on instinct, so your not sure if he faked it as part of some elaborate scheme or is really gone till this scene shows that, no he really isn’t there. And the how is simply in knowing the guy: Glomgold is not good at subtley. He has disguises and such, but their never remotely convincing. He could NEVER pull off  actually being a humble fish monger nor have gone four fucking months without yelling at scrooge or remotely contacting him. There’s also the fact Fisher and Mann 100% belivie in duke and back up his very real story of being dredged out of the bay. There’s also his south african accent, which actors including David Tennant himself have admitted is one of the hardest to pull off but Keith does swimingly, which is a hint.. but only on rewatch or for those who know his comics origins. 

Louie isn’t convinced which is fair: even if Glomgold isn’t good at this sort of thing, he’s still tried it a lot. Webby however correctly figures he has amensia. So the two simply try talking to him. Fisher and Mann do get a bit dickish laughing off the idea he’s possibly Glomgold.. despite the fact you know you dredged him out of the fucking water 4 months ago.. and if you actually looked at the news, would see Glomgold disappeared around the exact same time you found Duke. It just annoys me because otherwise these two are great characters: Friendly loveable fisherpersons who love their job, have no comeptiviness and genuinely want to help their friend duke. The encounter does have them seeing a fancy money clip Duke has but with no other options they leave for now. 

But while Duke has forgotten who he was... bits of glomgold still stir within him. And that starts when Duke spots the McDuck Industries fishing boat, the best fishing boat on the sea, something his friends are okay with.. but Duke naturally isn’t. So while Duke was a calm sane fisherman before the true glomgold in him is on full display as he comes up with insane schemes involving fish and explosives, before presenting a rather insane scheme to his friends involving getting engineering degrees and other stuff.. it’s as poorly drawn and wonderful as you expect from him. But what’s telling is that he reigns it in when his friends show obvious concern with his actions... something Glomgold would NEVER do. For one he dosen’t have friends. For another, he doesn’t care about anyone else’s feelings or thoughts. 

By now Webby is also championing that Duke is a diffrente person.. which is true. Duke is Glomgold stripped of his hate and resitment towards scrooge. He’s who the man COULD’VE been had he not sworn eternal vengeance on Scrooge. Louie is doubtful that he’s amnesiac still.. but neither can quite figure out the full story so it’s time for research.. and for Webby to accidentally knock Louie into some lobster traps.. which given he’s spent the entire episode assuming an amnesiac man isn’t that despite all the evidence to the contrary, he earned that. That said these two were the perfect choice for it: All of the boys have a bit of skeptic in them, and we already had a plot with Huey being skeptical.. and even he would’ve given up by now as would dewey since he only has a pinch at best. Webby.. has none. She can question motives and stuff sure, but at her heart she’s a kind forgiving soul who belives the best in everyone. And.. its’  paid off fo rher. Look at the whole Lena situation, she believed in her, even while Lena was actively manipulating her,.. and it truly changed her, convinced Lena to do the right thing despite the cost, to choose love over the abusive monster who made her. It’s the only missed opportunity in the episode for me. Character wise it has exactly the 8 it needs to tell the story and focuses heavly on the five it truly is about. But not having Webby bring up Lena when we don’t hear her mentoined AT ALL during her absence (though to the shows credit they did a good job showing Webby still had never remotely given up), and it made the wait more agonizing and would’ve made her motivations hit even harder: that she belives in duke because she believed in lena and it was real. And while this thank christ isn’t remotely romantic, the point does stand: She wants to see the best. 

Louie is a conman by nature so he only sees the worst, the weakest in people, the things he can use to take htem down or take hteir money. He can’t fathom someone doing good because he can’t fathom HIMSELF being good. And that.. says a lot.. but he’s accepted himself as a shady conperson who cares only for himself.. even if that’s not the truth. His inclusion here enhances his own arc much like Huey’s role in quack pack enhanced his. It shows that deep down Louie dosen’t think much of anyone.. and probably not himself. That he has to be shady and greedy to survive when that’s not tru. Sharper than the sharpies yes but also square.

One last bit before we moved on  I just found out though: The Crew originally had this as a straight up origin story: no kids, none of the rest of the duck family, except presumably Scrooge’s parts here, just Glomgold’s struggle with amensia and his past leading to who hei s now. Honestly I think that version could’ve worked, but likely given disney seems TERRIFIED of making a show starring an adult without a chlid and had to be talked into the child light Golden Lagoon, that was a non starter but I think it still works fine. I also foudn this out via a twitter thread of Frank’s rewriting history that goes in deep on teh production of each episode. Had I known this existed before writing this one, I would’ve used it for the other two arcs and most dangerous game night, but I intend to read through it so I have everything on the table from here on out. 

For only the second time in her long career of researching stuff though, Webby has hit a dead end. Mostly because she couldn’t find anything on Duke.. and NOTHING on Glomgold’s past pre-Duckburg. The most she has is his visa...

I want to frame this on my wall.. and someone is actually seling id cards out there, so I want this one at some point. It’s not Disney because they don’t care about fan merch like this, but then that just means they don’t get the money because they didn’t think of it or put the work in then huh. 

But yeah with nothing else our heroes go to the only person they know who knows him well...  Scrooge. 

Meanwhile Duke has .. this... I just.....I can’t put words to this truly bizzare surreal dream sequence.. it involves Glomgold going insane, the kids dancing on a bagpipe, and owlson is there.. despite the fact that Glomgold should have zero idea whot hat is. I think the kids mentioned here but even then, he somehow knows exactly what she looks like.

Otherwise good stuff and it’s raining hard as Duke goes in. Fisher and Mann have formally added him to their sign, and warmly welcomed him in and Duke says “this is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me I think” which is probably true. and makes what’s coming all the more heartbreaking. 

But before what’s coming Duke has another thing coming.. Scrooge who the kids brought to talk to him. The two talk casually, the kids watch not knowing.. and then Scrooge comes back to them. Turns out Webby was, unsurprisingly right on the money, Flinty does have amnesia, and unlike what Louie thought.. he isn’t inherently evil. Duke is just duke.. and Scrooge has no intention of fixing the amnesia. And while that SOUNDS bad.. his intentions are noble: Glomgold.. was a throughly miserable person. He was never happy and never would be till Scrooge was dead by his hand and that was never going to happen.  It isn’t even taking an enemy off the board: Flinty is only a threat on occasion. Scrooge clearly ENJOYS their conflict: it may annoy him from time to time, but he clearly enjoys upstaging the guy. And as he points out, it’s not a brain injury or anything: Glomgold is practically immortal as Louie put earlier, and Scrooge outright mentions Glomgold’s taken a LOT of explosions to the face. So he’s in no real danger physically or emotionally.. he’s happy. He has friends, a calling he truly enjoys. There’s another reason too but we’ll see that in the final scene. 

So Duke is finally happy... but it doesn’t last... the kids go out but a storms a coming, and Duke selfleslly heads out to save them.. only to get hit on the head and fall in the ocean again. 

It’s here we get the 2017 version of Glomgold’s origin story. We did kinda get one with life and times, as we saw his first meeting with scrooge and why he hated him, long story short with the long story coming later this week Glomgold left Scrooge for dead and Scrooge’s response was to come back, kick the fuckers ass, tar and feather him and utterly humilaite him, leading to Flinty swearing vengance. 

But while I love that version..t his one is just as awesome if not better. And it’s without having Scrooge ride a lion. Here we instead meet Flinty as a child Scrooge’s age... and as a shoeshine boy. Yup just like Scrooge Duke, Glomgold’s birth name, was an industrious young boy with big dreams. He also had unwieldy schemes from minute one, but Scrooge saw in this lad the same fire he had and tried replicating his own origin. 

The problem was... the different context ruined it. Scrooge was paid by an equally poor ditchdigger the us equilvent of his pay: still useless in scotland, but a good lesson in hard work and not being swindled. Scrooge tried that... as the richest duck in the world and without giving flinty the same amount of money. 

So Duke/Flinty took umbrage at this yelled at scrooge.. and pick pocketed his money clip. In the only bit taken from the rosa version of their first meeting, Scrooge never realized he’d met flinty already. There and then duke came up with his first true, and first insane scheme: Save the money and use it to mold himself into a richer, more scottish version of scrooge dedicating his life to one upping him and killing him. A “single white female” type thing as Frank put it. 

It’s.. utterly brilliant... taking Glomgold being a knockoff as mention and just running with that... making Glomgold a LITERAL knockoff. This was indeed the plan all along: A way to have him be both south african and scottish and it was brilliant. It also gives him more depth and more tragedy: He COULD’VE been the next scrooge.. but instead of being his own man or learning any of the hard lessons scrooge did he doubled down on never learning anything and getting vengeance on an old man’s well meant but accidently classist gesture. 

So Glomgold reawakens and while it first looks like he’s going to save the kids... he instead throws Webby into the raging sea, and steals their fish. Webby is heartbroken and Louie asks him “what about duke.” His response is heartbreaking as it is character defnting

“I”m Flintheart Glomgold and I always will be!” the lightning shot, the cackle..i t’s just such a damn good moment that underscores the tragedy of the episode as Glomgold’s new friends are horrified by what he is now and what he was always meant to be and Glomgold leaves to go stalk scrooge once again. He indeed is Flintheart Glomgold and always will be.. because he threw the decent person he could’ve been away. He’s miserable.. because he can’t let go of his rage or ego and just move on from something that happened to him when he was ten! He has to be in his 60′s now! Glomgold may think Scrooge is his worst enemy.. but it’s really Flintheart Glomgold.... and it always will be. 

So naturally his first actoin is to storm into his company and scream at scrooge. How he found him there... honestly not a huge suprise it’s his company and he likely knows how to find scrooge anywhere because he’s a creep like that. Scrooge and Owlson’s reactions are both worth a look at:

Given Glomgold bursts into an already annoying meeting of Scrooge trying to get the dimes part knocked down to nickles (and likely lower before that given he mentioned Pennies earlier), to accuse Scrooge of trying to trick him by appearing as a boat in his dreams her bafflement is both understandable and hilarious. Like she probably HEARD what Glomgold was like but gennuinely didn’t belivie it and her face is just now frozen in a look of “oh my god they were not exagearating what fresh hell is this”. 

She tries to be professional and introduce herself but he just brushes her off and yells at Scrooge blaming him for being forgotten (”You literally forgot yourself), with Owlson also considering calling security. She only dosen’t because Scrooge points out he’ll tire himself out eventually and as usual for their jousts, is not remotely threatened or worried. He’s just..sad. And getting back to his reaction.. that’s what’s telling about his plan. He probably KNEW this would happen. He in his heart knew Duke Balloney would be gone soon, and he’d have to deal with Glomgold again. It helps soften the implicatoins: it wouldn’t last and fraknly if it did Scrooge would probably have people check on him regualry to make sure he was okay. He’s not a monster.. he just wanted Flinty to be happy for five minutes and to not ruin that out of some misplaced sense of right and wrong.. when the right thing was to simply let the man be happy till it inevitably blew up. 

Glomgold however, furious at being forgotten and cast aside has decided to take a huge poorly thought through gamble and challenges scrooge to a classic Scrooge comics trope between the two, but with higher stakes: A contest to see who will be the richest duck in the world by the end of the year.. and given Christmas happens right after this i’m just assuming he means a year from now. Winner gets both companies and fortunes. Scrooge scoffs at this.. till Flinty pulls out the clip, taunting him with how he did it and “If I can beat you once scrooge i’ll beat you again”. And this, Flinty revealing he stole from him and he NEVER KNEW it or realize it, enrages scrooge enough to agree and to take him seriously... meanwhile Owlson.. just tries to get actual work shit done and just forges their signatures. Look she is a woman of color in the business world with genuinely good motives... she’s probably used to using white nonsense to get things past two idiots having a peeing race. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is truly excellent and like Most Dangerous Game Night! i’d forgottne just HOW good it was. The pacing, the comedy, and the character work is all on full blast and i’ve gushed plenty enough about how great an origin story is. it’s a character piece that explains why this doofus is the way he is and that is what holds him back. 

Next time on MMM: Louie’s back as he pulls a ghostbusters to make quick money and Storkules starts rooming with Donald with predictable results. 

If you liked this review consider joining my patreon and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reboot Reviews: The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!

Fenton faces some of his greatest challenges yet: Gizmoduck’s soaring popularity and the possiblity of amour...  oh and the return of his arch enemy but that’s a standard tuesday for a superhero. It’s a Date, don’t let him trick you noooo, under the cut. 

I have to admit something first: I WAS going to cover the other two fentoncentric episodes before I got to this one, as a build up to this weekends episode. The problem though was I realized that this week’s episode is, via word of god, going to cover WHY Gyro hates Fenton , and thus I really can’t dig into Gyro’s behavior in both eps, especially Who Is Gizmoduck? where despite his rational fears of having funding cut, he’s still an uttershithead to fenton and I feel it’d be better served if I waited a little and did the ep sometime after saturday.  So with that bit of expostion you probably didn’t need out of the way: Dangerous Chemistry! This one is a personal faviorite of mine, to the point that when I was bored a week or two ago I watched this one just for fun, and probably will again. That’s not why i’m reviewing it: even if I hadn’t I would rewatch it and planned to for the ones I was going to review, it’s just dumb luck. And part of that is Fenton is one of my faviortes: Lin Manuel Miranda really brings his a game to the character, and the crew really fleshed him out, making him a really likeable, fun, and relatable awkward dork. Another reason is one that should be obvious if you saw my comics reviews when I in vain tried to review each dawn of x comic on a weekly basis before throwing up my hands at the sheer volume: I fucking love super heroes, and Who is Gizmoduck and this very episode are very good superhero stories that still fit well into the ducktales universe, as is the darkwing debut “The Duck Knight Returns!”. And finally the episode also has Huey in a major role and I love my red boy. So with all that stuff out of the way I can dive into the ep itself.  This one, as you probably know but I do like me my context, takes place in the second half of season. While Fenton did show up earlier for fellow instant classic “The 87 Cent Solution!”, he’s otherwise been absent this season. My honest theroy is, rather than Lin being busy, which while he sure as hell is he still squeezes the show in, it’s more a simple fact that season 2 is pretty damn stuffed: looking back at the episode count almost EVERY ONE ties into one of the major arcs of the season (Della’s journey home/struggle to fit into her kids life/ the moonvasion, glomgold’s bet with scrooge and louie inc), and those that don’t either bring in major new characters like the Cablleros or Drake, or touch on previous arcs: Last Christmas! touching on Dewey missing his mom while she’s still missing. Lena’s episodes bringing her back to the world of the living/introducing her sister, and then resolving her fear of magica for now and revealing where Magica’s been, and this ep checking in on fenton. There was just a LOT to do and get through, and Gandra was really the only time sesntive thing Fenton wise they had to absolutley do this season. So while it sucks, I do understand why they did it this way,  I do see why and hold no ill will over it.  And to the crew’s credit they used the fact Fenton had been absent cleverly and had a valid reason why we hadn’t seen him outside of one breif apperance: he’s busy. Simple as that. He’s been superheroing all this time: when we catch up with him he’s outright called burnt out by a c-list weather villian who looks like dr.doofnschmritz but lacks his awkward charm. He even uses the same pun twice. It’s also logical: his literal JOB is to be a superhero, it’s what he’s paid for, and given Duckberg seems ground zero for lunatics, it’s only natural ther’es a bakers dozens with techno gimmicks and costumes floating around trying to beat him up. He’s naturally exausted and i’ts made worse by two factors: His alter ego being all over the news, so even when h’es off work he can’t escape work, and being unable to do science.  And both are clever delimas: a lot of the usual superhero issues are non existant for fenton: while he’s bad at hiding his identity, the only person he really has to hide from is his mom, who we later learn at the end of the season already knows and has come around to it. His job isn’t in remote jeapordy because Gizmoduck IS the job, while he still has full acess to a lab to do the science work he’s always wanted. But he’s starting to see the price for doing the right thing: He’s spent so much time as Gizmoduck.. Fenton has nothing of his own. No time to do science, only two friends, and as a result is exausted and burnt out and yearning for a break.  So thankfully he’s taking one, and in another use of “time has moved on a bit because we didn’t have time for Fenton this season” he and Huey have gone from superhero and biggest fan to best friends. But I let it slide, partly because again the season is overstuffed dand i’ll likelky delve into that more when I get to this seasons arcs at some point, and mainly beause the two have a great dynamic: Huey is supportive, just wants his friend to be okay, and meshes with fenton perfectly: Their both big nerds who people tend ot ignore who get overly excited about science. But Hueys more openly confident while Fenton clearly lacks it at times. It’s a nice eb and flow I hope to see more of. 

HE and Huey are hanging out to do science and stuff, with webby tagging along because why not, and I absolutly love the gag of gizmoduck passing by, Webby not noticing at all and only finding out Fenton and Gizmoduck are the same person because Huey makes a rather big deal abotu the fact Gizmoduck just passed by and Webby is really smart and likes solving shit.  So we quickly get the rest of our setup: At the elctronics store, Fenton has a meet cute (which the juinor woodchuck guidebook of course has an entry on. ) with Gandra Dee, played by guest acress Jameela Jamil, better known from the good place and being the only one to point out “hey emil hirsch beat the shit out of the woman what the fuck” when quinten Tarantino cast him in the otherwise amazing film “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood”, who does a great job here. The two have some romantic tension as she calls fenton a suit and what not, he fires back he is good at sceincing and they schedule what may or may not be a date... with Fenton unaware that Gandra is a spy hired by mark beaks to get the gizmoduck passowrd and use her nanites merged with gizmotech to boost his strength. As you do.  The resulting episode is really damn good: Starting in the obvious place, Fenton and Gandra have a reall good dynamic: besides the obvious oppsoites attract thing: the modernized nerutoic nerd and the rebllious scientest there’s the nice contrast in who they work for: Sure Fenton works for a billionare who DOES use some of his and gyro’s work for fairly self serving things (and I didn't realize the universal solvant was a rosa thing first time around, I learned it between viewings, but it’s a nice mythology gag), but it’s been shown as far back as the pilot that’s he’s more than willing ot help all of duckberg, even if it makes a profit. WHy WOULD he stop gyro or fenton’s research for any reason? He funnels a ton of money into them simply beause he knows for every dozen failures something useful will come out of it and at most simply wants more treasure hunting gear, stuff both can whip up easily and for Fenton to spend most of his time as defender of the city, something Fenton wanted anyway. He’s a good boss... while the billionares Gandra’s working with, Bradford as we learned later and beaks in this episode.. are self serving scumbags who only want innovation for world domination and personal validation. By refusing to have ties with or trust anybody or put in the legwork to find an employer who would give her mostly freedom, she wants complete freedomf or her work in exchange for taking money from truly awful people. She’s no freer than fenton is and her hypcoricy is obvious, without making the character terrible in any way. As the kingpin once said in spiderman the animated series “the best strings are invisble”. While Gandra is well aware of who she’s working for she refuses to see the irony or the possible harm in her actions , and it’ll be intresting to see where her charcter goes from ehre.  As for Beaks, he’s a FAR better threat here than in the past episodes: I didn’t MIND him being a joke villian, though I was horribly disapointed, and he will likely be super dated eventually... but here it finds a nice ballance: While he’s still a whiny manchild, the breaking into the lab sequence is utterly delightful and shows that he’s NOT harmless. He’s at his best, like glomgold, when he’s either off to the side comedic relief, or a mixture of genuinely threatining and utterly moronic. His drinking 80 pounds of senstive chemicals turns him into the hulk and the resulting fight scnees are great, as is his confusion upon taking huey and webby hostage “I have your kids.. I think.. I don’t know how this family works” and his cries of “whose the looser now coach dad” are both funny and offerd our first peak into why he’s so screwed up. And his defeat while rediculous is clever, using his love of fame and his phone against him. Overall a much better showing than the past that so far has kept up into season 3: even if his plan backfired there and was for goofy reasons, it was here too, it only fell apart because he hired someone who hated him and underestiamated how much he’d pissed off graves last time. 

As for Fenton himself, the episod eis a great showcase, besides the before issues his manuvering around both the obvious date the kids set up for him (more on that in a second), and his genuine chemsitry and contrast with gandra are a delight.. as his his dad’s lesuire suit. On top of that the scenes wher ehe chews gandra out are a great bit of acting from Lin manuel Miranda, the hurt and fury in his voice coming through great.  To finish it out Huey is a delight this episode, showing himself to be a suprisingly good romantic for his age, serously violet won the lottery with this one, and while overenthsastic, i’ts still sweet and his friendship with fenton is genuinely heartwarming, as is what has to be the best line of the episode besides the beaks one above Huey: Fenton’s going to be devistated! Webby: (Annoyed) Or kidnapped by spies! Huey: (Dead serious) TWO BAD THINGS COULD HAPPENS! It’s a sweet dyanmic overall and the cherry on top of an utterly fantastic episode. Hopefully the momentum keeps up going into saturday. Until then, later days. Speaking of which.. WHY ISN’T THE WEEKENDERS ON DISNEY PLUS. God I shouldn’t be able to keep thinking of shows that are missing. Anyways, once again later days.  P.S. I almost forgot Launchpads great bit listing off all his exes and confriming that he’s probably bi. It was great.