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Read All
About Ed
Compared
to later seasons, it’s surprising that this first one features the Eds try to
get money through much fairer measures than just scams. Even so, their eccentric personalities still
have a tendency to make things go wrong, but as is in line with the nature of
this show, it’s still a lot of fun to watch.
For this cartoon, Double D has signed up for a paper route in the name
of getting a new expensive microscope.
When Eddy gets under the impression that one route can grant a large sum
of money, he thinks ahead with how much can be made with a ton more. With that, the conflict soon makes itself
known as Double D is faced with a literal mountain of newspapers at his
door. Now the Eds have a difficult task
of distributing the entire supply to customers all over Peach Creek, the catch
being that the supply is phenomenally bigger than average.
All the way, the difficulties of actually
pulling this off are highlighted by the Eds’ distinct personality. Ed puts in good effort despite his lack of
intelligence causing a mess of things like putting a lot of the same paper in a
mailbox which he breaks the back end of.
Double D is much more calculative with how he throws each newspaper, and
unlike later seasons where he doesn’t have it in him, actually pulls off each
throw. He’s unable to prevent himself
from more difficult obstacles like a dog who doesn’t hesitate to bite his sock. As for Eddy, his approach to delivering the
newspapers is hardly one at all. He
mostly just sits back and lounges around and puts little to know effort the one
time he tries his hand in throwing a newspaper to a house. In addition to fitting his self-proclaimed
role as mastermind, this also gives a connection to the beginning of the
cartoon as he's constantly being awakened from sleep. This continues through much of the rest of it
through breaking down and sleeping on the sidewalk outside, and his bed ending
up on top of the newspaper mountain. The
result is a good use of seemingly unrelated scene at the beginning driving the
main plot.
Overall, the attempts to
deliver the newspapers the right way is getting them nowhere, so things get
creative to solve everything. Double D builds
a newspaper shooter that successfully does its job with great power, precision,
and accuracy. It’s at this point where
making fully functional machines is seen as a very impressive talent. The only way it backfires is because of a
dumb reckless move, though it’s from an expected character. Ed, who was loading the papers into the
shooter, ends up putting in Eddy’s bed. While further tying the random opening scene
into the rest of the plot, this move brings an exciting climax. The shooter goes out of control with Ed
holding on as newspapers cause uncontrollable destruction. Even through all this, there’s a lot of fun
in the fast desperation for the other Eds to catch him, the exciting music, and
what happens as a result of the firing newspapers.
At the end of this fun come the consequences
of even more work for the Eds who have to clean up all the newspapers to get
paid, and many of them dissolve into ink from on and off rain. Then they get even more with a horoscope accurately
saying that new enterprise fails to meet expectations. I guess you can call
this punishment for taking the easy way out, but it would have worked if the
bed didn’t fall into the shooter.
Thanks
to the fun and excitement of the general story and everything being in
character, it hardly stings and the cartoon can be easily enjoyed as another
Ed-escapade.
A
Quick Shot
Ed
Often
in life, people get carried away with random crazy ideas and don’t even realize
the nuisance they’re being around others.
When this happens with the Eds, the results aren’t just entertaining,
but also make the consequences they get feel appropriate.
As for their crazy scheme in this cartoon, it
happens when they’re exploring Eddy’s attic, and find a camera lying
around. The thing about this camera
though is that it appears to emit a light that’s so bright, anyone it
photographs ends up with hypno-eyes.
That’s a fine example of this show’s many comedic exaggerations of
things since all the times I’ve been photographed, the light may have been
bright, but never to that extent.
Anyway, the camera gives Eddy an idea to take surprise pictures of the neighborhood
kids, and put them together in a calendar to sell to them. This could be seen as an infringement on
privacy, but the Eds hardly hide what they’re doing. The closest to staying hidden is Double D
treating what they’re doing like a silent safari, referring to the kids doing
their thing as animals in the wild. That right here
demonstrates the point of how obsessive people tend to get with crazy
schemes.
The Eds get so involved in
putting together their calendar that they’re flat-out unaware of how much
they’re annoying everyone. From an
audience perspective, it’s fun to watch what happens with certain kids whenever
the Eds photograph them. Kevin gets
knocked off his bike from the photo flash and is visually impaired as he goes
around trying to find the Eds and beat them up.
Sarah unleashes one of her most dynamic tempers by attacking the Eds
with doll parts for intimidating Jimmy with the camera flash. Rolf falls into a meat processor when
photographed resulting in a funny visual of him as a wiener. Then Kevin shows up again to chase them down
on his bike which results in the Eds getting stuck in a tire floating down a
sewer and Kevin falling into a dump truck.
These scenes are some of the funniest highlights resulting from the Eds’
shenanigans especially as some go the extra creative mile. It’s also impressive that the Eds are
actually successful with getting most of their pictures even with everyone
fighting aggressively against them for their actions.
Regarding the aggression though, the Eds do come
off as dense over how they react to it.
They say that certain characters have gone mad as a result of getting
photographed, but never realize they’re reacting out of annoyance for their
privacy being infiltrated. No one, not
even Double D, gets the impression they’re going too far and are disturbingly
out of touch with reality. Fortunately,
the last act finally does bring them to their senses. For their last picture, they dare to
photograph the most dangerous Peach Creek residents, the Kanker sisters. The Kankers turn out to get some of their
better appearances as them catching the Eds and embarrassingly making them
pretty comes off as consequences for obsessions. They also end up getting photographed by the
other kids and supposedly are suffering with them in the calendar since it can
be argued their photos are there too.
When it comes to the Eds’ punishment for their actions, through
relatable obsessions, it allows all directions of this cartoon to really work.
A
The Ranking
1. Dawn of the Eds
2. The Ed-Touchables
3. Vert Ed Go
4. Read All About Ed
5. Quick Shot Ed
6. A Pinch to Grow an Ed
7. Pop Goes the Ed
8. Sir Ed-a-Lot
9. Over Your Ed
10. Nagged to Ed
The next Ed Edd n Eddy review has the Eds try to outrun Sarah and her sudden crush on Double D, and they have a well-deserved victory in hide and seek.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Now We're Only Falling Apart" from 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. 
Read All About Ed:
ReplyDeleteThe classic paper route, how can you really make a profit off it? Ordering a mountain of papers to deliver.
This episode delves a bit into the personality of each Ed, by showing how each of them attempt to deliver the paper: Ed being enthusiastic yet inefficient, Edd being a perfectionist with ingenuity (and OCD issues), and Eddy being highly ambitious yet incredibly lazy.
One thing I tend to question is who to blame for it all going wrong at the end: Ed for accidentally tossing Eddy's bed into the newspaper shooter, or Eddy for being too lazy to get out of bed in the first place? Either way, a highly entertaining episode.
Quick Shot Ed:
This one was a lot of fun with the Eds running around taking pictures of everyone. Edd's running gag of comparing the kids to animals was clever, and Kevin constantly failing to harm the Eds was great.
It was actually refreshing to see at the end where the Eds only failed due to their own mistakes. Really, they could've just left the trailer park before anything bad happened, but Eddy opted to take the risk of getting a picture of the Kanker Sisters. This is more what I was getting at with "Virt-Ed-Go", where the humour is much better if the failure of the Eds was more on their part, rather than just the villain sue trio easily managing to screw them over. It was also honestly funny seeing the kids get their revenge on the Eds for taking embarrassing photos of them.
On that note, why would Eddy think the kids would buy the calendar they were making if it was full of embarrassing photos of the kids?
Still, a fun episode.