Tag: TV

This British cartoon about a super-spy rodent didn’t come to my TV until the mid-1980s, by which time I’d already seen my first two James Bond movies (both of them Roger Moores, in case you wondered why I have his autobiography; I was marked at a young age). I’ve often wondered what the show is like for people who saw those things in a more age-appropriate order, since Danger Mouse may be one of the first things I ever recognized as parody.

Why Found-Again? Because even the most puerile grownup—I grant that I may crack a top 500 list in this regard—can only stomach so much punnery at a time, and once the DVDs are in, I refuse to turn them off in the entertainment equivalent of eating the whole bag of chips.

The Premise: The world’s greatest secret agent is a little white mouse with an eyepatch who lives in a mailbox. His assistant is a nervous hamster with glasses and a suit. Together they take on foes natural and un-, including evil toad (but I repeat myself) Baron Silas Greenback and a pre-vegetarianism Count Duckula, saving the world one odd adventure at a time.

For something like this, it might work better if I just list my top 3 episodes, in no particular order:

• “Who Stole the Bagpipes?”—Dangermouse and his not-very-musical assistant Penfold investigate bagpipe theft…and as the bagpipes in question are wheezy, plaid grazing creatures, it gets a little odd.
• “The Duel”—Dangermouse enters a contest with supervillain Baron Greenback; if the mouse wins, Greenback promises to give up villainy. Yeah, that’ll happen.
• “One of Our Stately Homes Is Missing”—in which we learn what DM did before he met Penfold, and about his very unusual piloting ability.

And then there’s the theme song:

The Verdict: Interestingly, the DVDs have made it a little harder for me to rewatch these by restoring them to their original British glory; when I was a kid, some of the transition between episodes was obviated, and Stiletto the hench-crow had a Cockney accent, not Italian. So it’s not quite as I remember it. It is still gloriously silly, though, which is good, because so am I.

Might go well with:  Tea, anything you ate as a giddy eight-year-old.

Next time: In all likelihood, a shorter-than-usual Highlander post.

When I was a very small child, four things terrified me:

• Heights;
• That Looney Tunes cartoon where Tweety gets into the Jekyll-and-Hyde potion;
• My great-aunt Ruth’s lamp, which looked a bit like this one (or indeed, just about any result you get from Googling “Deco panther lamp”; who knew those things were so ubiquitous?);
• Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, which was so obviously calculated to scare the bejesus out of children that it turned up on TV every October despite not actually being a Halloween story.

Why Found-Again? I have no idea why I picked up the DVD as an adult, but it may have been some combination of a low price and the desire to finally see the show while not peeking out from beneath a blanket in sheer dread.I’m a grownup now, right? (Discounting the Highlander posts, anyway.)

The Premise: Doughty mongoose Rikki is adopted by a very British family living in India and defends them from the scariest damn snakes this side of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the assistance of a pair of birds and a timid muskrat.

Over the years, I’d never realized that Chuck Jones animated Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and it was surprising to see how cute Rikki is, the occasional red eyes of mongoose bloodlust notwithstanding. The snakes, especially the main cobra villains Nag and Nagaina, are suitably sinister-looking, but aaaagghh those voices; when we first hear Nag speak, I may not have hidden under the blanket this time, but I did make a noise usually reserved for stepping on hairballs with my bare feet.

When the snakes aren’t talking, Orson Welles’ narration keeps things going, lending so much gravitas to the story that sometimes animation effects like Rikki’s super-swishing tail seem out of place. (The scene of Rikki destroying snake eggs by trampling them to death—shown only as shadows— also keeps things somber.) The cartoon ends in a chase scene that had me glued to the screen even after all this time, rooting for what has to be one of the bite-iest heroes in all of fiction.

The Verdict: Everything about this was better than I remembered except the musical numbers; stick to sidekicking, Mr. Bird.

Might Go Well With: Chicken tikka masala, strong tea; definitely not eggs.

Next time: We find out who my least favorite minor character in Highlander is, among other things.

Come with me to another dimension; a dimension not of sight and sound, but of shoulder pads and sweeping hairdos. You are now entering…the Dynasty zone.

The Premise: Oilman Blake Carrington marries his secretary Krystle, who soon finds out that pretty much every rich person in Denver, and especially in the Carrington mansion, is batshit crazy.

Why Found-Again? I am now most of the way into the fourth season, so far down the rabbit hole of rewatching Dynasty that I can’t even remember what inspired me to re-view it. I was seven years old when the show first came on, and all I really remembered about it was that I loved Claudia and Kirby and hated Adam Carrington and Dex Dexter, and that Alexis was always making trouble.

I really have no idea what it says about me that every single one of those things is still true—or that as recently as a week ago I was screaming “Kill him!” at my TV, and for once not at any of the characters in Highlander or Robin of Sherwood, but at Jeff friggin’ Colby. Every single character on this show is his or her own worst enemy most of the time, but it’s absurdly easy to get sucked in and hard to stop caring, even when the show does all the completely inane things we remember from the era of ’80s soap excess: the catfights, the amnesia, the hysterical paralysis.

And then there’s Steven Carrington, who was among the first openly gay characters on television. He is referred to by some of the other characters in terms that will make your jaw drop in the early seasons, but the show never stops portraying him as a real and valuable human being, and it’s interesting to watch the way he develops as part of the show.

There are also things I didn’t remember at all from childhood, some of which are completely nuts—like this from James Farentino’s season 2 turn as psychiatrist Dr. Nick Toscanni, which has to be seen to be believed. It’s his first appearance on the show; Claudia has lost her daughter and attempted suicide, and this is Dr. Nick’s/Dynasty‘s idea of heroic measures (relevant part starts at 3:40 and goes till 6:55; and yes, he drives a DeLorean that looks like an extremely advanced tin can):

I was originally going to try transcribing that. I…don’t think I can.

The Verdict: Hard to tell. It’s very silly, and one gets the impression that Denver is maybe half a mile wide on each side, but I’m definitely hooked.

Next time: Arms and the woman.