Oh hey, I'm back over here on blogger/blogspot/whatever they are calling themselves now. Two and a half years over on wordpress and not even 100 posts. I don't know why I forget about this blog so often when honest to death it's becoming the one fun thing on the internet. Twitter is a cesspool of idiocy. Facebook is mostly boring and Youtube is literally becoming the place for AI Slop. No post on this blog will ever be AI Slop, mostly because I don't know how to make them and because It's not the same if I don't put a PORTNOYD IS A POOPY BOY comment in there somewhere. I don't think AI would do that which is a reason why it's no good. The fact everything it makes just has a weird unsettlingly vibe to it doesn't help.
I figure I should tell you all why I came back to blogspot. There's a few reasons. I kinda never used any of the stuff Wordpress had that blogspot didn't. I kinda missed the way blogspot looked. Portnoyd it seemed had an easier time to post here. I may give him some gruff and griff but (sometimes) I like talking to him. The biggest thing was, random people just liking my posts and never commenting. I don't write this for some random guy to like it. I want comments! I know they probably made it so they like everything with some bot they made so people would look at their work. I don't think I ever did. Sorry but a simple comment of WOW I REMEMBER THIS THING or WOW I WISH I COULD HAVE SEEN JASON DAVID FRANK AND AMY JO JOHNSON HAVE BUTT SEX TOGETHER. Like a comment makes me at least sometimes believe there is a person behind it all. That and the blog was looking like more of a website and less of a blog. I dunno. I came back here just because I wanted to. I also wrote this long meandering paragraph about it because I also wanted to.
One of my favorite things to do with this blog is to pick out some weird obscure, forgotten thing that was barely even a thing when it came out. It hit and then went. I'm talking about the kinda obscure, forgotten things that were shoved into production just to end up on tv at 5 o clock in the morning. The kinda stuff that you weren't sure was ever really a thing because you were rarely up at 5 o clock in the morning. The stuff that you screamed "HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS WASN'T A FEVER DREAM I HAD IN 1993" when you find an image of it on the internet. The kinda thing that made syndicated television so wonderful. That and it being a wild insane hodge podge of like all previous decades. I dedicated my knowledge of a lot of goofy stuff made prior to the 1990s because of syndicated television. I miss it because while it's still around it's really not the same as it was.
Our weird obscurity for today is, The Smoggies a cartoon made in Canada by the company Cinar Films. Cinar Films was created in 1976 by Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg. They started dubbing animes and making cartoons and kid shows sometime during the 1980s. The most famous show they did was Are You Afraid of the Dark? a co-production by them and Nickelodeon. Cinar faced some problems in 2000 when it was found out that their founders had put 167 million into a Bahamian bank account, which forced the company to rename itself and be sold. The renamed Cookie Jar Entertainment is now a part of Wild Brain which is a company that literally bought up every other Canadian kids show/cartoon makers up AND DiC entertainment. I probably mentioned all of this when I did Are You Afraid of the Dark cartoon but I forgot that I had so just shut up and read it again. READ IT AND ENJOY IT.
Anyway, the creators of this show are pretty interesting. I mean mostly just one of them but still. Colin Thibert (a swiss writer of French tv shows and cartoons!) and Gerald Potterton. Gerald Potterton worked on Yellow Submarine, something made in the 1960s that is still relatively popular because of the Beatles. I have never seen it. He also directed Heavy Metal. It's pretty wild. Colin Thibert worked on Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, a weird, WEIRD French cartoon that I do want to talk about in more depth but I have to find all of the episodes and watch it. It's not a show you can just review the Final Episode of just for shits and giggles. You gotta watch the entire, weird ass thing. The theme song was written by Joe Raposo, who wrote the themes for Three's Company, Shining Time Station and a bunch of Sesame Street songs. I like that this obscure little cartoon is connected to a lot of things that are more well known. It's kinda fun.
The overall theme to this cartoon is a group of bad guys called the Smoggies who pollute (yes this is an anti-pollution cartoon ala Captain Planet, if you couldn't kinda tell by the name) and destroy the earth around an Island of little guys and gals called the Suntots. The Suntots also have coral that can make you young again which two of the bad guys want. It's your simple overall setting for fifty two episodes. I did not re-watch this episode before now so this might be one of those top heavy The Final Episode posts where I get seventy five paragraphs about the creation of the show and like three about the actual episode. Anyway, let's do this!
This episode is called "Deep Sleep" and it starts with the lady bad guy, Emma is complaining about how she has lost her glow. Clarence who I am guessing is her husband, is a total simp and wife guy. Like he loves this crabby old bitch like there is no tomorrow. She wants her glow back so she decides to go to the mountains to get fresh mountain air. Clarence is like a hike and she's like 'fuck no" so he creates this machine that brings the Smoggies to the top of the mountain. Then we go to see the Suntots. Speed and uh I dunno Orange Suntot guy are working on some kind of invention. Another Suntot comes in. The Cool Suntot..............named Cool. Yeah, the Suntots are not creative with the names they have for each other. Cool is a mix of a hippy and a surfer. Why were surfers considered so cool between 1988 and 1994? Like I don't get it. PORTNOYD EXPLAIN IT TO ME.
The gas that runs the machine car thing that brings the Smoggies up the mountain, also starts making everyone go to sleep. The get to the mountain and put the smog into one of the floaty things you have in pools. Emma then falls into the water and her crabby ass wants to go home. I find the duo of crabby bitch and simp to be really funny. Their henchman Pulloto is your usual big dumb guy. I love his voice and the little bird that lives on his head. Very entertaining design. Anyway the suntot princess, Cool, and Old Bob all leave Speed and Orange to go to the mountain. Old Bob ends up getting the floaty caught on something it causes a small hole causing the Sleep Gas to put Old Bob to sleep. He's also getting close to a waterfall!!
However Speed and Orange come by and save him in their cool car/ship/plane called the Wonder Doohickey. Actually I don't know it's real name I just wanted to say Doohickey. Anyway they have to turn into a plane at the last second before they hit the bottom of the waterfall. They survive of course, this cartoon was created by gentle people and not Bratwurst who would have killed every single character in the show two or three times. He is a sadistic lunatic but I still like him. Anyway they save Old Bob and then go to get Ms Doctor to find out whats wrong with him! The Smoggies are still going up the mountain without realizing they are fucking everything up. A tree full of Fogbogs or whatever the hell they are gonna fall into the water! The Suntots have to save them!
Now we go back to the Smoggies who are still driving the Smoggies Shitty Car and spraying the Sleeping gas everywhere. They spray it all over a field of berries (that the Princess was going to get) and then get stuck. The Princess (named Leela, Matt Groening was a big fan of The Smoggies.) gets some of the Berries and then goes to another Suntot named Gardener. I like when the characters name explains easily what they do. Crabby Bitch Emma sees her and gets out of the Shitty Car when it's stopped by some rocks. Clarence getting it unstuck causes an avalanche and traps Emma and Princess Leela in the Shitty Cave. Everyone ends up falling asleep except Speed, who I assume got his name becuase he uses a lot of Drugs. He gets into the Airplane that becomes a boat and also a car. It's got a name but I don't care enough to remember it. He gets back to Cool who's drumming a beat which apparently wakes Old Bob up. I know Old Bob has a different name but I like the name Old Bob better.
Of course Cool now gets to drum. Something I should probably have mentioned is that everyone was annoyed by his drumming all through the beginning of this episode but it saves everyone. They get Emma and Princess Leela and a random bear all out of a cave. They then talk about not polluting the air, remmeber this is a hippy cartoon about loving the earth. Then a giant rock falls on the Shitty Car and Emma and Clarence have to drag Polutto's giant ass down' the mountain because he's sleeping (and they think it's cause of the gas for some reason, he winks at the camera and the dumb guy actually did something smart!)
FINAL THOUGHTS: Not a bad way to end a cartoon. Sure it's one of the "random adventures of the week that you'd have to be told was the Final Episode" kinda Final Episodes but those actually end up still being some of the better ones. I had a good time revisiting this goofy little obscurity and would probably watch more. I hope Bratwurst is happy I called him a sadistic lunatic. He's a weird man.
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