Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Sir Ed-A-Lot / A Pinch to Grow an Ed (Ed Edd n Eddy Season 1 Episode 3) - 'Toon Reviews 33

If you like this review and want to stay updated for what else I have in store, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter. Now on with today's review:
Sir Ed-a-Lot
 
Typically, spoiled brat characters are very unpleasant for their unwarranted anger and selfish thoughts.  This cartoon has the Eds’ conflict be driven by such a character, and yet the whole thing turns out pretty entertaining. 
After a random scene of Eddy impressing everyone with a cool car he somehow has, he and Double D leave it behind to check on Ed.  It turns out he’s been roped into looking after his little sister Sarah, and as a deviation from his usual positive outlook on life, is aware of how bad the situation is.  Before his friends have a chance to get away though, they’re roped into babysitting too. 
All the way, Sarah doesn’t let up on her bratty ways, offering plenty of loud-mouthed demands to get what she wants with no consideration for what others think.  She also resorts to practices to intentionally make Ed looking after her difficult such as holding her breath and not stopping until Eddy agrees to dress up for her tea party.  The rest of the cartoon is also fueled by this loud, boisterous, difficult behavior as the Eds are forced to cater to her every desire as the queen she masquerades as.  They act as horses for chariot races down the hall she has with her friend Jimmy who suddenly arrives as a prince.  Eddy is thrown in a dungeon (an upside-down crib) when he loses the race, and keeping with the child-like atmosphere, he doesn’t easily get out via a lack of floor. 
Then when he hears that Ed is getting paid for looking after his sister, Eddy suddenly becomes more engaged in helping him as the thought of money typically does for him.  However, even when he does put in effort to entertain Sarah, she seems to willingly not enjoy him as if she’s one of the worst critics out there. 
It’s only during a juggling spree with anything in the house when Ed accidentally throws Eddy a cactus and everything falls as Eddy yells in pain when Sarah finally enjoys him.  Her bratty ways prove to not only relate to anger issues following this.  She also goes mad with power of her queen role as she and Jimmy run from place to place breaking things for the intent of getting her brother and his friends in trouble. 
So far, it’s been discussed of how much the Eds are put at the mercy of an unfair uncontrollable little brat like Sarah.  Deliberately making Ed look like a bad babysitter only makes it worse.  This could make the whole cartoon bad, but despite Sarah’s attitude, it’s still a lot of fun.  Eddy’s attitude to being roped into this before learning Ed’s getting paid is nicely reflective of what most would think of the situation.  Even if the Eds are forced into joining Sarah’s activities, there’s a lot of energy through well-timed music and fast-paced animation to them.  The chariot races through the halls are exciting that feel like a real race complete with Sarah giving her own form of road rage.  Eddy trying to entertain Sarah as a fool has solid comedy out of pathetic jokes and his juggling is grand-scale entertainment.  The fun and high energy also makes the climax of the Eds rushing all over to stop Sarah from making messes very exciting.  Plus there’s a good payoff to all this when Eddy takes over as king, gets Sarah mad, and them puts her in the ‘dungeon.’  Making this moment more special is how it’s one of the rare times the Eds come out on top over Sarah.  I have to question how putting a picture of a clean room in front of the mess will fix anything, but I suppose the ending shows it’s a good thing adults aren’t seen in this show. 
It may be hard to deal with a brat, but it’s impressive that this cartoon is as fun as it is regardless.
B+
 
A Pinch to Grow an Ed
When making a story about a short character who wants to be big, the proper direction is to make the drive for said short character to be a compelling one.  That’s the route this cartoon following this convention goes which works in its favor.  At the same time, it turns out to be a solid exercise of this show’s talents of extreme visual gags and staging of backfires. 
In what may be the only time it’s addressed, Eddy is faced with frustration over being the shortest kid in the cul-de-sac.  There are apparent hardships in literally everything he does.  He has to jump up just to look at himself get dressed in a mirror.  The neighborhood kids keep bombarding him with minor taunts about his height, although Rolf feels just as considerate as he is competitive at basketball.  Despite pulling off a few decent playground stunts like jumping from swings, there are others Eddy just struggles at such as doing chin ups on monkey bars. 
The worst treatment he gets for his size come from relentless taunts from the Kanker sisters.  When he runs into them, they don’t just bombard him with unwarranted infatuation.  They completely talk down to him, treating him like a cute little child they can smother with love against his will.  It’s completely believable that this is the final straw for him when it comes to his self-conscious issues of his size.  As a genuinely friendly gesture, he doesn’t even have to say anything to get Double D and Ed to want to try and make him tall. 
It’s here where the cartoon’s direction starts getting interesting.  The first attempts are simple ones on Ed’s part through simply pulling Eddy from a tree or making him eat a raft and then inflating it.  These don’t work, but are highlighted by funny drawings and well-timed launches into the air, especially as a result of what’s done with the raft. 
The one thing that does work are a pair of boots Double D designs that allow Eddy to instantly increase his height with the push of a remote control button.  Now, this would be the part of the story where you’d expect Eddy to end up much bigger than desired, things get worse instead of better, and he wants to go back to normal.  With that remote control though, this doesn’t happen.  Eddy knows exactly how he wants to manipulate his height, and getting too tall is never a problem, meaning this change is a complete success for him.  That said, he does really misuse the boots on the other kids by crushing them or their property.  They may have insulted him before, but this is pretty disproportionate if you ask me.  Since Eddy legitimately thinks people will respect him for this, these actions feel more like social misguidedness than just being mean. 
Still, he’s open for some karma, but it doesn’t exactly come in the best places.  The characters actually deserving of major retribution, the Kankers, come back and take control of the remote control in the name of humiliating Eddy than flirting with him.  At least the visual gags of the boots rising and falling fast are funny to see.  When the remote breaks, there’s one last gag as the boots send Eddy and his friends to space.  They’re broken down, making for a major fall towards Earth.  Thank cartoon logic they survive this, although Eddy ends up in a baby getup. 
Overall, the structure of this story puts a fresh spin on the idea of short characters becoming tall.  The motivation is sympathetic, the backfire is appropriate, and there’s solid animated fun highlighting the whole affair.
A-

The Ranking

1.      The Ed-Touchables

2.      A Pinch to Grow an Ed

3.      Pop Goes the Ed

4.      Sir Ed-a-Lot

5.      Over Your Ed

6.      Nagged to Ed

 

The next Ed Edd n Eddy review has the Eds believe they're trapped on a robot rebel planet as space outlaws, and then try to build their social status by building a clubhouse.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Letters to Lars" in Steven Universe.



If you would like to check out other Ed Edd n Eddy reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

1 comment:

  1. Sir Ed-a-Lot:

    I keep wondering where the character of Sarah came from. She's a spoiled brat of a child who only seemed to exist to cause misery for the Eds and almost never got her comeuppance. In fact, this episode was one of the very few times the Eds ever come on top after dealing with Sarah.

    This episode showed one of the worst parts of babysitting, trying to please the kid enough so they don't lie to their parents about you, but the Eds could only take so much before they decided it was time to give Sarah a taste of her own medicine when she and Jimmy started to run amok.

    The slapstick in this episode was great, and set the bar for how much of it the Eds could do in one sitting.

    A Pinch to Grow an Ed:

    Eddy was dragged through the gutter for the majority of this episode, both with his own frustration of being short and everyone else in the neighborhood teasing him for it. Yes, even Ed and Edd were teasing him a bit before seeing how it really hurt him.

    It got better when the Eds tried to help Eddy get taller, leading to the latest in Double-D-Tech with the Walking Braces which Eddy used to get revenge on the kids. But then the Kanker Sisters, who teased Eddy the most in this episode, showed up again, easily take control of the Walking Braces, and destroyed them with little difficulty because they're Diabolus Ex Machina.

    Eddy's insecurity was never really resolved, and the episode just ended with him being humiliated again. It would've been much funnier if Eddy was the one who broke the Walking Braces by using it too much. Not only would it be funnier, but it would also play into one of Eddy's biggest flaws: his arrogance, which tends to get the better of him.

    ReplyDelete