DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 92, "Ducky Mountain High"

From December 1989 through the Fall of 1990, DuckTales fans inhabited a strange sort of limbo... or perhaps "purgatory" would be a better word.  After a lengthy run of new second-season episodes for the "sweeps month" of November '89, culminating with "The Masked Mallard" on November 17, the series kicked back into rerun mode.  No real surprise there... except that we had been led to believe that 27 "second-season" episodes had been produced, and we had gotten only 24.  What had happened to the three "strays"?

That the missing episodes had not been "lost" so much as "temporarily misplaced" became clear when the ongoing DuckTales episode guide running in Gladstone Comics' DUCKTALES title wrapped up in issue #12 (March 1990):

So now we knew what to expect, sort of, but WHEN WOULD WE GET THE PAYOFF?  During the early "sweeps months" of 1990, perhaps?  No such luck.  NBC favored us (in a manner of speaking) with the previously-unannounced holiday special "A DuckTales Valentine" in February, but "The Tardy Trio" stubbornly refused to show themselves.  A contemporary drawing by Joe Torcivia summed up our increasing irritation:

Even the Summer 1990 release of DuckTales: The Movie -- Treasure of the Lost Lamp failed to quell our querulousness.  Not after we saw a TV special promoting the film in which footage from "Scrooge's Last Adventure" appeared and our suspiciously overenthusiastic hosts, Tracey Gold and Kadeem Hardison, described the ep as though it had already been released.  So what made THEM so special, hm?  Joe and I would have been jealous if we weren't so thoroughly frustrated.

All finally became clear on Monday, September 10, 1990, with the debut of the Disney Afternoon two-hour block.  The block's three older series -- Gummi Bears, DuckTales, and Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers -- marked the occasion by broadcasting either a completely new episode (Gummis' "A Gummi's Work is Never Done") or a "held-back" episode with a 1989 copyright date (Rescue Rangers' "Zipper Come Home," DT's "Ducky Mountain High").  We were now free to unclench and relax... though two months would elapse before the third of the missing eps ("Last Adventure") would appear, and we still had a few surprises in store in the form of four unanticipated, brand-new eps, including the two-part series finale, "The Golden Goose."  Ah, for the "Heroic Age of Fandom," when we somehow managed to survive despite not always knowing what was headed our way around the next corner!

The series' production order lends credence to the theory that WDTVA simply decided to hold back the last few episodes produced for the 1989-90 season.  "Ducky Mountain High," "The Duck Who Knew Too Much," and "Scrooge's Last Adventure" were three of the last four second-season eps to be produced, along with "The Masked Mallard."  I've little doubt that "Mallard" rated a Fall 1989 broadcast because WDTVA was trying to hitch a ride on Batman's cape.  (As things turned out, the timing was good for "Mallard"'s "Lawrence Loudmouth" parody of Morton Downey, Jr., as well; Downey's controversial talk show had sunk like a stone in the ratings during the 1988-89 season and was cancelled a mere two months before "Mallard" aired.  By the Fall of 1990, "Mouthy Mort" was already well on his way down the pop culture "memory hole.")

Although it is highly unlikely that WDTVA chose to hold back the three episodes that it did strictly because they were of unusually high quality, the fact is that all three of them are quite good, certainly above average for second-season eps in general.  "The Duck Who Knew Too Much" is probably the most uniformly satisfying of the three.  "Ducky Mountain" and "Last Adventure," while highly enjoyable and built around rock-solid thematic cores, both suffer a bit from some distressingly sloppy work at the margins.  The offenses are arguably more bothersome in the case of "Ducky Mountain," because it doesn't take all that much brainwork to see how the various logical problems could have been avoided, or, at the very least, minimized.

Glittering Goldie's reappearance here, for the first time since "Till Nephews Do Us Part," was a pleasant surprise indeed -- the more so because her relationship with Scrooge at the end of that first-season finale was, shall we say, at a crossroads.  As in, "Goldie is cross and is chasing the 'two-timing' Scrooge down the road with a shotgun."  The mere fact that Goldie is willing to deal with Scrooge at all in "Ducky Mountain" suggests that the two of them must have arranged some kind of entente cordiale before things got too terribly bloody.  Given that Scrooge never explicitly declared his "eternal devotion" to Goldie and Goldie neglected to extract such a pledge at the end of "Back to the Klondike," I imagine that the agreement included some sort of apology from Goldie for overreacting so dramatically to the notion of Scrooge getting married to another woman.  I can also envisage Goldie still stewing a bit over the incident even after the concordance was agreed upon.  Marry that subterranean motivation to Goldie's well-known love for all things golden, and the impetus for her scheming here becomes quite clear.  Since Flintheart Glomgold gets caught up in the conniving more or less by chance, it's obvious that Goldie was perfectly prepared to hornswoggle Scrooge all by her lonesome if she had to.

Goldie's sending Scrooge the gold stationery to coax him up to the Great Ducky Mountains is believable enough.  The problem is that writers Ken Koonce, David Weimers, and Rich Fogel never do  establish a clear path between Scrooge's receipt and "scenting-out" of the "New Paper's Secret" and his pinpointing of a specific location as the source of the stationery.  How would Scrooge know that the gold paper came from that particular paper mill?  He might have more than one mill up there, no?  This oversight could easily have been papered over (heh) by changing Scrooge's original reference from "the paper mill" to "my Canadian paper mill."  As filmed, Scrooge's immediate dash for the door (without luggage or supplies, yet!) seems overly precipitous.

Scrooge and Glomgold's ability to sniff out gold also poses something of a problem.  One might reasonably argue that the events of "Too Much of a Gold Thing" left the post-"Gold Fevered" Scrooge with a residual ability to sense gold with his nose, but how do you explain Flinty possessing the same ability, and with no explanation whatsoever?  For Glomgold to have this sort of natural talent flies in the face of his previous uses of technology to keep tabs on Scrooge, as seen in "Wrongway in Ronguay" and "My Mother the Psychic," to take two examples.  Glomgold's constant need to rely on cheating, subterfuge, and other indirect means of keeping up with Scrooge also strongly suggests that he does not possess -- or possesses far less of -- Scrooge's inherent ability to find wealth.  Heck, Flinty even admits as much in "Wrongway" when he tells "El Capitan," "You don't know Scrooge -- he's a money magnet, he'll find the gold for sure."  No indication there that Glomgold may have a similarly "magnetic personality."  The sudden amplification of Glomgold's pelf-perception powers is basically a hastily-concocted way of getting Flinty involved in the action; simply having Flinty see gold flecks in the paper would have been sufficient.  Nor is there any explanation as to how Flinty tracked the stationery to the exact same paper mill (though, if Scrooge had been clearer about having just ONE paper mill in Canada, the deduction would have been a little easier to make).

GeoX calls Bubba's role here the caveduck's best of the series.  I'd be inclined to agree, but not in spite of the sudden sports obsession... rather, because of it.  Bubba's preternatural tracking skills may be a more consistent element of his character, but they derive directly from the survival skills he was obliged to develop in 1,000,000 BC.  His sudden enthusiasm for sports, by contrast, is an acquired trait that fits much better with his "charge-in-and-grunt-questions-later" persona than any contrived obsession with rock music ever could.  It also happens to tie in with one of the very few Bubba-focused comics stories, "Slugga Bubba" from DISNEY ADVENTURES DIGEST, in which HD&L teach Bubba how to play baseball and he turns out to be a "natural" at the game.  We do get the expected "flubbas" and subsequent blowups by Scrooge, but Bubba gets a more than ample number of opportunities to make up for the mistakes.  In terms of what he actually contributes to the Ducks' ultimate (albeit consequently blighted) triumph, he certainly outshines HD&L here, just as he outpaced Webby in "Attack of the Fifty-Foot Webby."  For a final series appearance by a generally disappointing and arguably ill-conceived character, this is considerably better than half-bad, or even three-quarters-bad.

The existence of the stand of gold trees is, of course, wildly problematic, and not simply because of the hand-waved "the roots soaked up gold from the gold deposit" explanation.  When Scrooge and HD&L first go exploring and run across the trees, the stand is located near the edge of a cliff (which will never be seen again).  Since the Ducks have been walking on Scrooge's land in the direction of the trees, the logical conclusion is that Scrooge's land ends, and Goldie's begins, immediately past the cliff.  So, if the roots are growing in the direction that we later learn they are, then they would have to be growing... um, into the cliff side?  Wouldn't the roots have grown through and out of the cliff in that case?  It's a heavy price to pay for the nifty visual in which Scrooge and HD&L climb up the cliff and we get the dramatic reveal of the trees.  Note the substantial size of the stand, BTW; it's going to get considerably smaller before we're through...

Scrooge's decision to don a buckskin outfit before going to call on (and attempt to fleece) Goldie is an easily missed, but nonetheless noticeable, indication of "Ducky Mountain"'s lack of subtlety compared to an ep like "Back to the Klondike."  Scrooge has donned "stereotypical, location-appropriate garb" before (for example, in "The Curse of Castle McDuck"), but this reminded me a little more of Launchpad dressing in garish green Irish gear in "Luck O' the Ducks" or (shudder!) Scrooge putting on that over-the-top cowboy outfit in "Ducks of the West."  There seems to be no real reason for it, not even the borderline excuse given in "Castle McDuck" that Scrooge needed to put on the Clan McDuck tartans because his regular raiment had gotten wet.  Scrooge describes the outfit as an "investment," but, later on in the ep, he'll purchase a whole bunch of lumberjacking gear and then plan to return it once the gold trees are harvested.  Surely, the backwoods garb cost far more than any of those items, and yet Scrooge is going to... keep it?  No... sense... making... Must... find... sense...

Thankfully, just prior to Scrooge's strange splurge, we get an indication that we'll soon be heading due north (into Canada, what a coincidence!) in terms of the ep's quality, as Glomgold makes contact with the Canadian Beagle Boys.  Actually, Backwoods, Binky (who was not mentioned in the Gladstone DuckTales index), and Bacon are never explicitly referred to by that title, so that first official animated appearance by Vic Lockman's "Beagles International" will have to await some bright, shiny day in the future.  (If there is a future, as William F. Buckley, Jr. once said in a different context.)

 

 "Beagle Bug-Off" (Gladstone UNCLE $CROOGE ADVENTURES #34, September 1995)

"SPEACH! SPEACH!!"

As Greg says, it's hard to dislike the Canadian Beagles despite the obvious stereotyping, the "Eh"s and all the rest... simply because it's absolutely impossible to take them seriously.  The buzzards that can be seen circling below the CBBs' dilapidated cliffside shack telegraphs the truth about them right away: as a legitimate threat to the Ducks, they are D.O.A.  The Beagles of "Don't Give Up the Ship" were positive menaces compared to these guys.

Goldie's "playing" of Scrooge and Flinty at her cabin is executed in a first-rate manner, though Goldie's use of what GeoX accurately terms a "f***ing grotesque" blond wig makes her look like a superannuated Webby (and, like Scrooge's buckskin outfit, seems too contrived by half).  Goldie did just fine, thank you, wearing her old honkytonk outfit but keeping her becoming gray hair in "Back to the Klondike."  At the start of the sequence, we get a nice reprise of the "reunion" scene of "Klondike" when Scrooge cautiously approaches the door, only to be met by gunfire from the porch, and Goldie gets away with a surprisingly gamy metaphor when she explains her move from the Klondike to the Great Duckies by reporting that the duo's old claim at White Agony Creek had been "picked cleaner than a vulture on a rabbit."

When Glomgold shows up, Scrooge rises -- or lowers -- to the bait, and the misers subsequently act like a couple of bickering children for a spell.  They even channel the spirit of classic Warner Bros. cartoons past with the "Out you go!/No, out YOU go!" routine, culminating in both of them somehow getting tossed out at the same time, in the manner of Bugs Bunny and Sylvester the Dog in Hare Force (1944). Of course, the gussying-up Goldie is oblivious to all of this... we think.  At least she didn't end up being thrown out herself, as Granny was in the Warners short.

The foolishness continues after the trio reach the Moosehead Lodge; Scrooge literally "stuffs" Glomgold when he escorts Goldie out of the truck and into the restaurant, and Flinty later goes Scrooge one better by squashing him while the two are bidding on Goldie's land.  You have to give Goldie credit for taking full advantage of the unexpected presence of Glomgold and recognizing that having a bidding rival will make Scrooge even more of a sucker for her scheme.  It's no surprise that Goldie ultimately chooses Scrooge's offer, even though Glomgold offered the higher dollar amount.  The whole purpose of this enterprise was to get one over on Scrooge, after all.

"Flat"tery will get you nowhere, Flinty!

Act Three continues the pattern of the episode as a whole: solid ideas and decent action, partially undercut by questionable details that were not completely worked out.  It makes sense that Scrooge and the CBBs would try to "undercut" Scrooge's deal by taking away the gold trees for themselves, but why didn't the ever-vigilant Scrooge think to post a guard to make sure that such a fairly obvious dodge wouldn't take place?  (All you'd need would be Bubba and a conveniently placed large boulder.  Judging by this episode, the latter appear to be scattered all over the place.)  And why are the total pickings from the forest sufficiently tiny to allow Glomgold to wrap them all up in a single, smallish raft?  Thankfully, the Ducks' dispatching of the hapless CBBs, and Scrooge and Glomgold's subsequent raft-wrassle, follow in short order and help us to quickly forget the oversights... until we go back and do a detailed rewatch, that is.

Axes?  Guns?  What's the difference, Toon Disney?

We then get... yet another conveyor-belt sequence, on the heels of "Money to Burn"?  Really??  Complete with the same trope that the victim stays on the belt just long enough to be rescued, regardless of how far away he is from the blade at the start and how fast the belt is moving?  We are well and truly on the downhill slide now when it comes to exciting new plot ideas (actually, a better analogy than a slide would be the waterfall that Scrooge and Glomgold take their plummet over just before Scrooge wakes up in the sawmill).  From a character-based perspective, the most annoying thing about this version of the familiar routine is Scrooge's seeming lack of interest in trying to find a way to save himself.  Even Monterey Jack, the would-be victim in Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers' "Love is a Many Splintered Thing," managed to foil the scheme of Desiree D'Allure and Erol by twisting the log so that the blade would miss him and cut off his bindings.  Would Scrooge, so famously "tougher than the toughies," really restrict his efforts to plaintive cries of "Help!", rather than fighting his apparent fate every millimeter of the way?  I can SORT of buy Scrooge's despair in "Money to Burn" causing him to become temporarily inert -- he had every reason to think at the time that his fortune was in the process of being melted down -- but giving up in the face of a terminal triumph by Glomgold?  No way can I accept that.  At least the sequence gives Launchpad, hitherto a relatively secondary player in this particular cast (save for one or two good quips), something interesting and in character to do.  His overelaborate attempt to swing to Scrooge's rescue, complete with egotistical disclaimer, brings back pleasant memories of "The Webbed Wonder" rescuing money from banks "his way" in "Hero for Hire."  Seeing such an overt callback to the greatest Launchpad episode of them all at this late stage can't help but raise this ep's rating a few notches.  I put the absence of a scene showing the unsuccessful LP making contact with the log pile down to a combination of a straitened budget and, just perhaps, the animators' lack of confidence in the ability to show, or their unwillingness to add, what they might have considered to be a superfluous scene.  More's the pity.

Before coming to Scrooge's aid, the other Ducks had, of course, foiled Glomgold's plan to "[get] away with the gold wood" by knocking down the railroad bridge... a rather drastic thing to do, given that other trains passing along the route are going to be in for a nasty surprise, but an appropriately bravura climax to the subtheme of Bubba's sports obsession saving the day.  With the gold planks (I thought the raft was made up of logs?  Did Flinty take the time to cut up the logs into planks before he turned his attention to disposing of Scrooge?) safely stowed away at the bottom of the gorge, it'll be a simple matter to go back and... waitasec... Greg is completely right!  What's to prevent Glomgold and the CBBs from picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, and going to look for another means of carrying at least some of their booty away?  Scrooge doesn't even seem to consider that possibility, leading Launchpad, HD&L, and Bubba from the sawmill right back to the field of tree stumps to look for the gold deposit.  The Scrooge I know, realizing that his claim to the land was secure but that his ownership of the gold lumber wasn't, would almost certainly have made sure that the "wood in the hand" was safe and sound before attacking a potential fortune.

The final sequence is carried off to near-perfection, despite the annoying reduction of the forest of gold trees to a tiny bit of acreage that is just large enough to give the Ducks sufficient elbow room to dig for the gold deposit.  Scrooge, as we all knew he would, suffers an attack of conscience and 'fesses up to the deception, and Goldie's unexpectedly generous response leads to some rough-and-ready animation of a newly-excited Scrooge "digging for dollars."  It's as if the animation here is meant to reflect Scrooge's jangled state of mind.

Contact lens FAIL!

Then the other spat drops, and, well, there's only one thing to question here... When, exactly, did Scrooge demonstrate to Goldie how to be a "dirty deal maker"?  Goldie went of her own accord to White Agony Creek to pay off her debt to Scrooge in "Klondike," and the pair were probably too busy mining and (AHEM!) doing other things to have time for outside chicanery during their period of cohabitation.  It might have been better had Goldie simply repeated what Scrooge had said earlier and referred to Scrooge in more neutral terms as a "master" of driving a hard bargain, specific terms and circumstances not stated.  Scrooge might console himself with the thought that, once he cuts down the remaining tree stumps and recovers the gold lumber, he'll come away from the "fleecing" with something.  The psychological trauma of being outdone is liable to linger a little bit longer, despite that makeup kiss at the end.

Simply letting Goldie be Goldie, and in a slightly different setting to boot, lifts "Ducky Mountain" into the category of near-great DT eps, despite all of the ep's niggling flaws.  It might be argued that, of all of DT's Barksian supporting players, Goldie turned out to be the one who was most successfully realized, though I think that you could also make a case for Gyro Gearloose.  Even Goldie's "non-canonical" appearances featured an entirely believable version of the character.  Are they as successful as Don Rosa's portrayals?  I would argue not, because the uses of Goldie on DuckTales were a little less ambitious overall.  But there can be no question that DT did right by "the greediest gal in the Klondike."

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"DuckBlurbs" 

(GeoX) Okay, I also kind of liked the ostentatiously Canadian Beagles that appear here, if only for their aggressive bizarreness. One of them's a pig. "He had a bad case of swine flu." I like how that non-explanation is just sort of left dangling there.

The gag in which Backwoods admits that the boys ate their calendar was "aggressively bizarre," too.

(GeoX) [I]n spite of the ending's welcome tartness, they just can't resist tossing in a little sugar: Goldie kisses him and he blushes and winks at the camera as we go out with a heart. Hmph.

I'd like to think that they might have considered irising out on Scrooge realizing the truth, but I guess they felt that Scrooge and Goldie's continuance of their relationship had to be made clear.

(Greg) Flint admits that he needs backup and walks stage left as we logically head to a cliff where the shack was earlier on the overhead shot (See; build and everything) as we head inside and see the Backwoods Beagles for the first time. Two of the Beagle Boys in this are wearing gold miners and wood cutter outfits and have oversized beards. The Big Time'ish Beagle (with the raccoon hat) kicks the spit of moose antlers and blows off all this normalcy. Oh; and he speaks with a stereotypical Canadian accent. How do I know? He sezs "eh" in every other sentence...  The reason why I don't take offense to it is because Canadians typically know how to laugh at themselves when they see such an obvious stereotype. Heck; watch the closing of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games for a refresher course.

The only gag that I might legitimately have questioned was the sight of an outhouse next to the Moosehead Lodge.  C'mon, even in the depths of rural Canada, indoor plumbing DOES exist.  I did get a chuckle out of the use of the plinky-plinky piano music from "Klondike" and the Klondike sequence of "Once Upon a Dime," as if "nothing has really changed" in that neck of the woods between the late 1800s and 1989!

(Greg) ["Lumberjerk" Launchpad] plays golf with the axe; and that breaks the glass and shoots the conveniently placed blunderbuss and almost kills Huey with it in the process. And Toon Disney kept it all for us to see.

That, plus the scene in which HD&L are wielding axes, presumably with intent to maim.  Censorship: HOW does it work?!

Next: Episode 93, "The Masked Mallard."

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 5, "Scrooge's Pet"

After a brief break to watch the Olympics and attend to other pressing matters, it's time for me to polish off my last hunk of "good imported cheese," pull up to the computer, and revisit DuckTales' first truly successful adaptation of a Carl Barks story.  Now, in all honesty, it would have been pretty hard for DT not to have presented a reasonably faithful version of "The Lemming with the Locket."  The plot of Barks' story is simple, many of its scenes are easily translatable into animated form, Donald's role is generic enough that it's easy to insert Launchpad as his replacement, and some of the changes made to the Barks version represent legitimate improvements, at least on an objective level.  Heck, even though what GeoX calls the "surprising and charming" theme of Donald and HD&L enjoying the Norwegian cheese is dropped, there are enough additional references to cheese in the episode to make me think that adapter Jack Enyart (who claims on his Web site that he "developed Disney's first TV cartoon" DuckTales...[sic?!?!]) was trying to do even that little detail some sort of justice.  No, despite the inexplicable lack of a story credit for Barks and a few other logical holes, the literary aspects of this episode aren't the problem.  A fresh viewing, however, reveals a fairly egregious animation mistake that serves to bollix up the climax a bit (and, to be fair to the animators, may have been triggered by a writing decision).  Then, of course, there's that distressingly bland title...

Apart from being unnecessary -- would "The Lemming with the Locket" really have been THAT hard for viewers to understand? -- the change is somewhat misleading, because Lucky the lemming literally doesn't have time to be Scrooge's pet.  All that Lucky does is try to eat Scrooge's cheese sandwich, get the locket entangled about his neck, and then lead the Ducks on the merry chase to Scandinavia.  Honestly, calling the ep "Scrooge's Potential Pet" would have made more logical sense.

Right off the reel -- an apropos expression to use when the opening scenes deal with a fishing trip -- we get two improvements on the original, as Scrooge uses a statue of Goldie on which to hang the locket (Dangerous Dan's honkytonk had a gift shop?) and the pet-seeking kids meet Lucky through Barnacle Biff the sailor, as opposed to the little guy simply showing up in the Ducks' lunch bag.  I'd posit that we also get an improvement on past (and future) series practice, as Webby wears a charming sun hat over her standard bow.  I think that this headgear is quite becoming on her, and I wish that it had been used more often.  At the very least, its use would have given pause to those carping critics who used Webby's "cute widdle pink bow" as one of the excuses to loathe her.

I am less enamored of how Enyart handled the "replacement vault" business.  Barks used the first page and a half of his story to let us know in advance WHY losing the combination would be a big deal (at least until Scrooge had time to memorize it).  The way it's presented in "Scrooge's Pet," however, Scrooge's new vault door appears to be... well, just another vault door.  It's not made of "impervium metal," or super-wax, or Protectoglass, or anything like that.  Greg makes the obvious point that Scrooge should at least have considered drilling the door.  Later in the series, Big Time Beagle will use a giant can opener to cut into the vault, so, really, how hard could it be?

Enyart provides another unfortunate "dumbing down" of a Barks bit when the Ducks and Launchpad fly to Novay.  Barks had the Ducks first attempt to reach the Moony Gull with a helicopter, then decide to wait until the ship enters a port and take a plane to that location.  All very logical, you'll agree.  The DT version gives us the awkward business in which Launchpad tries to fly Scrooge, HD&L, and Webby to Novay in a helicopter without the necessary fuel on board... and then continues on his way even after Scrooge loudly points out the grotesque absurdity inherent in this procedure.  Ah, I know why Enyart did this; so that we could have a "crash sequence" involving Launchpad and do a tribute to Rocky and Bullwinkle's Edgar and Chauncey (or is that The Flintstones' Oley and Sven -- I can't decide) with the two dock-loitering Novaygians.  I don't think that the egregious logic break was worth it, especially since everyone wound up getting wet as a result.

The interesting thing about the chase on board the Moony Gull -- which is exceptionally faithful to Barks, probably because the duplication of the sight gags was a natural thing to do -- is that Lucky, who is (as GeoX notes) somewhat more anthropomorphic than Barks' unnamed lemming, actually displays less personality than the latter critter.  Barks' lemming purposely bites Scrooge several times, causes HD&L to fall off the rigging, sneaks its way into some would-be cheese bait, and even appears to trigger the harpoon gun of its own accord.  Most of the damage that Lucky causes is purely accidental.  I also wonder whether HD&L's fall was edited out of "Scrooge's Pet" because the DT crew didn't want to show the boys in such active peril.  At least, not yet.

Then we get our lemming stampede, which is generally well-animated, despite the occasional reliance on "moving brown blobs."  (To be fair, in his splash panel on p. 15 of the original story, Barks was forced to resort to such a device as well.)  For the life of me, I can't understand why the Novaygians and the inhabitants of Herringtail aren't better prepared for this predictable onslaught of ravenous rodents.  Why not start moving out furnishings, food, and so forth SEVERAL MONTHS before the lemmings' expected arrival time?  Forget the "cartoony Scandinavian accents"; this is a real insult to the inhabitants' intelligence... though I suppose that they come off a little better than the Ronguayians who fled the once-a-century Monsopis during "Treasure of the Golden Suns."

Unfortunately, after the (lemmings') fall is over and Scrooge appears to have lost his fortune, some lazy animated scenario-setting trips the story up in a BIG way.  Earlier in the episode, we saw the kids hanging up their cheese for safekeeping, just as HD&L did in "The Lemming with the Locket":

As the supposedly defeated Ducks plod their way dockwards, we get a POV shot of the scene from the opposite direction:

Say, where'd that broken shutter come from?  And where'd the drainpipe go?  No, those are not the problem.  What follows the recovery of the locket, and Lucky's subsequent tumble out of the cheese, IS:

There's the "ladder to the cheese" that you missed, Greg!  It's not surprising that you overlooked it, because it appears from OUT OF NOWHERE.  Honestly, it would have made more sense for Lucky to have clambered up the pole on the left and gotten to the cheese that way.  I think that this screw-up was an indirect casualty of the decision to excise the Barks scene in which two of the Nephews discover that the lemming has built a ladder under the cheese, find the lemming stuck inside, and then decide to hold off on revealing all to Scrooge until they've tried to get some kind of reward out of their uncle.  That scene only "worked" because the boys had gone ahead of the other Ducks to recover the cheese.  Since the Ducks were moving as a group in the animated version, the only way to have preserved the original's "surprise reveal moment" was to refrain from showing the ladder at first.  If only Enyart had had the guts to go with the original version, its somewhat negative depiction of the Nephews and all!  But I suppose that it would have been foolish to have expected the HD&L of an early DT episode to display such naked opportunism.  Now, if this episode had taken place after the events of "Dangerous Currency"...

"Cool beans!  I musta rubbed off on those guys!" -- Gosalyn Mallard

Both Barks and DuckTales soft-pedal the ultimate fate of the lemmings, though DT handles it in a somewhat squishier fashion by having Webby refer to Lucky and the other lemmings being "back in Novay."  So they're simply swimming around in the ocean, happy as clams?  Right.  The early-series temptation to play things a bit safe is on display here, as it is at several other points during the episode.  I give Enyart full credit, however, for recognizing that the best way to handle an adaptation of a Barks story was to let as much of the original effort "speak for itself" as possible -- albeit in a somewhat goofier manner.

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"DuckBlurbs"

A Note on Place Names:  This episode is the first notable example of DT's occasional tendency to replace a real place name with a fanciful placeholder.  Later examples include "Great Written" in "Much Ado About Scrooge," "Emerald Isle" as a euphemism for Ireland in "Luck O' the Ducks," and "Swizzleland" in "The Duck Who Knew Too Much."  The strange thing about this is that the series didn't seem reluctant to use real place names at other times: England, Scotland, Greece/Troy, Panama, Singapore, Greenland, Malaysia, the Bermuda Triangle, Egypt...  I put this down to the sheer diversity of writers who worked on the first-season episodes.

(GeoX) There's some decent interplay between Scrooge and Launchpad.

This was one of the better points about the episode -- at least when I watched it the first few times.  Now that I have seen it in its proper order, I'm not quite so sure.  In "Micro Ducks from Outer Space," we got all those insults directed at Gyro by Scrooge.  Here, Scrooge takes a steady stream of shots at LP.  Hey, I realize that LP is a tempting target and sometimes brings comical condemnation on himself, but an unpleasant pattern seems to be developing here.  Thankfully, future barrages of insults will not be as "concentrated" as they were in this episode.

(Greg)  As for Captain Frye; and while Chris doesn't have an official confirmation on this; it is supposed to be the debut of the late Phil Hartman (although USIMDB has it as a Sea Captain only)...

Yes, and I think he voiced at least one of the Novaygians who spoke.  He may have been one of the dock loiterers (the other one was definitely Alan Young) and/or the running guy with the plant.  Captain Frye's gravelly voice appears to have been something of a stretch for Phil, given what we know about his work on The Simpsons. 

(Greg)  Now despite the obvious stupidity of Scrooge McDuck; this was a really good episode although the pacing could have been a bit better. Launchpad was his usual smooth self and while I like the entire episode premise; it did make Scrooge look stupid. As I said several times; he got upset over nothing in the context of the episode. Now if the locket was the main focus because of his relationship with Goldie; the whole episode would have been awesome and it would have made Scrooge look a lot better than him simply losing his money. As I said; blaming the nephews and Webby was silly because Scrooge could have memorized the locket during lunch or drill the vault combination off and the episode would have been resolved either way.

I think that Scrooge's perceived "overreaction" was more a result of Enyart not setting up the nature of the new vault door properly than anything else.  All Enyart needed to do to fix the problem was to trim or shorten one or two of the scenes with the kids at the dock and replace them with some sort of clear explanation about the vault's supposed impermeability.  Unless you're familiar with the original story, for Scrooge to panic in the manner he did would seem a little nonsensical.

Next:  Episode 6, "Dinosaur Ducks."

Book Review: IGNITING THE FLAME: AMERICA'S FIRST OLYMPIC TEAM by Jim Reisler (Lyons Press, 2012)

Yes, I've got the Olympics on my mind, and I've just finished another worthwhile read delving into the modern Games' frequently strange and curious past.  This time around, the focus is on the 14 young men who formed the American team for the 1896 Athens Olympics.  Though these fellows rated a TV mini-series not so long ago, author Reisler goes that fictionalized effort one better by coupling the story of the recruitment, travels, and triumphs of the U.S. contingent to a quick survey of the development of the modern Olympic movement and the role that American academics, in particular, played in organizing the team and encouraging its participation.  In the late 19th century, thanks to the opening of such schools as Johns Hopkins, MIT, and the University of Chicago, American higher education was trending towards the sciences and other "modern" fields, but classical scholars were still a substantial presence on the typical campus. Some, such as Princeton's William Milligan Sloane, the first president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, jumped at the chance to assist the Greeks in their revival of the ancient Games.  To be sure, some of Sloane's peers were less than enthusiastic about allowing their athletes to go off on what was seen as a purposeless junket; James Connolly, the modern Games' first champion, actually had to drop out of Harvard, never to return, after his request for time off was denied.

The somewhat ramshackle, ad hoc nature of the first modern Olympics is exemplified by American Robert Garrett shockingly winning the discus competition over two Greeks... after having started practicing with the regulation Olympic discus just the day before.  Garrett's victory, however, was one of the key events that cemented a bond of friendship between the enthusiastic American athletes and the Athenians who attended and supported the Games.  The Greeks were especially pleased that the Americans' participation kept the 1896 Games from being an all-European affair.  Despite being skunked in most of the track-and-field events, the Greeks famously got one back on the Americans when Spiridon Louis won the inaugural marathon.  Political disagreements and spats born of envy were conspicuous by their absence, however, and the goodwill fostered by the 1896 Games helped sustain the Olympics during the lean decade that followed, until the events of London 1908 put the Games on solid footing for good (albeit also putting bitter national rivalries in style).  The modern Olympics may never have been truly pristine or innocent, but Athens 1896 was as close as they ever got to being so, and the Americans played no small role in making it happen.

Book Review: SHOWDOWN AT SHEPHERD'S BUSH by David Davis (St. Martin's Press, 2012)

Here's a quick, enjoyable read to pass the time between events at the upcoming Olympics -- or, if you've soured on the commercialism, rampant doping, and overall "too-much-ness" of the modern version of the Games, a more than acceptable substitute for viewing same.  Not that controversy is absent from this discussion of the 1908 London Olympics marathon; quite the opposite, in fact.  Davis makes the argument that the half-dramatic, half-farcical conclusion of the '08 race ranks as the first "globally famous" sporting event.  Surely, the combination of new technology (film), aggressive media coverage, and the holding of the Games in the seat of what was then the world's preeminent empire helped publicize this notable moment at a critical time when the future of the modern Olympic movement seemed in some doubt.  But consider the fact that the intense interest in what transpired at the White City Stadium on that baking-hot July day firmly established the then-exotic marathon as a truly legitimate sporting event, and Davis' argument seems reasonably legitimate.  Even if you are not particularly interested in running or the Olympics, SHOWDOWN AT SHEPHERD'S BUSH comes highly recommended as an interesting slice of early 20th century cultural history. 

SHOWDOWN AT SHEPHERD'S BUSH takes a parallel-lives approach in its early stages, sketching out the lives and times of three of the major figures in the '08 marathon: Dorando Pietri of Italy, Johnny Hayes of the U.S., and Onondaga Indian Tom Longboat of Canada.  All three came from very humble beginnings and used long-distance running as a means of improving their lot -- though, with "simon-pure" amateurism still the announced and (generally) practiced Olympic ideal, they could not truly reap the financial benefits of their efforts until after the Games, when a series of match races between them and other leading marathoners launched a brief "running craze" that captivated America seven decades before Jim Fixx appeared on the scene.  This was the "heroic age" of long-distance running, paralleling that of Polar exploration.  Given the era's minimal understanding of race tactics and training procedures, inadequate footwear, and lack of recuperation time between races, not to mention the frequent holding of races in smoke-filled indoor arenas (such as the old Madison Square Garden), it's hard not to wince while reading about these early pie-a-pie encounters.  In the course of his narrative, Davis gives us a useful potted history of early marathoning, brushing away some of the myths that have accreted around the race (e.g. the oft-repeated tale that the race was based on a courier's run to Athens following the battle of Marathon), describing the development of such early efforts at organization as the Boston Marathon, and relating the frequently shambolic details of the Olympic marathons of 1896, 1900, and 1904.  The marathon at the 1906 "Intercalated Games," held in Athens in an effort to regain a bit of the prestige that had been lost as a result of the '00 and '04 Games being dominated by ongoing expositions in Paris and St. Louis, was only a bit more successful.  Entering the '08 London Olympics, the future of the marathon as an Olympic event, to say nothing of the Games themselves, seemed anything but secure.  But competent local organization (also well detailed by Davis) and the sparks from a bitter rivalry between the host British and the upstart Americans helped to refuel the flickering torch, and the sensational conclusion of the marathon finished the job.  Save for forced breaks caused by world war, the continuation of the Olympics would never be seriously questioned again.

Dorando's heroic failure and disqualification have come to mark him as "the most famous loser in Olympic history."  Certainly, Hayes, who was declared the winner, is a forgotten man by comparison.  Davis performs his most useful services by reminding the reader of Hayes' accomplishment (which the British, no surprise, did not much appreciate) and in rescuing the role of Longboat, the pre-race favorite, from obscurity.  Longboat failed to complete the race, partially because he had sustained an injury while training in Ireland beforehand.  The extent of said training -- with Longboat's trainer-promoter putting his charge through a series of lengthy runs before curious crowds -- further points up the exploitative, almost ad hoc nature of the culture of early long-distance running.

Davis' writing gets a little too purple in places, but he accomplishes quite a lot in such a small package, providing a Cook's tour of early Olympic and long-distance history in addition to sketching out the details (in present tense, for some peculiar reason) of the headlined race.  Much like THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED or SEABISCUIT, this is a "sports history book" that the wider public should be able to fully appreciate.

DVD Review: PEANUTS 1970s COLLECTION, VOLUME 2 (Warner Home Video, 2010)

I'll gamely resist the obvious temptation to link the out-of-left-field "Motocross" theme of You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (1975) to Fonzie's infamous flight and state uncategorically, definitively, and absotively that It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977), the fifth (though actually fourth in chronological order) of the six episodes in this back-end-of-the-70s collection, stands as THE moment when the PEANUTS TV franchise officially "jumped the shark." The infamous episode that brought the Little Red-Haired Girl "on stage" for what Charles Schulz himself later admitted was the "cheap thrill" of having Charlie Brown get to meet and kiss his "dream girl" also marked the first PEANUTS special without the invaluable musical contributions of Vince Guaraldi. Guaraldi's distinctive scores made even the lesser efforts of the TV franchise's first decade enjoyable. With First Kiss, we suddenly switch to something that the Schulz of ten years before would have dismissed out of hand as "generic cartoon music." To make matters worse, we start hearing the notorious wokka-chih-wokka! undertones of the disco era. It was only a short slide-step from there to Flashbeagle and all that that implied. Tack on the sheer unfairness of Charlie Brown getting blamed for his football team losing the "big game" when it was Lucy (doing the football-pulling-away routine on a "real" stage, this time) who was the real culprit, and First Kiss has a lot to answer for. What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown (1978) provided a welcome return to something like form -- albeit in an extremely unusual format and venue -- but I can't honestly say that I loved, or even overly liked, any PEANUTS special after that one, and even Nightmare originally struck me as more "weird" than anything else, only to grow on me later. So this package truly does represent the last of the "vintage" PEANUTS TV output.

The three Guaraldi eps in this set all have their good points, though Good Sport, with its patchy plot (which, like those of some of the weaker early shows, takes a good long while to get moving) and forced attempt to "sell Motocross," has fewer than either Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975) or It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (1976). Valentine is unspectacular but gets the job done; why else would Charlie Brown have been sent a flood of valentines after its original showing, just as people sent him candy to make up for getting all those rocks at Halloween? The show also cleverly updates the evergreen theme of Linus' crush on Miss Othmar by giving Miss O. a hot car and a boyfriend (and, presumably, a Women's Lib membership card). Arbor Day is often patronized because of the "sense of holiday desperation" suggested by the title, and it is rather strange that the obscure fete was chosen over, say, New Year's Day, which PEANUTS didn't get to until much later, or July 4th. A fresh viewing, however, reveals a clever juxtaposition of tree-talk with the opening of the gang's baseball season, and the scene of Charlie and Peppermint Patty's teams attempting to play ball in what has now been converted into an orchard is one of the most imaginative that Schulz, Melendez, & co. ever devised. Good Sport has one or two funny bits (e.g. the injured Charlie and "Masked Marvel" Snoopy getting brought to the vet and the hospital -- and that's the correct order), but I detect the start of a somewhat cynical attitude here. "Motocross" was never anything close to a big deal in the comic strip; tennis (which Snoopy plays vs. a ball-chucking machine and Woodstock in a l-o-o-o-o-o-o-n-g sequence at the start) was much more relevant to the gang at this time, reflecting as it did Schulz' contemporary athletic interests. Was Schulz trying to sneak a new strip concept in through the back door, essaying a "TV test balloon" of some sort? If so, then the gambit obviously didn't work.

As noted above, What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown looks a lot better in retrospect. Such a radical departure -- Snoopy essentially soloing (with, of course, no dialogue as a result) and being forced to undergo a stern (albeit imaginary) trial as a sled dog in a quasi-realistic Frozen North where Scrooge McDuck and Glittering Goldie might not have seemed out of place -- needed complete conviction from all involved in order to work, and Melendez' animators rise to the challenge. Snoopy's facial expressions during his agonizing ordeal are priceless, as is the scene in the saloon (honky-tonk?!) where ol' Snoop tries without success to be a can-can dancer and clean up at the poker table. Then, of course, just when he's discovered that he needs to be a real dog in order to survive, he wakes up and it's back to normal (or what passes as such for Snoopy). Even the music in this special works reasonably well, throwing in harmonica riffs and an atmospheric player-piano tune to add to the ambience. Unfortunately, the high of this special wasn't sustained in the final entry in this collection, You're The Greatest, Charlie Brown (1979), which drags us through all ten events of the decathlon, tossing in a few surreptitious licks of the Olympic Theme for good measure. Charlie Brown and Marcie's sportsmanship is admirable but has the feel of a "this-is-good-for-you" theme that was stressed one or two too many times. We see a sort of anticipation here of such later specials as Why, Charlie Brown, Why? (1990) and What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983). In You're The Greatest, however, the rap of the schoolmaster's stick is a little too sharp. Alas, so is the adult voice of the track announcer, which opens up a whole new can of worms that would only grow wigglier as we moved into the 80s. (Adults of a sort do appear in What a Nightmare, it's true, but they follow convention; sled-dog Snoopy's master is only seen in silhouette and speaks with the familiar trombone-voice, while we only see bits and pieces of the bodies of the saloon patrons. I'm willing to forgive that because of the highly unusual nature of the special; we had to have some substantial visual evidence that we were "really" in the Arctic in order for the show's conceit to work.)

The only extra here is "You're Groovy, Charlie Brown," which purports to examine PEANUTS in the 70s. How strange, then, that I saw so many clips from the Schulz documentaries of the 60s tossed in. It seems that even the extra-makers realized that this collection well and truly marked the passing of the glory days.