Friday, October 15, 2021

X Marks the Ed / From Here to Ed - (Ed Edd n Eddy Season 3 Episode 7) - 'Toon Reviews 47

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X Marks the Ed

Growing up, people have a tendency to want to keep up a good appearance for both their character, and how they look.  For many people, especially youth, looking good can become a pretty embarrassing and difficult challenge when puberty hits.  Among the most prominent examples of this are when one ends up with a zit or pimple.  You grow up to discover and accept that these things are a normal part of a growing body, but at a young age, they can be largely unattractive and hard to deal with.  This cartoon covers such a topic, and the overall impressions do capture what a first pimple can feel like, but it feels mixed when it comes to entertainment.  

The Eds are off doing their get-rich-quick schemes which backfire as usual.  A notable thing about Eddy in particular is that he’s wearing a hat the whole time, but Ed’s antics force the hat off.  This reveals that Eddy is the one to be enduring a first pimple.  Being someone after respect and admiration the most, Eddy is absolutely horrified to see this happen to him.  He spends much of the cartoon trying various attempts to hide it, and none of them work.  

All the while, he has to endure many reactions of the world around him.  Ed constantly reacts to this normal act of puberty as something of another world, while Double D attempts to downplay it to no avail.  The biggest reaction comes from the rest of the kids who are absolutely relentless about Eddy’s pimple.  They gather around Eddy like he’s a freak and proceed to mock him for it with Jonny even making a lot of money out of treating Eddy like a tourist attraction.  It certainly doesn’t help that somehow the pimple keeps growing by the minute to almost unnatural levels.  The mocking Eddy gets for this is by far the biggest detractor of the cartoon.  Yes, the kids don’t have a good relationship with the Eds, but here their scorn goes way too far, coming at a time when they aren’t even doing anything bad to them.  Plus, knowing how normal pimples are at an older age, the teasing only becomes less acceptable.  In short, this is an example of really unfair torture to the Eds, though it’s not as frequent as it will become in later seasons.  

Thankfully, there’s a notable exception among the kids, as he’s actually willing to help Eddy with his problem.  Further proving to be the standout neighborhood kid like much of this season’s material, Rolf flat-out says he takes sympathy for Eddy’s plight and invites the Eds for a solution.  In accordance with his unusual cultural customs, Rolf prepares a special stew meant to cure human flesh of any impurity.  It’s an amusing process with creative steps like marinating Eddy in lard, suddenly turning the visit into a cooking show, and revealing that he already has something prepared.  Then after Eddy spends 24 hours with a chicken pecking his head while Rolf passes the time carving at a stump in his underwear, the final results are revealed.  

Technically, Eddy is free of his pimple, but now his head is freakishly small.  This ends the cartoon with another problem for him, but unlike the earlier teasing, it’s easy to get a good laugh out of it.  Eddy’s condition is funny by itself, but he rightfully doesn’t take it well, so Rolf is left to face a mob of him as well as Double D wanting a report and Ed wanting what Eddy has.  

How much you enjoy the cartoon depends on how much you can tolerate teasing over pimples, but despite that, everything that works here is stronger than the things that don’t.

B

From Here to Ed

It’s often said that the Eds represent three parts of one set of thinking, and that’s a good way of putting it.  Eddy represents the impulsive side of oneself, jumping into any plan without second thought, Double D represents logic and reason, and Ed just wants to have a good time.  This in turn makes their dynamic as interesting as it is in everything they do.  This cartoon features that setup at play in a situation that’s honestly very petty and baseless, and lacking in a compelling reason to exist.  

During a promising looking scam of a bobsled ride through a snowy landscape made of soap, Kevin unknowingly intervenes, and causes a crash.  Even though it was clearly an accident, Eddy sees this act as a deliberate sabotage and vows to get revenge on Kevin for it.  This in turn begins the overall setup for the cartoon.  Driven by an obvious misconception, Eddy has the gang pull off all sorts of elaborate stunts to hit Kevin to get back at him for the failure of his scam.  It’s true that Kevin is the cul-de-sac kid whom Eddy seems to get along with the least, with tensions between them being strong since the beginning.  This makes it believable that he would be so insistent on beating him, especially since Kevin is the one to get in the final beatings more often than not.  

From a story perspective, this isn’t a good impression for the characters the audience is meant to follow and root for.  Again it’s clear that Kevin didn’t actually intend to cause that scam to fail and Eddy is being too irrational to see that, making for understandable frustration.  To make up the bulk of entertainment, reliance has to be put on the antics that come from the Eds’ attempts at beating Kevin.  This in turn puts to use the differentiating approaches to life of each of the Eds.  Double D points out how ridiculous and pointless Eddy’s animosity towards Kevin is, bringing to mind something of a conscience, a voice of reason that ultimately gets ignored.  There wouldn’t be a cartoon if it wasn’t ignored.  As for Ed, he’s mostly in his own world as he’s roped into Eddy’s scheme.  He nonchalantly follows orders while spending the whole affair wearing a turtle on his head like a helmet.  While he lacks intelligence, this in a way can be very relatable where even when one has a job to do, they’d rather be free to do as they please, having simple dumb fun with life.  

Even though he’s granted little sympathy, there is solid amusement to Eddy’s attempts at beating Kevin with the fun ways they backfire.  He has Double D attempt to sock Kevin with Ed’s gross school lunch, but in decent timing, the lunch just explodes after Kevin leaves.  He tries to get Kevin with pancake syrup that works like fly paper, but it gets Jimmy stuck instead, and when Ed tackles him, Kevin just rides past the scene like there’s nothing.  

Finally, the most elaborate scene involves hitting Kevin from the sky with a big makeshift cannon with everyone disguised in blue with cloud fluff, but it shoots backwards.  It’s the execution of the backfires that bring out the lack of justification for the conflict and nicely compliments how ridiculous Eddy is being.  In fact, in the end he has to accept that Kevin should be left alone, and prepares to humbly declare him victory in the rivalry.  In accordance with pettiness, Kevin is just left confused and unaware of what Eddy’s talking about, making for little point to this whole conflict.  That said, slamming the door on his hand does feel deliberate.  

While this cartoon isn’t too great as a story, it’s solid enough through its comedy and look at the Eds as a unit.

B

Series Ranking

1.      One + One = Ed

2.      A Glass of Warm Ed

3.      It Came from Outer Ed

4.      Rent-A-Ed

5.      Once Upon an Ed

6.      Fa La La La Ed

7.      Urban Ed

8.      Laugh Ed Laugh

9.      Dawn of the Eds

10.  Wish You Were Ed

11.  Dueling Eds

12.  Mirror, Mirror On the Ed

13.  Ed-N-Seek

14.  Keeping Up With the Eds

15.  Who Let the Ed In

16.  Avast Ye Eds

17.  Flea Bitten Ed

18.  Fool on the Ed

19.  Ready Set Ed

20.  The Ed-Touchables

21.  Who What Where Ed

22.  Dear Ed

23.  Momma’s Little Ed

24.  Hot Buttered Ed

25.  Stop Look and Ed

26.  See No Ed

27.  Shoo Ed

28.  Ed in a Halfshell

29.  Scrambled Ed

30.  Vert Ed Go

31.  Oath to an Ed

32.  Ed, Ed, and Away

33.  Button Yer Ed

34.  An Ed in the Bush

35.  Read All About Ed

36.  Rambling Ed

37.  Home Cooked Ed

38.  Honor Thy Ed

39.  Floss Your Ed

40.  Quick Shot Ed

41.  Look Into My Eds

42.  Knock, Knock Who’s Ed

43.  A Boy and His Ed

44.  Eds-Aggerate

45.  Three Squares and an Ed

46.  Will Work for Ed

47.  High Heeled Ed

48.  Know-it-All Ed

49.  For Your Ed Only

50.  Dim Lit Eds

51.  Cry Ed

52.  Eeny Meeny Miney Ed

53.  A Pinch to Grow an Ed

54.  Pop Goes the Ed

55.  Hands Across Ed

56.  An Ed Too Many

57.  Sir Ed-a-Lot

58.  Over Your Ed

59.  From Here to Ed

60.  A Key to My Ed

61.  X Marks the Ed

62.  It’s Way Ed

63.  In Like Ed

64.  To Sir With Ed

65.  Nagged to Ed

66.  Tag Yer Ed

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode about most of the boys of the cul-de-sac competing for the affection of Nazz, and there's three Eds and only two jawbreakers.

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.


 

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