DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 86, "Beaglemania"

True confessions time:  Boy, did I HATE this episode when it first aired.  As I've mentioned before, given the atypical manner in which I'd entered Duck fandom, I was generally in a more forgiving mood towards the non-canonical nature of many aspects of DuckTales from the get-go.  But this... THIS definitely seemed a (non-musical) bridge too far.  Too many references to contemporary mass-market musical culture, all of the Ducks being reduced to playing minor supporting roles for the first time, and, of course, the whole absurd, laughable notion of the Beagle Boys becoming rock stars.  It took a while, and a few additional viewings, before I could accept "Beaglemania" for exactly what it was -- no more and no less than the Fenton-Bubba era's version of "Scroogerello," with all the positives and negatives attendant upon that description.  Once I was able to get over that hurdle and revel in all the gleefully silly fun, I found myself greatly enjoying this ultimate example of departure from the objections of "old sourdoughs."

If I were re-rating the DT episodes today, I'd probably rank "Beaglemania" a little below "Scroogerello," primarily because writer Mark Seidenberg doesn't take quite as much care in setting up and tearing down his audacious premise as he does in exploiting it.  The idea of Duckburg hipster impresario Screamin' Sky McFly (who is finally seen in the diminutive flesh here after we heard his lip-burbling audio act in "Marking Time") running a contest to find the hottest new singing group is a perfectly fine one, as we ourselves certainly know, having been force-fed modern-day televised versions of pretty much the same concept for a decade or more.  Nor is there anything wrong with casting Duckburgified versions of popular real-world pop acts as the competition.  Even in the context of an exaggerated satire, however, it was bad form to have McFly declare the Beagles the winners of the contest without any other acts having been performed.  "The gig is up," you say, Big Time?  More like "the fix is in."  It wouldn't have taken that much for this problem to have been rectified -- perhaps a 10- or 15-second sequence in which the Beagles alternately wait for the show to finish, comment about their performance, and grouse about not having swiped the guitar full of money when they had the chance to do so.  Leaving the bridge out seems "but awfully" contrived at this remove.

Don't tell ME this guy can't be bought.

On the back end of the episode, we get what must be one of the ultimate tests of the Barksian dictum that, no matter what trials and tribulations the characters may endure during a story, things must always conclude "as they were."  The vengeful Ma Beagle's audience-aggravating anthem causes the Beagles to "bomb" for good and all... but there's still that small matter of the fortune that the Beagles had accumulated in the interim, sitting there in yet another version of a Beagle Money Bin.  And this fortune is not likely to explode, implode, or otherwise dissipate.  So how to get the Beagles back to "Square Want" (as in, "We want Scrooge's money")?  The episode doesn't know and, apparently, doesn't care.  My best guess is that Scrooge, as the Beagles' employer (!!), used some legal muscle to get the Beagles' betrayal of their fans interpreted as some sort of "breach of contract" and was able to take the Beagles' boodle away from them.  That seems rather cold-blooded, but, let's remember, the Scrooge of "Beaglemania" is willing to go beyond mere "cooperation for convenience's sake," a la the arrangements with Glomgold in "Robot Robbers" and Magica in "Magica's Shadow War," and exploit the Beagles in a mutually beneficial money-spinning enterprise.  This doesn't take Scrooge as far down the path of ethically dubious doings as have some Italian adventures of Paperone di Paperone, wherein Scrooge is known to have committed actual crimes, but there's something unnerving about it, nonetheless.  A Scrooge who is willing to cut deals with his most persistent foes would probably be capable of commandeering the Beagles' profits through clever legal means.

"Beaglemania" also suffers from some irritating production problems.  Some are of the cheese-paring variety, such as the three identical crowd-pan shots we see during the Beagles' performance of "Boogie Beagle Blues."  To be fair, many of the same characters that we see in the pans can also be seen ripping up seats and rioting during the Beagles' final, fatal gig (a sequence that seems to have been cut from the episode at some point, given the visual evidence I've been able to dig up on YouTube).  So I'll give the Wang animators the benefit of the doubt, for consistency, if nothing else. 

Rally, rinse, repeat.

On second thought, scratch that...

It's a bit harder to overlook the opening of the scene at the Dukka Records recording studio.  Before the Frank Welker-voiced engineer gives the corpulent Melvis Pigsley the go-ahead, we hear the muffled word "Take" in a voice that DOESN'T sound like Welker's.  Evidently, one of voice director David Weimers' cast instructions got onto the master tape, and no one caught the error or bothered to edit it out.  This goof is particularly troublesome in light of the fact that, while the quality of the animation in DuckTales isn't always consistent, the audio production has hitherto been impeccable.  (I'm also aware that some of the YouTube posts of this ep have sound out of sync with picture in Act Three.  I don't recall this problem during the initial episode airings, so I'm figuring that this was some sort of transfer problem.)

Sloppy framing and teetering production values aside, the remainder of the episode can best be described as one continuous laugh riot.  Not all of the jokes hit home, but most of them do, including the easily overlooked, yet nonetheless amusing, scene at the Mothers of Criminals meeting.  Here, we see a side of Ma Beagle that we've never before been privy to, namely, her twisted "pride" in her family's criminal accomplishments (which was earlier lampshaded in the "Duckburg's Most Wanted" TV-watching scene).  Ma's proclamation in "Take Me Out of the Ballgame" that "Cheating is a family tradition!" is something of a precursor of this, but her admission of shame that "four of my boys have... gone legit" adds an extra dose of irony or three to the mix.  Ma's later desire to be "Bramble Soups' Mother of the Year" in "New Gizmo-Kids on the Block" is but a pale echo of this "bad is good" theme, which wouldn't have been out of place in one of Barks' sourer stories.

We also learn here -- though the lesson won't really be rammed home until "The Bride Wore Stripes" -- that Ma might suffer a tad from OCS.  It isn't enough for her that the Beagles have become rock stars; instead, she pushes them and pushes them to "suffer for [their] art" until they finally snap and throw her out.  And it isn't just verbal nagging, either, as her threatening of Big Time with those "little piggies" makes clear.  Perhaps we can formulate a new theory as to why Ma has "as many boys as a toad has warts."  She just can't HELP herself.

Of course, the juxtaposition of the Ducks' world with that of popular music isn't exactly new.  As one might expect, the Nephews were the first of the clan to express any sort of appreciation of rock and roll, starting with a dogface simulacrum of the original rock star ("Mutilated Music," DONALD DUCK #53, May 1957, drawn by Tony Strobl and John Liggera):

I like that "weeks ago."  Yes, there once was a time when people thought that rock and roll, like mambo and other briefly trendy musical forms, would eventually fade away...

HD&L were back in fanboy mode several years after this in "The Paper Route Panic" (DONALD DUCK #66, July 1959, written by Bob Gregory, drawn by Strobl and Liggera).  This time, they were the fans (literally -- the ONLY fans) of a cowboy-hatted crooner named Paisley Mantee.  I suppose that you could drape the mantle of rock over this obsession by calling Mantee a practitioner of rockabilly.  HD&L must have really had it bad if they were willing to spend a $50 newspaper delivery prize on Mantee's records.  That's $50 in 1959 money, folks.

Carl Barks, however reluctantly, dipped a toe into the "pop pool" with his late Scrooge adventure "Queen of the Wild Dog Pack" (UNCLE $CROOGE #62, March 1966), which finds the boys enamored with the music of Tweedy Teentwirp.  Oddly enough, when Scrooge confronts the kids over the noise from their TV set in "Beaglemania," Huey holds a "boomlet box" in a manner that is disquietingly similar to the ways in which various characters in "Dog Pack" zone out while listening to Tweedy on transistors.

Perhaps more relevant to the current discussion is Barks' invocation of The Beatles in "The Great Wig Mystery" (UNCLE $CROOGE #52, September 1964), both in general theme (Duckburg having gone wiggy for moptop wigs) and in explicit mention.  If you're perturbed at the idea of "Beaglemania" showing direct parodies of Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Elton John, and Michael Jackson, consider that Barks was striking while the iron was red-hot in his own way; he composed "Wig Mystery" in the early months of 1964, when America was enduring the virulent early stage of Beatlemania.  Barks may not have shown a version of the moptops, but he wasn't above invoking their actual names for the purposes of a gag.

He could be diddling MUCH WORSE things, believe me...

During "Time is Money," the series had prepared the groundwork for the kids' immense enthusiasm over the Sky McFly show.  Indeed, Bubba's immediate commandeering of McFly phrases like "Get rude, dude!" and "Bop till you drop!" was supposed to help define his personality (more's the pity, but I digress).  That being said, I find the depiction of the kids' love of McFly in "Beaglemania" to be a whole lot cuter, primarily due to the inclusion of Webby.  After so many instances of the boys blowing Webby off for her choices of favored pastimes "just because she's a girl," it's refreshing to see her fully accepted as part of a fan-group.  And not simply accepted; Dewey even dances with her!  I wonder why Webby didn't do the "change partners" routine at some point and dance with Huey or Louie.  Perhaps Dewey's being the cleverest of the Nephews (cf. "Duck in the Iron Mask") held some sort of cachet for her.

The Beagles' performance of "Boogie Beagle Blues" is... well, unlike Babyface, Bankjob, and Bebop/Bugle's harmonizing in "Time Teasers," it'd be a stretch to call it an actual song.  In the original performance, Welker and McCann only sing the actual phrase "... and sing the Boogie Beagle Blues," "talking" through everything else.  It's easy to overlook this because of the flashy accompanying visuals, which include Burger biting through his guitar neck, the drum set being blown up, and Bouncer firing pistols directly into the camera.  In case you're wondering, no, that last bit has never been censored to my knowledge.  Presumably, the blue-pencil people would have been more offended had Bouncer fired the pistols up in the air, or, heaven forbid, twirled them around in his hands, the way Fenton did during the scene on the dam in "Liquid Assets."  The version of "Blues" that you're more likely to be familiar with, the one on the 1990 Disney Afternoon Songbook CD, has somewhat smoother production values, and Welker and Chuck McCann sing just a little bit more, but basically, it's six of one, six and a quarter (Scrooge: "Not one of mine... but I can give it a good home!") of the other.

It goes without saying that this performance would have been a perfect time to bring Bebop/Bugle back as a supporting player.  Heck, in one of that character's several incarnations (the "Scroogerello" one), he even talks in rhythm!  Tell me that that wouldn't have been a useful contribution to the production.  By this time, unfortunately, the DT writers have settled upon Big Time, Bouncer, Burger, and Baggy as THE de facto Beagle Boys, and over-familiarity has long since started to breed contempt (not that some didn't possess such an attitude about the DT Beagles from the beginning).  The constant post-season-one use of the "Feckless Four" can usually be put down to laziness.  Here is one instance in which the lassitude made the ep something distinctly less than it could have been.

Through the mysterious alchemy of instant stardom, the Beagles' song is soon "#1 with a bullet... and I'm not kidding" (my choice for the single cleverest gag of the episode).  I suppose that I should be surprised that the strongarm tactics that the Beagles use to crash the music biz -- first forcing Dukka Records to sign them to a contract by threatening to torch the recording studio, then putting the gun on the KDUK DJ to get him to play their platter -- didn't get them into legal trouble before they got involved in contract disputes with Scrooge.  It's long been crystal-clear, however, that the denizens of Duckburg (the DuckTales version, at least) can be conned or browbeaten into doing just about anything.

Ma soon takes full charge of her boys' affairs, making demands on Scrooge and hounding the Beagles into all manner of fan-propitiating activities.  We're invited to blame her for the costume changes that turn the new pop stars into what can only be called "The Village Beagles," since Big Time is heard protesting the wardrobe choice at the record store.  The truth might be a little more complicated, though; the Beagles had already been seen wearing the garish gear on the cover of ROLLING DUCK, presumably before Ma had muscled her way into the Brian Epstein role, and they don't seem to be having any problem with it there.  Actually, Big Time has much less reason to be unnerved by his costume than does Bouncer.  Somewhere, Gyro's Helper is shuddering silently, and the members of Electric Light Orchestra are fuming that they didn't think of this first.

Most of the subsequent gags, like that of the Beagles' sartorial invocations of various genres of rock music, are pretty broad in nature -- a fact that GeoX brings up as one of the ep's negative aspects.  In truth, I think that GeoX missed the point here.  The fact that the gags are broad and silly pales in comparison to the overwhelmingly bizarre nature of the episode's context in and of itself.  It's shocking enough that we got an episode in which the Beagles become rock stars and move into a mansion called Disgraceland; let's not quibble too much about authentically subversive rock-industry-satire tropes.

After being given the heave-ho by her rebellious brood, Ma resorts to the time-tested approach of a cheesy disguise, posing as ROLLING DUCK reporter Nina Quackwell in order to frame the Beagles for a robbery.  In a further indication that she's playing for keeps, Ma goes beyond the earlier fistic threat she'd made to Big Time and actually mugs the real Nina on camera in order to steal Nina's clothes.  OK, it isn't as bad as killing someone to get a dress, as the 1800s Ma of "Once Upon a Dime" did, but it's bad enough.  Ma evidently has come a ways from the days of "Robot Robbers" when she merely evaded the security guard at Glomgold's construction site.

Ma benefits from the wonders of Spandex.

The "robbery" itself has two interesting features: the victimized bank is our familiar four-walled friend, the "First Interfeather Bank," and one of the cops who arrest the Beagles is female.  The Duckburg legal system may be terminally inept, but you can't say that the city's law enforcement operatives don't practice progressive hiring methods.

Of course, in the manner of tone-deaf celebrity worshippers everywhere, the Beagles' fans aren't bothered by their arrest, and thus Scrooge and Ma must join forces in order to burst the band's balloon.  I do wish that Seidenberg had avoided the obvious trap and had had the desperate Scrooge say something less drastic than "I don't think that my bank account can take this much punishment!".  Scrooge's "entire fortune" doesn't always have to be at putative stake in order for the consequences of an episode to be meaningful.  Any reasonable loss should be enough to pitch Scrooge into panic mode, since he values a portion of his fortune just as much as he values the whole.  The oversight is less fatal here than in "Yuppy Ducks," but it's still annoying.

The Beagles' final scene with McFly is arguably the sharpest jab of all at the hypocrisies of the rock business, as McFly's cheerful attitude quickly sours and is replaced with a threatening one once it becomes clear that the boys don't have a new song ready to perform.  Ma then pounces and extracts a promise to be good in exchange for a "new" (lyrically, at least) ditty.  A rain of refuse from the indignant audience subsequently renders the Beagles "multiply-hit one-hit wonders."  They're left to lick their wounds and, presumably, to find access to their accumulated wealth barred for some vaguely plausible reason that we're apparently expected to work out ourselves.

I perfectly understand why certain folks might hate "Beaglemania."  I prefer to regard it as one of the series' boldest ventures, and, therefore, am willing to cut it a little slack on the small stuff.  Perhaps it's the sheer, unapologetic chutzpah with which the idea is punched over, but, after that initial period of fear and loathing, I came to accept the episode on its own terms... not unlike the manner in which a fair number of folks grew to tolerate, and then perhaps even enjoy, rock music when it first burst on the scene. 

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Bumper #21: "Quadricycle"

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"DuckBlurbs"

Terry Talks:  I've long wondered whether Terry McGovern based the persona of Screamin' Sky McFly on his own persona as a DJ in the San Francisco Bay area.  I couldn't find a recording of his dating that far back, but I was able to find a clip from one of his shows on the Internet oldies station, Boss Boss Radio.  (Insert blibbering lips where desired.)

In addition, here's an interview with McGovern conducted for the California Historical Radio Society.  The revelation that Terry was responsible for one of the many iconic lines from the original (and I do mean ORIGINAL) Star Wars movie will be a great "I did not know that" moment for many of you.

Dickie Bird is the Word:  Italian comics maestro Romano Scarpa plunged more deeply than Barks would ever have dared to into the pop-music waters with his original character Paperetta Ye-Ye, aka Dickie Duck, who first appeared in TOPOLINO #577 (December 18, 1966).  Like most Americans, I haven't had that much exposure to Dickie, but, judging from the fact that she's seen wearing (and grooving to) a transistor radio ring in that initial appearance, I gather that "musical fangirl" was one of her defining traits, at least during the late 60s.

(Greg) We begin this one with the STOCK FOOTAGE OF DOOM and down in the basement as Scrooge is giving the dollar bills a bubble bath and drying them on clotheslines. Duckworth just stands there; probably wondering about Scrooge's sanity at this point. Scrooge puts the dollar bill through the ringer and Duckworth pins the bills on the clothesline. Apparently; in Duckberg, Scrooge can launder money and get away with it.

At least, he has been able to since UNCLE $CROOGE #6 (June-August 1954), when Carl Barks drew him doing the same thing for the issue's cover.

(Greg) Duckworth even references Frank Sinatra and some other guy which earns a blow off from the nephews as they call Scrooge a fuddy duddy. Well screw you nephews! Frank Sinatra is awesome! Rock and roll is great; but that doesn't mean Frank Sinatra automatically sucks because he doesn't do rock and roll.

"Some other guy" wasn't too bad, either.  I might even have voted for him over Frank as "the winner of the hog-calling contest."

(Greg) Scrooge blows it off because he has work to do and the kids walk upstairs calling Scrooge more ancient than Bubba. Bubba is as confused as I am.

"My God!  I'm either a gimmick character or an unnecessary

extra Nephew.  Rock, hard place."

(Greg) So we head to KDUK radio studio (with big ass D on top of the building) and then pan down to floor level and then go inside the studio as a pig Elvis [sings] so badly that he has to mangle the words to avoid infringement.

The building is actually the Dukka Records building; the Beagles don't infiltrate KDUK until they threaten the DJ (which makes more sense, given that they'd have to sign a record contract before a record actually existed).

Is the Elvis parody here cruel, or what?  I know that the "fat-farm" and "overdressed" tropes have long since been beaten to death -- or, given that we're talking about Elvis in the context of death, maybe they haven't been -- but Melvis Pigsley doesn't catch anything resembling a break here.  You almost find yourself feeling embarrassed that Scrooge winds up hiring Melvis to replace the Beagles.

(Greg) Mrs. Featherby goes to the door and she gets MURDERED by the Beagle Boys and Ma who are running away from their fans... [Later] the fanboys and fangirls break down the door and use it as a bridge to squash Mrs. Featherby (Again; what is this no male on female contact rule again?) and head to the window. 

Remember Fenton and HD&L asking for "hazard pay" and "hazard allowances" in "The Land of Trala La"?  Poor Mrs. F. ought to consider putting in for similar compensation here.  OUCH!!

 

(Greg) Ma gives Scrooge a list of demands which Scrooge blows off because it will cost a fortune. Ma blows it off because it's in their contract and if Scrooge violates the deal, they split. There's one problem to this: Scrooge can simply end the deal now and the episodes ends in less than a minute.

Scrooge probably was scared to death of what he might have to pay in legal costs if the Beagles took him to court over the matter.  Considering that it's the Duckburg legal system we're talking about here, and considering that the Beagles once succeeded in taking said legal system over, I can forgive Scrooge for eschewing a separation, at least until the odds are clearly on his side.

(Greg) After the commercial break; we head to the Money Bin Desolate version as we go to the vault and the Beagle Boys dive into the money and the law of heavy metals has forsaken us.

(GeoX) And from there [the Beagles] become big stars with their own money bin.  Which they're able to swim in, contradicting previous episodes.

Well, they were seen swimming and playing in Scrooge's Bin in "Bubba Trubba."  Plus, they're not swimming in their own Bin so much as they're sort of wallowing in it.  No biggie, I deem.

Next: Episode 87, "The Big Flub."

You Snooze, You Lose... Sleep, That Is

I finally got a new CPAP machine with a revised prescription to combat my sleep apnea.  In case any of my readers think that this medical issue sounds a touch exaggerated, here is what Nicky would have to deal with if I DIDN'T have a working machine.  She doesn't usually film me in such "compromising positions" without my knowledge, but she heard a strange sound clear on the other side of the house and came to investigate.

In other, less noisy medical news, I'll be having my kidney transplant pre-op consultation at Johns Hopkins on Monday.  Once that is done, I'll provide you with a more detailed update on exactly what I will be facing in several weeks' time.

Comics Reviews: MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDS FOREVER #5-#6 (IDW Publishing, May-June 2014)

Thomas Zahler had a lot of ground to make up in the two most recent issues of MLP: FRIENDS FOREVER, seeing as how his TWILIGHT SPARKLE script for the defunct MICROSERIES... uh, series... was easily the most vanilla-nothing, instantly forgettable of those wildly inconsistent efforts.  I'm happy to report that he does much better here.  Though each issue is not without its flaws, these scripts at least display some enthusiasm and some reasonable insight into how the characters involved work.

** SPOILERS **

In #5, Fluttershy asks for Zecora's aid after the former's animal acquaintances suddenly develop the ability to talk directly with her.  (I find it much easier to imagine Fluttershy using Twilight as her first-choice magical consultant, but perhaps Twilight was otherwise occupied with princess duties.)  After more than a few overly repetitive false starts, Zecora ultimately figures out that the critters were given the power of speech by none other than Discord, who wanted to give 'Shy the experience of interacting on a more personal level with her little friends.  This is actually a nice shout-out to the fact that Fluttershy was the pony primarily responsible for befriending Discord and turning him to the side of good (or, at the very least, away from the side of evil), a theme introduced in the TV series' third-season episode "Keep Calm and Flutter On" and carried through to the end of the recently completed fourth season.  The presentation of Discord here is, however, somewhat problematic.  You'd expect that a "kinder and gentler" Discord would be better behaved than is his normal snarky wont, but Zahler's Discord is just this side of somnolent; the only hint of his true nature (if it could be called that) is an elbow-in-the-ribs jab at Zecora's propensity to speak in rhyme.  Zahler does better with Zecora, but some of the zebra's rhymes can be politely described as strained, and how would this purveyor of "natural magic" know anything about Rorschach blots and ESP cards?  At least Zecora doesn't have all the answers right away, bumbling around a bit before finding out the truth.  This is a vast improvement on the show's occasional tendency to use Zecora as a politically correct deus ex machina.  I'm also pleased to note that Fluttershy is not treated as a completely hopeless and helpless shrinking violet -- a characterization that has long since curdled IMHO -- but as a character who at least has the sense to be proactive and try to figure out what is happening around her.  Thanks to the somewhat more progressive portrayals of the protagonists, the good here ends up outweighing the bad.

#6 gives us the Clash of the Titan... ic Egos... as Rainbow Dash is called to a distant land to, as it turns out, dig the devious magical con artist Trixie out of a self-imposed crisis which has cast the latter in the role of an unwilling Queen to a pack of (surprisingly benign, albeit stupid) Diamond Dogs.  Trixie is incredibly popular with a certain segment of MLP fandom, and this is her first featured appearance in the comics, so I was paying particularly close attention to how she would be depicted.  Well, Zahler gets the ego and the self-delusion right, but he completely bollixes Trixie's distinctive speech pattern, in which she refers to herself as "The Great and Powerful Trixie" and similar third-pony phrases.  Here, it's strictly "I-I-I" all the way.  Perhaps Trixie mended some of her self-centered ways after being humbled in season three's "Magic Duel," but I should think that her manner of speech would have taken a bit longer to refine.  It's also never made clear here why Trixie chose to call upon Rainbow Dash for help.  Because Dash can fly, ergo, make a quick getaway?  I guess.  I'm hoping for better, and more in-character, things from Trixie in the story arc that is scheduled to follow the recently-completed "alternate Equestria" arc in the regular MLP title.  Another reason why this issue falls a little short compared to the Fluttershy-Zecora effort is the Agnes Garbowska artwork, which continues to be far too picture-book and Colorforms-ish for my taste.  There's a hint of laziness in the constant use of panels featuring single-character, from-the-neck-up head shots.  I will give Agnes some credit for a nice cover composition, with its subtle reference to the Elements of Harmony, but I greatly prefer Tony Fleecs' work in #5.  (Thanks for dispensing with those disturbing mouth-distortion shots, Tony.)  Despite the problems, I did find the end product reasonably enjoyable.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 85, "Dough Ray Me"

Funny thing: like Greg, I immediately realized that "Dough Ray Me" had certain antecedents in Disney Duck history.  They just weren't the ones you might think.  When Joe Torcivia and I commented on the episode for our DUCKTALES INDEX, the fiduciary connection between "Dough Ray" and the Disney "edu-tainment" short Scrooge McDuck and Money (1967)...

... seemed far less relevant than the ep's thematic similarity to a pair of humorous "escalation stories" penned by John Lustig and William Van Horn for the "Gladstone I" DUCKTALES title: "The Bedeviled Dime" (DT #9, August 1989) and "The Billion-Bean Stampede" (DT #13, May 1990).  In both of these fanciful tales, a small problem metastatizes into a huge one, causing massive trouble for Duckburg.  Needless to say, Carl Barks whelped several similar puppies during his long tenure, but Lustig and Van Horn's efforts came more quickly to mind, thanks to their use of the DuckTales characters (well, Launchpad, anyway) and their use of off-the-wall throwaway characters and gags.  In retrospect, "Dough Ray" doesn't seem quite as zany as it once did, but Burger Beagle's obsession with prison "puddin'" (inspired by that one Barks Beagle's affection for prunes, perhaps?), the "Scrooge McDuck's Money Mania" video game (which I half suspect that McDuck Industries itself had a hand in, given that the pixellated Beagles lose even when they win), and the presence of a couple of endearingly wacky supporting players speak to a generally lighter approach than one might expect under the circumstances.

That's not to say, of course, that "Dough Ray" doesn't follow, however tentatively, in the web-steps of Scrooge McDuck and Money in terms of teaching a useful lesson about the dangers of inflation.  The difference is that the proliferation of coins vibrating to the influence of Gyro Gearloose's Multiphonic Duplicator is the mere backdrop against which the comedic events of the TV production take place.  In Scrooge and Money, the whole purpose of the enterprise is to inform viewers about the history of money and banking and the importance of keeping a budget.  The level of seriousness of the "educational aspect" of "Dough Ray" can be gauged by the fact that Fenton -- you know, that accountant guy -- doesn't seem to grasp the concept of money losing its value any better than do Scrooge's alternately conniving and super-naive Nephews.  Granted, Fenton got his business education via mail-order, but you would think that he would have learned a little something about inflation's effects before now.  Despite a couple of cutting comments from Scrooge and HD&L about Fenton's intellect, he actually doesn't do all that much wrong here -- his plan to have the Beagle Boys gather up all the duplicated money makes sense, given that he and everyone else are working under the impression that the money will eventually explode -- but such a gaffe makes one wonder why Scrooge doesn't simply limit his contributions to money-bin guard duty in the guise of Gizmoduck.

HD&L don't come off as poorly here as they did in "Yuppy Ducks" -- that would be a well-nigh impossible task, to be frank -- but they don't cover themselves in glory, either.  After blowing their entire allowance on video games, they respond to Scrooge's suggestion to take up summertime work by becoming "Dirtbusters" for hire (I wonder how they managed to acquire those protective suits?  Wouldn't those cost money, too?), only to wreak chaos and ultimately cause Mrs. Beakley (who probably looks back with horror on this ep as her one unfortunate experience of "torture porn") to be showered with dust and grime.  They then proceed to trash Gyro's lab in similar fashion.  They haven't even done anything dishonest yet, and already they're several points in arrears.

After learning about Gyro's Multiphonic Duplicator, the lads... stop me (and time, while you're at it) if you've heard this before... spirit the device away under the guise of giving it a test run "to help Gyro out."  For several reasons, I'd argue that HD&L's swiping of the Duplicator is a more serious offense than their earlier borrowing of the Time Teaser.  Firstly, Gyro tells them that the gizmo doesn't yet have all the bugs worked out of it.  This notion of premature employment of a Gearloose invention, which will also play a role in the upcoming "The Big Flub," seems to be primarily a second-season conceit.  In the past, Gyro's creations generally either worked fine, worked "too well" (e.g., Armstrong), or were "hijacked" to perform nefarious deeds that were not in the original product description (e.g., the giant construction robots being turned into "Robot Robbers" by the Beagle Boys).  HD&L's ignoring of Gyro's warning, however, pales in comparison to the boys' inability to recognize that what they're doing is the functional equivalent of counterfeiting, which is, as a Barks character might say, "awful unlawful."  The script partially obscures this by having the Nephews start with duplicating the non-monetary contents of their room, but, like Fenton, the boys really should have picked up on such an obvious point much earlier in the game.  (Not that HD&L are alone in this oversight; Scrooge doesn't mention anything about illegality either, though he can perhaps be excused for the mental hiccup, since he is more concerned with the fact that the duplicated money has rendered his Binned lucre all but worthless.)

In another anticipation of "The Big Flub," Fenton starts the episode in go-getting mode, convinced that he deserves a raise and then seeking to justify his request for a salary boost by coming up with a new money-making idea.  It's nice to see Fenton's desire to "rise above the common Duck" reignited, since it generally makes for good comedy.  Here, though, not so much; Fenton's "Great Crackshello" act is pretty lame and probably owes its existence to the simple fact that Brooks Wachtel, who provided the story here, was a performing magician in between writing gigs.  If Scrooge weren't already in a bad mood when this scene started, then Fenton's performance would certainly have put him in one.

Thanks to HD&L's heedless getting and spending of the duplicated money and the replicated riches' vulnerability to redoubling at the sound of a bell, Fenton's cheerful comment, "What could go wrong?" (yet another harkening forward to "The Big Flub," in which he says almost exactly the same thing about Flubble Gum!), is soon overtaken by events.  Of the specific gags used here, only the scene of a car spinning its wheels in a pile of piasters, as if the latter were a snowdrift, strikes me as truly clever and inspired, in a physical sense at least.  That's OK, though, because the character-focused gags involving the put-upon mittel-European movie director, price-gouging dentist, Don Hills-voiced bank president, and several others partially make up for it.  These gags probably needed to be a little wackier in order to truly achieve Lustig and Van Horn-level quality, but they're definitely progressing along those lines.  Gizmoduck's brief contribution to the fun, in which he flies onto the scene only to crash into the movie-set bell, is arguably his lowest point of the series, simply because that is literally all he does.  It probably would have been better had he not gotten involved at all.

The tale's logic begins to turn wobbly once Fenton hatches his scheme to turn the Beagle Boys into unwitting collectors of the unstable duplicated money.  I'm not merely referring to the fact that, during their jail break, the location of the Beagles' prison cell appears to change two or three times, much as Scrooge and Mrs. Beakley's cell shifted around for plot convenience's sake in "The Billionaire Beagle Boys Club."  The real problem, which GeoX is quick to note, is that it would literally be impossible for the Beagles to gather up ALL of the duplicated money.  The money left in the streets, maybe, but it's more than likely than more than a few Duckburgians who have taken their money indoors or deposited it in banks (which, as we see in the bank scene, now appear to be jammed full with cash) would be unwilling or unable to turn it over to the Beagles.  This leads me to wonder: Did the Beagles really need to be used in this episode?  One might argue that a Beagle-less story could have unfolded along the same lines as Barks' "A Financial Fable" (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #126), with the Duckburgians running hither and thither to spend their money, only to wind up paying it back to Scrooge, who has stuck to his last as the one remaining productive citizen in town.  The analogy breaks down, however, due to the fact that this particular money-storm is localized -- in "A Financial Fable," the tornado literally spreads Scrooge's wealth all over the country, making the breakdown of the economy much more dramatic and universal -- and, of course, the perceived undesirability of turning the "hero" of the series into a profiteer.  In order to restore the status quo, the episode as written needed a fall guy, and I suppose that the Beagles were as good a choice as anyone.

Even if you're willing to buy the improbable notion that the Beagles do manage to corral all of the duplicated cash (AND construct a Money Bin on short notice in which to store it!), you still have to deal with the "explosion/implosion" business.  Frankly, the ep doesn't handle this aspect of the story very well.  The problem is that Gyro's explanation of the misunderstanding -- that thinking that the coins will explode "was a slight miscalculation on my part" -- is worded in a hopelessly sloppy manner.  It implicitly assumes that Gyro had told the Ducks that the coins would explode in an earlier conversation... only he never actually did.  (For confirmation, refer back to the phone palaver at the end of Act Two.)  It would have been far more sensible for Gyro to have corrected Scrooge's mistake, mentioned that the coins weren't going to explode, and then tried to explain that they were fated to implode, only to be cut off by Scrooge's attack on Fenton.  The verbal assault is, of course, completely unjustified, since there was no way for Fenton to know that he had been operating under a false assumption.  Here is one instance in which making Fenton the goat (a decision that is fully confirmed at the end when Scrooge nixes his raise) bespeaks lazy writing more than it does humor that flows naturally out of the story.

The implosion sequence includes some nifty visuals, which makes it all the more unfortunate that the ep turns to the cheese-paring approach of reusing a sound clip from "Frozen Assets" (Fenton's yelping when he is first encased by the Gizmoduck suit) to accompany Scrooge's rescue of Fenton from the maelstrom.  It strikes me as funny that Fenton needed to be rescued from the disaster, whereas the Beagle Boys, who were inside the Bin as it imploded, wind up none the worse for wear, suffering only the dejection of losing their fortune.  It would stand to reason that the Beagles would have been far more likely to have perished in such a situation.

"Dough Ray Me" remains entertaining today despite the manifest weaknesses of its last act.  I'd be more likely to turn to Scrooge McDuck and Money as a Duck-themed primer on economic matters, but this offering still ranks as one of the more enjoyable second-season efforts.

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Bumper #20: "Mummy"

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"DuckBlurbs"

This isn't the first time that Gyro Gearloose and an "implosion scenario" have (quite forcefully) come together.  See the recent post on Joe Torcivia's THE ISSUE AT HAND blog in which Joe reproduces some panels from the obscure Gyro story "Operation Implosion" (UNCLE $CROOGE #82, August 1969) and links them thematically to the latest chapter in Dan Cunningham's discussion of the history of the Disney Comics line.

A few years after the DUCKTALES INDEX appeared, Van Horn, working solo this time, returned to the "duplication" theme in his famous adventure story "The Black Moon" (Gladstone DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #24, February 1994).  Our own GeoX wrote an excellent review of this tale some time ago.  Suffice it to say that Van Horn's use of the "duplication" notion here is far less wacky, and far more ill-boding, than it was in those earlier joint efforts with Lustig.

 

(Greg) Gyro explains all through the fact that he has two of everything including his pal Light Bulb which makes his first cameo in Ducktales in a long while (The Money Vanishes comes to mind).

This was, in fact, Helper's first appearance since that episode.  Happily, it would not be the last.

(Greg) Gyro wants to discuss lunch as he brings out the tv dinners which are broccoli stew. He duplicates them and then pops them into the microwave as the nephews bail out the door.

In "Scrooge's Last Adventure," Gyro will acknowledge the receipt of a broccoli sandwich from Mrs. Beakley.  I sense a rather insipid trend here.

(Greg) [Gyro] gets more confused as he adjusts his glasses on an FPS shot as everything he duplicated already has increased from two to four. Gyro deduces that he needs to redo his calculations. Oh and apparently; he needs the adjust in the glasses because he never sees the fact that in the next scene changer, we see the nephews have stolen his duplicator. Logic break #1 for the episode six and a half minutes in. Now I'm confused. Did the nephews duplicate the stuff behind his back; or is there more to this?

This is actually a nice foreshadowing of the later discovery that the sound of a bell (in this case, the microwave timer) causes things to duplicate. 

(Greg)  So the nephews go to the drawers (NOT THOSE ONES!) and on top is a small box containing all their marbles... and [they] bring out the purple “Great Masher” marble from Pearl of Wisdom.

Which, by all rights, should no longer exist, since it was used to detonate a torpedo in that episode.  I guess that we need to take the Nephew's comment that "you can never have too many of these" to mean that the boys had stashed a few additional "Mashers" in reserve.

(Greg) Fenton proclaims that the device is from Gyro which surprises me since I don't recall the nephews ever informing him that it was from Gyro.

They actually did, which explains his subsequent remark: "I can't believe that crackpot actually hit the jackpot!"

(Greg)  So we head to Gyro's residence as Gyro is using the magnifying lens on three Light Bulbs (wait; three? We clearly saw four of them made. Logic break #1 for the episode for real at ten minutes in); and then Scrooge and Fenton barge in as Gyro deduces that the audio duplication machine (logic break #2: Now there are eight Light Bulbs on the table for no reason whatsoever)...

This isn't really a logical problem if you assume that an off-camera bell sound had previously caused the four Helpers to double to eight.  More problematic is the fact that, when HD&L ring the doorbell, everything duplicates BUT the Helpers.

(Greg) The nephews use the human chain ladder spot and go to the payphone and insert a silver dollar into it. Probably the only thing that hasn't risen in prices.

Which is somewhat peculiar, since the Nephews mentioned earlier that they were forced to pay $30 to use a gumball machine.  Public utility vs. private enterprise must be in play here.

(Greg) The heels load up the trucks with sacks of money. It should be noted that it's the same bank we [saw] in Super Ducktales among other episodes...

Yup, the good old "First Interfeather Bank," which dates all the way back to "Hero for Hire."

Next: Episode 86, "Beaglemania."