DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 94, "The Duck Who Knew Too Much"

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that, prior to preparing these RETROSPECTIVES, I'd watched "The Duck Who Knew Too Much" fewer times than any other DuckTales episode.  (That, or "A DuckTales Valentine"; it's hard to say for absolute certain.)  There's no particular reason for this; circumstances just seemed to work out that way.  What is relevant to the present review is that any prior speculation as to the quality of the ep was based on comparatively sketchy personal recollections and/or what Joe Torcivia wrote in our DUCKTALES INDEX.  I was therefore sticking my long, scrawny Duck neck out just a bit during my review of "Ducky Mountain High" when I fingered "Knew Too Much" as "probably the most uniformly satisfying" of the three second-season episodes that were held over for the first season of The Disney Afternoon.  Having now gone over "Knew Too Much" with a finer-tooth comb... well, I would now like to qualify that statement a bit.  The ep's superiority to both "Mountain" and "Scrooge's Last Adventure" is no longer quite so clear in my mind.

Don't get me wrong... "Knew Too Much," like the other two components of "The Tardy Trio," is centered on a first-rate thematic conceit -- in this case, chivvying a bumbling Fenton through a scenario that wouldn't be out of place in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  Despite the title, the ep probably more closely resembles North by Northwest (1959) than The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), if only because a good deal of the early action takes place on board a train.  However, despite the slinky spy Goldfeather's claim at one point that Fenton "knows too much," one shouldn't push any Hitchcockian analogy too far.  In both of the Hitchcock movies, the protagonists are thrust into intrigue through no fault of their own.  Fenton, by contrast, sets himself up for trouble by using chicanery (to wit: a phony case of "the dreaded purple-blotch beak pox") to sneak off on his ski vacation.  Once the initial dirty deed is done, the plot slips into a more familiar Hitchcockian groove, but, thanks to Fenton's original dishonesty, we have slightly less of an emotional investment in seeing him triumph in the end... at least, until the second half of the episode swings our sympathies in his direction and he receives due punishment for his "original sin" in the end.  The universe's balance is thereby restored, though Fenton might not appreciate the fact at the moment.

In three of Fenton's last four appearances of the series (counting "Knew Too Much"), he either doesn't use the Gizmoduck suit at all or has only a tangential relationship with its ultimate use. This strikes me as the DuckTales' writers' tacit admission that, when all is said and done, Fenton is truly more interesting than his Gizmoduck alter ego.  (One has to wonder how many more Fenton-only eps we would have gotten had the series extended beyond 100 episodes.)  Writer Doug Hutchinson (whose last animated episode of any kind this was, thereby concluding a brief, but highly fruitful, career with WDTVA) certainly takes full advantage of the opportunity; Fenton is in excellent form throughout, spouting quips, donning disguises, and acting the harried victim to a T.  The fact that we also get to enjoy Gandra Dee's most multifaceted and enjoyable role (just in time, too; it's also her last) is merely a bonus.  Not only that, the episode is surprisingly mature, touching on sexual themes more than any other ep outside the overheated "Metal Attraction," and perhaps deserving some extra credit in that human beings (or the Duckburgian equivalent thereof) are driving the "steamy engine," as opposed to a lecherous, crazed robot.  So, there is quite a lot to like here.

Unfortunately, we can't leave things at that...

... because this episode also features some of THE worst transition sequences the series has ever seen.  Greg brought a lot of these up in his review, but the "sitch" is, if anything, worse than he describes.  Throughout the first act and into the second, we are fed a constant stream of "WTF??  I thought that...??" moments that test, and ultimately break, our patience.  At the same time, the episode is acutely aware of itself, sometimes almost to excess, and the constant "nudge-winks" to the audience as we are trying to figure out "how we got from scene A to scene B" ultimately become a bit grating.  Thankfully, things get straightened out as Act Two progresses, and we get a thoroughly first-class conclusion in Act Three, but there is no way that we can entirely forget what has gone before.  Entertaining, to be sure, but unquestionably frustrating.

I'm not sure whether to blame Hutchinson or story editors Ken Koonce and David Weimers for "making the mess" (green jello and swizzle stick not included) here.  Actually, that's not strictly true. Since the final version of the episode is already packed full of incident to begin with, it is possible that Hutchinson originally included even more material, and, when K&W trimmed the ep down to a 22-minute length, they excised scenes that "seemed" unnecessary but actually provided for better transitions.  Or, perhaps Hutchinson wrote the script that we saw on TV, and K&W simply didn't bother to ask Hutchinson to tighten those transitions up.  (I prefer the former theory, for a reason I'll describe below.)  Other theories are possible, but I'm sensing that K&W may have been the ones who really fell down on the job (or into the jello-filled kiddie pool) in this case.

Despite the silliness of the whole Let's Make a Mess scenario, we get an early indication of the "mature matter" to come when the tackily triumphant Fenton "detumesces" in response to a kiss from the gleeful Gandra Dee.  The fairly hot "demo-babe" who suggestively swizzles her stick for the camera doesn't detract from the mood, either.  I do wonder, though: Since Mrs. Crackshell was watching the broadcast, shouldn't she have heard Fenton ask Gandra to "come ski with me"?  Wouldn't that have dissuaded her from automatically assuming that she would be going to Swizzleland with Fenton?

After Scrooge (who swings between grumpiness and cluelessness throughout before one final, glorious moment of redemption) violently rejects Fenton's request for vacation time, Fenton channels... well, Donald, Fred Flintstone, take your pick of any number of sitcom stars... and pulls what Major Courage would term "the old sickness ploy."  To his credit, Hutchinson handles the other characters' reactions to Fenton's invalid indisposition well.  Mrs. Crackshell warns Fenton of possible consequences (how responsible of her! -- though she will ultimately backslide a bit later in the ep), while Scrooge initially balks before being convinced of Fenton's illness for economic reasons (the possibility that Fenton might infect all of Scrooge's other employees, or at least those at the Money Bin).  Nicely played, Mr. Hutchinson...

... alas, now we get:

Bad Transition 1:  We jump from the Crackshells' trailer to the airport with NO explanation as to how (a) Fenton convinced his "M'Ma" to stand down; (b) Fenton managed to convince the jealous Gandra Dee that there was no "other woman" involved.  Leave aside for the moment the question of why the normally placid Gandra is suddenly so quick to don the green eyeglasses.  Presumably, Fenton had to go to or call Gandra just to convince her to get on the plane with him.  Here, though, Fenton is proclaiming his love for Gandra as they are sitting down in their seats.  Is this supposed to explain why Gandra looks so pissed off?  But then, why did she consent to board the plane in the first place?

Scrooge's presence on the plane is the first of many "near misses" that Fenton will have before the two finally meet again at the close of Act Two.  This would be more contrived if it weren't quickly made clear that Swizzleland is so tiny (with all the main settings of the drama located so close together) that the two characters NOT crossing paths would be less likely than them actually doing so!  Of course, some awkward contrivance will be involved, as well...

Bad Transition 2:  We jump from Fenton and Gandra getting ready to take off from Duckburg right to the train station in Swizzleland... or is it ACTUALLY Switzerland?...

... with no intervening scenes.  So how did Fenton and Scrooge miss each other during the flight and its aftermath?  One of them would have had to have gone to the "little Duck's room" at some point, no?  Or go to baggage claim?  Or go to currency exchange?  Or meet during the trip from the airport to the train station?  Or meet after Scrooge saw Gandra at some point?  After all, the two have met before, in "Metal Attraction," and Scrooge does know about Fenton and Gandra's relationship.

I'm willing to give Fenton a bit of a pass on making a pass at Goldfeather, because he was hit on the head by some luggage a moment before, and so his brains might still have been a bit croggled.  If this is an indication of the hidden depths of Fenton's subconscious mind, though, then perhaps Gandra has a reason for her "jealous-o-meter" to be set at "10".  (BTW, Susan Blu's "French" accent for Goldfeather has GOT to be the worst stab [no pun intended] at such an accent that I have EVER heard, even including Ruth Buzzi's horrific performance as Miss Ma'amselle Hepzibah in I Go Pogo: Pogo for President [1980]).  I honestly have no idea why Blu was allowed to get away with it.  Perhaps they thought they were trying to be funny, or ironic, or something, but it really is a distraction.)

The subsequent near-misses, hesitations, threats, and goof-ups on the train do have a number of bright moments, for example, Fenton pretending to be "suggestive" when he closes the curtains in his and Gandra's compartment, and a curiously dyslexic Scrooge continually misinterpreting the warning notes that a furtive Fenton tries to send him...

... but they also provide us with:

Bad Transition 3:  The frantic Fenton hides on a luggage rack in Goldfeather's compartment and then immediately hears and sees her below, talking to Agent X (the swizzle-stick magnate Von Doghousen).  Greg pointed out that Goldfeather would have no reason NOT to see Fenton when she went into the compartment.  I suppose it's possible that she sat down without noticing that Fenton was in the luggage rack above her, but then, you have to account for the fact that, when the rack breaks, Fenton falls down directly in front of Goldfeather, suggesting that he was on the opposite rack.  (Also note that Fenton appears to be looking forward when he listens to Goldfeather's conversation.) Questionable logistics, no matter how you slice things.

Bad Transition 4:  Fenton's notorious jump from the foreground of the picture inside the train onto the outside undercarriage of the train.  "Kids, don't bother trying this at home -- it can't be done, except by a trained Toon professional!"

Bad Transition 5:  Fenton and Gandra arriving at "Gducks" together at the start of Act Two, though we never saw how they made up after Gandra caught Fenton in Goldfeather's compartment and ran away in tears.  This is even worse than Bad Transition 1, or, for that matter, the scene at the train station.  Gandra actually saw the two characters together in what could easily be described as an intimate ("suggestive"?) setting, and Gandra had already been made suspicious of Goldfeather, thanks to the train-station incident.  Gandra's offhanded comment about Fenton "acting weird" doesn't even BEGIN to paper over the chasm here.

This is a LOT of oversights to forgive.  It's fine for an episode to have (in GeoX's terms) a "manic" pace, but there's "manic," and then there's just plain SLOPPY.  Unfortunately, we're not quite done yet:

Bad Transition 6:  Fenton knows enough (and why not -- he already supposedly knows "too much"?) to go to the Whizzle Swizzle Stick Factory to intercept Goldfeather and Von Doghousen, despite the fact that neither Goldfeather nor Von Doghousen ever mentioned the factory during their conversation on the train.  Nor does Goldfeather mention it when she asks the desk clerk for a taxi to go to "ze very important meet-ING."  This is the best evidence of all that some material had to have been cut or removed from the initial script.  It strikes me as highly unlikely that Hutchinson would have completely neglected such an important plot point.  Scrooge just happening to own the factory -- and, rather improbably, taking time out from supervising his gold shipment to do "surprise inspections" of "all [his] Swiz properties" -- is a mere "hop of logic" compared to this mighty leap across a canyon of unexplained deduction.

Thankfully, once we hit the factory, the episode FINALLY finds its webs and proceeds to deliver the intrigue and excitement we have been hoping for.  Fenton gets a chance to strut his stuff in several on-the-spot disguises and manages to remain undetected until the unfortunate incident with the sloppily slipshod swizzle-stick stomper.  (I'd ask you to "say that three times fast," but that joke, which isn't all that funny to begin with, is all but used to death during this sequence.  The earlier self-referential moments -- the real-life "idea bulb"; "Don't try this at home"; Fenton's warning to the audience that he does, too, have wits; the Alan Oppenheimer-voiced Von Doghousen dissing the code word "Oppenheimer" -- were cute, fairly clever, and generally isolated; here, the ep tries too hard to punch a gag over, in a textbook example of unnecessary "jackhammering.")

Once Fenton manages to explain things to Gandra, the pair turn out to make a pretty good team, so much so that I'd like to have seen them have at least one additional dual starring role before the series closed up shop.  Gandra gets most of the priceless moments; even her momentary lapse into inappropriate Spanish is made up for by the quick recovery into French.  Then, of course, she gets to show those hard-won "night school" skills by manipulating the giant robot mantis with ease.  Her ultimate ejection certainly isn't her fault, due to Goldfeather's possession of the remote control.  Gandra probably had as many "hidden talents" as Mrs. Beakley; too bad we never got to see more of them.

With the late-arriving Scrooge now a part of the good guys' team -- and "Gizmomamma" finally making up for her previous lack of attention to the ringing phone by bringing the Gizmosuit on-site -- Act Three whizzes by in a riot of laughs and generally impressive action, some of which is legitimately perilous.  The robot mantis legitimately does seem unstoppable as it "taps" the gold out of Scrooge's gold trucks...

... and Fenton earns some "gonad points" for daring to use the telephone workers' equipment to attempt to electrocute the mantis, putting himself in quite a bit of danger in the process.

Then, of course, "Gizmomamma" pushes all of the Gizmosuit's buttons (the last time we will see that particular shtick) and destroys the mantis, in perhaps the ultimate display of the adage that "motherhood is all about suffering."  In the end, though, you REALLY have to give it up to Scrooge for "getting dangerous," at least where the WDTVA censors are concerned:

Oddly enough, you could argue that Scrooge might have gotten the idea for the fake-gun trick from a notoriously feeble-souled comic-book story published during Western Publishing's terminal decline phase.  "The Jack-in-the-Box Plots" (UNCLE $CROOGE #193, February 1982, written by Vic Lockman, art by Pete Alvarado) found The Beagle Boys reduced to intimidating Scrooge into giving up his money by literally pointing fingers at him in unlikely places.  At one point, Scrooge moans that he can't tell the world about the Beagles' crimes because he would be too embarrassed to do so, and you can hardly blame him.

The late-episode rush is strong enough to make this episode a good one... but, as should be more than obvious by now, not as good as it could have been with a little additional care and thought.  The immediately subsequent "Scrooge's Last Adventure," like "Knew Too Much" and "Ducky Mountain High," will be a similar combination of conceptual gold and tactical dross.  Whichever episode contains the highest gold-to-dross ratio... well, that's up to every viewer to decide for himself or herself.  Myself, I think that it's a three-way tossup.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) For this one, the seminal wikipedia article "List of DuckTales Episodes" claims that "Fenton uncovers an international conspiracy to steal Scrooge's gold overseas while supposedly on vacation." I defy you to tell me, based on that description, who is overseas, who is on vacation, and whether or not these two things are one and the same.

Hey, at least the description isn't factually wrong.  I wish I could say as much for the "official" DuckTales episode capsules that were published in Gladstone's DUCKTALES title.

(GeoX) The only real weakness is the ending, in which, [with Hutchinson] apparently unable to come up with anything really satisfying in the limited space remaining, Fenton comes down with the illness ("the purple-blotch beak-pox") that he was feigning before.

The ending may have been just a bit rushed, but Fenton did get his just deserts.  So there's that.

(GeoX) Fenton and Gandra have separate hotel rooms, I note. Yeah, it's a kids' show, I know, but still…could this have some relationship to the fact that he's so intensely--uncharacteristically, I would have thought--lecherous upon meeting the enemy femme fatale?

See above for my argument as to the possible source of Fenton's sudden bout of "lecherousness."  As to Fenton and Gandra's separate rooms... well, there's always the possibility that the two rooms are part of, you know, a duplex...

(Greg) This episode is written by Doug Hutchinson and the story [sic] is done by Ken Koonce and David Weimers. 

K&W are the story editors, actually... and here, it's a distinction with a real difference.


(Greg) So Goldfeather sticks the pistol in Fenton's face (WARNING! Toon Disney cut might be commencing here) and Fenton does the Peter Piper tongue twister to confuse her and he tries to bail stage left. But Goldfeather teleports in front of him and sticks the pistol in his face. I'm almost happy if Toon Disney cuts this scene actually. Almost.

It didn't.  To review: Waving blunderbusses about to no apparent purpose = OK.  Having a character meet a gun beak-to-barrel = No problem-o.

(Greg) So we finally head to the Swizzle Stick Factory of Doom which is on a snowy hill in Swizzleland. And there is a huge door below the mountain by the way which will probably be used by the end of this episode.

Curiously, though it would have seemed natural to have included a shot of the robot mantis walking through the door, we never actually get such a scene.  Instead, we see the mantis "emerging" from the shadow of the Swizzle Stick Factory hill and advancing on the surrounding countryside.  Apparently we were meant to infer that the creature exited via the door.

 
(Greg)  We see the stamping machine in a far view as Worker Fenton fiddles with swizzle sticks and then in comes a [pig] tour guide with some tourists which includes Gandra Dee who comes in last... The pig fur[r]y (who looks like that furry from somewhere I cannot remember at the moment) wants Worker Fenton to demonstrate since he's behind the control panel now trying to escape. 

It's Sevenchins Snootsbury from "The Land of Trala La."  Earlier, the Quack Maison waiter from "Down and Out in Duckburg" made an appearance as Scrooge's waiter on the train.  And, lest we forget...

Au revoir, Vacation van Honk, we hardly knew ye.  (Literally.)  And Quax is probably grateful that Gloria Swansong allowed him to go out on his own for once.

(Greg)  Fenton whisper yells that he's going to explain why he is here; but grabs Gandra and they run into the storage room with a No Swizzle sign on it. Why is there a sign? I don't know; I don't they will ever explain it.

I think it's meant to be a "Do Not Enter" sign.  The interdicted hand appears to be reaching for a door knob.

(Greg) So Fenton dials the phone and we discover that the motel desk man is known as the Italian Sn[o]b (6.5% of the people in Switzerland speak Italian so there better be someone German and Romanian or I am going to be disappointed.) as Fenton informs the guy that he has an important message to Scrooge that the Swizzle Stick Factory is a cover for a plot to steal his gold signed a friend.

The desk clerk isn't "The Italian Snob"; he is referring to the lodge as "Hotel de Snob."  (Funny, I thought the place was called "Gducks."  Maybe that's the name of the village in which it is located.)  And I think you mean Romansh, rather than Romanian. 

Next: Episode 95, "Scrooge's Last [sic!] Adventure."

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 91, "Attack of the Fifty-Foot Webby"

And so, we enter "the top of the stretch"... only 10 more eps to go.  Original broadcast dates are going to start getting a little wonky before long, since three of the "second-season" episodes were famously held back to provide additional "new material" for the first season of The Disney Afternoon.  Of the "second-season" eps that were actually broadcast during the "official" (read: syndicated) second season, we're now down to a precious two: "Attack of the Fifty-Foot Webby" and "The Masked Mallard."  Quite an unlikely brace, to be sure...

I think that Greg has "Attack" pegged pretty accurately: Godawful premise, unimaginative first and second acts, partial redemption in Act Three.  My major deviation from this template is the reason for the success of the climactic action -- specifically, the "King Kong in reverse" showdown at McDuck Tower.  I'd like to give writers Alan Burnett and Mark Seidenberg due credit for coming up with the ingenious idea of mating (in a figurative sense, of course) the giant-sized Webby and the (relatively) pint-sized monkey previously known as the "Long-Tailed Gorilla," but, in truth, similar ground had been plowed almost four decades ago, albeit in a relatively obscure venue.  In issue #3 (February 1975) of RICHIE RICH PROFITS, Richie's girlfriend Gloria and the miniature gorilla "Kong King" gamboled about a scale-model version of the Empire State Building while being pestered by remote-controlled biplanes.  Amusingly, the two generic crooks in this Warren Kremer-drawn story, like the genially sleazy circus owner Happy Jack of "Attack," are after the monkey, as opposed to the monstrous maiden.

What makes the McDuck tower sequence work so well is not so much the basic visual setup as the canvas on which it is painted.  The earlier part of the ep featured more than its share of slovenly animation, a few examples of which we'll see below, but, when it comes time for the "money sequence," the much-put-upon Wang Films comes up aces full, splashing the screen with dramatic P.O.V. shots and ingenious employment of spotlights and shadows.  Wang doesn't get the sequence completely right -- when the top of the tower breaks off and Webby and "Mr. Fuzzy" plummet to the ground, the tower-piece doesn't follow them onto the pavement, or anywhere else, for that matter -- but the effort that was made here is readily apparent.  Even a predictable and cliched final post-Tower scene can't spoil the overall effect.

Unfortunately, before we get to the payoff, we are obliged to slog through some rather dreary preliminaries, starting with the inexplicable decision to base the entire episode upon the premise of Webby being too physically small to be noticed.  You don't have to be a Webby partisan to call "no way" on this one; you simply have to be able to use your functioning eyeballs and note, like GeoX, that Webby is the same size as the Nephews.  "Back Out in the Outback" avoided this mistake, explaining away Webby's unseen departure from the sheep station as a result of HD&L's carelessness and Webby's fixation on meeting Australian animals, rather than Webby's physical size.  Even the setup of "The Good Muddahs" bested "Attack"'s approach insofar as believability goes (with the arguable exception of Webby overreacting to the busy Mrs. Beakley's blowoff).  Judging by Webby's alternatively explosive and sarcastic reactions to other characters overlooking her presence, we are led to believe that this issue has been bothering Webby for some time.  Pardon me if I don't buy it.  Even Burnett and Seidenberg seem uneasy with their own premise here; Webby's jumping up and down, presumably "to see over HD&L and Bubba," during the scene in Scrooge's office is a textbook example of "jackhammering" to get a point across.

Burnett and Seidenberg then compound their folly by presenting Webby's decision to defy Scrooge and sneak aboard the Ducks' Africa-bound plane as if this were some new, bold idea.  Of course it isn't; Webby was playing the "tagalong" as far back as "Dinosaur Ducks" and "Cold Duck."  How far back do B&S plan to walk Webby's character, anyway?

As it turns out, far worse is soon to come.  Webby's enumeration of her "essential" supplies -- "my Quackypatch doll, extra hair ribbons, and a canteen of cocoa" -- is a distillation of all of the things that Webby-bashers delight in bringing up when they criticize the character: childishness, impracticality, tokenishness, and, of course, stereotyped "little-girl" behavior.  Contra Greg, this scene doesn't completely bury Webby -- her brief tenure in the shrunken Gizmosuit in "New Gizmo-Kids on the Block" will quite literally help to save that episode from complete and utter ruin -- but, BOY, does it give back almost all the ground that Webby has gained and fought to hold over the previous 90 episodes.  It says something, I think, that Bubba, whose amazing tracking skills are referred to and employed throughout the episode -- first to locate the "Long-Tailed Gorilla," later to track down giant Webby -- seems to be more fully developed a cast member here than the unfortunate Ms. Vanderquack. 

Happy Jack -- who represents, almost surely, the only melding of The Who, The Flintstones, and Ed Wynn in the long, strange annals of pop culture -- deserves special note as the series' first one-shot villain to employ the Beagle Boys as the functional equivalents of "hood-for-hire" mercenaries.  (Charles Upstuck III of "The Status Seekers" came close, but he hired the blueblood Beagle Boys, rather than their uncouth cousins, or half-brothers, or whatever.)  This may not sound like much of a departure, but in fact it is: even Carl Barks rarely used the idea.  Big Time's initial reluctance to participate in the "monkey business" is very much in character; recall how he blew off Magica de Spell's offer to team up in "Send in the Clones."  His teeth-grinding deference to Burger when the deal is closed might therefore reflect a subconscious admission that the palmy days of the first season, when the Beagles actually seemed like a legitimate threat, are well and truly over, and the more caricatured members of the Beagle bunch are now driving the "plot train"!

The scene in which Jack is first introduced was obviously inspired by the Flintstones episode "Circus Business" (1965), in which a poverty-stricken carnival owner bestows his flea-bitten show upon the credulous Fred.  We get the "group montage" in which the unpaid performers walk out on Jack and a featured appearance by a "half-man, half-woman" character for good measure.  The Beagle Boys' later role as "monkey trainers" for the captured "Long-Tailed Gorilla" might also be a reflection of the denouement of the Flintstones episode, in which the Flintstones and the Rubbles manage to put on a show to help Fred avoid jail time for "misrepresentation," but I'm not nearly as confident of a connection there.

The jungle sequence that climaxes with Webby falling into the "magic spring" and growing to 50 feet in height couldn't have been more obvious and square-cut if Burnett and Seidenberg had consciously set out to make it so.  All of the tropes -- cheesy Beagle Boy disguises, Webby's capture by the "Long-Tailed Gorilla" and subsequent discovery of the ape's secret, the reveal of the "magic spring" and Webby's dunking -- are all visible from several hundred miles away, even for someone of normal stature.  This fact tends to focus one's attention on side matters, and the ones that pop out at us here are not flattering, particularly in the area of animation.  The supposedly creepy reveal of the "Long-Tailed Gorilla" as a pair of watching eyes, unlike the similar reveal of Prince Greydrake in "Jungle Duck," is likely to elicit laughter rather than fear:

The REAL "Jungle Phantom"?

Likewise, Webby's "waterslide" is every bit as awkwardly staged as Greg suggests, with Webby seemingly sitting on the surface of the water as she floats along.  I guess this means that Webby can be classified as half-divine.

To be fair, Webby's bonding with "Mr. Fuzzy" is reasonably cute without being overly cloying, and Webby should receive some credit for doping out the truth about the sizable simian all by her lonesome.  It would probably have been better, though, had her reference work of choice been the Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook, as opposed to a "mere" ABC picture book.

After the oversized Webby is brought home, we are treated to an unexpected second appearance by Dr. Von Swine, whose ego appears to have been inflated since the events of "Yuppy Ducks" for no apparent reason.  Von Swine is slightly more tolerable here than in that earlier train wreck of an episode, but it must be admitted that he could easily have been written out of the plot by the simple expedient of the Nephews' having checked the JW Guidebook and found the recipe BEFORE they came home, which one would normally expect them to have done.  All Von Swine actually does here is to provide some of the formula's more esoteric ingredients, such as "Bootle bug dust," and the list of necessities could easily have been made sufficiently mundane that HD&L could have tracked them down all by themselves.  I guess that the decision to use Von Swine was simply due to the fact that Howard Morris was already at hand.

Before you swoon over yourself too much, Doc, you ought to consider reapplying the Grecian Formula...

The comparatively perfunctory "effects of a giant Webby" sequence could have benefited from some additional action scenes -- for example, showing, rather than describing, some of HD&L and Bubba's disastrous attempts to play with their newly-enlarged pseudo-sibling -- but we do get a touching moment in which Webby weeps about her fate, along with *sigh* the obligatory wish that she be "little again" (as if she ever actually were).  Immediately following this scene, the ep at long last begins to ascend to something legitimately watchable, with the put-upon Webby finally deciding to get proactive after she learns via TV that Happy Jack has put the "Long-Tailed Gorilla" on exhibit.  It's about time that Webby stopped whining about her fate and tried to use her enhanced stature to do something meaningful.  I do have to wonder how Scrooge was able to construct that oversized bed so quickly.  Does this mean that the giant bed that a younger Scrooge dreamed of owning in Vic Lockman and Barks' "The Invisible Intruder" is both (1) canonical and (2) still in storage somewhere in McDuck Mansion?

There follows a nearly impeccable Act Three, with Webby giving far more than she gets atop McDuck Tower and Bubba, for once, playing the lead "Nephew," as HD&L and Scrooge are content to follow him while he is tracking down "Webba."  One might grouse about the fact that Happy Jack and the Beagles get off relatively lightly, suffering only a plunge into Duckburg Bay, but, given that they never actually commit a crime -- they use strongarm tactics to try and keep the Ducks away from the "Long-Tailed Gorilla," but they wind up capturing the ape, if not entirely fairly, then at the very least squarely -- the standard "frog-march to jail" would have seemed a bit on the "overkillish" side here.  In addition to the obvious King Kong references, Burnett and Seidenberg throw in allusions to Godzilla and the classic horror film The Fly (1958).

"Yeeesss, I SEE!"

The ep shifts back into "we've-seen-it" mode in the final minute, with Webby and the restored "Mr. Fuzzy" having a tearful departure and the Nephews and Bubba promising to "keep Webby in sight" from now on.  (What about the fate of "McDuck's Drive-Thru Safariland"?  Did Scrooge reconsider the investment after the "Long-Tailed Gorilla" ceased to exist?)  So I think it's fair to say that Act Three, all by itself, saves this episode from a failing grade.  No need to despair, though: in the few episodes we've got left, high quality will generally be the norm, rather than the exception.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) Giant Webby is way huger than Giant Monkey. I suppose the idea is that she's the same size in relation to it as she would be if they were both regular-sized, but in that case, that's one minuscule monkey. 

One could make the argument that Webby, being larger than the monkey, experienced a faster rate of growth than the monkey when she was enlarged, but that doesn't hold water; normal-sized Webby turns out to be only slightly larger than the normal-sized monkey.  Wang Films probably should get most of the blame for this.

(Greg) And then we start flushing the episode down the crapper as Webby gets mad because she was hiding all morning hoping they were looking for her. Now the problem with this is: There was no indication that the nephews wanted to play with her. Yes; it's the contrived and sexist: Boys refuse to play with girls plot line because she's too little to them. This works a lot better with Molly Cunningham because she's legit small and she's smaller than Kit is.

It wasn't so much the fact that the boys "refused to play" with Webby as the fact that they weren't even aware of her presence.  The episode commit a later faux pas along these lines when giant Webby says that the boys "refuse to play with [her]" and the Nephews proceed to explain that their attempts to do so led to disaster.

(Greg) Happy Jack is not happy at all of this happening and needs a brand new attraction to get back in the good graces of the customers. He reads the conveniently placed newspaper and notices that Scrooge is going ape for an ape as he walks out of the trailer and he claims that the long tailed "gorilla" is his meal ticket in.

Strange... Scrooge told the kids that he wanted to beat other "Gorilla" searchers to the punch, yet Happy Jack learns of the expedition from a newspaper article.  So how did the word get out?  Incidentally, the name of Jack's circus, "Circus Barkas," is a parody of a real-world circus... one that I actually saw as a child, no less.

(Greg) Huey thinks he hears something and out come the Beagle Gorillas acting so badly that if these kids and Scrooge fall for it; then Airhead Syndrome is at an all time high. As in "number of drugs needed to enjoy this angle". And yes they fall for it...

Point *sigh* taken.  It's especially annoying here because all the Beagles would have had to do to make better disguises was to take off the number plates and masks.  Is that REALLY so hard to do?

(Greg) Anyhow; the monkey pulls to the left some big ass blades of glass and we barely see a lake of hot molten blue liquid in sight as Webby deduces that this made the monkey big and the monkey nods in approval. 

The not entirely dissimilar Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode "Leviathan" (1967) uses an "underwater fissure," rather than a pool, as the source of the enlargement.  Like the fissure, the effects of the pool extend well beyond the immediate vicinity of the source.

 
(Greg) ...man[,] the "big girls don't cry" line from the nephews annoyed me too. Big girls do cry; usually when someone BULLIES them for being big and fat.

I don't think that Burnett and Seidenberg were making a real-world point here so much as simply parodying one of The Four Seasons' biggest hits.

(Greg) Happy Jack wakes up Burger by what was supposed to be a kick to the chest; but Wang Films screwed up it so bad that it looks like Burger got kicked in the balls.

Picture, thousand words:

(Greg) We cut to a police car as the police dog [Chief O'Hara clone] from Ducky Horror Picture Show... is on the transmitter and wants the army, air force and the Goose Gun. The WHAT?! What the hell is he talking about?

He actually said, "Call in the Army, the Air Force, the Goose Guard!"

Next: Episode 92, "Ducky Mountain High."