Episode 16
Chalkboard
Bungle
We all got to get our education somehow, and most of us do
so by going to school. However, it can
be a chore should you end up with a less-than-ideal teacher or professor who
expects so much from you and make the learning experience harder and more grueling
than it already is. You wish you can
retaliate, but you know that you could get in serious trouble if you do. It’s only in the realm of cartoons where it’s
safe to watch what you’d like to say to an overly strict teacher which can be
pretty comforting, and this cartoon features just that with the cartooniest
characters in the cast, the Warners, as the students.
They’re assigned to Ms. Flamiel who’s so
strict that she not only gives Fs for the pettiest of missteps, but does so to
everyone, even those she’s not teaching.
Also, when she finally is set up to teach the Warners, she makes the
classroom setting an overly-serious environment restricted of anything remotely
fun with rules of everything her students can’t do and a demanding tone to
everything she says. If you know
anything about the Warners though, they don’t adhere to strictness no matter
what, so when they’re pitted against an unfriendly teacher like Ms. Flamiel,
they don’t hold back with witty comebacks to everything she says.
When she tells them to repeat after her while
reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, they do so starting with the first thing she
says before the Pledge resulting in her growing frustration. Their answers to Ms. Flamiel’s questions are
sharp enough to work as jokes, but also make sense as logical responses like
when Dot is asked to talk about the scientists of the 1800s, she says they’re
all dead, or Wakko saying he’ll define “procrastinate” tomorrow while lounging
in his seat. Other clever jokes include
Yakko interpreting being assigned to “conjugate” as suggestive, and when the
kids are assigned a pop quiz, they utilize a double meaning for pop by tasting
sodas blindfolded and playing a pop number. Jokes like these not only further
sell the masterful hilarity of these characters, but also make possible the
many ways we wish we could fight back against some of our least favorite
teaching authorities.
What’s more,
they’re all capped off when Ms. Flamiel crosses the line and violates the
Warners personal space by writing Fs on their foreheads as she did before, or
on Wakko’s hat in his case. Wakko is
moved into an absolute frenzy of fury when his hat is vandalized and explodes
which apparently gets Ms. Flamiel locked in a crate at the cartoon’s end. This does make for a rare instance of cartoon
humor I can’t suspend disbelief towards because I find it hard to think of a
way Wakko exploding gets Ms. Flamiel in a crate, but that’s just me. We really do get a great collection of bull's-eye-hitting
gags with this cartoon.
It’s just too
bad that it isn’t very nice to look at most of the time being sent to the least
visually compelling animation studio working for the series, Freelance. Characters’ faces are often off-putting
especially at the eyes, there’s an overall blobby look to the motion, and
there’s overall not a lot of charm to the visualization. I know I mostly focus on story, characters,
and comedy in my reviews, but that’s because I feel they matter the most in
determining how good a cartoon is while the animation is hardly worth talking
about to me. However, since all those
things are so strong and the animation is kind of creepy here, the strengths would've stood out more if the cartoon was animated by one of the show’s more profound
studios.
If you can get past the
animation quality, you’re sure to enjoy the top-notch comedy, dynamic
characterizations, and the relatability of certain times in school. 9.5/10
Hurray for
Slappy
To me, Slappy Squirrel cartoons are at their best whenever
the old squirrel demonstrates the greatness of cartoon violence and shares
knowledge of cartoon nature to a younger generation. Since the focus of this cartoon isn’t really
on any of these things, this is one of the duller cartoons starring this
character. It’s still good as it is, but
it's not as interesting as the best cartoons starring this character.
Slappy is invited to a ceremony where she is to get the Lifetime
Achievement Award as a former toon great, while the enemies of her old cartoons
from back in the day plot to ruin the ceremony by clobbering her before she
gets her award. That there is one way
the cartoon stands out since it gives us a formal introduction to Walter Wolf,
Sid the Squid, and Beanie Bison, cartoon enemies we’ve only heard about or seen
in short clips of Slappy’s old cartoons prior to this. We even get a taste of their distinct
personalities at play like Walter as the disgruntled leader, Beanie as
cerebrally challenged guy who can never think straight, and Sid…who really
doesn’t stand out all that much apart from his fun design. These guys are who we mainly focus on
throughout the cartoon as they each try and fail to get the better of their
sworn enemy.
Truth be told, we do get
some great and humorous ways for Slappy to work her cartoon violence on any one
of her rivals’ pitiful attacks. They include how she works in three ways to
blow up Beanie posing as an autograph hound, despite the comedic impact getting
ruined with him realistically being in an all-body cast for the rest of the
cartoon, and pointing out Sid’s clichéd dynamite in the cake gag and using her
suggestions to improve it to get him blown up.
The problem is that so much time is devoted to these villains, but
they’re just not engaging enough to take up starring roles. Also, while the ways Slappy blows them up are
funny as always that also show off her appeal as a character, all they’re
attempts lose their interest because of how clear it is that the enemies are
too dumb to pull off an attack, making them such easy targets for Slappy to
fire at. Heck, they even say they’re not
surprised that one of them messed up at one point. Maybe their roles would be interesting if
they tried to take her out together and Slappy would find a unique way to beat
them in that scenario.
Fortunately, the
last attempted blow at Slappy where Walter gives her the award rigged as a
bomb, just before Slappy blows him and the others up again, there is a nice
moment where she praises her villains for helping to enhance her comedy, and
honestly, it makes perfect sense for her to do so. Any antagonist, regardless if they’re in a
comedy series like this, are the driving force of any conflict a protagonist is
up against, and the way the protagonist finds a way to beat them helps bring
out their admirable qualities. It’s also
a good payoff for Walter and company’s earlier laments about not being
appreciated. They may not ever win, but
it’s great that their true purpose is made clear.
Even with this interesting
perspective on villains and the great comedy in general, this is one of Slappy’s
weaker cartoons for focusing on some of the least interesting characters on the
show who are simply too dumb to do what they set out to do. It’s worth watching, but trust me when I say
there are better Slappy cartoons out there. 8/10
The Great
Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music
Closing the episode is one of the most bizarre yet most
hilarious things to come from the show. It
doesn’t tell a story at all nor does it amount to a song, but rather a
representation of an off-the-wall idea.
We open on a high-class setting of a sophisticated concert about to
begin, then the main performer of the concert appears, and that is Wakko all
dressed up for the event.
The concert begins with the classical piece, “The Blue Danube Waltz”
playing on piano. That doesn’t sound too out of the norm for the setting, but
that’s when we see the catch to the whole setup which is to be expected from a
physical comedy-driven character like Wakko.
At certain given notes during the piece, Wakko lets out a big belch to
go along with them. That’s all there is
to it. It’s a low-class action set
against a high-class setting mixing the vulgar with the sophisticated. I would usually be put off by something like
this, but surprisingly, the burps and the classical music mesh together very
well and leave a lot of admirable qualities.
The burps themselves are well performed and are in line with the note
they go with. Plus, each burp makes for
a hilarious drawing of Wakko to go along with it. They’re easily some of the best composed for
the character. You could just pause
during burps and find a lot of character in just a still drawing.
It’s also pretty amusing that while Wakko is
doing something against the nature of a classical music concert,
they still treat what he’s doing very seriously like when Dot appears mid-piece
to freshen Wakko up by feeding him a lot of soda so he’ll burp more, and at the
end of the piece while everyone applauds, Wakko formally bows while saying
“Excuse me!” In the end, everything that
goes into this segment results in a one-of-a-kind experience that takes
something rude yet funny and brings it into the fine art foray without making
it feel out of place.
They’d do this
thing a few more times throughout the series, but it would mostly be exactly
the same as the first showing, right down to the same animation on the phases
of the concert except for different music pieces and slightly different belching poses, so that does cost the segment
of specialness. At least those would
still be enjoyable in their own right, but we’ll get into them in
future review sets of the DVD volumes to this show. For now, I give a big goofy belch to the
first of these bizarre yet highly appealing Great Wakkorotti concerts. 9.5/10
Cartoon Ranking
- King Yakko
- Hello Nice Warners
- Slappy Goes Walnuts
- H.M.S. Yakko
- Hooked on a Ceiling
- Temporary Insanity
- Bumbie’s Mom
- Les Miseranimals
- Space Probed
- West Side Pigeons
- Battle for the Planet
- When Rita Met Runt
- De-zanitized
- Win Big
- Taming of the Screwy
- Chalkboard Bungle
- La La Law
- Piano Rag
- Cookies for Einstein
- The Big Candy Store
- Garage Sale of the Century
- Wally Llama
- Where Rodents Dare
- Hurray for Slappy
- Cat on a Hot Steel Beam
- Operation: Lollipop
- No Pain No Painting
- Goodfeathers: The Beginning
- La Behemoth
Song Ranking
- Yakko’s Universe
- Yakko’s World
- The Monkey Song
- What Are We?
- Little Old Slappy from Pasadena
Miscellaneous Ranking
- The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music
- Gilligan’s Island Parody
- Nighty-Night Toon
- Flipper Parody
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where the Warners annoy another historical figure into coming up with a big accomplishment, this one being Beethoven who's writing his 5th Symphony, and Rita and Runt find themselves in the home of an incredibly unsettling interpretation of famous violinmaker, Antonio Stradivarius.
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