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Fridge Horror [frĭdj haw-ər (hor-rər)]: when a plot point or character trait or revelation becomes terrifying after either thinking about it in realistic terms or putting it in conjunction with an early or later plot point, character trait or revelation. [from TVTropes.org]

If the Internet has taught me anything, it’s that there are classic cartoon fans out there who are content with just watching their long-ago favorites through the nostalgia filter and not letting reality spoil their enjoyment. For me, this condition is temporary. Once reality and logic contaminate my classic cartoon enjoyment, it stays contaminated. It’s not all bad though. Without it, I still wouldn’t have found the Pepe Le Pew cartoons funny on the level that I find most contemporary adult cartoons funny at age 14. However, there are moments where this isn’t the case.

Every Friday, I will pull up a classic cartoon (and maybe some contemporary ones) and describe how horrific the endings (and sometimes the entire cartoon, but mostly the endings) can be when the power of realistic, logical thought is applied. Yes, I know, it’s Saturday, but this is a sneak preview. The regular Fridge Horror Fridays won’t start until August 26th.

Title:  Long-Haired Hare

Release Date: June 25th, 1949

Summary: After pompous opera singer, Giovanni Jones, breaks Bugs’s musical instruments (a banjo, a harp, and a tuba respectively), Bugs gets back at Jones with several opera performance-related gags (including posing as  Leopold Stokowski).

The Ending (according to Wikipedia):  During the concert’s final act, Bugs poses as the highly respected Leopold Stokowski to take over the conducting duties. First, Bugs, emulating Stokowski’s free-hand conducting style, makes Jones sing various notes, including a very low note. After accepting brief applause (which is instantly stopped when he raises his hand), Bugs cracks his knuckles, winds up his fists, and conducts Jones into holding a singular high G note until Jones can hardly endure the strain. His face turns different colors as his formal wear unravels under the pressure: white formal bow tie unties itself, collar detaches and snaps open side to side, white vestee buttons burst off and vestee falls to the ground, dickey releases and rolls into his face, suspender buttons give causing his formal slacks to fall around his ankles, revealing a large pair of flowered boxer shorts. After a while, Bugs leaves his glove hovering in the air and steps outside to order a pair of earmuffs which are delivered immediately after Bugs places the order in the mailbox. Bugs returns to the stage to find Jones has obeyed the glove and is still singing the high note. He writhes on the floor banging his fists, looking a little worse for the wear. The top of the concert hall’s shell begins to shatter from the sustained note and eventually tumbles down on top of Jones. To the applause of the audience, a roughed-up Jones appears out of the rubble to take a bow. Witnessing one last piece of the amphitheater balanced on a steel beam above Jones, Bugs again cues the singer to close out his performance with the high note so that the piece falls and knocks him out. Satisfied with his victory, Bugs removes his wig, stares directly down at Giovanni and ends the performance by playing vaudeville-era four-note tune, “Good Evening Friends”, on his repaired banjo.

The Fridge Horror: Bugs may have killed a man all because the man rudely interrupted Bugs’s practice in the beginning of the cartoon. 

Usually when Bugs uses trickery to defeat a foe (whether it’s Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, Daffy Duck, or a one-time, mostly-unnamed male character), the foe is shown to be either badly battered, mentally scarred from dealing with him, or being carted off by the police and/or mental hospital to get away from Bugs. Once that boulder falls on Giovanni’s head, we never see or hear him again. Though, I don’t know which is worse: Giovanni getting crushed to death or the fact that he could have died from holding that overly long note (unless he had the diaphragm for such a feat) if the Looney Tunes cartoons followed reality. The viewer could see how much pain Giovanni was in and no one stepped in to say, “Stop, Bugs! He’s had enough!”

And we’re supposed to sympathize with Bugs Bunny in this cartoon? Actually, this cartoon has no one with whom to sympathize. Giovanni is a jerk-ass who broke Bugs’s musical instruments and Bugs resorted to disporportionate retribution to get back at Giovanni. It’s still funny, but think about that next time you watch this cartoon.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,400 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.

In 2010, there was 1 new post, growing the total archive of this blog to 8 posts.

The busiest day of the year was December 4th with 59 views. The most popular post that day was The ’90s Nook–Mask and You Shall Receive, part two (or Feather Farce).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were tvtropes.org, en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, student-loan-consilidation.com, and shannonsweetvalley.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for mask movie, the mask, cookie baboom, the mask cartoon, and goof trap.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

The ’90s Nook–Mask and You Shall Receive, part two (or Feather Farce) July 2009

Episode #2: Cut and Drawn (#9 to #1) June 2009
4 comments

Episode #2: Cut and Drawn (#18-#10) June 2009
4 comments

The ’90s Nook–Mask and You Shall Receive (part one) July 2009
1 comment and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Episode #1: Opening Day (Pilot) May 2009
2 comments

That’s right, everyone. Despite the blog not having much content in it, it actually did pretty well this year. This, of course, is thanks to the two articles I did about The Mask: The Animated Series and my two-parter about American TV’s most-censored cartoon shorts. Since the Internet connection at Job Corps blocks off blogging sites and I don’t have one of those Cricket wireless USB antennae, I can’t really update this as often as I’d like. But, I will write papers that I can easily copy here when I go on vacation, so all is not lost.

I know, you guys, I’m upset too, but things like this can’t last forever (even if it is kinda short-lived). Besides, once I get my personal shit together, I’ll come back. If the Looney Tunes can spend 2009 not being available on DVD, then come back in 2010 as a single-disc DVD set centered on one character, then there’s hope for me.

With this knowledge, I’ve decided to dedicate this blog space for any corrections, retractions, additions, plugs, and admissions that have to do with classic cartoon information.

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Type: Correction/Plug

Re: Cartoon Short Edit/New DVDs

On the second half of my “Cut and Drawn” piece (the piece about the classic cartoon shorts with the worst edits when shown on TV), I stated that “Hare Trimmed” has yet to be released on DVD. In April 2010, “Hare Trimmed” will be released on DVD as part of a new cartoon shorts-only DVD set replacing the 4-disc Golden Collection. This collection is called Looney Tunes Superstars and will consist of one disc featuring cartoons by one character (kinda like the Golden Jubilee VHS collection where you have one video dedicated to Bugs Bunny cartoons, another focused on Daffy Duck [when he was a screwball *and* when he was a jerkass], etc). It’s pretty bare-bones (no commentaries or special features), but if you don’t want any frills with your cartoon short DVDs and just want the cartoons (Goddamnit!), then this is a sure buy. Don’t believe me? See for yourself

The Bugs Bunny DVD contains the following cartoons, a lot of which have been shown cut on TV:

1) Apes of Wrath (edited on ABC)

2) Bedevilled Rabbit (edited on ABC)

3) Bushy Hare (edited on Nickelodeon; banned on Cartoon Network)

4) Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare (edited on ABC and CBS — that thing about it being edited on The Merrie Melodies Show was a lie and has now been erased from Wikipedia).

5) False Hare (edited on CBS)

6) Foxy By Proxy (edited on ABC and some prints that have aired on local TV stations)

7) From Hair to Heir (edited on ABC)

8 ) Hare Trimmed (oh, you better believe this was edited on ABC. I’ll bet some of you out there have been watching the edited version for so long that watching it uncut will come as a shock to you).

9) Hare We Go (edited on ABC)

10) Lighter Than Hare (edited on CBS, The WB, and FOX)

11) Lumberjack Rabbit (far as I know, this was shown uncut, though I didn’t see the cartoon with the special 3D  opening and closing cards until Cartoon Network starting airing it)

12) Mad As A Mars Hare (no edits, though I had never heard of this cartoon until I bought a VHS that had Marvin the Martian cartoons on it for my 16th birthday [along with a Pepe Le Pew pen] at a WB store in 2001. I vaguely remember seeing it on Nickelodeon, but didn’t remember the title. All I remembered was Bugs as some sort of monster who crushes Marvin the Martian).

13) The Million Hare (no edits, and I remember seeing this a lot on Nickelodeon, especially the part where Bugs says to himself, “I wonder if Daffy will ever realize that he can fly,” and a later, similar line that replaces “fly” with “swim”).

14) Mutiny on the Bunny (edited on ABC)

15) Napoleon Bunny-Part (edited on ABC)

The Daffy Duck DVD contains the following cartoons, some of which have been shown edited on TV:

1) Daffy’s Inn Trouble (edited on WB, TNT, and Cartoon Network [though CN did air this uncut at one point. I probably missed it because I don't remember seeing it uncut]).

2) Design for Leaving (edited on ABC and some syndicated versions)

3) Dime to Retire (it’s been said that Nickelodeon edited the ending where Daffy runs out the hotel with his butt on fire, but I’ve never seen it cut on Nickelodeon, so it’s been uncut on TV as far as I know).

4) Ducking the Devil (no edits, though I would have figured ABC or CBS would have cut the end where Daffy beats up Taz for the dollar Daffy dropped on the ground. Guess violence in cartoons is only allowed if it’s for money or the affections of a woman [or a cross-dressed Bugs Bunny]).

5) The Iceman Ducketh (edited on FOX’s version of “The Merrie Melodies Show,” the syndie run of “The Merrie Melodies Show,” and The WB)

6) People Are Bunny (edited on the FOX version of “The Merrie Melodies Show” and the syndie version of “The Merrie Melodies Show”)

7) Person to Bunny (edited on ABC and the FOX “Merrie Melodies Show”)

8 ) The Prize Pest (no edits, though $10 says that someone out there comes forward and says that ABC never aired this short after 1994 because Daffy says he has a split personality is a “schizophreniac.” Schizophrenia and a split personality [or multiple personality disorder] aren’t the same thing, and ABC has [or had] a Standards and Practices rule for its shows stating that mental illness couldn’t be mentioned or mocked).

9) Stork Naked (no edits, but Cartoon Network didn’t really air this one because of the part where the Drunken Stork visits an Indian reservation and celebrates with the tribe by drinking firewater. In the rare times I saw this cartoon, the Indian reservation part wasn’t cut).

10) Suppressed Duck (no edits)

11) This Is a Life? (edited on ABC and the syndie version of “The Merrie Melodies Show”)

12) Tick Tock Tuckered (no edits)

13) Nasty Quacks (no edits, though the director credit has been removed, but that was by design. At the time, Frank Tashlin left the studio and WB studio decided to let the cartoon go director-less)

14) Daffy Dilly (no edits, but a lot of people claim that this has been banned from network TV because of Daffy smoking when he accuses the butler of committing murder. Maybe it’s true, but I prefer to believe that this didn’t air on network TV because the short was made before July 1948 and network TV only aired cartoon shorts from July 1948 to the end of 1964 since those are the toons that are in color and the toons that most people remember when they think of Looney Tunes).

15) Wise Quackers (edited on ABC and the FOX version of Merrie Melodies; banned from…every other channel. I guess when the premise of the cartoon involves a black duck being a slave to a white hunter, there’s really no way in hell these modern, politically-correct TV exec types will ever air it, even if a few minor edits can be done to “fix” it).

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Type: Admission/Apology

Re: TVTropes.org entry

For those out of the know, TVTropes.org is a website where all the character types, plot devices, setting descriptions, and other entertainment phenomena are given names (and your favorite TV shows are analyzed for tropes). My personal favorite tropes are: Genki Girl (a hyperactive girl character), Getting Crap Past the Radar (when a TV show does something borderline risqué), Crapsack World (a place where everything bad happens all the time), What Happened to the Mouse (when a character or object is set up for a potential plotline or joke, but never given one), Brick Joke (the opposite of a “What Happened to the Mouse” moment where a character or object set up for a potential plotline or joke gets his/her/its punchline/storyline somewhere within the TV show or movie), Butt Monkey (a character who constantly gets pushed around, beaten up, or verbally berated — i.e., Krillin from Dragon Ball Z or Buster Bluth on Arrested Development), Funny Aneurysm Moment (a joke or funny reference that loses its humor when something tragic happens in connection with that joke/funny reference), and the different types of Fuels (Nightmare Fuel to scare and traumatize children, Paranoia Fuel to make people afraid of the world around them, Nausea Fuel to make people ill, and Fetish Fuel to sexually excite people with common [and not-so-common] kinks).

Anyway, a while back, while viewing the “Looney Tunes” entry to see if there were any good tropes (there are), I came across one called “Too Kinky to Torture,” where a character is put through so much physical hell and yet, isn’t the worse for wear from it (and in fact, comes to like it). I just saw the Bob Clampett cartoon, “The Wise Quacking Duck” and thought the ending to that would make a perfect example for it (see here and scroll down: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LooneyTunes). What followed was a three-page GoldenAgeCartoons.com thread about what I put down. Fortunately, no one knew I did it, and, yes, I should be happy that the blame was passed on to TVTropes, but I’m coming clean now to say that I, lauriedoublevie24, did it (my TVTropes name is XuxiRawe22), and I did it because I thought it would be funny. I didn’t mean for anyone to be traumatized over it.

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Type: Unknown/Unspecified

Re: Blog Entry

On June 23rd, 2009, David Germain (a moderator for Big Cartoon Database and creator of my personal favorite comic strip, The Censor Monkeys, from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia) wrote a blog essay about Looney Tunes character, Pepe Le Pew. He covered the things I would have covered had I done something similar: how the Pepe Le Pew character is a parody to Charles Boyer’s Pepe Le Moko character from the film, Algiers, how Pepe’s “great lovair” personality was not only an exaggeration of the French lover stereotype, but also based on Ted Pierce, a Termite Terrace writer known for being a party animal and a womanizer, and how the Pepe cartoons translate to modern audiences (the answer is “not well,” if you believe those who think the Pepe cartoons are sexist).

What I wanted to tell David Germain (which I’m doing now) is that not everyone has gotten the memo that the moral guardians have sapped the fun out of Pepe and made him out to be something wicked. The Looney Tunes comics published by DC Comics have Pepe as his womanizing self, only now, instead of Penelope the Cat, Pepe has gone after human women and, in one case, the bull from Bully for Bugs (this isn’t too surprising when you consider that Pepe Le Pew can come off as a Depraved Bisexual teetering on the edge of Anything That Moves (see TVTropes for the definitions of both terms) in the Golden Age cartoons. For crying out loud, the first cartoon had Pepe go after a male cat painted as a skunk — made all the more head-tilting when it’s revealed that Pepe has a wife and kids) and the cheesy French puns and innuendo are now bound by the Comic Code (which has surprisingly looser standards than the Hayes Office) and some of the stories even include third-party action from other characters — something that the classic cartoons didn’t do (though if you’re a purist, this make come across as a slap in the face to tradition).

I recommend reading the following DC Comics Looney Tunes stories as proof of what I just said:

La Cage Aux Pew (issue #46; November 1998)

Mind Your Manners: Polite Pre-Reek-Quisites (issue #47; December 1998 — this is a very good one because it even shows that Pepe can still offend while trying to be PC)

The Right Stink (issue #121; February 2005 — proof of just how much Pepe is a DB teetering on the edge of ATM)

There’s a website called Comics Overview of Looney Tunes that has summaries of issues #1-122 of the DC Comics Looney Tunes (though the summaries really don’t do the stories justice. You have to go to comic book store websites to find the issues in question).

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Well, that’s everything I wanted to admit. Hope no one’s worse off for it.

But, no worries. With classic cartoon forums and blogs all abuzz, thanks to Cartoon Network re-airing the Looney Tunes shorts, I’ll have plenty of fodder for Point/Counterpoints (hopefully, I won’t be called an “ignorant slut” if and when I criticize an opposing opinion).

Other pieces I’m considering for “Saturday Morning Hangover” include:

1) Alternate Interpretations: This one’s pretty straightforward. I’m going to take a classic cartoon and, with my mad film analyzing skillz from University of the Iz-Zarts, try to theorize what it means through contemporary eyes. Some are easy to do; some take some thinking and repeated viewing.

2) Th-Th-Th-That’s All, Tropes: I don’t have all the details for this one, but it will involve a joint effort with TVTropes.org.

3) Auteur Detour: Ah, my aborted blog post from months before. This time, I will get this off the ground. For those who don’t know, Auteur Detour is where I take a director and go through the recurring themes, gags, elements, etc that make this director’s oeuvre stand out.

4) Save a Contemporary Piece, Snark a Classic Cartoon: Exactly what it says on the tin (sort of). I take a classic cartoon and make sarcastically funny comments on everything in it. This is sure to be a popular one, though I’m having some doubts about it.

5) Point/Counterpoint: As mentioned above, this will be where I take comments from classic cartoon blogs and forums and provide my opinion on them, and, unlike FOX News, I will at least make the effort to be fair and balanced.

Just remember that all of these are subject to change and not all of them will be recurring pieces. I have money that says that #2 will only last four, five posts tops.

While I’m happy that Cartoon Network is bringing back one of the things that made its network great since 1992 and introducing them to a new generation of kids who either don’t know what the Looney Tunes is or only know them through cheesy merchandise, you can probably count me out of watching it.

Why?

Well, for starters, I’m still not over that incident from 2003 when For Scenti-mental Reasons aired with two out of the three suicide parts cut. Knowing Cartoon Network, they won’t even try to reinstate some of the parts cut from their cartoon package (though they did impress me on New Years’ Day 2009 when they aired Trap Happy Porky and The Mouse-merized Cat with two stereotypically black references left in). Yeah, it makes the diehard toonheads jizz in their pants, but they’re going to have to do better than that to wow me.

Second, I’ve been amassing Looney Tunes cartoon shorts on video since I was a child. Due to the shifts in home-viewing technology, video soon became DVD, and DVD soon became Internet downloading/viewing on YouTube. In layman’s terms, I don’t need TV to satisfy my craving for Looney Tunes, not with new media (DVD, VHS, and Internet).

Third, I’ve moved on to other, crazier cartoons — most from my childhood from the late 1980s into the 1990s (with some select choices from the early part of the 2000s), the ones that were inspired by the old-school antics of the Looney Tunes (or tried to be the new generation’s answer to them). It doesn’t mean I’m going to drop the Looney Tunes completely; it’s just that I won’t watch them as much as I used to (unless it’s for this blog, which I will return to once I get my life outside the blog on track).

Fourth, I’m a recovering toonhead, so this sudden onslaught of classic cartoons isn’t healthy for me. Sure, I occasionally watch them, but I can’t binge on them like I did in high school.

So, Cartoon Network, if you succeed in bringing back Looney Tunes and making them popular again, know this: I won’t be there to welcome it back.

T-T-T-That’s All, Folks!

Most of part one was just a history of how The Mask was first a comic book series and then a movie before becoming Saturday Morning fare. More importantly, it was a set-up for this blog, which will look inside what I personally think is the edgiest episode of the entire series — or, at least, has a memorable sequence that screams loud and clear that The Mask (like most 1990s cartoons) wasn’t kiddie fare:

In the tradition of blogs that recount TV shows (and books) from the 1980s to the 1990s, I will recount this episode scene by scene, sequence by sequence, from start to finish.

However, I’m not going to bore you with a wall of text and pictures (I’ve contemplated it, but backed out at the last minute). Since “Flight as a Feather” is readily available for viewing on YouTube, I will be uploading all three acts and summarizing them. That way, you can watch and read at the same time (which is the reason why I have closed captioning on my TV, even though I’m not deaf). It’s highly recommended that you watch the YouTube video and read along with the act summaries on the blog. If that’s too taxing, then I will put in some stills for your pleasure and you can go back and watch the episode at your own leisure. It really is one of those episodes that’s too outrageous to be believed…at first.

Act One:

We open on a peaceful evening in Edge City outside of the apartment building in which Stanley Ipkiss lives. We fade inside to Stanley’s bathroom. The Mask is in the shower, wearing a bathing suit, an inner tube, and a snorkel — or, as I like to call it, “The Geeky Never-Nude’s High School Shower Stall Uniform” — and singing this to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”:

Sweet, it’s karaoke night
At the Coco Bongo
First, I’ll win the prize tonight
Then eat a chimichango!

The Mask pokes his head out from behind the shower curtains, asking Milo — and the home viewers — if his
singing is worthy of winning the upcoming karaoke contest. Milo obviously doesn’t think so as he whines
and covers his ears. Mrs. Peenman, who is in her bathroom, banging on the wall with the dull end of a broom, apparently agrees, but chooses to loudly lodge her complaint about The Mask’s singing by screaming, “Pipe down in there, Ipkiss! You’re making my African violets droop!” (which is funny when you consider that The Mask’s wussy alter ego, Stanley, isn’t even in this episode). The Mask, as he steps out of the shower, retorts, ”That’s not all that’s drooping on the old bag.”

So right out of the gate, we have our first double entendre/sexual innuendo/whatever you wanna call it for this episode, and it’s a breast joke (albeit a vague one).

Despite outside criticisms of his singing, The Mask is very optimistic about winning the Coco Bongo’s karaoke contest. Why? Because he has his looks going for him. But one thing is missing from his usual ensemble that is his yellow zoot suit with matching hat: his lucky fedora feather.

You might be wondering, “How did The Mask ever get that feather that’s always on his hat?”

The Mask pulls out a white balloon and inflates it, taking us back to an unspecified time in the past at the Coco Bongo, where four Rockette-style showgirls in purple and green feathers and blue sequin bikinis are doing a can-can onstage. The Mask narrates, “Yeah, she came into my life, one very special even-ning,” as we see The Mask diving into the arms of all four of the showgirls and catching a white feather with a black tip on it with his teeth. The white memory balloon pops back into the present, where The Mask still has the feather in hand. Much like the night he dove into the arms of the four showgirls, tonight, The Mask feels confident that his lucky feather will bring him luck again–this time in the form of winning the karaoke contest, as we see in the mirror, a blond woman with a Swedish accent wearing a pink dress declaring The Mask the winner.

Before The Mask can head off to the Coco Bongo, however, he has some business to deal with Mrs. Peenman after what she barked at him. The Mask bolts out the bathroom window and goes spinning into Mrs. Peenman’s bathroom, sucking her into the whirlwind and placing her on her armchair (which sends her spinning in it). Peenman is reeling, but The Mask has the cure for that.

The Mask:  There now, comfy are we? How ’bout some “wrap” music to unwind with? [ties Mrs. Peenman up with a bright blue ribbon]
Mrs. Peenman: Hey! [struggles to break free]
The Mask:   Oh, I get it. “Wrap”‘s not your bag, huh, girlfriend? Well, maybe some *easy* listening then [pulls out a cassette that reads "GREATEST HITS" and has The Mask's face on it. The cassette cover is shown to the viewing audience as The Mask on the cover speaks]
“Greatest Hits” Cover:     That’s right. It’s The Mask’s Greatest Hits! All The Mask, all the time, but wait — there’s more…

To demonstrate, The Mask pops it into a very large boombox and presses the PLAY button. An ear-shattering rendition of “O, Tannenbaum” (“O, Christmas Tree”) plays with new lyrics and The Mask singing in a whiny voice:

Oh, Mrs. P,
Oh, Mrs. P,
How ugly are your curlers!

And this is better than “wrap” music…how?

The Mask gives Mrs. Peenman some earphones so she can listen to the obnoxious tune without bothering the neighbors (the ones who aren’t or haven’t already gone deaf). All the earphones do is damage her hearing (and her sanity) at close range.

With that done, The Mask escapes through the window, standing out on the fire exit, telling her to “…enjoy my lady,” (with “lady” being used loosely in the case of the curmudgeonly Peenman). The Mask puts his hat back on his head, unaware (for that moment) that his lucky feather is floating away. The Mask checks the time (6:45, according to the miniature-scale Big Ben that sprouts from his clock), plenty of time before the karaoke contest, but before The Mask can officially go, he senses something amiss. He pulls out a full-length mirror and conducts a last-minute clothes check (“Shoes shiny, suit zooty, hat jaunty, feather — goney!”)

The Mask’s lucky feather has flown the coop. He scans over the edge of the fire escape and sees it floating in the air. The Mask (as Romeo, who ironically has a yellow and black feather on his hat) declares, in Shakespearean rhyme, that he’ll retrieve his precious feather and jumps out of his tights.

The feather floats down to Big Gordo’s Pizza, where the chef is preparing a pizza for a lone customer: a black man in a red hat, a mustard yellow jacket, and blue jeans. Through a telescopic point of view, the viewer can see that The Mask’s lucky feather has come to rest on the pizza dough that the chef is tossing in the air. The Mask (dressed as a hick farmer) is on top of an apartment building, keepin’ an eye on that li’l-ol’ feather of his.

We cut to Big Gordo’s Pizza, where the chef has stopped tossing the dough and is walking off with the pizza. The Mask (dressed in his usual outfit) hip-checks the man who was waiting patiently for his order and offers to take it, whether or not the pizza is done. The man is pissed. He was there first and he’s not leaving until he gets his pizza. The Mask is more than understanding…but makes it clear that he deserves the pizza by opening himself up to the stranger:

The man moans, “I think I just lost my appetite,” as he coughs and covers his mouth to keep from retching. The Mask gives the nauseous man a complimentary barf bag and makes off with the feathered pizza. The Mask doesn’t get very far with it — a little boy on a skateboard crashes into him, sending the pizza out of his hands and into the air.

The Mask (and the little boy) stare in shock as the pizza goes flying. A truck rumbles by and catches the pizza pie on its whistle. The stay is short-lived, as the truck horn blows, splitting the pizza into several perfect slices and sending the fedora feather in the air once again, doing loop-de-loops as it floats away. The Mask pursues the feather with a butterfly net, shouting, “Come back here, you!” as he runs off into the night.

 Back at Big Gordo’s Pizza, the little boy with the skateboard scratches his head in confusion at what just transpired. The black man, who waited for God knows how long just to get a pizza pie only to be accosted (and grossed-out) by some cartoonish stranger with a green head and a loud, yellow zoot suit, is on the phone with the police.

Customer [on the phone]: Hello, police! I wanna report a pizza-napping. [a beat]: Well, h-he was green.
[cut to Lieutenant Kellaway at his desk at the police station, with the phone in one hand and a dart in the other]
Lieutenant Kellaway [on the other line]: “Green,” huh? [chucks the dart straight at a photo of The Mask,
which has a bulls-eye drawn on it in black marker and two other darts that obviously missed the mark. The dart Kellaway throws hits between The Mask's eyes (the bulls-eye)]
Customer [over the phone]: Yeah.
Lieutenant Kellaway: Say no more.

On the other side of the the precinct, Mrs. Peenman is speaking with Doyle about filing an “intent to kill with really bad music” complaint. Doyle agrees to file it, even though such a complaint is, to quote Doyle, “…a new one on me.” Before Mrs. Peenman leaves, she reminds Doyle that her aural assailant (The Mask) is recognizable because “…he’s green.”

All of this talk of The Mask napping pizzas and using irritating music on old ladies is too much for Lieutenant Kellaway. Tonight’s the night he’s going to get The Mask come Hell or high water, though the fact that Kellaway doesn’t notice that he just stuck his hand in Doyle’s rubber stamp ink pad and is now smearing his own face with his inked hand doesn’t inspire confidence, not even in Doyle.

On the other side of town, Mayor Tilton is basking in the glow of the camera flashbulbs as a large crowd and TV news crews are gathered outside Edge City Hall, which is decorated in balloons. Mayor Tilton announces that tomorrow will be declared, “Bavariaville Day.” German folk music blares from speakers mounted outside city hall as The Mask’s feather floats in on the event unnoticed.

The reason for “Bavariaville Day”: the people of Bavariaville, Edge City’s oldest district, have agreed to become the exclusive  pretzel supplier to Edge City, with the pretzels being sold during film festivals, polo tournaments, and on every wiener schnitzel stand in the city.

If you ask me, this is a pretty dire turn-out. When I first watched this episode (back in the ancient, mystical year of 1997 — I know because after I graduated from elementary school [sixth grade] and was prepping for middle school [seventh grade]), I always thought the crowd was larger. And I never understood what the event was for back when I first watched it. I thought it was a bill signing.

Oh, and it should be of note that, unlike season one, Mayor Tilton’s personality in season two is more on par with the archetypical/stereotypical politician: greedy, narcissistic, opportunistic, not afraid to make shady deals, and has dated an unsavory woman — though the last item would be shocking is if Mayor Tilton were married, and there has been no visual or verbal reference inferring this. The other aspects were touched on in the previous episode, “Goin’ for the Green” (which I will summarize later).

Over in Bavariaville, an old woman in a purple sweater and a dark skirt is watching Mayor Tilton’s speech on her black and white television in a simple living room in her cabin, consisting of a couch, an end table with a lamp on it, another table (that looks like a bare cable spool) to the right of the TV, and a bookcase to the left of the TV.

Old woman     [in a German accent]: Fritz, Fritz, it’s the Mayor! Hurry, or you’ll miss him!
                            [to herself]: What a cutie! Oh, if I were five years younger…[woofs
                            suggestively]

On TV, the crowd applauds as Mayor Tilton twists John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” proclamation into “Ich bin ein Bavariavillian”. Now comes the time to sign the pretzel deal with Bavariaville to make everything nice and legal.

Just one problem: the mayor’s assistant, Smedley (who looks like a better-colored version of Mayor Tilton’s nameless, yet still geeky assistant from “Goin’ for the Green”. Here’s a side-by-side comparison for your perusal. The left is Smedley as he is in “Flight as a Feather”; the right is Smedley as he was in “Goin’ for the Green”)

…reminds the mayor that the city is a little strapped for cash ever since Mayor Tilton blew the budget on a party for the winners of a beauty contest. How strapped? According to Smedley, the city doesn’t even have enough to spend on basic office supplies in their government office. Mayor Tilton’s lucky that Edge City brokered that deal with Bavariaville over selling pretzels. I mean, sure, he can rely on the citizens and raise taxes or use kickbacks and bribes, but something tells me that that’s the money that they use for the polo tournaments and film festivals, not to mention the self-aggrandizing statues of Mayor Tilton (see “Goin’ for the Green”).

Mayor Tilton chuckles sheepishly facing the crowd, then turns back to Smedley, muttering to “ix-nay on the ash-bay” for one reason: they’re on live television. Anything incriminating they say and/or do can and will be ripe fodder for investigative reporters on the local evening news, cable pundits who want whoever’s in charge — and not of their political party – to go down in flames, and, of course, satirical late-night sketch comedy shows hungry for material in order to stay alive and culturally relevant for another 10 to 20 years.

Mayor Tilton orders Smedley to find something — anything — that can write so he can sign the Bavariaville deal. Smedley checks his suit pockets for a writing tool, just as The Mask’s lucky fedora feather floats in and lands on Smedley’s head. Smedley tries to blow it away as he continues his fruitless search.

In a pique of inspiration (or is that desperation?), Mayor Tilton decides to use The Mask’s fedora feather as a quill — and coffee in a cup held by his bodyguard as ink. According to Tilton, “If a quill was good enough for the Founding Fathers, then it’s good enough for me,” to sign the Bavariaville pretzel deal. The audience applauds…

…and, just when we think we’ve lost him in the story, The Mask comes barging in, foolishly thinking the audience is cheering for his uninvited entrance.

While The Mask hams it up for a wide-eyed crowd that was not expecting him at all, another uninvited guest — in the form of a young, black woman with her black hair done in this style that mixes the height of a ’50s bouffant with the tousled, feathered locks of a ’70s Farrah-do, and the wide, blown-out look of an ’80s perm for women, stunning emerald eyes, and and blood red lips with a beauty mark — barges in, wearing blue hoop earrings, a trenchcoat, and a very bad attitude, as she shoves aside two people amid a gasping crowd. She proclaims, “Mayor or not, nobody jilts Cookie BaBoom and gets away with it!”

Looking at her, is anyone else reminded of Esmerelda from the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Back on the top step of Edge City Hall, the Mayor is waving at the crowd. Smedley turns to the crowd and his eyes widen. He turns back to Mayor Tilton and — honest to God (or whatever deity you worship) — whispers:

Uh, Mr. Mayor, it’s that strip–er, exotic dancer you were dating.

Bad enough Mayor Tilton put the city in debt, now his ex-girlfriend (with an occupation you’re least likely to hear on a children’s cartoon) is crashing the celebration. Well, Mayor Tilton’s gotta put a stop to that — he orders Smedley (his assistant) to “get her outta here before she ruins my wholesome image,” as opposed to, say, the bodyguard who held that cup of coffee for him when he was signing the Bavariaville deal. Way to sacrifice, Mayor. This’ll look real good when you run for re-election.

Cookie charges the top steps of Edge City Hall amid a booing crowd (which I find odd. If Cookie is a stripper, wouldn’t most of the men in Edge City have recognized her? Either Mayor Tilton is her best — and only — customer or she’s not very good, though I doubt that). Smedley tries to stop her, but gets called a “pipsqueak” and shoved out of the way. Smedley catches up with Cookie and begs, “But, Miss BaBoom, you can’t just –” Cookie retorts, “Oh, can’t I?” and takes that as a welcome invitation to open her trenchcoat and flash Smedley.

I wish I was kidding.

I wish this was a fanfic.

I wish this was an urban legend.

It’s none of these. There’s video proof that this scene exists (as seen above) and picture proof that this scene exists, as seen below:

That tinny whistling noise you’re hearing is the sound of a V-Chip sobbing. And it’s about to sob harder as this sequence continues…

We cut to a close-up of Smedley as he gasps and growls lecherously. Almost absent-mindedly, Smedley channels Jimmie “J.J.” Walker by uttering, “Dy-no-mite!”

Cookie’s trenchcoat drops to her high-heeled feet as the crowd gawks in horror.

They just witnessed a woman indecently expose herself (if it was a man, there’d be outrage, but not to this extent. I mean, mostly when you hear about flashers in trenchcoats, they’re men) on [what I'm assuming is] live television, since there was a cameraman and news vans surrounding Edge City Hall and that old woman from Bavariaville was watching the announcement about the pretzel deal as it happened. But don’t go calling the FCC just yet. In fact, now would be a good time to call the bomb squad.

Cookie’s dressed to kill in two megatons worth of dynamite fashioned as a bikini, making her look like the unholy union of a suicide bomber and Josephine Baker. Apparently, some zidiot named Mortimer dumped her. Rather than drown her sorrows in Häagen-Dazs, Merlot, and chick flicks (or, since she dated a public figure, sublimate her anger and rejection into a tell-all book or tabloid magazine article), she’s using her mad skills in stripping and explosives to shuffle off this mortal coil with a bang (even if everyone else gets caught in the aforementioned bang).

And here comes the zidiot Mortimer now…

 Yeah, yeah, I know. Not that big a surprise, but I had no idea Mortimer was Mayor Tilton’s real name when I first saw this episode (in fact, I had no idea his last name was Tilton. I had crappy reception on my TV and first saw this on a local TV station, so the sound was always going in and out and I could hardly make out most of the dialogue. It was only after I found a download of this episode from an overseas Boomerang broadcast that I realized what I was missing).

Mortimer tries to reason his ex-girlfriend out of this suicide. No dice. Since she got blown off by Mayor Tilton, now was the time to return the favor (and not in the sexual way, either).

Act Two

 We come back from the commercial break to find that the people who gathered for Mayor Tilton’s announcement of “Bavariaville Day” are now screaming and fleeing. A man screams, “She’s got dynamite!” and the ground is littered in papers.

On the top stairs of Edge City Hall, Smedley and Mayor Tilton are standing next to Cookie (an unwise decision; if they truly feared for their lives, they would have been running and screaming with the rest of the crowd…or at least call in the SWAT team), still dressed in her suicide belt bikini and still holding the detonator. 

Nothing’s really happened yet, because Cookie can’t work the detonator (you’d think if she was really committed to committing suicide in such an attention-grabbing way, she’d make two suicide belt bikinis–a version to strap on a dummy [or a test goat] and test it to see how quickly or how slowly the belt will react, and, of course, the version she’s wearing now with any and all kinks worked out).

Mayor Tilton (with The Mask’s fedora feather still in hand from Act One) sees this distraction as a window of opportunity to do something heroic: get Smedley to once again deal with his deranged ex-girlfriend — this time by disarming her. Smedley takes one look at Cookie and, rather than lecherously volunteer just to grope her, refuses to do it.

Why? For the same reason most of us wouldn’t do something this insane — money. In this case, Smedley implies that Mayor Tilton doesn’t pay him well (not even with all the cash he squandered for that beauty contest party) and that he doesn’t get overtime.

Back to the panicking crowd (which includes a couple running hand in hand, a fat woman dragging her poodle by its leash, a blond in green heels and a short skirt running off, and a man carrying a stack of newspapers under his arm), The Mask is just standing there, not realizing (or just not caring) that his (and everyone else’s) life is in danger. All The Mask cares about is getting his feather back in time for the Swedish karaoke contest (which, at this point in the story, seems like a mere footnote in the plot).

The Mask reluctantly accepts the overblown charges made to him on Hero Hotline Phone, just as Cookie has fixed whatever was wrong with her detonator. Her last words to Mayor Tilton: “Kiss your constituency *good-bye*, Mortimer!”

Before Cookie crumbles, The Mask pops up unexpectedly with a mouse trap and slips it between Cookie’s manicured hands and the detonator plunger.

About as painful as In Living Color in its fifth season…

As Cookie flees to remove the mouse trap from her hand, The Mask transforms into a bartender(?!). Wipe that incredulous look off your face; this does have a point.

The Mask swipes his feather and uses it as a quill (like before in Act One) to jot down the Mayor’s drink order (even though he’s too dumbfounded to give one). Today’s special: The Bikini Cocktail. Now the Bikini Cocktail is an explosive little drink that can be served three ways: shaken, not stirred, straight up, or with a twist. But where do you get the twist if you don’t have any lemons?

That’s right. You get it off a pair of melons!

And twist, like so…

Now that you got your twist (and your main ingredient) for the Bikini Cocktail, simply place in a blender (that, much like Cookie BaBoom, is topless) and blend until pink and bubbly. The Bikini Cocktail is best served straight from the pitcher with no added frills like ice, a lemon slice, a lime slice, a ring of salt, a cherry, a martini olive, crushed mint leaves, or a cute little parasol.

Cookie BaBoom is still(!) spinning just as Lieutenant Kellaway and his partner, Doyle, approach the Edge City Hall steps. Kellaway has The Mask right where he wants him, but The Mask (back in his yellow zoot suit) has a trick up his sleeve. Before Kellaway and Doyle can actually catch The Mask, he stops Cookie from spinning (finally) by grabbing her shoulders and making her face Kellaway and Doyle. The Mask bolts while all eyes (well, at least Kellaway’s and Doyle’s) are on Cookie.

Did I mention that, at this point, Cookie is completely naked (even though she had two strategically-placed suicide belts, somehow she ended up naked rather than just topless)?

Because I love you (and want to cover my ass should I be blamed for causing someone to lose his/her job, especially in a recession like this), I’m only going to link the picture I was supposed to put here on the blog, even though the nudity is heavily implied as you can tell by Cookie’s bare back and the reactions from Kellaway and Doyle: http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7841/snapshot20090726040328.jpg (moderately not safe for work…or school library…or public library).

Now, you figure when male police officers have to deal with a woman who’s nude in public, they’d be professional about it, no matter how good she looks naked, right?

In this case, no.

K & D completely lose it (not in that wild, Tex Avery-at-MGM style as seen on those Wolf and the showgirl cartoons, but more like that buzzard in Bob Clampett’s “Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid” way). Doyle melts first, managing a goofy, “My…oh, my!” before sliding down. Kellaway does his best to keep cool, but alas, all he can do is stammer out, “L-Lady, y-you’re under…arrest,” and slides down as well.

===DERAIL===

As you’re watching this, you just have to ask: where’s a strip club champagne room and a wad of singles when you really need them?

I mean, you just have to ask, “How did the writer get away with this?”

Simple: this was made back when cartoon writers, especially those who worked on TV cartoons, actually took a chance to entertain not only kids, but older audiences, but even back then, there were limits. Those who were crazy enough to tempt the censors with a joke that zoomed past risqué and crashed right into bawdy usually paid for it by having his precious scene cut or line of dialogue replaced with something less offensive. It happened to Rocko’s Modern Life, it happened to Ren and Stimpy [of course, that was also because some of the scenes were too disgusting for human consumption back before the Internet and reality TV desensitized us], and it was the reason why Animaniacs only had two cartoons featuring Minerva Mink. The only reason The Mask got away with this (and managed to keep the scene in rerun after rerun after rerun) was because this episode never saw an airing on network television. In fact, the only channel ever to bar “Flight as a Feather” (and most of the season 2 episodes of The Mask: TAS) from airing was ABC Family (back in the late 1990s-early 2000s when it was called FOX Family).

Oh, and if you think this episode was penned by some horny, immature adolescent of a male cartoon show writer, think again. The writer credited for “Flight as a Feather” is one Julia Jane Lewald (often credited as “Julia J. Roberts” or simply “Julia Lewald”). That’s right — it’s a woman, and a married one, at that. Her husband is Eric Lewald, and together, the two of them were showrunners for the live-action show Young Hercules. Other cartoons Mrs. Lewald has written for include a lot of Disney Afternoon shows, like Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, and Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles. Her non-Disney oeuvre besides this one episode of The Mask: The Animated Series (shame she didn’t write another episode) include Nickelodeon’s CatDog, FOX’s X-Men, and some syndicated oddities, like Mummies Alive! and Street Fighter: The Animated Series (on which, she was a story editor, not a writer).

For a complete list of what Ms. Lewald has written, see her Internet Movie Database entry at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0506719/filmoseries#tt0096557

===DERAIL ENDS HERE===

On the top stairs of Edge City Hall, Mayor Tilton is smiling over his ex-girlfriend’s humiliation while Smedley can only stare. The Mask then barges in and asks Cookie if he knows her from traffic school. Before she can answer (or because the punchline to the joke was too racy to be aired [Yeah, like everything else here is so squeaky clean]), we cut to the cabin in Bavariaville where the old woman who once lusted after the mayor is now staring in shock over everything that happened to him that aired on live TV (a big continuity goof, as everyone, including the guy with the news camera and the news vans, bailed after Cookie pulled out her detonator. So much for catching breaking news as it develops). Rather than file a nasty complaint to the FCC over nudity and an attempted murder/suicide (which she probably would have done had this cartoon been made after that “wardrobe malfunction” incident in 2004), the Bavariavillian woman shrieks that there’s “a monster [The Mask] with the mayor!” I don’t know how The Mask can be considered a monster. He saved everyone from a dirty bomb (so to speak).

We cut back to Edge City Hall, where Kellaway and Doyle are now lying at the foot of the city hall stairs. Utterly defeated (and not wanting to do time for indecent exposure, attempting to assassinate the mayor, and attempted suicide), Cookie BaBoom (now clad in the trenchcoat she wore when she was introduced) runs off without saying a word. While Doyle is still infatuated with Cookie, Kellaway would rather have The Mask arrested (if only Doyle would snap out of it).

The Mask is beginning to feel the afteraffects of the Bikini Cocktail, as he begins belching small explosions, causing
his fedora feather to once again float away into the night.

This time, it lands in the back of a Franco’s Feathers truck that has just stopped at a red light. The light turns green and the feather truck (with the lucky fedora feather) continues down the road to a pillow-making factory called Peterson’s. The truck pulls up to the side of the factory. The Mask is on foot in pursuit of his lucky feather, telling it to hang on.

It’s a little too late for that, because now the feather (and every other feather on the Franco’s truck) is being sucked inside the factory through a long, metal chute. The Mask can only stare helplessly (and comment, à la Jimmy Durante, on how much of a “revoltin’ development” this is) as his feather gets sucked inside the long, rattling pipe (where it sounds as if a cat also got sucked inside. Poor kitty).

So where does this pipe go? It deposits all the feathers sucked up from the truck into a large vat…and said vat is apparently going to be used for a bizarre living art piece by Crisco, the performance artist, dressed only in pantyhose, a loincloth, a kerchief wrapped around his head, and the leather restraints attached to the ropes from a pulley.

===DERAIL===

If you’ve ever been to art school (like I have), and you’ve been around performance art in some capacity, then you’ll probably find this next part funny in a truthful way since performance art really does have a tendency to be weird to those who don’t “get it”, but absolutely brilliant to those who do.

===DERAIL ENDS HERE===

Crisco announces that he’s about to create his most important work. Below, Crisco’s snooty, Eurotrash hangers-on (including a guy in a red suit jacket over a black turtleneck who looks like a caricature of Karl Lagerfeld, a bald woman in an orange body robe, a short second man with a goatee and glasses in a purple suit and a sea green turtleneck, and a black-haired woman red pointed glasses, dressed in a white turtleneck with a black vest and a black skirt, purple, black, and white jewelry, smoking a purple cigarette on a holder) clamor in agreement. The Purple Cigarette Smoking Lady comments that Crisco’s work is “more than ‘art.’ It’s ‘smart,’” while Mr. Purple-and-Sea-Green mentions Crisco’s last performance at the sewage recovery plant.

Crisco’s performance consists of slathering himself in tar and dipping himself in the vat of feathers (Yeah, I don’t get it either, but it really impresses his hangers-on, who probably have seen stranger installments by him [like the sewage recovery plant installment]). While Crisco’s admirers “ooh” and “ahh” over his upcoming dive into the feather vat, The Mask is frantically searching through the pillows and piles of feathers to look for the one that goes on his fedora. Using the rope-operated pulley, Crisco lowers himself into the vat as his hangers-on gasp and mutter in shock. Moments later, Crisco pulls himself out of the feather vat, covered in feathers, stopping once to aside to the viewing audience on how difficult it is to be this artistic.

The Mask continues to search for his fedora feather, until he turns around to see what Crisco’s hangers-on are clamoring about — and discovers that his lucky feather is attached to Crisco’s rear end. The Mask bolts up to the plank on which Crisco is standing and points out, “That’s my feather on your rump, chump!” Crisco doesn’t care about The Mask’s feather. The feathers on Crisco’s body, regardless from where they originally came, are a part of his art, and his art belongs to posterity.

The Mask’s response:

Oh, yeah? Well, your posterior belongs to me!

Once again, The Mask spins around to transform into another character (this time, a knight) and rescue his lucky feather from someone who is scantily-dressed (this time, a performance artist wearing nothing but tar, feathers, a loincloth, and pantyhose).

Crisco’s hangers-on don’t object to The Mask plucking Crisco (I said *plucking*). In fact, they think it’s part of
Crisco’s act. They think The Mask (or “that green creature”) represents monetary greed and that his ripping the feathers off Crisco’s body is symbolic of how this lust for money plucks away at man’s soul. Predictably, they brand this a stroke of genius on Crisco’s part.

Back on the plank, The Mask has plucked Crisco bare of all his feathers (leaving his tar-covered body swinging in the air) in an attempt at getting his fedora feather back. The bad news: The Mask’s feather is now covered in the tar from Crisco’s body. Even worse: Crisco is now clinging to the part of the metal chute that blew out all the feathers into the vat and turns the chute outwards, causing The Mask’s lucky feather to blow out an open window. The Mask bolts in pursuit of his feather, leaving Crisco to fall into the feather vat, still clinging to the (now broken) metal chute.

The feather floats through the air, just as it gets stuck to the underbelly of a bird with brown feathers. The Mask (with a helicopter propeller on his head) catches up with the bird and reaches out for his tar-stained feather. Before The Mask can grab it, a duck flies by and collides with the brown bird. The duck flies away, now with The Mask’s feather attached to its underbelly. The duck soon gets stuck to an approaching blimp (while The Mask gets pinned to its front end). The Mask scales the blimp in pursuit of the duck with his lucky feather stuck on him. The Mask dives for the duck. Scared, the duck flies off, leaving the fedora feather behind and The Mask has his feather back — until an airplane skims the edge of the blimp, flattening The Mask and making off with the lucky feather.

The airplane’s bay doors open while in midair (odd since that signals that it’s about to land, but there isn’t a runway for miles), dislodging the feather from underneath. The feather floats down, heading for the ocean. It rides with the air current–just as The Mask (now a blond surfer dude) is riding the waves after his “little feather dude”.

Success! The Mask is reunited with his feather!

But, like, something gnarly is about to transpire, moon-doggie. A humpback whale (what part of the world is The Mask in at this point?) has just cornered The Mask and his fedora feather. The Mask tries transforming into a pirate to fight off the whale. Alas, it only gets The Mask and his feather swallowed. The Mask (now dressed in his yellow zoot suit, feathered fedora and all) holds a lighted candelabrum to see where he is.

Swallowed by ten tons of blubber. In serious danger of missing my karaoke contest. Well, it doesn’t get
any worse than this.

As if on cue, familiar footsteps thud through the whale’s insides. Two red eyes flicker as Walter (Pretorious’s silent goon) steps out of the shadows and advances on him. The Mask gulps. He shouldn’t have spoken so soon.

Act Three

The whale dives through the water, carrying Walter and The Mask inside of him. As Walter keeps advancing on The Mask, The Mask asks Walter what exactly he’s doing inside the whale. Since Walter can’t answer that (what with being a mute and all), The Mask decides to fight back, French swashbuckler style, using his feather as a sword (of sorts) to subdue Walter.

Nothing.

Walter continues to advance on The Mask and The Mask walks near the whale’s uvula (that ball of flesh that hangs in the back of your mouth) where The Mask still tries to subdue Walter with his feather.

Still nothing. On the plus side, the feather brushing the whale’s uvula (which is bobbing up and down like an Adam’s apple on the neck of a semi-convincing transvestite) does garner a reaction — an allergic one, to be exact. The next thing we know, the whale sneezes, sending Walter flying through the air and The Mask, with feather in hand, crashing into the side of a cliff, next to an eagle’s nest. 

An eagle squawks as The Mask slides down the cliff’s side. The Mask assures the eagle that he’ll be out of its “hair” in a jiff. The eagle doesn’t take this well and begins pecking The Mask on the head. Apparently, The Mask broke one of the animal kingdom’s many social taboos: NEVER mention “hair” to a “bald” eagle.

As punishment for The Mask’s (unintentionally) insulting remark, the eagle swipes The Mask’s fedora feather. The Mask screams for the eagle to give him back the feather as he slides down the cliff, and lands on his butt, making a cartoonish accordian sound. Predictably, the eagle does not give the feather back; in fact, she (the eagle has a nest with eggs in it) wears it on her head. “This calls for extreme measures,” The Mask declares.

Turns out he meant to say, “egg-streme”, as a green egg rolls down the cliff into the nest. Even if the egg is large and green with spots on it (as opposed to the small, off-white eggs already in the nest), the eagle cares for it as if it was her own.

Soon, the eagle’s two biological eaglets hatch from the eggs, chirping. The adoptive egg hatches as well, revealing The Mask in a diaper with a pacifier in his mouth, crying “Mama!” The Mask then kisses the eagle on the beak and swipes the feather from the top of her head.

…and with that, The Mask leaves the nest (literally and figuratively speaking). We cut to a snowy mountainside where The Mask is cutting through the slopes to make it in time for the karaoke contest at the Coco Bongo. He and his feather are finally reunited and nothing can stop them now…except that The Mask foolishly decides to yodel.

There’s a cartoon rule (or trope or cliché or whatever you call it) that states that if a character is in a snowy, mountainous village that is meant to represent Switzerland or the Bavaria region of Germany, and that character makes a sound that echoes through the mountains, said sound will trigger an avalanche — and that’s just what happens here as The Mask skis off a slope. Seeing the flood of snow gaining on him, The Mask skis faster. The avalanche heads straight for the small town of Bavariaville, knocking down several trees in the process.

Meanwhile, Kellaway and Doyle continue their pursuit of The Mask at Peterson’s Pillow Factory, where Crisco (now removed of all the tar, save for a big patch on his stomach) identifies The Mask as “the sav-age” who “ruined my performance with his pluckage. Ruined it! Ruined it!” Doyle takes sympathy on Crisco, but Kellaway is less than understanding (if only for the fact that he’s more into Tony Bennett).

A female voice announces over Doyle’s police radio: “All units, come in all units, please be advised of an avalanche in progress off Mount Gomery Cliff.”

As Crisco walks away, Lieutenant Kellaway sits on the tar-covered pipe. According to Kellaway, an avalanche is no big emergency, even if it’s in Bavariaville (“I don’t have time to waste with those pretzel-twisters over in Bavariaville”). But the next police report, about witnesses seeing “…something green at the core of the avalanche…” convinces Kellaway otherwise. He and Doyle are off, but the tar ripping the seat of Kellaway’s pants delays their plans–at least until Kellaway can get a new pair down at the precinct.

We return to Bavariaville–now buried under several feet of snow with several broken and felled trees sticking out of the ground. The Mask is nowhere to be found, but look–someone made a snowman with The Mask’s fedora on top of its head. Just kidding–it *is* The Mask buried under the snowman and shivering (“Somebody thaw me!”). Nearby, the old woman who was watching Mayor Tilton on TV throughout Act I and part of Act II pops out of the snow, looking shocked at what happened to her house. The Mask approaches her and the old woman recognizes him immediately — as “the monster from the television,” — and apparently everyone else in Bavariaville recognizes him too, as they come a-running after him with pitchforks, torches, and farm equipment. The Mask hightails it out of there as the villagers go after him.

The Mask stops running when he reaches the edge of town. The villagers haven’t relented and The Mask is desperate for a place to hide, lamenting that “…there’s never an abandoned windmill around when you need one!” Au contraire–there is a windmill, but it’s not abandoned. In fact, it’s at a mini-golf course. The Mask bolts inside and slams the door behind him.

Back in the buried Bavariaville, the old woman crawls out of the snow hole just as Kellaway and Doyle arrive, still screaming about “the monster.” Kellaway and Doyle follow the angry villagers to where The Mask is hiding.

At the mini-golf course, we find Mrs. Peenman already there, coaxing any and all laggers to crowd around the windmill and attack The Mask. Among the laggers are: Cookie BaBoom (fully clothed and wielding a club), the black man from Big Gordo’s Pizza, Crisco the performance artist, and the eagle.

The Mask tries to fend off the “angry seething mob” by telling them he gave at the office. The mob doesn’t buy this and bangs on the door harder.

The Mask is screwed. Sure, he has his feather back, but now there’s a group of people who want his hide. What to do? What to do? Suddenly, The Mask gets an idea:

‘Tis, but one way to handle an unruly mob such as this…[brandishes a sword, tosses a handful of brown bite-size treats and skewers them on the blade, shish kebob style]: With snackages!

The Mask (dressed as a knight yet again) opens the door to face the angry, seething mob of villagers and those he harassed and humiliated throughout the episode. The Mask quells the angry mob by tossing the tray of s’more out into the crowd. With everyone fighting each other for a taste, The Mask transforms into a golfer and rushes to the closest hole. He asks a mustachioed man if he can play through with him and takes a club from a golf bag held by a sheep.

Just as he positions the club on the ball, Kellaway and Doyle approach him, ready to place him under arrest after all the crap they went through. However, The Mask shushes them because he’s trying to concentrate on his putt. Doyle agrees, showing Kellaway a nearby sign that reads, “Shhh!”

The Mask winds up…and ends up hitting himself. He turns into a green, screaming golf ball that flies around Kellaway and Doyle and out of sight. Kellaway laments that he was so close to catching The Mask. Doyle does nothing to console Kellaway, as all Doyle is interested in are the s’mores the crowd went crazy for.

The Mask finally makes it to karaoke night at the Coco Bongo. The emcee (the blond woman in the pink dress from the mirror vision in act one) goes to announce the winner, but can’t read the card because she forgot her glasses. The Mask “helps” her out by tickling her nose with his fedora feather. Lucky for The Mask, the emcee is so allergic that she sneezes herself in The Mask’s arms. She announces him the winner.

And that’s why The Mask’s feather is so lucky.

==========================================================

So what can you learn from all of this? Five things:

1) The Simpsons isn’t the only ’90s cartoon to have wacky, implausible plots featuring gratuitious nudity, corrupt political figures, and a jerkass character ends up getting chased by an angry mob near the end.

2) Don’t ever piss off a strip — er, “exotic dancer” if she knows out to make a suicide belt and fashion it into something she could wear during one of her shows.

3) Sometimes all it takes is food to distract the public from protesting

4) Mention “hair” to a bald eagle and you risk getting pecked.

5) ’90s cartoons really did know no bounds.

We’re going back to our classic cartoon format next time, with Auteur Detour.

This week, I take a break from the monotony of reviewing/analyzing classic theatrical cartoons and take a look at a modern-day TV cartoon that has aired in the 1990s in my new segment called “The ’90s Nook.”

In the 1990s, it seemed that every Saturday morning cartoon was a cartoon adaptation of a popular movie (particularly one that wasn’t meant for anyone under the age of 13, if America’s MPAA ratings system is indicative of anything). None were more memorable (to me, at least) than the cartoon adaptations of three (count ‘em, three) Jim Carrey movies: The Mask: The Animated Series, Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: The Animated Series, and Dumb and Dumber: The Animated Series.

Some Facts and Figures You Need to Know:

1) With the exception of Dumb and Dumber: The Animated Series, The Mask: TAS and Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: TAS aired on CBS from 1995 to 1997 (Dumb and Dumber: TAS aired on ABC in 1995).

2) Of the three Jim Carrey cartoon movie adaptations, The Mask: TAS and Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: TAS are both the longest-running (each lasted three seasons), but in terms of how many episodes each series had, The Mask: TAS (which lasted 54 episodes) beats Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: TAS (which only had 35 episodes, one of which was a crossover episode with The Mask: TAS).

3) Both The Mask: TAS and Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: TAS aired for a short time on CBS before finishing their runs on a cable network specializing in showing kids’ cartoons (The Mask aired on Cartoon Network; Ace Ventura aired on Nickelodeon).

Despite all of this trivia, I’m here to talk about The Mask: The Animated Series, since I remember that Jim Carrey movie cartoon adaptation more than the Ace Ventura cartoon (which was created by none other than Seth MacFarlane, the man [or sick fuck, depending on your tastes] behind Family Guy, American Dad!, and Seth’s Cartoon Cavalcade) and the Dumb and Dumber cartoon (which looks as if it was animated by the same people who did Cow and Chicken–Cartoon Network’s answer to that early ’90s John K. mindfuck Ren and Stimpy).

Creation and History

The Mask started out as a comic book series created by John Acrudi and Doug Mahnke and published by Dark Horse Comics. The comic book version of The Mask plays out like a mini-series, showing different people finding an antique green mask, wearing it, and turning into a brash, green-headed being (known as “Big Head” in the comics) that can only be described as a living cartoon character, able to do anything that defies every law in the book (including the laws of gravity and physics). Even though Stanley Ipkiss is the protagonist of the movie and TV cartoon versions of The Mask, in the original comic book, his trials and tribulations with the mask only last about four issues. The rest of the issues (from The Mask Returns and The Mask Strikes Back) focus on other people who find the mask and are totally unaware that the mask is behind the so-called “Big Head murders.” The original Mask comic book was also more violent than its film and TV adaptations, including such child-unfriendly acts as murder (Stanley as Big Head kills his first grade teacher and the mechanics who always cheat him out of money when he goes to get his car repaired), police brutality (Lieutenant Kellaway tries on the mask and becomes a Punisher-type vigilante), and domestic violence (Stanley verbally abuses his girlfriend, Kathy, and physically attacks her when in Big Head mode).

After The Mask Strikes Back, the violence was toned down to the cartoonish, Tex Avery-style humor of the 1994 movie. The only character from the original Mask series who appeared in the later comic books was Lieutenant Kellaway (who, in the movie and TV adaptation, NEVER put on The Mask, which is a shame, because that would have been a cool episode or movie sequence).

Now, the movie version was the first PG-13 movie I watched (at age 10). The movie version focused on Stanley Ipkiss (played by Jim Carrey), a loser bank clerk who finds a wooden mask in the Edge City river (mistakenly believing it was someone drowning) tries it on, and becomes a wacky, green-headed living cartoon man in a loud, yellow zoot-suit. He uses his new alter ego to impress a nightclub singer named Tina Carlyle (played by Cameron Diaz) and get back at the people who bullied him, such as his landlady Mrs. Peenman and the mechanics who constantly screw him over when he takes his car in to get repaired (this, by the way, was the only scene from the original comic series that was in the movie). However, things get sticky when a mobster named Dorian (played by Peter Greene) stage a robbery at the Edge City Bank and police detectives Mitch Kellaway (played by Peter Riegert) and his idiot partner, Doyle (played by Jim Doughan) brand Stanley as a “person of interest” in a rash of crimes that have been happening at night — all perpetrated by a man with a big, green head. I won’t give too much away. If you haven’t seen it, go.

Anyway, The Mask (movie version) was the movie that launched the careers of Jim Carrey (who was fresh off the FOX sketch show, In Living Color, which, at the time, was in its final season and really hitting the skids since the Wayans brothers [and sister] left the show following a dispute with censors over the show’s content, new cast members who didn’t exactly win over the audience were brought in, and the writers were either phoning it in or not really trying) and Cameron Diaz (who started out as a model, believe it or not). It got rave reviews from critics, was a box office success (grossing $119 million domestically and over $350 million worldwide), and was nominated for several awards (Jim Carrey was nominated for a Golden Globe while the film itself was nominated for the “Best Visual Effects” Oscar. Unfortunately, it lost to Forrest Gump). Since it got all this praise and good karma and since this was the 1990s, there was one more thing to do to make this all complete: create a Saturday morning cartoon series out of it.

As mentioned earlier, The Mask: TAS was the first of the Jim Carrey movie cartoon adaptation trio, and was probably the only one that anyone really remembers. It aired on CBS from 1995 to 1997, even though CBS only aired seasons one and three. Season two had the privilege of airing on Cartoon Network and on local TV affiliates (often as part of an after-school line-up called BKN [Big Kids Network] that included such animated shows as The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys, Extreme Dinosaurs, Street Sharks, and Extreme Ghostbusters). Where I lived, season two of The Mask: TAS aired on channel 17 (back when it was an affiliate for The WB) and channel 48, a local TV station that used be a “whatever” channel (meaning the programmers aired “whatever” they had in their library, from old sitcoms to cartoons that network TV would never touch if they valued their FCC licenses). These days, Channel 48 is an all-Christian programming, all the time channel and Channel 17 is now called “MyNetworkTV” and airs worse shows than FOX (with the possible exception of Family Guy, but the Family Guy episodes they have are edited to remove a lot of the more tasteless jokes — some of which, by the grace of whatever deity you worship, made it past the FOX censors. Those that didn’t end up uncut on DVD or Cartoon Network).

Much like the movie, The Mask cartoon series focused on Stanley Ipkiss (voiced by Rob Paulsen [the guy who played Yakko Warner on Animaniacs]) and his cartoony alter-ego The Mask, had that Tex Avery/Bob Clampett-esque wackiness, and included Stanley’s friends, Peggy Brandt (voiced by Heidi Shannon) and Charlie Shumacher (voiced by Mark L. Taylor), and enemies, Mrs. Peenman (voiced by veteran voice actress Tress MacNeille), Lieutenant Kellaway (voiced by Neil Ross), and Doyle (voiced by veteran voice actor Jim Cummings). Unlike the movie, Stanley’s mask now works during the day (In the movie, Stanley tries to wear The Mask during the day, but nothing happens), Cameron Diaz’s character, Tina Carlyle, and the mobsters who used her to rob the Edge City Bank aren’t in the cartoon, and Peggy Brandt (the tabloid newspaper writer who liked Stanley Ipkiss for who he is and not what he’s become) is seen more (in the movie, there was supposed to be a scene where Dorian [wearing The Mask] kills Peggy by dumping her body in a newspaper printing press. Had that scene been shown in the movie proper, Peggy’s appearance in the cartoon would not have made any sense. In the actual movie, it was heavily implied that after Peggy met Dorian at the newspaper office, she made off with the money with her life intact and disappeared from the plot of the movie). Her personality is also tweaked a little. In the movie, Peggy actually cares about Stanley’s well-being when he’s The Mask; in the cartoon, Peggy still cares for Stanley, but she cares more about furthering her writing career and often wants Stanley to appear as The Mask so she can get that Pulitzer-winning headline.

The cartoon also created crazier villains, making this show the wacky, light-hearted yin to the yang of the dark and dramatic action cartoons, like Batman: TAS, X-Men, and Superman: TAS. Some of the regular villains include: 

1) A mad scientist cyborg named Pretorious (voiced by the always-skeevy Tim Curry) whose head always detached from his body and moved around on a set of metal spider legs. His thing was conducting wide-scale experiments that had an 80-90% chance of dooming all of humanity (like the Large Hadron Collider — at least, according to any conspiracy nut you can name) and using Stanley’s mask as part of the experiment. Pretorious is the only villain in the cartoon series who knows that Stanley Ipkiss is The Mask.

Pretorious appeared in the following episodes:

• “The Mask is Always Greener on the Other Side” (parts one and two)
• “Sister Mask”
• “Bride of Pretorious”
• “Shrink Rap”
• “Mayor Mask”
• “Santa Mask”
• “Cool Hand Mask”
• “Mutiny of the Bounty Hunters”
• “Convention of Evil”
• “To Have and Have Snot”
• “Mystery Cruise”
• “The Goofalotatots”
• “The Aceman Cometh”

2) Pretorious’s silent goon, Walter. Originally from the Mask comic book series, Walter is a redheaded, Frankenstein monster-type creature with a scar below one of his eyes. In the comic, Walter was murderous and cruel, along with being mute, but that was dropped for the cartoon. Much like Pretorious, Walter also wants The Mask (but only to wear it for himself), but on the last episode of season one (“Split Personality”), it’s revealed that the Mask doesn’t transform Walter at all because the Mask only works on those who have a personality. There are some episodes where Walter is seen as Pretorious’s sidekick and other episodes where he works alone (or is seen for no discernible reason other than to remind viewers that Walter exists).

Walter appeared in the following episodes:

• “The Mask is Always Greener on the Other Side” (parts one and two)
• “Double Reverse”
• “Mayor Mask”
• “How Much is That Dog in the Tin Can”
• “Santa Mask”
• “Split Personality”
• “Flight as a Feather” [fighting the Mask inside a whale]
• “Mask au Gratin” [it's very "blink-and-you-miss-it"; it's at the part where Gorgonzola chases The Mask into a punk rock club]
• “Broadway Malady” [as one of the performers in Andrew Bedwetter's broadway show]
• “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Green Mask” [mourning over The Mask at his "funeral"]
• “Mystery Cruise”

3) Dr. Amelia Chronos (voiced by Candi Milo), a mad scientist, like Pretorious. Unlike Pretorious, Dr. Chronos is a woman, and her deal is with manipulating time, sending her victims 100 years into the past or 10,000 years into a dystopian future (is there any other kind?). Chronos can also curse her victim into living the same half-hour repeatedly. Dr. Chronos didn’t appear until season two, and even then, only appeared in a handful of episodes: the season two premiere “A Comedy of Eras” (which the jackasses at TV.com mistakenly believe is an episode where Stanley meets Adam Sandler, Mike Meyers, and Jim Carrey. Like Saturday morning TV can afford to get stars like that on their dinky little shows), “What Goes Around Comes Around,” and “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Green Mask.” I guess she wasn’t as popular as the creators thought.

4) Putty Thing and Fish Guy (voiced by Cam Clarke and Jeff Glen Bennett), a giant made of putty and a mutant fish, respectively. Originally, these monsters were two slacker teenagers named Dak and Eddie who read comic books and thought it would be cool to gain superpowers from radioactivity.  The two fell ill after raiding a nuclear plant and ended up being rushed to the hospital. En route to the hospital, the ambulance crashed, sending them flying into two stores: Dak crashed into a hardware store [where putty is sold] while Eddie crashed into an exotic fish shop. The rest, as we say is history. A running gag with these guys would be that Eddie (now Fish Guy) gets mocked by The Mask for being a lousy supervillain and Eddie immediately gets jealous of Dak (now Putty Thing) and his amazing powers.

Putty Thing and Fish Guy appeared in the following episodes:

• “The Terrible Twos”
• “Martian Mask”
• “Santa Mask”
• “The Good, The Bad, and the Fish Guy”
• “Broadway Malady”

5) Lonnie The Shark (voiced by Glen Shadix), a typical mob boss type of character. Outside of having sharp teeth and a hairstyle resembling a shark’s fin, there’s really nothing strange about him (except for the fact that, in his first episode, he was the host of a children’s show modeled after “Barney the Dinosaur”). He has a biker gang led by a blond wuss named Pete (voiced by Charlie Adler [Buster Bunny from Tiny Toon Adventures]).

Lonnie the Shark (and his biker gang) appeared in the following episodes:

• “Baby’s Wild Ride”
• “Malled”
• “Convention of Evil”
• “The Green Marine”

6) Skillit (voiced by Jason Marsden), a warped version of Peter Pan (yes, even more warped than Michael Jackson, God rest his soul). Skillit lives in an alternate world called The Shadowland where monsters and other mythical beings live and are used as Skillit’s toys. Skillit has the power to suck the youth out of mortals by stealing their shadows (since The Mask is only semi-mortal, he is immune to this) so he can stay young forever.

Skillit appeared in the following episodes:

• “Shadow of a Skillit”
• “All Hallow’s Eve”
• “Enquiring Masks Want to Know”

7) Probably the creepiest Mask villain because of the Winnie the Pooh voice, Kablamus (voiced by Jim Cummings) was a balloon factory worker who, like Jack Napier, fell into a vat of acid and became a supervillain, only Kablamus becomes a supervillain that can inflate and blow himself up repeatedly.

Kablamus appeared in the following episodes:

• “Double Reverse”
• “Santa Mask”
• “Power of Suggestion”
• “Broadway Malady”

The rest of the supervillains on The Mask were either one-shots (such as Gorgonzola from “Mask au Gratin,” The Tempest from “Rain of Terror,” Channel Surfer from “Channel Surfin’,” The Stinger from “To Bee or Not To Bee,” and Bob The Devil from “Boogie with the Man”) or just ordinary people who were either pricks with bizarre agendas (such as Putterware CEO Celia N. Airtight from “Sealed Fate,” the Ross Perot-esque future mayor in “Future Mask,” and Colonel Beauregard Klaxon from “Goin’ for the Green”) or were deranged enough to stage a murder/suicide with explosives and apparently rich enough to afford said explosives (such as Art Nouveau from “The Terrible Twos,” Cookie BaBoom from “Flight as a Feather,” and the disgruntled chef from “Love Potion No. 8 1/2″).

Season Overviews

The first season of The Mask: The Animated Series played out like a follow-up to the movie version of The Mask (with, of course, alterations done; most at the creator’s discretion, some for content, and others for plot reasons). This was the season that introduced the recurring villains listed above (except for Dr. Chronos, Channel Surfer, The Tempest, The Stinger, Bob the Devil, Celia N. Airtight, Colonel Beauregard Kalxon, the Ross Perot-esque future mayor, Cookie BaBoom, the disgruntled chef from “Love Potion No. 8 1/2″, and Gorgonzola). This season, in comparison to seasons two and three, is probably the only one that has some semblance of realism to it, despite the cartoonishness. It even had lessons to learn (delivered in a manner that was neither heavy-handed nor overly preachy), like revenge has its consequences for all involved (“Split Personality”), don’t be so quick to judge others (“The Terrible Twos” and “How Much is That Dog in the Tin Can”), and don’t ever mess with a heat-packing babysitter (“Baby’s Wild Ride”).

Season two is when the series took a drink of spiced cable cocktail (or a Syndicated on the Beach) and lost (some of) its network TV inhibitions. It became cartoony in the same way The Simpsons did when Mike Scully took over from season nine to season twelve. The only difference is that The Mask was never a “realistic” cartoon to start with. It may have been somewhat rooted in reality, but season one of The Mask never had an episode where Stanley gives up drinking for 30 days following a DWI. Or one where Peggy buys a fancy Chanel suit and wants to join a country club. Or even an episode where The Mask must pass a history test or face repeating the fourth grade, so its descent into looniness and unbelievability wasn’t as heart-wrenching as, say, having an episode like “The Principal and the Pauper” (which may not be the best episode ever, but does have an interesting backstory if you ever listen to the audio commentary for this episode on the season nine DVD set) or “Saddlesore Galactica” (which I actually like because the writers purposely made ”Saddlesore Galactica” as a pisstake against wacky “adult” cartoons like South Park and, of course, The Simpsons fans who feel that the show lost the down-to-earth satire that it had in its first couple years). In fact, The Mask’s descent into looniness and unbelievability in season two was worth the pissed pants and aching lungs from laughing so much (or the locked jaws from gaping at what the writers got away with–more about that later).

Season three continued where season two left off humor-wise. Even though it was a tad weaker than the pure, uncut craziness of season two (thanks, in no small part, to the fact that season three aired on CBS, where the censors were stricter with what could and couldn’t be shown), you did have a lot of gross-out episodes, like “To Have and Have Snot” and “Fantaschtick Voyage”, but by 1997, The Mask: The Animated Series was already past its life expectency in the world of Saturday Morning TV (which, at that point, was becoming more and more moribund, thanks to cable TV airing better programming, plummeting network TV ratings, hack animators attempting to make their cartoons as outrageous as Ren and Stimpy [and failing], and media watchdog groups pushing for more educational shows “for da children,” when really, it’s for the parents so they don’t have to deal with “da children”), and CBS canceled The Mask: TAS after only nine episodes in its third season. The final episode, titled, “The Aceman Cometh,” was not only a crossover episode (with the cartoon version of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), but it also ended on a cliffhanger. After Ace Ventura bids farewell to Stanley Ipkiss, Stanley realizes that his magical mask has been taken from him by Ace’s pet monkey, Spike. The final shot of the final episode of The Mask: TAS shows Stanley chasing after Ace’s car as Ace drives off to Florida. Don’t despair, viewers. There exists a follow-up to this series finale, in the form of the Ace Ventura: TAS episode, “Have Mask, Will Travel,” which is available for viewing on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gop_y_IDT7U.

Uh-oh…according to the time on my laptop, I gotta cut this installment of Saturday Morning Hangover short. Tune in next time when I go inside an episode of The Mask: The Animated Series that puts a perverted spin on the phrase, “sex bomb.”

And maybe I’ll get on that Auteur Detour post…

This time, we go through the cartoons that have suffered major cuts and turned your favorite shorts into incoherent short-shorts (and not the kind women have to starve themselves to fit into either…but like seeing a morbidly obese woman in skintight short-shorts, these cuts will turn your stomach and make you wanna puke):

9.

Studio: MGM

Director(s): William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

Writer: (not credited)

Release Date: July 7, 1951

Summary: Tom is stranded at sea, and washes up on the shore of a (seemingly) deserted island. He goes after Jerry (also stranded), but gets scared when he confronts a tribe of savage black cat cannibals (one of which is a disguised Jerry).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Much like the Tom and Jerry cartoons featuring that sassy black housekeeper, Mammy Two Shoes, this cartoon has not been (and probably never will be) shown uncut on television due to its racial stereotypes (this time, centered on blacks being savages who feast on human flesh, though Tom is a cat and Jerry is a mouse). It has been shown on the cable channel, Turner Classic Movies, albeit in brief clips (possibly for that anthology show, Cartoon Alley).

Now, the good news is, this cartoon is available for viewing on home video (Tom and Jerry on Parade) and DVD (Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection vol. 3).

The bad news is both the video and DVD are edited.

“What exactly is edited?” you may ask, as you wipe your weepy eyes from your ten-second sobbing.

Well, if you watch the version on the Tom and Jerry on Parade VHS, you’ll notice that no scenes are cut, but you’re scratching your head and wondering why all the savages (including poseur Jerry) moving their lips and not saying anything. That’s because the VHS version has muted out all the black savage dialogue (including what Jerry says).

If you watch the version on the third volume of the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD, you’ll notice that, huzzah, the black savage dialogue has been reinstated.

BUT…in exchange for letting the savage dialogue go, a shot of the pygmy savage that corners Jerry just before Jerry runs away has been cropped out (in the same way that the black girl centaur from Fantasia was cut or how Cartoon Network edited that infamous sequence from the Cowboy Bebop episode “Jupiter Jazz, part one,” where Faye Valentine corners a man named Gren in the shower and discovers that he has breasts).

So much for home video being the respite for cartoons that have been banned and censored by mainstream media.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part: For the VHS cut, it plays like a silent cartoon…which isn’t really much of a stretch, considering that the Tom and Jerry cartoons are famous for having little to no dialogue (except for the occasional lines from Mammy Two Shoes [or whoever is Tom's master/mistress in the short] and, of course, Tom’s screaming in pain). In this case, however, that dialogue was sorely needed, stereotypical or not. I mean, you don’t see rap videos censoring out dialogue that’s vile and degrading to the African-American communi–oh, wait. Bad example.

As for the DVD version, not too bad, but I am taking points off because post-production pan and zoom looks awkward as hell. As someone who does video editing as a hobby, I can vouch for this.

Egregious or Not: For the DVD version, no (barring the awkward crop job). For the VHS version, it’s borderline. On the one hand, it’s still watchable, but on the other (as I mentioned earlier), the dialogue was sorely needed.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Your best bet is to scour Internet video sites and tape trading sites for an uncut bootleg, but beware! Some sites and tape traders may have the edited version. Do NOT, repeat, DO NOT settle for an edited print.

8.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles M. Jones”)

Writer(s): Michael Maltese

Release Date: November 12, 1949

Summary: After two previous failed attempts (not counting Arthur Davis’ Odor of the Day) at romantically pairing a horny French skunk with another animal who makes the mistake of disguising himself/herself as a skunk, Chuck and Mike finally get it right by having a common, female black-and-white cat get a white skunk’s stripe down her back (courtesy of an angry French parfumerie shopkeep and an upset bottle of hair dye) and proved to a skeptical studio producer that mangled French puns, good, old-fashioned sexual harassment, and twist endings where the protagonist gets his comeuppance make for an award-winning combination.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Gather ’round, kiddies, because this is a sad story about what was cut:

Once upon a time, ABC was the only American television channel known for removing the entire sequence where Pepe tries to coax the nameless painted cat out of a glass display case. Why? Two reasons:

1)      ABC didn’t like scenes where characters locked themselves in closed spaces that can only be opened from the outside due to semi-substantiated fears that kids might want to try it, only to pass out from suffocation or realize that they’re claustrophobic, and,

2)      Near the end of the sequence in question, Pepe puts a gun to his head and pretends to commit suicide when the cat mimes that she doesn’t like him because of his stench (only to be had when she runs out the case and finds that Pepe “meesed”).

Another part that ABC removed was when Pepe attempts to rescue the cat from jumping out the window, but she slips through his libidinous fingers. Before Pepe drops as well, he turns to the camera, salutes, and announces, “Viva l’amour! We die together!” While the rescue attempt and Pepe’s drop were left intact, the line was shortened to “Viva l’amour!” Judging by these cuts, ABC has direct references to suicide (like the gun to the head and the declaration of dying together) on its list of what can and can’t air on children’s TV, though the censors didn’t seem to notice or care that they let Pepe’s line about the cat committing suicide to prove her love for him slip through the cracks like a scrawny starlet replicating Marilyn Monroe’s subway grate flash from The Seven Year Itch.

Over in the Cable TV Kingdom, Cartoon Network left “For Scent-imental Reasons” uncut for many years, despite that the short in question had references to suicide (which Cartoon Network is not a fan of in any way [particularly when said suicide involves guns to the head or nooses around necks], evidenced by edits done in other animated shorts that made light of “ending it all”), making many a cartoon fan (at least one that didn’t have access to home video, laserdisc, or DVD cuts of the short) very happy.

That changed (for the worse) on a cold December Saturday morning in 2003 (if memory serves, it was on the unlucky 13^th day of the month) when Cartoon Network aired “For Scentimental Reasons” as part of their weekend installment of The Looney Tunes Show. The once untouchable-on-cable-TV short was, once again, violated. Not only was the glass case suicide sequence sequestered from sight, but the line ABC let slip (about the cat committing suicide to prove her love for Pepe) was also removed, leaving the other line ABC cut (“Viva l’amour! We die together!”) to be spared from censorship.

The bitter irony of it all is that a similar line about committing suicide for love was used in the penultimate Pepe cartoon “A Scent of the Matterhorn” (1961, story and direction by Chuck Jones), and was it ever removed on Cartoon Network or, for that matter, ABC? NO! (at least on Cartoon Network. I don’t think ABC ever aired this cartoon because their Warner Bros. library only had shorts from late 1948 to 1957, or what the really anal animation buffs call, “The Golden Age of Animation.” Everything before that was an experiment, and everything after was a mistake, as far as they’re concerned).

To top it all off (and prove that fairy tales don’t always end with “happily ever after”), this cartoon has been shown edited across the pond (in the UK, to be exact). American censorship may be arbitrary and taxing on one’s sanity, but censorship in UK is even worse. It’s pretty much the same as American censorship, only theirs is bound by law (while America’s is bound by studios, corporations, and media watchdog groups who only tone down so as not to offend sponsors and bitchy soccer moms [the hockey moms are okay with it]) and have harder rules on what is and isn’t allowed in children’s programming. They don’t just edit out violence or dangerous stunts that stupid kids will try at home; UK censoring also goes after scenes that glorify weapons (especially Japanese weapons, like nunchucks and those metal throwing stars), glorify tobacco smoking, and scenes that may traumatize the emotionally frail (such as vivid, grotesque scenes of transformation, vivid, grotesque scenes of death, and any scene where a child is in danger and chances of rescue are slim to nil). The BBFC doesn’t fuck around, which is why every allusion to suicide (the glass case and the two lines implying that killing oneself for love is the only way) was removed from “For Scent-imental Reasons.”

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Not well, I don’t care which edited version you watch. The whole thing about “suicide for love” (even if it’s unrequited) in this cartoon is probably the only venture into dark comedy that Chuck Jones got right (Jones tried with the Censored 11 short “Angel Puss,” about a black boy paid to drown a cat, only to be tricked into thinking the cat’s ghost is haunting him, and it met with the same contempt that Troy Steele had for the Goosebumps book “Chicken Chicken”)–besides the underlying references to sexual exploitation (and the dog getting his gravy-pumped comeuppance) seen on the 1951 one-shot short, ”Chow Hound”. Without it, the cartoon is just an empty, amorous shell of its former self.

Egregious or Not: Egregious. Plain and simple.

Where Can I See It Uncut: If you’re done weeping or loudly cursing the name of all humanity, I have some good news: “For Scent-imental Reasons” is available uncut on the Golden Jubilee videos “Pepe Le Pew’s Skunk Tales” and “A Salute to Chuck Jones” and the first volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set.

7.

Studio: Disney

Director: Jack Hannah

Writer(s): Roy Williams and Nick George

Release Date: January 15, 1954

Summary: Donald’s nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) keep abandoning their chores to LARP (live-action roleplay) in the backyard. Donald is torn between losing his temper or using child psychology by playing along with them, which goes to hell when a real band of pygmy cannibals escape from the circus and Donald thinks they’re his nephews (who dressed up as African cannibals after skipping out of their chores).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Everything after the title card, “But the Worse Was Yet to Come,” has been put through the censorial shredder because of the three pygmy cannibals (including the part near the end where Donald takes all three cannibals into his shed and whales on them for trying to roast him in a black cauldron).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since I haven’t seen this one edited, I’ll let someone with experience (reviewer Jerry Edward from www.disneyshorts.org) explain:

“Disney completely botches the censored version of this short – deleting all scenes of the cannibals and making the short impossible to follow [...] reducing a 6 minute short (not counting credits) to a 2.5 minute disaster…”

So, it’s just as bad as the cut version of “For Scent-imental Reasons,” or even “Bacall to Arms” (which, not only had the ending cut when it aired on TNT, but also had scenes missing because Bob Clampett left Warner Bros. Studios before he could complete the cartoon and no one bothered to step in and finish what Clampett started).

Egregious or Not: Totally egregious, not because of how badly it’s edited, but because it never occurred to Disney Studios to just not air the short if they felt the presence of African cannibals would be offensive. Other studios have done it, and, in most cases, made up for it by having the banned cartoon(s) appear uncensored on a home video/laserdisc/DVD collection.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Like “For Scent-imental Reasons,” this victim of extreme censorship is available uncut on the Disney Treasures DVD set (“The Chronological Donald Duck” volume, showing Donald Duck cartoons from 1951 to 1961). If you’re strapped for cash for luxuries (and who isn’t these days?), there’s always YouTube or friendly tape/DVD traders.

6.

Studio: MGM

Director(s): William Hannah and Joseph Barbera

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: January 14, 1950

Summary: While Mammy Two Shoes goes out to play bridge, Tom invites his alley cat buddies to play raucous jazz music in the house. Naturally, there is a neighbor complaint lodged — by Jerry the mouse.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: 

The short version: since this is a Tom and Jerry cartoon with Mammy Two Shoes in it, Mammy Two Shoes’s appearance has been altered on American TV.

The long version: This cartoon exists in several altered forms:

• There’s the common redubbed version where Lillian Randolph’s voice is redubbed with a less stereotypically black female voice (provided by either Thea Vidale or June Foray). This was the version that aired on Cartoon Network and on the second volume of the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD set.
• There’s a version (done by Gene Deitch during his brief stint at MGM) where Mammy Two Shoes has been reanimated as a white, teenaged girl stepping out to dance with her boyfriend at his house (instead of playing bridge with the Lucky Seven Bridge Club) with June Foray voicing her.
• There’s a third version (which resulted from a highly amusing dubbing error) combining the reanimated version with the white teenaged girl with the original audio (meaning that whenever the white teenage girl speaks, she sounds like a stereotypically black housemaid).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): I can take or leave the versions where Mammy Two Shoes’s voice is redubbed or even the version with the white teenage girl with June Foray’s voice, but the version with the white girl speaking like Mammy Two Shoes is a joke (or some vague satirical statement about race in the media).

Egregious or Not: The versions where Mammy Two Shoes is replaced by a white teenaged girl (with and without the vocal mistake) is plenty egregious (if you’re an animation buff) because the Tom and Jerry cartoons didn’t have white people as heads of the house until after “Push-Button Kitty” (which was made the year Hattie McDaniel, the real-world incarnation and inspiration for Mammy Two Shoes, died). If you’re a casual viewer and you watched the original and edited versions, it’d be like watching the original version of a movie vs. a cheap remake.

Actually, it would be like that, regardless.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Since the DVD version doesn’t have Mammy’s original voice, Internet video sites, bootlegs, and scouring eBay for an old home video compilation are your friends.

5.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Robert McKimson

Writer(s): Tedd Pierce

Release Date: June 28, 1952

Summary: The Big Bad Wolf’s nephew comes home from school, angry that his uncle is the same Big Bad Wolf who attacked the Three Little Pigs in the fairy tale of the same name. To cover his ass, the Big Bad Wolf pulls a one-sided Rashomon and tells his side of the story (with no one else to counter it with corrections), where the Big Bad Wolf is a naive schoolboy and the Three Little Pigs were a bunch of porcine pricks who cut the Wolf’s tail as part of a game warden-commissioned bounty.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: On the FOX Network’s “Merrie Melodies Show,” the brief shot of the Wolf pouring bootlegged alcohol into a jug just before his nephew comes in the house was cut. On the WB version, the bootlegged alcohol part is left in, but not one of the Pigs dissing the Wolf with, “Ah, go blow your brains out!” after the Wolf gets slingshot in the butt and the Wolf effeminately asks, “Why must you torment me when I pas your houses? Why?”

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since it’s a jump cut from one inoffensive scene to the next, it plays like there’s something obviously missing (for both the FOX and WB versions).

Egregious or Not: I can tolerate a network like the WB (or even ABC) cutting out a suicide reference (the “Ah, go blow your brains out!” line). I may not like that they did it, but I can live with it and I least know why the edit was done. What I can’t tolerate (or live with) is a network like FOX (notorious for thumbing its nose at censorship in with such raunchy, groundbreaking comedies as Married…With Children, Titus [the short-lived sitcom based on comedian Christopher Titus's darkly humorous life with Ken; his hardassed father, Juanita; his schizophrenic mother, Dave; his idiot half-brother, Erin; his loving girlfriend, and Tommy; his effeminate best male friend], The Simpsons [at least up until season 9], In Living Color, and the trinity of Seth MacFarlane-created sitcoms: Family Guy, American Dad, and upcoming spinoff, The Cleveland Show) editing bootlegging from a cartoon they’re airing to kids. Why? Because I find it hypocritical. Sure, FOX can have Martin Lawrence feeling rather “randy” and making some lewd remark about a butt (and I’m pretty sure they did), but showing a wolf making beer at his house — unacceptable! And they still do it to this day, with editing Family Guy for a fart joke, but letting MADtv and post-Golden Age Simpsons make unsubtle (and unfunny) references to sex.

So to answer the question: The cut on FOX is not egregious, but the network that cut it is.

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon is available (with all the bootlegging and suicidal chiding intact) on the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (on the second disk, which features fairy tale parodies done WB style).

4.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Robert McKimson

Writer(s): Warren Foster

Release Date: October 9, 1948

Summary: After his father gets booted out of a henhouse by the always bombastic Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk takes it upon himself to go after chickens. Foghorn Leghorn offers himself to Henery, but the chickenhawk thinks Foghorn is a “loud-mouthed schnook,” according to his father.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: I could talk about ABC shortening the part where Barnyard Dawg climbs out of the trunk and gets whacked on the head and face as Foghorn is wildly gesticulating while telling Henery Hawk that he got a trunk instead of a chicken or how ABC also shortened the part where Barnyard Dawg slams Foghorn to the ground several times and calls him a “good-for-nothin’ chicken,” but that’s not egregious; it’s standard.

What I will talk about is how CBS took it a step further for editing the end…by cutting the entire part after Henery doesn’t believe Foghorn Leghorn is a chicken (even after seeing Foghorn put himself in a roasting pan), then resuming the cartoon on the scene where Henery is dragging Foghorn and asiding to the audience, “He talked me into it.” For a clear, detailed version of what was missing, here’s the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foghorn_Leghorn#Censorship (I wouldn’t trust the Censored Cartoons Page entry since their explanations of how the Warner Bros. shorts were cut are needlessly formal to the point that they’re as incoherent as the edited short itself).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Like Henery easily got what he wanted without any struggle or comic misunderstanding leading to it. Are the censors not familiar with screenwriting (Don’t answer that!)?

Egregious or Not: Very egregious, because the part where Henery says, “Still tryin’ to prove you’re a chicken, eh? Schnook!” was left in while the part where Henery finally realizes that Foghorn is a chicken is cut. How could Henery simply be “talked into it” if he came off as totally skeptical? That ending was the beat that led to the plot point where Henery sees the light (and Foghorn sees stars after getting hit with a shovel), and without it, there’s a continuity error as large as the freshly-made hole in the wall you punched your fist through when you saw this cartoon and realized it was cut.

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon can be found uncut on volume one of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (fourth disc) — with the original title cards and credits. No “Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodie” crap, like on TV (or that Golden Jubilee video dedicated to Foghorn Leghorn).

3.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Bob Clampett (uncredited)

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: August 3, 1946

Summary: A zoot-suited wolf goes crazy for sultry femme fatale Laurie BeCool during a screening of “To Have…To Have…To Have…To Have…” (that’s the title of the movie; I haven’t gone into Porky Pig mode), but does he lust for her or…something else?

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Which do you want to talk about first: the ending cut by TNT where the Wolf happily puffs Laurie BeCool’s cigarette, only to get shot by Bogey GoCart, who takes the cigarette for himself, smokes it, and becomes blackfaced, or how choppy and incomplete some of the wolf’s reactions to Red Laurie BeCool are (according to Jerry Beck on his audio commentary for this cartoon)?

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Much like “Red Hot Riding Hood” and its deleted scenes of the Wolf reacting to a sexy female performer, I can’t say much about “Bacall to Arms”‘s similar predicament because, unlike Red Hot Riding Hood, the original scenes were lost to time, due to Bob Clampett leaving WB Studios in 1946. Arthur Davis (who was hired to complete the cartoon) could have drawn the scenes himself (or have someone do it for him), but the studio was probably running on borrowed time and couldn’t do it, though I’d like to think that, in a true case of “Take this job and shove it”-itis, Clampett probably made off with the scenes that were supposed to be in the cartoon when he left. Why? Who knows? Maybe the scenes were so spicy that there was no way in Hell the Hayes Office would approve of them. Maybe Clampett needed them as portfolio samples for his next animation job. Maybe they only exist in Clampett’s now maggot-filled skull since he’s been six feet under since 1984 and were never put to paper or celluloid.

The part TNT cut (and Cartoon Network left uncut when they ran their short-lived anthology The Bob Clampett Show, featuring Clampett’s best work with no edits whatsoever) is another story. Personally, I’ve never seen the edited version of the cartoon (nor did I know it existed until I was in my mid-teens and spending much of high school looking up classic cartoon trivia), but I can imagine that the cartoon ended with the Wolf bolting to the ceiling of the (now empty) theater and about to come down, but the cartoon blacks out like a drunk and when it comes to, it’s over.

Egregious or Not: On a scale from 1 to 10, its egregiousness ranks at a 7. You know there should be more to the cartoon, and it’s very easy to chalk it up to the fact that Clampett never completed the short and Davis couldn’t come up with a funny ending if you’re a casual viewer, but once you discover the true reason why the ending was never shown on TV, you’ll kick yourself for not seeing it sooner and wonder why TNT couldn’t just shelve the cartoon rather than hack the ending.

Where Can I See It Uncut: The fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (disc three).

2.

A.K.A: “The Hunting Trilogy” (or “The Hunter’s Trilogy”)

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles M. Jones” for all three shorts)

Writer(s): Michael Maltese (for all three cartoons)

Release Dates: May 19, 1951 (for “Rabbit Fire”); September 20, 1952 (for “Rabbit Seasoning”); and October 3, 1953 (for “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!”)

Summary: Elmer goes hunting, Daffy tricks Elmer into going after Bugs, Bugs and Daffy get into a verbal war, and Daffy ends up getting shot several times (applies to all three cartoons).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Daffy ends up getting shot several times. With the exception of the Ted Turner-owned channels that aired WB cartoons in the past (TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies [probably]) and local network affiliates in other countries, the Hunting Trilogy was itself, the hunted. Its predator, however, wasn’t a bald, moronic man with a rifle; it was tribes of rabid censors whose only weapons were college-aged interns having second thoughts about majoring in videography. Several tribes had their own ways of cutting these cartoons to remove the many times Daffy gets shot.

• ABC and “The Merrie Melodies Show” (the syndicated version) would cut to a freeze-framed shot of Bugs looking off-camera while the audio of Daffy getting shot was still heard.
• CBS and the WB, however, chose not to give young viewers the satisfaction of using their imaginations and edited audio and visual of Daffy getting blasted.
• Nickelodeon actually left “Rabbit Seasoning” and “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” alone in the editing department, but “Rabbit Fire” wasn’t so lucky. The famous “no more bullets” part (where Daffy looks down the barrel of Elmer’s rifle and gets shot through his scalp) was cut. Okay, so maybe “Rabbit Fire” was lucky (in that the “no more bullets” scene was the only part cut), but still…

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): The ABC, “Merrie Melodies Show,” and Nickelodeon cuts you can tolerate. The CBS and WB versions aren’t recommended for theatrical cartoon lovers with short tempers. Either way, the point of these three cartoons is to introduce Daffy Duck as Bugs Bunny’s greedy, bloodthirsty foil and how said greedy, bloodthirsty foil ends up getting his in the end (though “Rabbit Fire” ended with Elmer getting his) through violence. Without it, they just lie there, like an unsatisfied wife waiting for her husband to finish penetrating her when really he’s just humping a blanket fold.

Egregious or Not: Only the CBS and the WB cuts will drive you up the wall. The ABC and “Merrie Melodies Show” versions aren’t too bad (as they keep in the audio and the results of Daffy getting shot). Ditto with the Nickelodeon version.

Where Can I See It Uncut: These three cartoons are available uncut almost anywhere. The Turner cable channels aired them uncut. The Golden Jubilee VHS set featured them uncut on the following videos: “Bugs Bunny’s Wacky Adventures,” (“Duck! Rabbit! Duck!”) “Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues…,” (“Rabbit Fire”) “Elmer Fudd’s Comedy Capers,” (“Rabbit Seasoning”) and “A Salute to Chuck Jones” (“Rabbit Seasoning”). Most important of all, all three of them made it to the first six volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (“Rabbit Fire” and “Rabbit Seasoning” are on volume one, while “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” is on volume three).

1.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Isadore “Friz” Freleng (credited as I. Freleng)

Writer(s): Warren Foster

Release Date: June 20, 1953

Summary: It’s Yosemite Sam vs. Bugs Bunny in a wooing match over Granny’s heart  (yes, the same Granny who is often seen as Tweety’s master in the Sylvester/Tweety shorts) and her $50 million inheritance.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: For anyone who grew up watching ABC’s The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (1986-2000), seeing egregious cuts to cartoons was a common occurrence, like living in a war-torn country or in a country with an oppressive government (PLEASE, no jokes/comments about the U.S.A over the latter comparison. This is not a political blog; it’s an entertainment blog). There were a lot of WB shorts that were slashed to bits, haphazardly pieced together, and tossed aside for innocent bystanders to see (like victims of a serial murderer who liked puzzles and uses that as his signature to screw over the police force), such as “Hare-Less Wolf,” “Hillbilly Hare,” almost every Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoon, “Apes of Wrath,” and “A Mouse Divided.” “Hare Trimmed” was no exception.

Everything after the part where Bugs (dressed as Granny) pushes a piano down the stairs and Yosemite Sam gets flattened by was cut on ABC: Granny thinking Sam is “looped,” “Granny” Bugs reprising his “one lump or two” gag from 1952’s “Rabbit’s Kin” twice (once with coffee and again when Sam begs for it upstairs), Sam’s playful “I can see you through the keyhol-l-le!” – and getting shot for that, and Sam getting shot again after climbing a ladder to the top window of Granny’s bedroom door and begging, “Aw, come on, Emmie!”.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): If you’re like me and saw this short ad nauseum for the time that ABC aired The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show on Saturday mornings, then you already know how it plays without the offensive parts. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, here’s a re-enactment of how ABC cut said sequence that I personally created. You can download and see for yourself (http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/40796/Hare_Trimmed_Sequence_(ABC_Cut).mpg)

Egregious or Not: After reading the “Scene(s) Cut/Altered” and seeing the video evidence in the “How Does It Play Without the ‘Offensive’ Part(s)”, do I really need to spell it out?

Where Can I See It Uncut: Since this is one of many Warner Bros. cartoons that has yet to be released on a DVD set (and not just on a DVD release of an old Warner Bros. movie, complete with the pre-feature film entertainment, such as coming attractions, a short live-action film [the B-movie, if you will], and an animated short), your best bet is to search the Internet for it and pray that Warner Home Video revives its project to release all the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies on DVD in the near future (since WHV stopped the Golden Collection at volume six and there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether or not the DVD releases will continue).

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Well, that’s it. Eighteen cartoons that have been cut eighteen ways from Sunday on and off TV. I think the moral of this story is that whether it’s a theatrical cartoon cut or an edit to a live-action TV show, all cuts (be they for time or content) are egregious. In this age where almost anything can be found online or released on DVD, the only solution to bucking the system is to go underground and dig for your uncensored treasure.

That’s it for this installment of Saturday Morning Hangover. Tune in next time when I take an Auteur Detour and look at the running themes, gags, and quirks of different animation directors.

Today, we take a page from Cracked.com (now living forever as a generic funny list website, now that their magazine went other. Meanwhile, Mad Magazine has been reduced to a quarterly and their sketch show [which had its moments, but was nowhere near as good as SNL...or even SCTV] has been canceled) and do a Top [Insert Number Here] List. The difference here is that my list is less SpikeTV, more Cartoon Network-meets-VH1. If you’re looking for bikini-clad bimbos, you’re out of luck.

I can spend all day telling you what cartoons you remember seeing as a kid were cut and what parts were missing and what channel cut it, but there’s already a website for that. It’s called The Censored Cartoons Page, which will be one of my sources in this list (the other is a Disney website that lists all the shorts ever made and their background history, including what The Disney Channel cut and, in some cases, what was cut when a particular short was released on video or DVD).

What I’m going after are the cuts that I (and maybe some of you) have frequently seen on TV or heard from the Censored Cartoons website, some of which have ruined what would have been a great experience in watching the cartoon short in question. And for what? To placate some soccer mom (who is too busy to actually be a mom) who fears that her children crotch spawn will be brainwashed into being bad (through imitating violent acts or being made to believe that thee ethnic and racial jokes in the short are fact) just because TV said so? And what if they did? You know, not every child out there will grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer (I know I didn’t). Some just seem to be destined to be the running herpes sore on the diseased cock of modern society, and no rehab center or stretch of jailtime will ever get through to them to make them see what they’re doing is wrong.

Besides, by cutting out the violence and racism in classic cartoons, TV censors are pissing off those who know this was made back when this kind of stuff was considered good, old-fashioned family entertainment (or at least know it’s all fantasy) and making them lament that modern cartoons get away with far worse than their classic counterparts (with none of the wit and subtlety). If these celluloid butchers want to stop this vicious cycle, then they should off themselves, disgraced samurai style (then again, classic cartoons haven’t been shown on network television or basic cable since 2004. And with new media [Internet and DVD] showing the classics uncut and people flocking to new media and abandoning TV, maybe it is all for the best).

The list will be split into two blog posts. I thought I could do it in all one post, but it’s taken me days to finish it and I just can’t take it.

Now, on with the first half of the main list:

The 18 Most Egregious Cuts and Edits to Classic Cartoons (part one)

18.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones (credited as Charles M. Jones)

Writer: Michael Maltese

Release Date: December 31, 1955

Summary (as if this cartoon needs it): A construction worker finds a frog that sings and tries to exploit it for fame, only to discover that the frog won’t sing for anyone else but him.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: During the sequence where the construction worker buys a theater and tries to garner an audience to watch the singing frog, he creates two signs. One is a “Free Admission” sign (which doesn’t get anyone to come in). The other is a sign that reads, “Free Beer” (which gets in a crowd of rough-looking men). On ABC and the former WB channel, the part where the construction worker creates the “Free Beer” sign is cut.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part: Pretty well, believe it or not, though if you’ve seen this cartoon several times before without the edit, you probably won’t believe that the rough-looking men were coming in just because the show was free.

Egregious or Not: No, but the worse is yet to come. I just put this in here to soften the blow. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (volume 2, disc 4)

17.

Studio: MGM

Director: Tex Avery

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: May 8, 1943

Summary: A cutesy, animated adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood gets an urban update where the Wolf is a skirt-chasing playboy, the Grandma is man-crazy and living in a penthouse, and Red Riding Hood is a sexy nightclub singer.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Before this short was released in theaters, the Hays Office (the movie industry’s censorship board before the MPAA ratings system came along) objected to two things: some of the Wolf’s lustful reactions to seeing Red sing (one of which showed steam erupting from the Wolf’s collar) and the original ending where the man-crazy Grandma captures the Wolf and drags him down to a courthouse where a Justice of the Peace (modeled after director Tex Avery) marries the two of them. Years later, the Wolf takes his half-human/half-lupine children to the nightclub where they see Red perform.

The popular version that aired in theaters to a general audience was edited on the Turner-owned cable channel TNT (back when TNT aired cartoon shorts, mostly pre-1948 Warner Bros. and MGM from the 1930s to the late 1950s). After the Wolf falls out the window of Grandma’s penthouse, he returns to the nightclub, grumbling about how women are nothing but trouble and if he sees another pretty girl, he’ll kill himself. Sure enough, Red the nightclub singer comes out to perform, the Wolf gets out two pistols, and shoots himself in the head. Rather than end on that macabre note, the Wolf’s ghost rises from the corpse and continues to whistle and howl at Red just like he did when he was living. TNT’s version cut the part where the Wolf actually shoots himself, but leaves in his vow to commit suicide and the part where he actually dies.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since the “director’s cut” of Red Hot Riding Hood isn’t that widely known (or seen), I can’t really say whether or not the director’s cut plays better (or worse) than the general release version. I know the director’s cut exists, but it’s probably not property of MGM (or rather Warner Bros., since they now have the rights to MGM’s cartoon library) anymore.

As for the edited TNT version vs. the uncut version, since the Wolf’s vow to commit suicide and the part where he drops dead are left uncut while the actual suicide is cut, the edited version plays as if the Wolf just dropped dead from shock of seeing Red again. Maybe some of the gun sound effects wasn’t entirely deleted from the soundtrack, but I don’t really remember seeing it cut on television.

Egregious or Not: Predictable, yes. Egregious…only if you’re a purist who won’t subject him/herself to scratchy, edited theatrical cartoon prints on TV. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: Sadly, it’s not available on DVD (though Warner Home Video did release Tom and Jerry and Droopy cartoons on DVD). However, Red Hot Riding Hood is available on the second video of the short-lived VHS collection, Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics and the public domain video, Cartoons for Big Kids, as well as many bootleg cartoon compilations that aren’t in stores (some of which are cuts taped off Cartoon Network or Boomerang). If you can’t find it on eBay or Amazon.com (or don’t want to), then it is available on such video websites as YouTube and Dailymotion.

16. 

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Tom Palmer

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: September 23, 1933

Summary: Just your typical early ‘30s cartoon where the plot is thin, the music is plenty, and there are more celebrity caricatures than an average episode of Family Guy. What sets it apart from the rest is that it’s centered on a morning radio show and how everyone in the world tunes in to hear it (and it’s not a Harman/Ising Merrie Melodie, which were notorious for being animated music videos back before the days of MTV).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: According to all incarnations of Jon Cooke’s “Censored Cartoons Page,” Nickelodeon (yes, the same Nickelodeon that aired made editorial mincemeat out of “Ren and Stimpy,” “Rocko’s Modern Life,” and “Invader Zim”) cut two scenes featuring ethnic stereotypes: one showed a rickshaw full of Chinese policemen sleeping while listening to the radio (and tying the horn-like speaker of the radio when the chief puts out an APB); the other showed a black jungle savage listening to a cooking program on a radio made of a human skull, a couple of light bulbs, and two batteries (how cool is that?) and stirring in salt and mustard into a pot holding two white explorers (caricatures of semi-obscure 1930s comedy duo Wheeler and Woolsey). Thanks to a tape trade I made six years ago and a Christmas gift I received two years ago, I’ve looked at both the original version and the Nickelodeon version and noticed that there was more missing than just the two requisite cuts for ethnic stereotypes.

For starters, on the part with Cros Bingsby singing “Why Can’t This Night Go On Forever?” (don’t know if this is the actual song title), there are two brief shots of female listeners tuning in to hear him sing: one is a shot of college coeds in pajamas and underwear; the other is an old crone hugging and kissing the radio. Guess which one Nickelodeon deleted?

(I still don’t know why this cut was necessary. There wasn’t that much skin showing.)

The other edit (which is more aural than visual) occurs during the scene where a hookah-smoking sheik grows tired of watching his harem girl dance (and isn’t bothered by the fact that she has badly-drawn hands) and turns his radio to a station playing “Amos and Andy.” On the Nickelodeon version, the “Amos and Andy” program is redubbed with the music that was playing before the sheik changed stations.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Since this is one of those plotless early ‘30s WB shorts, the parts gone/altered don’t really wreck the short in any way, though the part where the sheik smiling and slapping his knee plays better with the “Amos and Andy” sound clip rather than the music, and that skull radio on the cannibal part was actually cool (much more creative than turning it into a bong or a pencil holder).

Egregious or Not: To the casual viewer, no. To the eagle-eyed viewer, somewhat egregious, only because the Nickelodeon version made it look like the parts gone never existed in the first place. It’s like Nickelodeon’s censors are professional killers who know how to kill a man and make it look like he was never born. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: This obscure short (with an even more obscure director and animation style) can be found on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (volume 5, disc 4).

 15. 

Studio: Disney

Director: Walt Disney

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: December 30, 1928

Summary: In one of Mickey Mouse’s early roles (where he’s more of a prick than his current wholesome image might have you believe), Mickey is a gaucho who flirts who a tango-ing Minnie Mouse and rescues her from Peg-Leg Pete.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Not only did The Disney Channel find Mickey smoking a cigarette offensive (but not him drinking a frosty beer straight from the mug) and had it cut on such installment shows as The Ink and Paint Club, Mickey’s Mouse Tracks, and Donald’s Quack Attack, but they also did away with Minnie’s suggestive dancing.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): It plays all right, but the so-called “offensive” scenes are there for a reason…and that reason is to break the preconceived notion that Disney’s oeuvre is innocent and family-friendly.

Egregious or Not: Slightly. The cuts aren’t egregious; just the fact that this is the kind of “bury it in the backyard and let us never speak of it again” behavior you’d expect from a big, faceless corporation. 

Where Can I See It Uncut: This cartoon is available on the “Mickey Mouse in Black and White” Disney Treasures DVD set.

14.

Studio: MGM

Director: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: December 11, 1948

Summary: After tracking mud into the house in his latest attempt at capturing Jerry, Mammy Two-Shoes (the black housemaid who’s only shown from the neck down) threatens Tom to keep the house clean while she’s out…prompting Jerry to stage several messes so Tom will get the blame.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: This cartoon isn’t seen much due to two (count ‘em two) stereotypically black aspects that would definitely get the censors’ collective panties in a knot. For starters, we have Mammy Two Shoes, voiced by Lillian Randolph (1898-1980), whose voice (purportedly) makes all black women look bad (when really, it reminds me of my maternal grandmother, in a good way, and isn’t any worse than any rap video or former all-female UPN sitcom you can name). Secondly, there’s the end gag where Jerry reroutes a delivery chute of coal into Mammy’s house, and the entire pile buries Tom and Mammy in a wave of sootiness. Tom (now in blackface and inexplicably speaking like Stepin Fetchit) tries to slink away, but Mammy quickly recognizes him and tries to wing a fleeing Tom in the head with some lumps of coal.

Believe it or not, Cartoon Network has aired this cartoon, with one ongoing alteration (redubbing Mammy Two Shoes’s voice with one that sounds less “ethnic”) and one scene cut (after the coal cavalcade plows down Mammy Two Shoes and Tom, the Cartoon Network version removes the part where Tom appears in blackface and speaks like Stepin Fetchit after Mammy initially doesn’t recognize Tom and asks him if he’s seen a no-good cat).

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): The less ethnic voice of M.T.S. would have been more tolerable if said less ethnic voice could act. As for the near-end cut…well, you’d have to be deaf and blind not to see and hear what was missing.

Egregious or Not: The redubbing of Mammy’s voice is a major pain in the ass, but it’s a little too weak to be considered “egregious” (even if the replacement voice is a hack, at least you’re watching a Mammy Two Shoes cartoon on TV. Otherwise, it’d be locked away in MGM’s vaults). The painfully obvious jump cut near the end of the cartoon, however, does add for some unintentional hilarity (at least that’s what my sister tells me). 

Where Can I See It Uncut: Even though the MGM Tom and Jerry ‘toons are available on DVD, “Mouse Cleaning” and 1951’s “Casanova Cat” have been barred from being released. Your best bet in seeing it uncut (since Cartoon Network airs edited prints of “Mouse Cleaning” and “Casanova Cat”) is through video websites and sleepless nights of torrent searching and downloading.

13.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Chuck Jones

Writer(s): Michael Maltese

Release Date: March 20, 1954

Summary: In this, his eighth cartoon (ninth if you count that cameo in the Sylvester/Tweety cartoon “Dog Pounded” [which came out the same year as this one]), Pepe Le Pew (in a smoking jacket reminiscent of The Continental [the original 1950s one and the Saturday Night Live version]) recounts when he first met Penelope painted cat at the fabled Casbah.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: To quote an archived version of The Censored Cartoons Page, “The entire pre-flashback introduction, in which the camera takes the point of view of a reporter interviewing Pepe in his digs in cut by ABC, no doubt because the skunk offers the unseen reporter champagne.” It then concludes with, and I’m quoting from the same source, “The taboo on drinking in the tradition of ONE FROGGY EVENING continues!” While I do believe that ABC would cut that part for that particular reason, I can’t help but think that the underlying sexual tone of it may have been another reason why ABC thought it was unsuitable for kids.

Don’t believe me. Check this shit out (start at 0:35 and don’t stop until you hit the two minute mark): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dbt3_pepe-le-pew-the-cats-bah

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): Much like “One Froggy Evening,” it plays well, but you’ll probably be haunted by the thought that there might be a scene missing.

Egregious or Not: Yes, but what I find more egregious is the fact that the end (with Penelope chained to Pepe’s ankle in what can only be described as the 1950s way Chuck Jones and co. could get away with showing bondage) wasn’t edited by ABC (or any other channel that aired this cartoon). Not that I’m advocating censorship, mind you, but it’s like my mama says: “If you can’t do something right [even if it's wrong], don’t do it at all.”

Where Can I See It Uncut: Since it hasn’t been released on DVD as of this writing (it might some day, but not now), your best bet is to either look on eBay for the “Pepe Le Pew Skunk Tales” Golden Jubilee video (or the “Longitude And Looneytude: 14 Globetrotting Looney Tunes Favorites” laserdisc for those who cling to laserdiscs the same way lice cling to a human scalp) or watch it on the video website Dailymotion (it was on YouTube, but it was taken down for copyright reasons).

12.

Studio: MGM

Director: Tex Avery

Writer(s): (not credited)

Release Date: May 5, 1951

Summary: Droopy is a Boy Scout who must do a string of good deeds in order to win a trip to meet the President of the United States. The only problem is that a train-riding hobo named Spike (also a dog and now posing as a Boy Scout) wants that trip more than Droopy and attempts to bump him off so he can win the prize.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Three parts gone:

1)    Droopy tells him that lightning never strikes the same place, Spike stands on the charred remains of a tree and gets struck by lightning, leaving him charred, skinny, and in blackface. Cartoon Network cut the part after the lightning strikes by blacking out to the next scene.

2)    Spike tricks Droopy into thinking there’s a woman trapped in a burning cabin (that Spike set ablaze himself). Droopy comes out with a blond pin-up girl in purple lingerie. Spike goes in, foolishly thinking there’s another woman in there for him and ends up burnt (along with the rest of the house). Droopy then opens the charred remains of the door and says to Spike, “Hey, Blackie. Any more babes in there?” Cartoon Network (surprisingly enough) left in Spike getting burnt, but Droopy’s “Blackie” line was cut just after he opens the door. On top of that, there is tell of an urban legend that the burning cabin sequence was originally supposed to end with Spike carrying out a fat, black woman who beats up the dog. Many toonheads have dismissed it as the urban legend it is, but there are those who believe it exists (and hey, if that “missing link” skeleton can be found, then surely there might be an alternate version of this cartoon somewhere in the world).

3)  Spike places a round cartoon bomb in a rich white man’s top hat after it flies away in the wind. Droopy retrieves it to the rich white man and he offers a cash reward. Spike moves Droopy out of the way to take the money for himself. The bomb in the hat goes off, turning Spike and the rich white man into po’ black stereotypes. This is almost ALWAYS cut when aired on television, regardless of channel, and I was unaware of the scene’s existence until I got into studying the classics for something other than nostalgia.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): It doesn’t play too bad, but with the way Cartoon Network cut it (and given that each of the blackface jokes involve fire or some kind of explosive), you could tell something was missing.

Egregious or Not: A little, but not to much to make you want to chuck the remote at the TV.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Your best bet is to see it uncut on YouTube or any video site for that matter. Though it has been released on video and DVD, there may be a 50-60% chance that the video release version may have the lightning and the burning cabin parts uncut, but not the rich white man part, and I don’t want to be held responsible for providing misinformation.

UPDATE: A blog commenter named David Germain recently told me that yes, “Droopy’s Good Deed” is available on the Complete Droopy DVD set, with all the parts that were cut on television intact.

11.

Studio: Famous/Paramount Studios

Director: Seymour Kneitel

Writer(s): Isadore Klein and Jack Ward

Release Date: September 12, 1947

Summary: Popeye is taking Olive on a boat ride when she spots a pirate ship. They are soon captured, and Popeye has to rescue Olive from the (initially charming) pirate captain.

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: Popeye dresses up as a woman to the attraction of a pirate. When he thinks he’s rid of the pirate, Popeye starts to take off his dress; then, suddenly, the scene cuts to Popeye in his white sailor suit, running from the pirate. That’s not the part that was cut; that’s how the scene has been played ever since it aired on TV.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): It plays like there’s something obviously missing, because how did Popeye go from being in drag to being in his sailor suit, and why does the pirate have his mouth full of cannonballs?

Egregious or Not: Oooh, this is a tough one. On the one hand, it’s plenty egregious, due in part that something is gone and it messes with the continuity of the film. On the other hand, you can’t really blame the TV censors for cutting it, since it was (more than likely) cut before it was theatrically released (much like the fabled deleted scenes from Bob Clampett’s “Baby Bottleneck” and Tex Avery’s “The Heckling Hare”).

Where Can I See It Uncut: If time travel were possible, you could go back to 1947 and see how the cartoon was supposed to look before the Hayes Office asked Seymour Kneitel to edit whatever was cut. Otherwise, no one has seen hide nor celluloid of the deleted scene.

10.

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director(s): Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton

Writer(s): Melvin “Tubby” Millar

Release Date: August 12, 1939

Summary: An unnamed male hunter goes hunting for rabbit to get back at the government for raising meat prices, but runs into a crazy rabbit known as “the prototypical Bugs” (not in the cartoon proper, but by cartoon fans in general).

Scene(s) Cut/Altered: On the popular TV print, the cartoon abruptly ends after the unnamed hunter declares that he can whip proto-Bugs and his entire family, followed by proto-Bugs and his entire family appearing to put the hurt on the hunter. Prior to April 2009, there has been wild speculation about what the ending could be, though it doesn’t take a Wile E. Coyote super-genius to figure out that the cartoon was supposed to end with the gang of proto-Bugs Bunnies beating the shit out of the hunter. The real question is, “Is that all there is?”

The answer: No, that’s not all (folks)! Here are the two theories (read: long-standing rumors) connected to this cartoon’s final moments:

On April 27, 2009, David Gerstein’s blog revealed the true ending to “Hare-Um Scare-Um.” So, which ending is the true ending? Neither. While there was a fight that got cut, the end results were thus, according to Wikipedia and the Gerstein blog:

The rabbits attack the hunter in a cartoon smoke and then run away. The smoke clears up to show the hunter disheveled (with his head intact). The rabbit returns to give the hunter his busted rifle, saying, ”You oughtta get that fixed. Somebody’s liable to get hurt.” He then returns to his looney self, bouncing on his head like a pogo stick down the road. The hunter then goes insane, bouncing on his head like a pogo stick.

How Does It Play Without the “Offensive” Part(s): The cartoon plays okay, but the cut makes it look like it was done by TV censors for violence, when really it was cut by WB Studios for unknown reasons (possibly time).

Egregious or Not: “Egregious” is too strong a word to use in this case. “Disappointing” might be more appropriate, since we see the set-up, but no punchline and aftermath to said punchline.

Where Can I See It Uncut: Unlike the cut for “Popeye and the Pirates,” a full, uncut print does exist in the world and has been shown at a revival screening (which is where David Gerstein found his). However, since the popular print has been in circulation on both TV and the Internet, there’s really no way to see it uncut (unless you attend a revival screening or wait for the day that it comes out uncut and uncensored on DVD).

TO BE CONTINUED…

If you are unfamiliar with the premise of this blog, let me give you the short answer: I take the cartoons (mostly theatrical classics that were packaged into syndication and shown lopped, cropped, chopped, and edited all to hell) you loved as a child (and, I’m hoping, still love now, despite their limited availability on TV) and dissect them in a morbidly humorous fashion now that I am no longer brainwashed into thinking that these cartoons (and for that matter, some of the made-for-TV shows that were either Saturday morning fare or daily/weekly cable TV fare) are meant for children (Happy 10th anniversary of my deprogramming! WOO! PART-AY!)

For the long, drawn-out story, visit this site: http://satamhangover.wordpress.com/about/

This week, we take a look at opening sequences to these theatrical cartoon installment shows (specifically, the ones for the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons).

Television (particularly American television) has not been kind to theatrical cartoons at all (especially the Warner Bros. ones). If the censors weren’t editing them for violence, racial/ethnic caricatures, and behavior that would be considered “too mature” or “politically incorrect” by the ever-changing standards of what’s taboo and what isn’t, then the cartoons were being marketed as kiddie fare. Yeah, why overpay some teenaged punkette with a $500/month phone habit, an appetite that makes Michael Phelps’s look like an anorexic’s, and a scuzzy boyfriend who remembers when The Rolling Stones were cool (and is currently teaching American history at her high school) when the TV and your local cable (or satellite provider) can do it for double the cost (anything to help in this economy)? Sure, the bill will be worse than your current mortgage, but it’s worth it for hours upon hours of top-quality entertainment.

Anyway, the way these installment shows’ openings depicted the theatrical cartoons was the same. It was that sense of “Come on in! It’s safe! We won’t hurt or offend you! Just sit back and blindly laugh at our schtick,” when really the message should have been, “These are some of the most hilarious, and dangerous, testaments to creativity and entertainment ever devised by the human mind. We came from a time when, yes, we were a little cruel to women and minorities, but, really, it’s no worse or better than what’s on right now. So please watch us, especially if you’re too young to catch the humor or too stoned to care. Either way, you’ll remember it years from now, and boy, will the realization hit you like a ton of bricks.”

Our first opening conveys the former idée fixe of the Warner theatrical cartoons being “safe” and “fun for everyone”. It’s the opening for The Porky Pig Show, a Saturday morning installment show that aired on ABC in (what I assume is) the 1960s. I say “the 1960s” because when this opening was shown as a special feature on the second volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection (third disc), there was a note that read the following:

Warner Bros. packaged THE PORKY PIG SHOW for ABC to air on Saturday mornings. New opening and closing titles were required, but the Warner animation studio had, at this time, disbanded. Hal Seegar Productions in New York produced this memorable (and unusual) piece of introductory animation.

Your clue as to where this opening came from comes at the line “the Warner animation studio had, at this time, disbanded,” which would put this cartoon anywhere on or after 1964 (I know there were WB cartoons made after the shutdown [those Daffy/Speedy cartoons, the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons NOT directed by Chuck Jones, and some forgettable one-shot attempts at creating new characters, such as Cool Cat, Merlin the Mouse, Chimp N. Zee, and Bunny and Claude], but those were made in a different studio).

Your next clue comes in the form of the subject of the last sentence: “Hal Seegar Productions” (I should note that Hal Seegar’s name is actually spelled “S-E-E-G-E-R”).

“Who’s Hal Seeger?” you ask.

Hal Seeger was a cartoon producer and director who owned his own studio in the mid-1960s. In the 1940s, he was an animator for Fleischer Studios (the same studio that made Popeye the Sailor Man, Betty Boop, and the same studio that made cartoon shorts out of the Superman comics) and wrote three movies featuring famous black performers of the day: Hi-De-Ho (with Cab Calloway), Killer Diller (with Dusty Fletcher and Moms Mabley), and Boarding House Blues (also with Dusty Fletcher and Moms Mabley). Seeger also created three animated shows between 1965 and 1967: Batfink (1966-1967), Milton the Monster (1965-1966), and Fearless Fly (1965).

Far be it from me to make wild assumptions based on insufficient exposure, but, after seeing the opening (and closing) to The Porky Pig Show (and a still of Fearless Fly from Don Markstein’s Toonopedia), the Seeger style (to me) is 1960s Hanna-Barbera sans the popularity or campy likeability. While the animation is serviceable and really not all that bad, the character designs look like something you’d find in a 99-cent store coloring book and the overall color gives the look and feel of a corny Saturday morning cartoon cavalcade-type show that would have aired (and probably did) between the years 1964 and 1969.

As I mentioned before, the biggest crime committed with The Porky Pig Show opening — and closing — is that both perpetuate the stereotype that the Warner Bros. cartoons are kid-friendly. Don’t believe me? Here are the clips:

The Porky Pig Show Opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxyAUZCFszE

The Porky Pig Show Closing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYWFhc9puVM

Notice how cringe-inducingly cheap the song (and accompanying music) sounds!

Gaze at how horrendously off-model the Looney Tunes characters are (particularly Sylvester the Cat and Foghorn Leghorn)!

And ask yourself the following:

Why is Elmer Fudd is driving a bus with Yosemite Sam and a jug band of quadruplet canines (who all look like a redneck version of Underdog) to a barn where Granny, Daffy, Foghorn Leghorn, Sam (that sheepdog from Chuck Jones’s short-lived series about a Wile E. Coyote-esque wolf and a sheepdog treating their natural rivalry between each other as if it were a factory job) live in a barn with Porky Pig that’s open every Saturday morning to entertain snot-nosed brats for…I’m going to say an hour, because thirty minutes of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies does not sate me (or any WB cartoon head) at all, and this show aired back before Cartoon Network existed and had their theatrical WB cartoon installment shows on for anywhere between 90 minutes (an hour and a half) to four hours?

Why is Yosemite Sam dressed as a pirate and not a cowboy (He was a pirate in a handful of his cartoons, but he was a cowboy first in 1945′s Hare Trigger and that’s how Sam is best remembered), and how can he carry that double bass (I can tell because you don’t use your fingers to pluck at a cello’s strings, while you do with a double bass [though you can play a double bass with a bow, but only if you're in an orchestra. If you're playing the bass at some cool, beatnik jazz club or a barnyard party, you use your fingers]) with a smile on his face instead of angrily grumbling his usual “Rackin’ frackin’” type cursing?

Why is there purple punch prepared on a table in the scene with Sylvester and Granny dancing? Is this a cult (I mean, it would make sense. They’re out in a barn where there are no witnesses to their unholy activities, Granny’s dressed up like a member of the FLDS, the leader is a charismatic pig, they sing his praises, and do strange dances. It’s only a matter of time before the Feds come in response to a disturbance call and they all consume that punch in a mass suicide)?

What dirtbag parents would let their children go to a barn on Saturday morning to watch cartoons, especially since there is no electricity in the barn to power the TV? They could have a battery-powered TV, but even that’s stretching it.

Where is everyone going on that bus during the ending? I thought the characters (save Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and the dog jug band) lived at Porky’s barn as a sort of homeless shelter for out-of-work cartoon characters? Are they going to try and find a job during the work week, then return to the barn when they’ve inevitably failed? Yes, I know, it’s a lot to ponder (and read), but that’s what happens when you grow up.

The intro bumper on the DVD cut of this opening stated that the Porky Pig Show opening is “memorable and unusual,” which is the same thing you can say about your senile old grandmother getting on the table during Thanksgiving dinner and showing everyone how she pissed off her mother by rouging her knees, wearing knee-length stockings with a short skirt, and shaking her moneymaker for all the “Negro jazz musicians” back in the ’20s.

The next set of openings try to paint the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons as sketches on a cartoon variety show…one that airs in primetime, no less. It’s not as nauseatingly sweet as The Porky Pig Show‘s attempt to make the cartoons fun for kids, but now, we’re treading family-friendly territory. Family-friendly territory will allow some risqué jokes to sneak by, but anything race-related, condoning tobacco and/or alcohol, or violent beyond the realm of slapstick is going to be caught and detained. When it will be released is really up to whoever’s in charge, and even then, he’ll probably have his hands tied.

Now, the first opening is from CBS’s The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (sometimes called, The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour). This opening is actually a melding of two separate openings: ABC’s Bugs Bunny Show (which aired as a primetime show on weekday nights) and CBS’s Road Runner Show (which aired as Saturday morning fare). Now, you’re probably thinking, “Well, this is like peanut butter and chocolate: it’s two great tastes that tastes great together,” — and between you and me, I think it’s a winning combination, too, but really, outside of that one cartoon where Bugs takes over for the Road Runner (“Hare Breadth Hurry”, 1963/Chuck Jones), what do Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner have in common? They’ve both been chased by Wile E. Coyote? They’re both the most popular WB characters? I don’t get it. On top of that, you have two theme songs that mesh together (the popular “On With the Show, This Is It!” theme and the “Road Runner/The Coyote’s After You” theme) in a way that in-laws and blood relatives mesh together: they do, but it’s not by choice, and the results are tepid at best (and unipygic [half-assed], if you want to be creatively upfront about it). It seems like they should have stuck with the “Overture” theme and left it at that.

Now, I can’t upload it (since WordPress.com expects money for video uploading space and I don’t have it), but YouTube does have both The Bugs Bunny Show opening (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RilpD_ljld8) and The Road Runner Show opening (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18oyNInSgDc) separately. If you want to see the meshed, unipygic version, rent or buy volume two of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (it’s on the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote and Friends disc).

Speaking of CBS and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, this show ran until 1985 (the year this blogger was born). It was canceled because ABC was starting up its own WB cartoon installment show and by the mid-1980s, it got most of the cartoons in CBS’s library. In its final season (1984-1985), the CBS producers (in their infinite wisdom) decided that the variety show opening they had was stale and tired (that makes two of us) and decided to make it more up-to-date (which, in turn, made it look dated): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPFhSTyek38

This would have been likeable, had it not the look and feel of the animated adaptation of Happy Days (and yes, such a thing did exist). I mean, the “Cartoon Gold for Young and Old” line is probably the most honest description of the Warner Brothers cartoons ever said on American network TV, though the line does come off as a lie when you realize that whatever cartoons CBS had left to air were probably cut to shreds by Standards and Practices. Sorry, Billy and Grampa, you can’t see Bugs using his carrot to plug Elmer’s rifle, Yosemite Sam going into one of his garbled profanity-laced temper tantrums, Daffy getting his beak shot off, Wile E. Coyote dicking around with explosives, or Pepe Le Pew making a pass at a painted cat. It’ll give Billy ideas and it’s too much on Grampa’s heart. Now, shut up and eat your Fruity Pebbles!

To make matters worse, it had a matching set of title cards to go with the “futuristic” ’80s style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkjiuojjpCo

The ending sequence, strangely enough, was rather plain (save the strange Tron-esque effects before the actual credits): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eZ66bU3R-I

We move on to ABC’s Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show openings. The first one (from the 1986-1987 season) was your typical “show rapid-fire clips from past cartoons” opening that was more appropriate for local TV affiliates or international channels airing the WB cartoons. I will say, though, that I do like this opening better than the second one, because of the part where Tweety’s hat falls over his eyes. It’s so adorable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8dVZ5r_kU

Even before Disney overtook ABC, ABC was all about being “family-friendly” and “safe for kiddies” (after all, this was the channel that aired Full House, Family Matters, and whatever else came down the Miller-Boyett pipeline), so, despite the opening’s promise of airing a variety show of all your favorite WB characters’ famous antics, the ABC S&P went a little (I use the term loosely) censorial knife-happy with a lot of the cartoons that aired (Friz Freleng’s “Hare Trimmed” from 1953 was a frequent victim), most of which, for asinine reasons. “Hare Brush” (the one where Bugs and Elmer switch personalities thanks to a psychiatrist) had the establishing shot of a mental hospital called “The Fruitcake Sanitarium” (whose motto is “It’s Full of Nuts”) cut because mentioning mental illness and/or making fun of it was against Standards and Practices rules. If that is truly the case, then maybe the Looney (as in “cracked,” “mad,” “deranged”) Tunes (with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck) shouldn’t have aired in the first place. Another example can be found in the ABC version of “Dog Collared” (a Robert McKimson cartoon where Porky tries to run away from an overly-affectionate dog who turns out to be the pet of a rich man), when Porky is listening to a TV newscast about the dog he’s been avoiding throughout the cartoon and the anchor says that the dog is worth 5000 bucks. Porky responds, “A thousand a-be-a-be-bucks”, to which the anchor corrects, “No. Five thousand a-be-a-be-bucks!” in the original. Apparently, ABC thought the anchor was being cruel to stutterers, so now the line goes, “No, Five thousand…bucks!” If there’s one thing I hate more than censorship for asinine reasons is censorship that manages to wreck a joke or corrupt a storyline, no matter how simplistic or formulaic it may be.

But I’m getting off-track. The censorship talk is going to be fully discussed in the next Saturday Morning Hangover episode, “Cut and Drawn”.

So, when ABC was sick of the mid-1980s opening they had, they re-vamped it to the “character morph” version that anyone who grew up watching 1990s Saturday morning TV on ABC will immediately remember (then lament that today’s kids wouldn’t know good entertainment if it bit them — which is true, but I’m sick of hearing it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN3bkgLZqAQ

What really burns me about this opening is that, even though it’s supposed to be new, you can tell that the editors re-used the “Overture” theme from CBS’s Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show. I know, I know, Mel Blanc died in 1989 and there’s no way ABC could have done a remake of it, but ABC could have at least subjected the viewers to a horrible rendition of the song with wannabe Mel Blanc voice artists instead of just giving up and recycling the song.

Before this turns into a boring, all-out “bash-fest”, I must tell you, fair reader, that there are two openings for Warner Bros. cartoon shows that understood that the Warner Bros. cartoons are not meant for children (at least the seven and younger set). One was Nickelodeon’s second opening for Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon.

http://www.retrojunk.com/tv/videos/857-looney-tunes-on-nickelodeon/621/#intro

Shameless Nickelodeon plugging aside (something that would really rear its ugly head when Nickelodeon aired reruns of Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain), the second opening showed color-changing concentric rings, had a screwed-up version of “Merrily We Roll Along” playing, showed characters at their craziest, and was memorable without being sickeningly cute or relying on something that worked well in 1964, but not in 1994 (at the time this opening was first used).

The other opening doesn’t come from a television show (it should have, but the censors would have balked). It comes from the Golden Jubilee video set. Before being released on DVD, the Looney Tunes were released on video and laserdisc. The laserdisc set was called “The Golden Age of Looney Tunes” and the video set was called “Looney Tunes Golden Jubilee”. With the exception of three “Salute to…” videos, each of the Golden Jubilee tapes focused on a Looney Tunes character (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, etc). The “Salute to…” videos were the best works from directors Chuck Jones (1912-2002) and Friz Freleng (1906-1995) and the best works from voice actor Mel Blanc (1908-1989):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzELLOhVOc8

Looking back at it, this came off as a total pisstake of the opening used for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. Why? Well, for starters, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show didn’t start out with Taz being pursued by the police on a motorcycle for seemingly no reason. Secondly, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show opening didn’t end with Taz riding his motorcycle into the theater and crashing into Bugs, Daffy, and Porky (who are leading the chorus line of characters, with Tweety as the shortest and Foghorn Leghorn as the tallest). I mean, why were the police going after Taz? Shouldn’t he have been in the chorus line of characters at the theater?

Now, I won’t mention any of Cartoon Network’s openings for their cartoon installment shows. First of all, because some of them are so cut and dry that they neither suck nor are that interesting to be discussed (i.e., the opening for “Bugs and Daffy” where it shows Bugs getting applause for doing absolutely nothing while Daffy resorts to doing tricks to please the crowd). The opening for The Looney Tunes Show is actually pretty good (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x07BOja7eog), but I can’t help but think that it’s a rip-off of the opening for the WB cartoon installment show That’s Warner Bros.! (later renamed The Bugs and Daffy Show and had the cartoon The Bee-Deviled Bruin banned due to excessive violence), where it uses the meta-reference of the Warner Bros. characters as living actors, despite being brightly colored and two-dimensional (which is what you can say about any flesh-and-blood actor). Sadly, no Internet video of the That’s Warner Bros.! opening exists, but there is an article by Kevin McCorry and Jon Cooke that explains what the opening was like (http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/tv/thatswb/). Secondly, most of them aren’t readily available. If the day comes I can find one and nitpick it, I will edit this post.

Well, I can see by the laptop clock that that’s it for me this week. Tune in next week when I get into censorship of classic cartoons (and not just the Warner Bros. stuff either).

Of course, the conversation about classic cartoon openings and classic cartoons in general doesn’t have to stop here. I’m available for Twitter (http://twitter.com/LaurieDoublevie) , Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=58400925#/profile.php?id=508315432&ref=name), and good, ol’-fashioned email (including IMing through Yahoo!) discussions, including suggestions about improving the blog.

Hell, it doesn’t have to be about classic cartoons; it could be about anything at all.