You know It's weird how things that were popular at the time just disappear into the hazy mists of memory. Fat Albert, I believe is one of those things. It was for 13 years a pretty popular television program. However after 1985 it just up and disappeared. Not any reboots or sequels except for a 2004 movie but really between 1987 and 2010 they were pulling out every tv show that had any kind of name value and making a movie out of it. It didn't matter as long as it was popular at one point. That movie is now 17 years old and no one did nothing with characters between then and now. I mean no one's going to do anything with them but I think by the name Cosby you can tell why. I finished watching several episodes and this was a pretty well done cartoon. It's a shame that other peoples hard work gets fucked over because someone involved with the show is a big old piece of shit but that's life for ya.
The first time stand up comedian, tv star, movie star, and serial rapist Bill Cosby ever mentioned Fat Albert was on one of his stand up albums entitled Revenge from 1967. Fat Albert was based around a kid he knew from his childhood. In 1969 they created a special for NBC called Hey Hey Hey It's Fat Albert. It was based around the stand up material. It was popular enough that they created a series around it in 1972. For CBS. The series was animated by our good friends at Filmation. It amazes me that Fat Albert was actually still on the air when He-Man and She-Ra and those Filmation shows were because they look so different from one another. Wild times. I also realized how many voices Lou Schiemer did for his cartoons. I guess it beat paying a voice actor to voice them. He's actually a pretty good voice actor to be fair.
I don't believe reruns of Fat Albert ever appeared on any TV channel around me. I'm pretty sure the first time I heard about it was yet again on the website Jump the Shark where people talk about when a show went downhill. It was a fun website full of weird debates and all kinds of silliness. Sadly it was bought out and then taken apart. People tried to re-create it as Bone the Fish (which is a term that doesn't work as well and sounds like some kind of weird sexual thing that Troy McClure would be into) which is still up online but doesn't seem like its updated anymore. Ah well. There's still archive.org for all the fun internet memories of days gone past. Anyway since I don't believe I ever saw this show before today I watched 3 episodes so let's discuss them all. Think of this as a EXTRA SIZED issue of a comic book or something!
The first episode we are going to talk about is Busted. It's about the gang creating a giant slide and a makeshift pool in the dirt in their old Junkyard. Fat Albert tries it and it's not great. They try to turn it into a rope slide but that doesn't seem to work either. They talk about how they want to go to the city pool but its 10 miles away and they don't have bus money. Rudy one of the characters of the show finds a guy named Larry and wants to invite him to join the gang. Larry is a bad dude who enjoys stealing cars and well you can see where this is going they end up in the stolen car and end up going to prison to be scared straight. Like seriously this scene in the prison is wild. Some jacked up dudes talk to them about how awful prison is. PEDOPHILES try to hit on the gang members. Seriously. Watch this scene on youtube because it is fucking wild.
The second episode I watched was called Gang Wars and it starts with the gang at a park cleaning it up for a re-opening. It's here where we meet Fernando and his brother who is in the 33rd street gang and wants Fernando to join. Fat Albert and Russell (Bill Cosby's little brother) have run ins with a rival gang and the rival gang wants to have a fight with Tito's gang. Except they have guns so Fernando and Fat Albert try to find Tito to warn him except it's way too late. Fernando ends up getting shot and Tito gives up the gang life. It's fucking messed up. They end up naming the park after Fernando. This is one thing you gotta give cartoons of the past is when they wanted to talk about a message they made sure you got the damn point.
The Final Episode was when Fat Albert actually went to first run syndication. It aired on August 10, 1985. 21 days before the person writing this stupid blog would come into this sweet beautiful earth of ours. I wonder if any show ended on my birthday. Either way this is like with MacGyver is that the first episode I watched was amazing and a lot of fun but the Final Episode I watched was not great. This one is probably better than MacGyver's last episode but I wouldn't rush out to see it especially when there are Fat Albert episodes about teenage mothers, skinheads, cults and other insane shit out there. This one is just eh, nice message but not very enthralling.
This episode starts with Fat Albert at his new job at the zoo. He's there to feed a elephant. I guess they don't have enough money to hire him to feed both elephants but whatever. The elephants name is Marvin and doesn't seem to like Dumb Donald. I like Dumb Donald and his hat. He has great tastes in movies as we learn later on. Even if theres a weird joke in this episode about him not being able to say elephant correctly even when he does. Fat Albert's mom is going out of town so he says he will cook for him and his dad and clean the house for her. Fat Albert tries to get some good food made but Rudy and Dumb Donald fuck up while watching the Invasion of the Flame Throwing Dragon instead of paying attention to the stove. Dumb Donald mentions how he's seen this movie ten times and I can't deny that I'm interested. In the end Fat Albert and his dad eat some cheeseburgers.
We come back a day later and Fat Albert even gives up watching the Brown Hornet (a show within a show about a superhero voiced by Bill Cosby.) and this show tells us the moral of the episode which is to care about your friends and help them. So they all decide to help Fat Albert with the house work so he can go feed Marvin the Elephant. Marvin is clearly the worst name for an elephant in the history of names. You name a Martian that, not a elephant! We then see Fat Albert and his mom together in a pretty nice scene and then Bill Cosby comes in and talks to us about attitude of gratitude, which is also the name of the episode. As I said, a decent enough way to end a series but man you try following an episode with the gang going to a prison and a damn child getting shot.
FINAL VERDICT: I'm glad I can put another show from the Jump the Shark days off the mental list I kept in my head and get to discuss it here for you great people..
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