Since portnoyd has been spewing hateful, offensive and incorrect opinions in a discord server it's time for me to discuss something he knows is awesome but will never agree because he is a big stupid doo doo head. Every time he is bad I will talk about Hanna-Barbera or Darkhawk. He will come to love both of these things when I am done with him. So watch your ass portnoyd you big dickhead. So uh, I've talked about Hanna-Barbera several times on this blog but I'm not sure if I've ever done a Final Episode on any of the things they made. I think they made have animated Captain Planet because at that time they were owned by Ted Turner but I really don't know and Captain Planet doesn't feel like a Hanna-Barbera character. He's a Ted Turner character they had to animate. 2 Stupid Dogs, Dexter's Lab, Johnny Bravo and Powerpuff Girls were all Hanna-Barbera shows technically but they all feel like something completely new and so different from the rest of Hanna-Barbera's output. I put out the most schizophrenic opening paragraphs out there into the ether of the universe and I am very proud of that fact.
So Hanna-Barbera for those not in the know was an animation studio that started all the way back in the late 1930s with Tom and Jerry cartoons. That's where they got their start. Sometime in the mid 1950s they moved to TV with The Ruff and Reddy Show. They stayed in TV animation for about four decades until the late 1990s. That's impressive. Not many people could pull that off but Bill and Joe did! They were cool as heck! Now I'm not going to say everything they made was gold because uh it clearly wasn't. Some okay many of their cartoons should probably be forgotten to the dustbins of history. Alongside Veronica's Closet. Actually fuck that even the worst Hanna-Barbera cartoons deserve better than to spend eternity with Kirstie Alley.
The cartoon series is one of the top 3 most enduring Hanna-Barbera properties. I would say The Flintstones and the Jetsons would be in spots 2 and 3. Even as a kid who would watch 42 hours of Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw with my dad I thought The Flintstones and The Jetsons were both really bad and not very fun to watch. I was a big fan of Scooby Doo which is probably the most popular Hanna-Barbera thing having started in 1969 and still being made fifty-two years later. That's impressive.
Scooby Doo is popular because it's pretty simple. Just put some goofy characters in a scary setting with a monster and blam you have a fifty year franchise. I dunno that's why I liked it as a kid because I wasn't allowed to watch anything horror related for quite some time (I finally broke my parents down and I watched enough horror stuff to choke a cow) and Scooby Doo was a great little escape for some really kid-friendly scares. They made some pretty great monsters on that show. Portnoyd will disagree because portnoyd is a stupid asshole and can get fucked in the nose.
There have been many many many Scooby Shows since 1969 and I intend to talk about every single one. Yes, even the ones that go after the mandate I put on myself. I will even talk about that really kinda stupid sounding Velma show with Mindy Kaling in it that won't even have Scooby Doo in it because it was clearly supposed to be a new project that the people making it shoved a IP on it. The first one was entitled Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and ran from 1969 to 1970 with a weird revival season in 1978. I think they missed the much better theme song for the original show but I can never tell what those wild rascals at Hanna-Barbera will do.
Scooby Doo Where Are You? final episode was called The Beast Is Awake at Bottomless Lake. It rhymes so I am very happy with that fact. It's also all over the place and ridiculous shit happens in this cartoon. It starts off with the gang of Fred, Velma, Daphne, Scooby and Shaggy all going someplace but the river has risen and made that road unusable and they get on another road and drive right into Canada. Of course the first thing they see is a Mountie. No port he was not riding a moose. Yes port I was disappointed too. They then meet a French person and my dad a grumpy Fisherman. They also meet a girl who says that she's a part of a family that lives by this supposedly Bottomless Lake.
They meet up with a rather cool lake monster. It's a giant fish with sharp ass teeth. I must say that I love the designs of the monsters they came up with for this show. Even the worst ones were still really cool. I don't know who did them but I would kiss them and buy them a beer. Anyway The Lake Monster does not want these kids messing around. So of course instead of going after the kids who are actually doing something it goes right for Shaggy and Scooby. Did any monster decide "Hey why don't I go after the kids actually doing stuff to stop my plan instead of these two lazy goofballs?" They get chased into a house where they find some green clay and a secret passage. Oh shit somethings up!
Shaggy and Scooby go back to the French guys store (yes he would say ze instead of the and go Ho ho! like every French person clearly does) and take some scuba suits so that they can check out the lake. I laughed at a ridiculously cheesy joke in this section. I think Hanna-Barbera is the reason I love cheesy jokes as an adult. Scooby and Shaggy get chased and to escape from the monster they inhale a shitload of compressed gas and become Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. It's pretty fucking weird to see. Fred Velma and Daphne get ready to go scuba-ing and Shaggy and Scooby refuse but end up being scared by the monster to do it. Fred, Velma and Daphne capture Scooby and Shaggy in a thingamajig with the monster and Scooby hits the button to let water in and everyone is sent out of a sewer pipe.
Scooby, Shaggy, The Lake Monster and the henchmen all get tangled in a net and now we find out who is behind the crime! It's Jill! The lady that appeared in one scene! I think it always turn outs to be the character that appears in one scene. They talk about how the cat who was owned by the family she said she was apart of didn't like her. They were stealing gold which you only end up seeing at the last second. She also does not say I'D HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT IF IT WASNT FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS. I think that line was like Beam Me Up, Scotty and it didn't really ever appear on any Scooby show from the early years but I couldn't tell you that for a fact. I'm not that nerdy.
FINAL VERDICT: If you like Scooby you should enjoy this silly little adventure. If you do not like Scooby this will probably not change your mind. I had a grand old time with the silly jokes and the weird looking Scooby and Shaggy as Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Floats thing. Seriously it looks kinda unnerving. Anyway this was a fun episode and I look forward to discussing many more Hanna-Barbera products.
No, none of those shows are Hanna Barbera. Wrong, again. Literally all Hanna Barbera cartoons should be lost to time and forgotten because they are all shitty shit. The only time they were good and fun was when they were used as punchlines in Harvey Birdman.
ReplyDeleteI watched a lot of Jetsons and it didn't age well. I hate using that term but in this case, it isn't racism apologies, it's bad tv apologies. It just sucks. Flintstones is even lamer because it's a Honeymooners ripoff.
Scooby-Doo is lame. All of the villains are lame. Your dad can't be a fisherman because horses don't know how to fish.