Saturday, July 20, 2019

Baloney and Kids / Super Buttons / Katie Ka-Boom: The Driving Lesson (Animaniacs Vol 3 Part 11) - 'Toon Reviews 32

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Episode 61
Baloney and Kids

When you’re a little kid, you’re often exposed to educational shows that parents think is the most harmless stuff you can watch.  Plenty of them put so much emphasis on being saccharine and overly-simplified.  It’s the kind of material that makes it seem like children have no intelligence or free will for themselves, and will like whatever happy and colorful thing is put in front of them. 
Take Barney and Friends for example.  I’m sure many of us have grown up with that show at some point in our lives, and given how anti-Barney humor and rants against the show are big in media, the majority regrets that.  As my critical skills have grown a lot over the years, I understand what makes Barney not hold up so well.  Not only is he very annoying with his laugh and emphasis on imagination, but from what I remember, there’s no real emotional range.  It’s just a bunch of kids happily doing a random activity at school, singing incessant pointless songs, and making strange things happen just by imagining.  The latter part makes the tone confusing where it seems down to Earth, but whatever they imagine always turns out real. That goes in line with the overall phoniness of how happy everything is.  With so many detracting factors surrounding Barney and his show, they’re just begging for a parody from this show, and it really delivers. 
Here, the Barney stand-in is called Baloney and colored orange, but his portrayal is very spot-on.  Introduced by kids who over-act and sound too old, he’s constantly happy giving mindless giggles, singing short pointless songs, and forcing kids into any game he things of.  The Warners are roped into starring on this show, and are the only ones to point out how dumb and creepy their situation is.  Then again, those two kids leave shortly after they arrive, so there’s a chance they know more than they seem to.  The Warners don’t seem to be allowed to leave and are at the mercy of this dementedly happy orange dinosaur.  The thing is, Baloney’s overly-happy ways makes him impervious to the kids’ brand of antics.  Every time they talk about leaving by taking a cab, going to planet reality, or saying to “imagine [their] delight” Baloney sees them as a cue to start playing pretend, or sing about it.  Even when he’s obsessed with his pretend, he’s on top of everything, such as deciding to stop pretending when he imagines he’s an astronaut, and the Warners say he’s lost oxygen.  This is one of those times where retaliation really works against them, and it’s kind of funny that one of their biggest enemies turn out to be a Barney parody of all things.  Still, the experience is kept funny through witty remarks to their bad situation and the kids remaining nonchalant against a creepily happy creature.
The best hold they have against Baloney is singing a random song called “The Anvil Song” which unsurprisingly gets him knocked on the head with anvils.  They don’t finish off Baloney or even hurt him, but they have enough fun dropping them on him anyway.  In a way this can go both ways for both sides of the Barney argument.  Little kids who like him don’t see him permanently destroyed, while older people who don’t like him can see this as cathartic.  Plus, the Warners get to leave as soon as the show’s over, and even get with the Prince and Princesses of Props when all is over.  I guess that message at the end of “Fair Game” has some accuracy to it. 
With a spot-on reference to Barney and how big a nuisance he is along with solid comedy, this is easily one of the show’s best constructed parody cartoons.
A+
Super Buttons
 
It really doesn’t matter what the backdrop for Mindy and Buttons cartoons is.  You can almost always expect the exact same formula every time, although the setting can make the difference every now and then.  With this superhero-themed escapade, some of their antics stand out because of how the cartoon unfolds, but also features some of Buttons’ most unfair pain gags. 
The superhero tone starts off strong with a background narration talking about how amazing he is as a superhero called Super Buttons.  Aside from one or two funny bits, they mostly feature him getting clobbered and beaten up by meaner animals.  That’s really not in line with the amazing hero figure that’s being built up, and I don’t see how that’s supposed to be funny.  He’s already shown in a bunch of bandages by the end of the intro, and the proper chase hasn’t even started yet. 
Speaking of that, the moment that starts, it hardly even matters that Buttons is a superhero, or Mindy and her family for that matter.  The way Mindy is distracted by a baby bird and flies out of the yard is very in line with how she escapes on a usual basis.  There are a few solid laughs during the chase like when Mindy’s pursuit for the bird lead her to a bank robbery resulting in her usual “why” conversations with random people.  Out of it is one solitary shred of weight to the actions of any robber like they do what they do maybe because their mothers didn’t hug them when they were kids.  Really that can be said for any criminal and is reflective of any bad upbringing.  If the jokes were more self-aware like this, the cartoon would be a lot better. 
However, most of its other passes for humor aren’t nearly as strong.  There’s an appropriate use of superhero conventions like sudden lightning storms and Mindy using super strength on a bus.  The appeal is significantly lightened by how hurt Buttons ends up getting from getting charred by lightning and believably hurt when crushed by that bus.  Some of them are just unnecessary like when a police car backs up and runs him over before pulling away.  What was even the point of that?  There’s also one other direct tie to the superhero tone as Buttons runs into a villainous spider person that the mayor has never seen even when she’s just above him. Buttons has a good idea to attack her with bug spray, but then she gets a giant fly swatter and she’s immediately forgotten about.  Is the cartoon seriously going to let the bad guy get away?  What humor is there to come from Buttons losing to her?  Plus it doesn’t have the slightest connection to protecting Mindy. 
Speaking of which after she arrives home on her own and Buttons follows, he’s called out for going out of the yard.  I can take Buttons ending up breaking a single rule as a result of the chases, but this scolding over leaving the yard is uncalled for.  He wouldn’t have done it if Mindy didn’t go out of the yard first, so for a superhero cartoon, there’s really no justice.  Even Mindy’s hug means nothing as the ending superhero tag shows her go off to chase something again meaning Buttons will have to chase her again. 
This cartoon is merely decent if you’re into the subject of superheroes, but the Mindy and Buttons formula being more frustrating than ever really works against the fun.
C-
Katie Ka-Boom: The Driving Lesson


Considering we haven’t seen Katie Ka-Boom since Episode 35, and even then heard nothing of her prior to that, this is pretty telling of how little was allowed to be done with her.  With this in mind, her cartoons are perhaps the show’s least pleasant.  I understand the creativity of a teenage girl starting nice and then turning into a monster as she slowly gets angry, but the execution isn’t very funny.  In fact, there’s such a small emphasis on humor that you end up feeling sorry for her family who are almost always powerless against her.  It’s practically an exercise of torture they have to go through every time she’s in the spotlight. 
While humor or appealing creativity isn’t present here, I do have to give this cartoon credit for at least being more exciting than usual.  It follows the teenager element where Katie, who has a learner’s permit, is allowed to drive part of the way home for the first time.  As is the usual case, she starts off all bubbly and happy at the idea of driving.  Slowly though, Katie’s temper rises as her parents, who are far more experienced drives by the way, give her pointers she claims she already knows.  You can feel something coming just from shots of her glaring eyes in the car mirrors. 
Then when she finally snaps and turns into a green nightmarish monster with a siren on her head, her anger is at the point of no return.  The ride home is now a dangerous drive through the neighborhood fueled by teenage hormones and the entire family is roped along for all of it.  It’s honestly a really fun watch if only out of context.  You never know what’s coming next as Katie drives into literally anything in her path, even going off the road.  The energy is kept high too with constant cuts to people in the neighborhood running for cover.  If only it was more enjoyable without so much emphasis on how tortured her family is during the whole thing.  That just makes it impossible to find what’s going on to be funny.  At least destruction coming up in an energetic drive is more pleasing entertainment-wise than the family just standing around at the mercy of it. 
Ultimately, this is one of the better Katie Ka-Boom cartoons, but given how low the bar for them is, it’s really not saying much.  This cartoon about a crazily intense car drive is pretty much a calm before the storm compared to what we’re really in for with her.
B-

 
Cartoon Ranking
1.      Baloney and Kids

2.      Ragamuffins

3.      Frontier Slappy

4.      Woodstock Slappy

5.      Wakko’s Gizmo

6.      The Warners and the Beanstalk

7.      Brain Meets Brawn

8.      Meet John Brain

9.      Yes, Always

10.  Drive Insane

11.  Karaoke Dokie

12.  Of Course, You Know This Means Warners

13.  Meet Minerva

14.  The Chicken Who Loved Me

15.  Smell Ya Later

16.  A Gift of Gold

17.  Ups and Downs

18.  The Helpinki Formula

19.  Les Boutons et le Ballon

20.  Gold Rush

21.  Up a Tree

22.  Cranial Crusader

23.  Katie Ka-Boom: The Driving Lesson

24.  Kung Boo

25.  The Brave Little Trailer

26.  Girlfeathers

27.  Super Buttons

Song Ranking

1.      Schnitzelbank

2.      I’m Cute

3.      Dot’s Quiet Time

Miscellaneous Ranking

1.      Branimaniacs

2.      Oh, Oh, Ethel

3.      Spike

 

 
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode, a late Halloween episode. There's Slappy and Skippy trick-or-treating their enemies, the final Rita and Runt cartoon ever which is witch-themed, and a Shakespeare translation of the witch scene from Macbeth.
If you would like to check out other Animaniacs reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

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