'Toon Reviews 14: Animaniacs Vol 1 Part 9: Wally Llama/Where Rodents Dare

Episode 9

Wally Llama

For this cartoon, we have the Warners faced against a character who’s a play on the word, “Dalai lama” known as Wally Llama.  Fitting for a concept with a funny name, he’s a literal llama who lives in the Himalayas and can answer any question imaginable.  With this background is a touch of relatability when he gets so worn out from answering questions and knowing the answers for all of them that he simply doesn’t want to answer anymore.  You can easily identify yourself with this entity, since anyone can get tired of doing the same thing at some point showing that one’s strengths can be a blessing and a curse. 

As for the Warners, they come in just as Wally Llama steps down from answering questions, and when he turns down the offer to help them, the kids clearly don’t take “no” for an answer.  They mostly spend the cartoon popping up in places that Wally Llama wouldn’t expect.  It starts off with them simply outside doors, but then their surprise entrances build to showing up inside his TV, at the driver seat of the taxi he’s using to get away and even inside his own psyche when he tries cleansing himself through meditation. 

Every time the kids take him by surprise, it’s an appropriate shock for the audience that turn out to be big on laughs and witty responses.  At the same time, you have to wonder if the Warners are worth getting behind in this case.  They keep infringing on Wally Llama’s privacy when he clearly doesn’t want to answer questions at the moment which makes the kids look inconsiderate.  Still, Wally Llama does come off as a little rude when he says he doesn’t want to answer any more questions and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t answer the one the kids have.  Then again, you could argue that this factors into his relatability on how people can get easily annoyed when people pester you to do something you don’t want to do.  You can also make the point that maybe what the Warners need answered is very important especially since they clearly travelled a long way to Wally Llama for an answer.  Wakko even got sick in Phoenix over it.  Basically, it’s hard to find out who to side with in this scenario. 

Thankfully, in addition to the overall great comedy from the Warners popping in on Wally Llama for an answer, the whole watch is aided by a satisfactory payoff.  Following a humorous back and forward between Yakko and Wally Llama about if the llama really can answer any question, we get the very question the Warners wanted an answer to.  It’s both humorous for its oddball topic on hotdogs and buns, but also one that’s truly worth pondering about how one’s sold in 10-packs and the other’s sold in 8-packs.  It also does the trick to break Wally Llama from his question funk when he finds out that he really doesn’t know the answer despite being claimed to be all-knowing.  So we end with one of the most intellectual jokes of the series and get a satisfying conclusion for Wally Llama’s arc. 

Even if it’s hard to pick who to side with most of the time, everything else is so big on entertainment it hardly matters. 9/10

Where Rodents Dare

There’s no doubt that Pinky and the Brain proved to be such a winning pair of characters with their first cartoon, so it’s great to see them back in action for another one in this episode.  While they basically do the same thing in every cartoon, try to take over the world, each one stands out with something different always being done with the formula and the two great characters of dynamically clashing personalities being at the center. 

This time, their plan is to infiltrate a peace summit all the world leaders are attending, and if Brain’s over bloated ego is anything to go by, taking control of the summit will allow them to take over the world…somehow.  As is to be expected with these cartoons, much of the entertainment comes from how well Pinky and the Brain themselves work off each other through Brain’s egotistical intellect and Pinky just wanting to have fun throughout the whole plan as shown through the running gag of a loud drumbeat that turns out to be coming from him all along.  An even stronger running gag comes from how Pinky and Brain communicate through walkie-talkies whether they’re doing so despite being very close to each other, or in unusual places like inside birds. 

The previous cartoon featured the mice getting to their goal easily with nothing working against them until the end.  Here, lots of things are working against them as they struggle to even get to the summit for a majority of the cartoon.  It is interesting that both Pinky and Brain are to blame for them constantly falling off the gondola into a snowy abyss far below the summit with Brain’s intellect miscalculating when to jump out of a plane to the summit, and Pinky’s lack of intelligence distracting Brain from recognizing the time to get off the gondola.  For the latter part though, it does prove problematic that they bring up this gag several times making it feel monotonous and boring. 

Speaking of which, that’s a good way to describe much of what we get in the cartoon.  So much time is spent on Pinky and Brain struggling to get out of the abyss and up to the summit that nothing really exciting relating to Brain’s plan happens, and it only gets worse when they end up in the abyss again when they were so close.  By the time they finally do get to where they need to be, the cartoon is nearly over, leaving little time for anything interesting to happen.  At least what does happen is interesting by itself when the very thing that makes the plan fail is, for once, out of any of the mice’s control when someone puts a glass on top of them just when they’re about to freeze the world leaders, so they get frozen themselves. 

Even if this does turn out to be one of the duller Pinky and the Brain cartoons, there’s still a lot of strong comedy, character interactions, and interesting twists to the formulaic setup to make it worth watching. 8/10

Cartoon Ranking

1. Slappy Goes Walnuts
2. H.M.S. Yakko
3. Hooked on a Ceiling
4. Temporary Insanity
5. Bumbie’s Mom
6. When Rita Met Runt
7. De-zanitized
8. Win Big
9. Taming of the Screwy
10. Piano Rag
11. Cookies for Einstein
12. The Big Candy Store
13. Wally Llama
14. Where Rodents Dare
15. Operation: Lollipop
16. Goodfeathers: The Beginning

Song Ranking

1. Yakko’s Universe
2. Yakko’s World
3. The Monkey Song
4. What Are We?

Miscellaneous Ranking

1. Gilligan’s Island Parody
2. Nighty-Night Toon
3. Flipper Parody

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where we let the anvils ring for what's not only my personal favorite Animaniacs episode, but also my favorite animated TV show episode in general.

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