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Dough Ray Me
Focus is back on Huey, Dewey, and Louie with this episode and continues the trend of them wanting to get money the easy way only for their plans to majorly backfire. With this in mind, it’s fitting to expect a lot of familiarity with the concept, though it’s not without some interesting insight on exactly how money works.
As usual, the boys are keen to a summer of all their favorite activities, but their excitability causes them to burn through the allowance they have, so they can’t afford to do them all. Since Scrooge won’t raise their allowance, they try to settle for a summer job acting as the “dust busters” utilizing the best skill kids their age have, cleaning. That said, even attempts at that job don’t go as planned. While on their job, they try selling their services to Gyro Gearloose who has another invention on hand for them to use to solve their problem the easy way as usual. This time, the invention is a duplicator ray with a name the boys noticeably have trouble pronouncing throughout the episode. Seeing that it can make a copy of anything, including money, that’s enough to convince the boys that their money problems are through. However, they end up proving very impatient and brash as they take the duplicator and use it to double their money without getting all the details.
The consequences of this are soon known as Gyro notices everything he duplicated starting to double at the sound of a bell. Since Huey, Dewey, and Louie used the duplicator on their money, that means it doubles too at the sound of a bell, and that holds true for everyone who’s paid their money. On the surface, it seems good that everyone gets a lot of money, but all of this means a very believable effect on the entire economy, inflation. Since everyone keeps getting tons of money, there are skyrocketing increases on even the smallest of things (though things like the cost of dental insurance remain the same). The depiction of inflation has a comedic exaggerated edge to it, but the main point of what all this means is still very clear. In a way, the episode is both a fun comedy of errors but also teaches a very valuable lesson on managing money, one of the most essential tools of life.
In finding a way around the doubling money situation, admittedly, there is some confusion and a bit of needless complexities. At one point, the money doubles so much that a warning from Gyro makes it seem like it and everything that was duplicated will explode. Fenton Crackshell, who throughout the episode was trying to come up with a good way to help Scrooge in hopes for a raise, comes up with a solution. By calling a few favors, he makes it very easy for the Beagle Boys to break out of prison and steal all the money complete with storing it in their own money bin. They think they hit it rich, unaware that they’re storing away an impending explosion. Then it turns out Gyro never meant to imply the duplicated items would explode causing some drama between characters. A bell goes off shortly after and then all the duplicated items including the money disappears or “implodes.” That takes care of the issue, but why couldn’t the clarification have been made sooner? There was honestly nothing to gain from that brief moment of panic. At least the point of inflation was made as is Huey, Dewey, and Louie learning to be more reasonable with making money…again.
On the whole, this episode is a mix of clever ideas and interactions along with repeated tropes and confusing stakes, but it’s a positive experience more or less.
B
The Ranking
1. My Mother the Psychic
2. Allowance Day
3. The Land of Trala La
4. The Good Muddahs
5.
Dough Ray Me
6. Metal Attraction
7. Bubbeo and Juliet
The next review shows what happens when a rambunctious cave duck gets a moment of genius.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is an episode from the reboot, "The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks."
If you would like to check out other DuckTales reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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