Overdue Review: Several "Powerpuff Girls" episodes

[Anthonynotes]

Lacking cable, the only way I've even seen the PPG's is by renting tapes of it from a video store. Tonight, I rented the newest tape, "Meet the Beat-Alls"....cartoons listed included: "Beat-Alls"; "Bought and Scold"; "Bubblevision"; "Jewel of the Aisle"; and "Collect Her", plus an Abe Lincoln Time Squad cartoon. The cover of the video, if anyone cares, depicts the girls flying away from a black-and-white-drawn crowd of people screaming/clamoring for the "Bad Four" coming out of a theater, with the marquee reading "Tonight! Beat - Alls". My two cents are as follows:

"Meet the Beat-Alls": Very funny parody of the Fab Four, with the puns/references coming by the truckload (the "Brutish Invasion", etc.). Also thought the girls being stopped by having a rock tossed on them *and* three energy blasts was pretty funny (PROFESSOR: He does that rock...thing...you know....). Also enjoyed the bits with Mojo Jojo and his new "love". Also finally now know what a "Fuzzy Lumpkins" (along with a "Princess" and "Him") is. One comment though: I don't think I heard the one Beatles reference I was hoping to hear, someone saying "get back, Mojo!"

"Bought and Scold": Princess buys out the mayor's office via daddy's bucks, and legalizes crime. Gave me backstory on this character (seems to be a female version of Montana Max), though not on how she got her superpowers. Fairly amusing...also get to find out what the "Gangrene Gang" is like (the guy with the eyes bugging out of his head made me laugh)...

"Bubblevision": Bubbles needs glasses to see clearly, and to help her sisters stop a giant ant. She did look pretty goofy in those glasses, I'll give her that. Pointless tidbit: in the comics, Superman usually had to lower his glasses a bit (when as Clark) to use his heat vision (or make his glasses out of the invulnerable Kryptonian glass from the rocket that brought him to Earth, depending on the version of the backstory) so as not to risk melting his lenses when he used his heat vision. </Pointless tidbit off>

"Jewel of the Aisle": Along with "Beat-Alls", the funniest one on the tape. A funny parody of those CGI-action shows that the girls were watching (some sort of Transformers-Animals-type of show-thing), along with the Trix cereal ads. Favorite line: where the crook is told by Buttercup(?) to "come back when he's got something good", and immediately returns in the same costume, posing as "his twin brother"...

"Collect Her": Weakest on on the tape (to me, anyway). Though was sort of amusing how some yahoo just apparently waltzed into the Girls' house to swipe their stuff. One observation: the Girls (when trapped in the plastic cases) didn't apparently use their super-strength (or heat vision, I guess) to break free. (Shrug) Also noted: how similar this episode felt to the "Simpsons" Halloween special episode with the Comic Book Guy doing the exact same thing as the collector in this episode did (trapping celebrities within plastic)...wonder if one of the shows had gotten the idea from the other or something. Then again, I didn't care for the "Simpsons" version either (preferred that hilarious "Y2K bug" thing)...

The "Time Squad" cartoon: Eh....had some amusing bits, though it didn't excite me one way or the other. Would've much rather seen a "Dexter's Lab" episode in its place...

Also included: a preview commentary on the upcoming PPG movie (aparently summarizing how they became superheroes....which might make it more appealing to the general public who hasn't seen much of the show [or seen it at all]....), and a bit with Mojo Jojo on "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" (wasting a ton of time amusingly repeating himself, and the girls watching it at home hoping they "call time already"....).


So overall, save for the last two cartoons, a fairly enjoyable tape. I expect commentary from Sharklady on some aspects of my comments, I suppose... :-)

-B.

[don Jaime]

I think there was a "Get Back" reference or two, but you're right, they didn't involve Mojo. I was personally expecting a parody of the infamous "Two Virgins" album cover shot. They got the Bed-In and primal screaming, but not that.

You didn't quite get the full Gangrene Gang treatment, since they didn't talk in that cartoon. Grubber, the bug-eyed one, communicates in raspberries. Princess Morebucks has no superpowers. She just bought them in the form of a suit like Iron Man's.

As for not using their powers to get out of the plastic cases - have you ever tried to open toy packaging? Only CDs have worse packaging.

I'm glad you liked the tape. There's some more out there. I'm hoping that all episodes will ultimately be released.

[Sharklady]

Far be it from me to disappoint your expectations.

> I don't think I heard the one Beatles reference I was hoping to hear, someone saying "get back, Mojo!" <

There was one line from that Beatle's song included, when Prof said, "Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn't last- he's just getting by with a little help from his friends."
That phrase 'Get Back Jojo' is used elsewhere; it's the title of the episode where Mojo goes back in time to prevent the juvenile Prof Utonium from ever developing any interest in science, so's he would never create the Girls. Mojo apparently forgot that this would also result in his remaining an ordinary chimpanzee- tisk! An oversight worthy of the Brain!

If you liked 'BeatAlls', I hope you someday get a chance to see it's accompanying Emmy-nominated ep, 'Moral Decay.' I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I'll just say it's one of those periodic 'the Girls aren't perfect' stories, and my favorite scene is Roger L. Jackson doing an extremely funny variation on Mojo's voice.


> Princess Morebucks has no superpowers. She just bought them in the form of a suit like Iron Man's. <

Indeed. She started buying 'em because she once aspired to be a Powerpuff Girl, not out of alturism but just to get the fame and adoration. When Blossom protested that "Money can't buy you superpowers!", Princess responded, "Yeah? Tell that to Batman."

[Anthonynotes]

>>>Far be it from me to disappoint your expectations.

> I don't think I heard the one Beatles reference I was hoping to hear, someone saying "get back, Mojo!" <

There was one line from that Beatle's song included, when Prof said, "Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn't last- he's just getting by with a little help from his friends."
That phrase 'Get Back Jojo' is used elsewhere; it's the title of the episode where Mojo goes back in time to prevent the juvenile Prof Utonium from ever developing any interest in science, so's he would never create the Girls. Mojo apparently forgot that this would also result in his remaining an ordinary chimpanzee- tisk! An oversight worthy of the Brain!
<<<


Heh....though I guess since the girls are still here, everything got fixed through some means or other (even if it's via the sitcom-reset-button effect where everything's back to normal by the next episode [made fun of on "Futurama" in that "Single Female Lawyer" episode at the end]....which in itself seems something Brain might want to investigate [BRAIN: By gaining control over the "sitcom reset anomaly effect", I shall be able to manipulate time and space so that all sitcoms' events within an episode shall have *lasting ramifications*...and with the populace annoyed at the notion of problems *not* being resolved and vanishing within a half-hour, or between each week's episodes, in the ensuing chaos, I shall seize control!])

>>If you liked 'BeatAlls', I hope you someday get a chance to see it's accompanying Emmy-nominated ep, 'Moral Decay.' I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I'll just say it's one of those periodic 'the Girls aren't perfect' stories, and my favorite scene is Roger L. Jackson doing an extremely funny variation on Mojo's voice.
<<<

Very well... I think it was on one of the other tapes for rent at the video store (either the one with the girls beating up the Sandman or the one with some amoeba gangsters on it)....


>>> Princess Morebucks has no superpowers. She just bought them in the form of a suit like Iron Man's. <

>>Indeed. She started buying 'em because she once aspired to be a Powerpuff Girl, not out of alturism but just to get the fame and adoration. When Blossom protested that "Money can't buy you superpowers!", Princess responded, "Yeah? Tell that to Batman."


Heh.....

Re: the plastic packaging: good point...

Re: the "Virgins" album cover: maybe it wouldn't have passed muster with the network censors, being a G-rated show and all? (Though there was that bit in the "Dexter's Lab: Ego Trip" movie with Dexter's parents towards the beginning that seemed *very* suggestive....). That or it just didn't occur to them (or they ran out of room with all those other Beatles' refs...)

Re: the Gangrene Gang: Figures there'd be more that I was missing....

-B.

[PeppeRaskell1]

Originally posted by Brainatra
[B]Lacking cable, the only way I've even seen the PPG's is by renting tapes of it from a video store. Tonight, I rented the newest tape, "Meet the Beat-Alls"....cartoons listed included: "Beat-Alls"; "Bought and Scold"; "Bubblevision"; "Jewel of the Aisle"; and "Collect Her", plus an Abe Lincoln Time Squad cartoon.

I didn't get the "Time Squad" cartoon on my DVD.
Is it supposed to be some sort of Easter Egg?
If so, where is it?

"Meet the Beat-Alls": Very funny parody of the Fab Four, with the puns/references coming by the truckload (the "Brutish Invasion", etc.).

My favorite scene was when the Beat-Alls beat up the cartoon Beatles. Somewhere up in Boomerang
Heaven, "The Impossibles" are laughing (Their show came out in 1966, the same year as the Beatles cartoon, if memory serves me right...)


"Collect Her": Weakest on on the tape (to me, anyway).

Are you kidding? I loved it, especially the line about "You may have all the toys...But one thing you do not have is...true fandom!" "Collect Her" was one of the reasons I bought the DVD.

[QUOTE]"Jack, do you like living in the future, or do you just have a memory problem?!?"

[The Mad Hatter]

They slipped Mojo's "Millionaire" bit in there? Yes! I've always been cracked up by that commercial. Me, I'd like to see the hilarious "Survivor" commercials Cartoon Network did a while back...

[don Jaime]

Re: "Two Virgins" - I was expecting the back cover shot. The first segment of the first new Dexter's Laboratory this Sunday had an experiment backfire and Dexter running home naked for most of it, a la "Bacon Streak" on TTA, so I think this was just overlooked rather than a censorship issue. It's possible that the discovery of Michelle was in this vein, but probably not.

[Anthonynotes]

Re: the "Time Squad" cartoon: I don't have a DVD player, and thus rented the VHS version...hence, no idea how the DVD differs...

-B.

[Sharklady]

> That phrase 'Get Back Jojo' is used elsewhere; it's the title of the episode where Mojo goes back in time to prevent the juvenile Prof Utonium from ever developing any interest in science, so's he would never create the Girls...

Heh....though I guess since the girls are still here, everything got fixed through some means or other (even if it's via the sitcom-reset-button effect where everything's back to normal by the next episode].... <

No, this time things got fixed by one of those Greek Drama twists, where a character's efforts to prevent a predicted event turn out to be what makes it happen. Mojo should've read his Sophocles a bit more carefully.

[DR. BELCH]

SHARKLADY:
I hope you...get a chance to see...'Moral Decay.' ...[I]t's one of those periodic 'the Girls aren't perfect' stories, and my favorite scene is Roger L. Jackson doing an extremely funny variation on Mojo's voice.
I wondered during that sequence if Jackson had to put something in his mouth to achieve that effect. Sounds like a useless bit of v/o trivia, right up there with Mel Blanc, Bugs Bunny, and carrots.

On glasses: these days they make them out of more resilinent materials--bendable frames, more flexible joints, heavy-duty plastics...I don't know if they would be more resistant to extreme heat/eye lasers, though Superman was around well before some of these new developments in optometry, so maybe he still wears the old-fashoned glass lenses.

On Grubber: seems I recall seeing a similar character on T-shirts some years ago--bulging eyes, protruding tounge, insane grin, usually stitting atop a diminutive monster truck. Presumably the character is McCracken's homage to some underground artist like Crumb or Ditko....

[Anthonynotes]

>>
On glasses: these days they make them out of more resilinent materials--bendable frames, more flexible joints, heavy-duty plastics...I don't know if they would be more resistant to extreme heat/eye lasers, though Superman was around well before some of these new developments in optometry, so maybe he still wears the old-fashoned glass lenses.
<<

Hmm....let's go into comic-book-geek mode and go over Superman and eye wear! (I know, I know, but it's this or paying attention to the high school marching bands getting passed over attention-wise/time-wise in favor of overcommercialized floats in the Macy's Parade and hack singers---and from watching it closely for the first time in awhile, aspects of it remind me of that "Christmas Week Parade" parody thing I wrote for that fanfic story, eerily enough....)

In the old comics: after starting his career as Superboy, when Clark donned his glasses as part of his disguise, he swiftly discovered that the (ordinary-glass-lenses) his eyeglasses were made of melted when he applied his heat vision through them (or "the heat of his x-ray vision", as the original story called it when this power first showed up in the early 50's, described as the heat generated by his x-ray vision...by the early 60's, it dawned on the writers that x-rays don't generate heat, so they made it the seperate power of "heat vision"). Clark proceeded to replace the melted lenses with glass from the rocket that brought him to Earth, which under Earth's yellow sun were of course, invulnerable. Of course, this story was written in the early 60's, probably before more modern glasses materials (besides glass) became available...

In the newer comics: I think his glasses are ordinary (Earthly) lenses, and thus he lowers them a bit when applying the heat vision (though I guess this depends on who's drawing the scene). I'd guess that Superman's heat vision is of a higher intensity than the Powerpuff Girls' "laser vision" (being Kryptonian and/or older than the Girls are), and that even newer eyeglass materials might melt under its intensity.

As for the glasses frames/etc. themeselves, maybe they're hand-me-downs from Pa Kent? Unless Clark decided to go to Lenscrafter's (or where I got mine from, JC Penney's when they're having a "free lenses with frames" special to save money, being a journalist and all ;-)

>>>
On Grubber: seems I recall seeing a similar character on T-shirts some years ago--bulging eyes, protruding tounge, insane grin, usually stitting atop a diminutive monster truck. Presumably the character is McCracken's homage to some underground artist like Crumb or Ditko.... <<

Yeah, that's what the character looked like to me....still looked fairly amusing though....

-B.

[don Jaime]

I think the artist Grubber is drawn from is Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. He was real popular with bikers and teenagers back in the '70s and '80s. He's still around and still doing custom paint jobs for cars. I think he's in Wisconsin.

Grubber also looks like some of the work of Basil Wolverton from the early MAD magazine.

[Anthonynotes]

Other observations, before I return this tape to the store:

In "Bubblevision" (at the scene in the lab at the end), the Professor apparently is the owner of an orange-colored, original-series-model Apple iBook laptop (the older, "clamshell"-shaped-case model, vs. the current all-white, conventionally-square-shaped models.... see: http://www.lowendmac.com/pb2/ibook.jpg ).

Also wondered in "Beat-Alls" where the heck Fuzzy Lumpkins was getting all those same-shaped rocks by the truckload from....the wonders of minimalistic TV animation, I guess :-)

Re: the PPGs/PatB crossover idea: maybe Brain's plan is to sell affordable property insurance, figuring insurance premium rates must be sky-high in superhero-containing cities like Townsville:

BRAIN: Compared to Metropolis (points to a picture of Superman), Gotham City (points to a picture of Batman), Central City (points to a picture of the Flash), and Washington DC (looks at a picture of Freakazoid), Townsville easily eclipses all other cities with major superheroic activity in terms of property damage incurred in super-powered fight scenes! And accompanying that sky-high damage rates comes equally sky-high *insurance premium* rates! My plan is simple: in both Townsville *and* those other cities, we shall sell property damage insurance with affordable premiums....

BILLIE: Erm...but given that that place has seen more damage than the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, how would we pay off the policyholders once they file for claims for, say, rebuilding downtown Townsville after just *one* fight?

PINKY: And besides, don't the Powerpuff Girls help rebuild the city and stuff like Superman does after fights, NARF?

BRAIN: Well, true, Pinky, they do do that....but the damage they *don't* repair should be easily covered by our financial holdings.

BILLIE: *What* financial holdings?!

BRAIN: The holdings we'll get by....um....hmm...you do have apoint there. We'll need to raise a grand total of.... (taps on a calculator) $47,237,985.37, including taxes, to have enough on hand before we finish selling enough insurance policies!

BILLIE: And how do we raise $47 million dollars?

BRAIN: I must ponder that one....

PINKY: And *I* must flounder this one! (Flaps around like a fish) HAHAHAHA! (Brain sighs)
>>>
:-)

Thanks to finding 99-cent any-video-available rental coupons, I'll probably be renting the other couple of PPG videos they have at the store (one with the girls beating up the Sandman on the cover, another with those amoeba gangsters on the cover, and the third "Monkey See, Doggie Do")...

-B.