DUCKTALES Fanfic Review: "The Sincere Fraud" by "Commander"

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. -- Robert Frost

Of course, what happens AFTER they take you in is often the most interesting part...

I'm back with another DuckTales fanfic focus... and the angst is STRONG with this one!  Thankfully, DuckTales doesn't appear to have inspired nearly as many of these soul-sucking fics as, let's say, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers (does anyone remember the concept of "Gadget-gouging"?  If not, then be thankful) or Darkwing Duck (the Gosalyn-Drake relationship was always rife with potential for emotional exploitation, and numerous writers have taken advantage).  The TV series simply didn't provide sufficient raw material for the introduction of soap-opera elements.  With THE LIFE AND TIMES OF $CROOGE McDUCK still well in the future, the show's explorations of Scrooge's past were comparatively straightforward, and they focused almost entirely on his individual exploits.  The Nephews and Webby were too young to enter "the dating zone" and similar locales where adolescent Weltschmerz might have a chance to get its hooks into them.  As for Launchpad, he was primarily concerned with where his next crash was coming from.

Of the main cast of DuckTales, Fenton Crackshell came the closest to experiencing some legitimate angst, thanks to his occasionally rocky relationship with Gandra Dee, the demands of his "M'Ma," and his struggles to reconcile his "normal" and superheroic identities.  However, these experiences  were generally played for laughs.  The mere fact that such stories were attempted with Fenton indicates just how promising a character he was... and what a shame it was that he was left abandoned on a metaphorical siding following the TV series' shutdown, with no further opportunities to build upon the ideas that had already been introduced.

The prolific fanfic writer "Commander" appears to have reasoned, logically enough, that, in order to introduce any heavy-duty emotional dynamics into the world of DuckTales as a whole, the characters would have to be pushed forward in time.  OK, I know what many of you must already be thinking...

... and, yes, HD&L are thrust into middle school in the epic under discussion here, but there's little indication that "Commander" was influenced in any meaningful way by Quack Pack.  During the traumatizing events of "The Sincere Fraud, " the boys are anything but ironically detached snark-dealers. 

"Commander" apparently planned to write a whole series of fics set in his personal version of the DT "universe" -- which turns out to be a mixture of the world of the TV series and his own take on Don Rosa's LATO$M timeline -- but "The Sincere Fraud" turned out to be the only major product that survived the vagaries of time and the demands of "real life."  He did, however, manage to set the table for the story in the reminiscence tale "Sepia Tone," which basically consists of the seven-year-old Louie finding an old family album and asking Scrooge to tell him about some of his and his brothers' "foreducks."  It's a pretty quick read, and I encourage you to give it a look if you get the chance, but here's a summary of the significant takeaways.  Some of them will be quite familiar, some not so much.

(1)  The McDuck siblings, in order of age: Scrooge, Matilda, Hortense (as per Rosa).

(2) Matilda married Ludwig Von Drake (as per the Rosa Family Tree) and died young.  Scratch "A Letter from Home" (preferably, while shedding a silent tear or two).

(3) Hortense married Quackmore, and they had Donald and Della two years apart.  That is, Donald and Della were not twins.  This fact actually turns out to be rather significant.

(4)  Quackmore joined the Navy during World War II and died in action when Donald was nine years old.  Since Donald was a "Mama's boy" and never really that close to his Dad, that was what really motivated him to join the Navy... AND, more than that, to make the service an actual career.

(5)  Della was the proverbial "bad seed," getting into repeated, and increasingly serious, trouble as a youngster and developing a knack for conning people into making them do what she wanted them to do.  In the process, she also developed a bad feud with her older brother Donald.  Don's original intention, to keep her from running completely off the "road of life," was actually a good one, but he ultimately got so angry at her that he came to believe that he had always hated her.  For her part, Della resented Donald trying to butt into her life, and he similarly assumed the role of a monster in her own troubled mind. Della ultimately got knocked up by someone or other -- I'm guessing that the picture of Della's anonymous mate on the Rosa Family Tree is meant to be a generic composite; if so, then it's probably an overly flattering one -- and had her triplets, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

 Idealized portrayal of Duck relationship #1

(6) Incapable of supporting herself, yet desperate to provide for her kids, Della tried to rob a bank and was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison.  The Nephews, who by that time were three years old, were subsequently transferred over to Donald's care.  The famous 1938 DONALD DUCK Sunday strip that introduced HD&L is therefore in error in at least one respect: The document that was sent to Donald to inform him of the transfer was probably a lot more formal than a simple handwritten note.

(7)  At the age of five -- yes, you read that right -- Donald joined the Navy, and HD&L came to live with their next closest relative, Scrooge.  Commence the events of DuckTales.  IF you can buy the idea of the Nephews being that young at the start of "Don't Give Up the Ship," then this actually explains a lot about why the characters act the way they do during the "dock scene."  As I noted in my review of that episode, it is quite clear that the Ducks of "Ship" do not know one another all that well, and it is therefore next to impossible to imagine them sharing any joint adventures between the time Donald assumed charge of the Nephews and the time he left to go to sea.  Heck, even if they had wanted to have an adventure, there was hardly enough time for them to do so!

Take a moment to consider the consequences of this setup.  "Commander"'s interpretation takes the events of "Don't Give Up the Ship," and subsequently of DuckTales, as being the TRUE Duck "canon," at least in an adventurous sense.  Any previous tales told by Barks (basically, the only Duck-bard who was relevant at the time of DT's debut) are hereby rendered null and void... EVEN THE ONES in which Donald and HD&L went on adventures all by themselves!  We're dealing with the cleanest of whiteboards here!

(8)  Webby was three years old when she and her "grammy" came to live with Scrooge and HD&L.  Despite Webby's occasionally "childish" behavior, that age also seems a little low.  Perhaps young Ducks mature at a quicker rate than humans of a similar age.  (If nothing else, then their memories improve quickly; HD&L do not have any clear memories of their mother, but, in the span of two years, their memories are suddenly working on roughly the same level as a typical adult's.)

Flash forward a decade or so.  Scrooge is older and creakier, and he now allows himself the luxury of a day off every week (gasp!), but he remains feisty and driven.  HD&L are now 14, are in eighth grade, and have developed very distinct personalities.  Webby is 12, is in sixth grade, is about to start dating, and may also harbor a secret crush on Dewey.  Mrs. Beakley, sad to say, is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's disease, and Scrooge has become Webby's legal guardian.  Donald is still in the Navy, albeit on leave, and Daisy is pushing him to finally "pop the question" (about time, don'tcha think?). 

** MAJOR SPOILERS **

THE STORY:  Having secured an early release from prison for good behavior -- or what would pass as such for a character with a temperament that's just as explosive as Donald's -- Della comes to McDuck Mansion in search of a fresh start... and, perhaps, some assistance from Scrooge to help her get her life back on track.  The Nephews have very different reactions to her.  "Troubled kid" Huey is suspicious of her motives, partially because he sees himself in her but doesn't want to end up like her. "Intellectual" Dewey tries to weigh the available evidence and maintain some objectivity.  "Optimistic, sensitive, and creative" Louie, meanwhile, embraces the idea that his Mom has returned and accepts her wholeheartedly.  When Donald proposes to Daisy and is turned down (for a presumed "lack of sincerity" -- sheesh, even Barks' Daisy never came close to being THAT fickle!), Donald has a mental breakdown that requires him to be cared for by Scrooge.  With Donald and Della now forced to be in close proximity, their long-standing feud flares up, in the manner of a particularly wince-inducing hemorrhoid.  When Ludwig von Drake calls from Europe to check in with Scrooge, the increasingly stressed tycoon jumps at the chance to invite Ludwig to his mansion, where the prof will be able to provide some much-needed therapy for Donald and Della.  Alas, Huey chooses this moment to explode in frustration at his role as the "put-upon," least favored Duck triplet, and he chooses his "cousin by adoption," the "perfect porcelain doll" Webby, as his primary target.  Events finally come to a head when Donald and Della get into an ugly fight at a restaurant at the same time that Scrooge, beset by familial dysfunction, finds himself at the mental -- and, more importantly, the physical -- breaking point.  Can this family be saved?...

PLOT:  The unraveling and subsequent reraveling of the Duck family.  That's pretty much all that happens.  (*** out of *****)

One of the problems with "angstfics" is that there is usually quite a lot going on -- of the emotional variety, anyway -- but nothing is actually happening.  To his credit, "Commander" doesn't completely succumb to this trap.  We only hear about Donald's post-turndown breakdown at second hand, from the policemen who come to tell Scrooge about the incident, but the restaurant ruckus is "on screen" and is appropriately nasty, complete with cursing and knives wielded with deadly intent.  Adding to the noxious atmosphere is the fact that Donald had been on a blind date and had been confronted and dressed down by an angry Daisy before Della even got there, making Don's reaction to Della's subsequent arrival all the more malicious.  (You may wonder why Daisy should even care that Donald has plunged back into the dating whirl, given that she had turned down Don's proposal.  Sorry, I got nothin'.)  Apart from this one ugly scene, "Commander" basically sticks to dialogue scenes (frequently involving arguments) and uses very little action. 

I know that there are those who love this sort of thing.  I typically don't count myself among their ranks.  At least "Commander"'s dialogue scenes are usually well-written and, given the characterizations that he has chosen to use here, generally believable.  They're just somewhat painful to read through at times.

CHARACTERIZATION:  "All over the map" doesn't begin to cover it.  (***1/2 out of *****)

There's no denying it... some of "Commander"'s decisions on characterization here are a little tough to stomach.  Take Huey, now... he's basically a complete asshole.  He "acts out" in school, breaks curfew, bullies the more passive Louie into spying on Scrooge and "his mysterious visitor" (Della), and pelts Webby with crudely sexist insults even before he verbally attacks her (and is apparently also ready to SLUG her!!) for being the cute little "favored child."  He's like the egocentric Huey of Quack Pack with the amp set at "11."  It's hard for me to believe, as "Commander" suggests (through the medium of Huey's thoughts), that Huey got to be this way because of some school pranks that just got out of hand.  There's a definite suggestion of something uglier having been there under the surface all along.  That thought kind of disturbs me.

Donald and Della, whose feud is sufficiently nasty to render them both as contemptible as Huey from the start, nonetheless wind up faring a bit better in the long run.  We all know about Donald's legendary (and supposedly "hilarious") temper, and Don did have a few minor blowups during his infrequent appearances on DT, but his outbursts here seem uncomfortably... realistic.  We are led to believe that the authorities may have had a point in examining Don at the psychiatric hospital before releasing him into the care of Scrooge.   To his credit, though, Donald rallies after Scrooge's cardiac event, pulls himself together, and even manages to make up with and become engaged to Daisy before the end.  (Daisy... fickle.  Just saying.  Actually, the reconciliation is handled very well, with both characters admitting that they will inevitably have arguments as husband and wife, yet deciding to get married anyway.  That's what makes a marriage work... the partners recognizing and accepting one another's flaws while, at the same time, cherishing the more meaningful feelings that drew them together in the first place.)

"Commander," of course, has more direct control over the characterization of Della, and he basically opts for the "female version of Donald" notion... the difference being that Della's temper has tended to have much more serious consequences in her life than Donald's has had in his.  This is why Della suffers through such despair after her fight with Donald at the restaurant gets them both tossed in jail.  She had been making some progress with Ludwig's help and now appears to have tossed it all away.  This was the first moment at which I legitimately felt bad for Della and hoped that she would, indeed, get control of herself and reform.  She subsequently earns additional points by deciding to leave Scrooge's mansion, move into a homeless shelter, and pick up the pieces of her life without being a burden on others.  (In response, Scrooge allows her to keep her job as a janitor at the Money Bin, despite all the problems she's caused.)  The change of heart comes very late in the game, and after Della had amassed a pretty sizable likability deficit, but at least she winds up making some progress, and I do appreciate that.

Idealized portrayal of Duck relationship #2

The rest of the gang is characterized fairly well.  Scrooge is Scrooge, albeit with a few thousand miles extra on him, and Webby is a reasonable advancement of the DT character to the lip of adolescence.  (Webby's "desperate" desire to be accepted at her new school does strike me as a little extreme, though.  Why haven't all of those adventures with Scrooge and the boys given her more self-confidence?)  Ludwig von Drake's bubbly enthusiasm provides a nice counterweight to all of the troubles swirling around him.  He can't completely escape the imperatives of an angstfic -- he is still clearly affected by Matilda's early death -- but he serves as a welcome voice of reason, and his psychiatric dissection of Donald and Della is far more adept than, say, his semi-comical analysis of Launchpad in the DT version of "The Golden Fleecing."  In a sidebar, "Commander" says that Ludwig is one of his favorite Duck characters, and his affection for the loquacious polymath is on clear display.

I also admit to being quite taken with the characterizations of Dewey and Louie.  Dewey is an intellectual with a heart; he wants to be supportive of others but prefers to get as many facts as he can about the case before committing himself.  Thus, he learns that Webby's "big first date" was a disappointment and immediately moves to comfort and counsel her, but he reserves passing final judgment on Della until he becomes more familiar with her.  Louie, meanwhile, is akin to the sensitive-souled kid of Quack Pack who wanted to protect "pugduddies" and such.  The difference is that he is even more trusting and optimistic.

HOMEWORK:   Only relevant when it comes to Duck Family Tree material. (N/A out of *****)

These are basically "Commander"'s own future versions of the characters, so it's not all that surprising that he does not refer to any of the TV episodes.

WRITING AND HUMOR:  The story is very well-written.  The humor is... well, quirky, for lack of a better word.  (***1/2 out of *****)

"Commander" has an odd way of slipping humor into unlikely places in the narrative.  When two policemen come to inform Scrooge of Donald's breakdown, one of them inexplicably starts acting like a character in a goofy cop comedy:

"Can I tell the story, officer?" asked the other policeman, younger and more hyper than his supervisor.

The older one sighed.  "Go ahead, Korwitz..."

Korwitz spread his arms out dramatically, as if about to begin an epic tale.  "Dateline, Duckburg, eight o'clock last night!  Location, the Dragon's Head restaurant, 825 L Street!  Incident, a broken-hearted Duck goes crazy, overturning tables and eating napkins!  Cloth napkins, not the paper kind!"

Considering that Scrooge, because of the return of Della, is already on edge as this scene begins, this strikes me as not exactly the most opportune time to shoehorn in some (rather forced) comedy relief.  Later, when HD&L and Webby visit Scrooge at the hospital, we get an awkward exchange that I think was supposed to pass for some manner of humor, in which Scrooge teases the youngsters' assuming responsibility for his hospital bill... or, barring that, his insurance premiums. Unnecessary cheapness gags during a family-wide crisis?  Not a smart editorial move.

QUESTIONABLE MATERIAL:  Occasional curse words, though none of the REALLY bad ones, and argument scenes that are sometimes difficult to endure.  Plus, one fairly nasty fight scene.

OVERALL:  ***1/2 out of *****.  RECOMMENDED, BUT WITH RESERVATIONS.

This one is definitely a matter of taste.  If you don't like watching the Ducks -- even slightly altered versions of same -- bickering like a hypercaffeinated version of The Fantastic Four, then I would suggest that you avoid.  If you're curious, or if you're indifferent to the notion of mutual Duck-breaking, then you're extremely unlikely to find a better version of the DuckTales angstfic anywhere in Googleworld captivity, so have a look.

NEXT FANFIC UP: Time for the Big Kahuna, the Top Boss, the Meat Grinder.  "DuckTales: 20 Years Later."  You'll definitely have to be patient with me on this one.  It's 125,000 words long, it features multiple crossovers, and a WHOLE honkin' load of stuff -- some of it quite untidy -- comes down in the process.  I may even have to break the review into several parts: one setting the stage by describing the world in which the story takes place, the other examining the story itself.  So as not to tease my reading public unnecessarily, I will not announce the review's impending arrival(s?) until I am just about finished with the project.

POST-DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE: Sometimes It's Better to be Lucky...

The Internet really is like the Wild West.  If you wander into the wrong place at the wrong time, you can figuratively be "blasted full o' holes" for looking at someone funny... BUT, you can also run across the most unlikely treasures in the most unexpected places.  Take the case of the long-rumored "Making of DuckTales" documentary.  The Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers documentary is readily available, and you'll occasionally run across images from the Tale Spin equivalent of same...

... but a behind-the-scenes look at DuckTales, the series that started WDTVA's syndicated ball rolling and led to The Disney Afternoon?  Not a trace... THAT IS, until I accidentally ran across this the other day:

As best I can tell, this promo ran as part of something called "Disney Day Off," a Disney cartoon marathon that ran on a local station.  (Note the occasional display of the air time of the syndicated series.)  It makes sense that Disney would use the opportunity provided by buying time on a local channel to spread the word about its new series, especially since airing it exclusively on The Disney Channel would have reached only a small portion of the potential audience. 

It's amusing to note how blithely Disney uses the names of such Carl Barks supporting players as Gyro Gearloose, Magica De Spell, and the Beagle Boys as "hooks" to snare viewers' interest.  How many kids in 1987 could have been expected to know who those characters were?  Evidently, the company was figuring that the "lure" of the supposedly better-known Scrooge and HD&L would be enough to entice eyeballs.  Even that seems something of a stretch, despite the then-recent revival of American Disney comics.

The obvious followup question here is, are there any more of these featurettes floating around?  Perhaps one focusing on Scrooge, or one focusing on the Nephews?  It wouldn't surprise me.

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."