Obscure Holiday Specials #3: Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas (1992)

 

You know since the other Inspector Gadget piece about the Final Episode of his show was taken off of another blog I had, this is the first time I've talked about DiC Animation so I get to blather on about them for the majority of this opening paragraph. They were created in 1971 by Jean Chapolin and for the majority of their first decade they made stuff  in France. In 1981 they teamed up with those rascals in Japan and created Ulysses 31 which literally has the greatest theme song in television history. Nothing will ever top it. He then teamed up with Andy Heyward and Bruno Bianchi and they created Inspector Gadget, the show that would put them on the map. The came Heathcliff and M.A.S.K. and The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin and the Sailor Moon dub, all things that I will blab about on my blog soon enough. DiC was even bought out by Disney! Sadly in 2008 DiC was made a part of Cookie Jar Entertainment and stopped being the  DiC we all love and know. They will live on in our memories.

Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas is a decent enough piece of Gadget related entertainment. It's not as good as most episodes from the first season of the original series, but it's certainly better looking then all of the stuff they've done with the character since. Some of that shit is really ugly. Also the Matthew Broderick and French Stewart movies. Yikes and double yikes. No one deserves that double team punch. Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas came out on December 4th, 1992 and faded into obscurity. I know someone will maybe one day find this blog and go NUH UH I SAW THIS FOURTY THREE THOUSAND TIMES AS A CHILD and I'll make fun of them for watching Christmas specials outside of Christmas. That's weird you weird-o. Anyway I would watch Inspector Gadget a fucking lot as a child. It was one of my favorite shows. It would come on NTV (rumor has it the weirdo who owned NTV, Geoff Stirling made them put on an episode during the middle of the news one day. It appeared picture in picture. What a weird man.) YTV, and just about every Canadian owned channel mostly because Nelvana a Canadian animation studio helped animate some of the episodes and most of the voice actors were Canadian, like Cree Summer. Every channel needed some Canadian content. Isn't that a wild factoid to know? Yeah I know it isn't. I'm sure it even showed on some of the American channels we got. Point is I loved this show

Since I loved the original series so much it's just kinda weird with the animation here. For an 80s cartoon the show was pretty well animated and pretty consistant with that animation. It just feels a bit off like not completely the same and that's weird coming from the company that owned Gadget. I dunno, I guess I just like the way they made the characters look in the original series over this. Oh, and this special has terrible terrible songs. Terrible. I don't want to hear Maurice LaMarche sing in a Don Adamsy kinda voice. Don Adams had a great voice for comedy and all that. He did not have a great voice for music. The other song by the elves is just annoying.

The plot is well your usual Inspector Gadget plot. Dr. Claw wants REVENGE on Santa Claus because he didn't bring him a Dirty Trick Sled when he was a child so now he's out on a RAMPAGE on the North Pole! Gadget comes in and does his dopey idiot schtick and Penny and Brain save the day and all like usual. Gadget was not the most plot heavy show. What I liked were the goofy ass gags and jokes and this special delievers them. A lot of very amusing jokes within this one, at least I thought so. It did end on a weird note with Dr. Claw's car being stuck and he was almost captured when Santa has the reindeer create a ice floe for him to escape.  I guess they didn't want to reveal who he was just yet because they were putting out those action figures. Man I remember seeing them on vacation and almost shitting my pants and trying to get my poor old mother to buy them and yes this happened when I was 8, not 28. I promise.

I said in my last review that I would rate this between Ernest Saves Christmas and Elmo Saves Christmas. This is not as good as Ernest Saves Christmas because it has very little Vern or Bobby action within. Despite never seeing it this is clearly better than Elmo Saves Christmas because Elmo is the worst Muppet out of the 28,000 Muppets created. That's right, I say the things we are all thinking but are too afraid to say! ELMO SUCKS! RISE UP PEOPLE!

Next Time: Let's go back to Charlie Brown and his second time at Christmas fun! Yes, I said second time...

The Final Episode #2: Inspector Gadget (Gadget and the Red Rose - February 1st, 1986)

 The Final Episode #2: Inspector Gadget (Gadget and the Red Rose - February 1st, 1986)

Inspector Gadget was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. I watched the absolute hell out of it. Like I don't want to even know how many times I watched every episode. It had to be at LEAST 50 times each. It was mostly because for the first season Nelvana, a Canadian corporation helped with the animation. So season 1 would be shown in Canada about 5820 times a day on several different channels. I still find the show to be very amusing. At least the first season. The stories of a dumbass cyborg (would you consider Gadget a cyborg?) with all kinds of well gadgets installed in his body and his niece and dog (who actually solve all the crimes) IS great fun to me!

As a kid I never knew there was a second season with 21 extra episodes... and I'm glad I never did because it would have been an incredible disappointment to me to have to watch these episodes. They aren't objectively the worst I've ever seen they just aren't as well animated, well voiced (several voice changes), have pointless new characters (we will get to him in a second) and are just not as enjoyable. Like everything was done worse for the second season which ran from 1985 to 1986.

I do remember the first time I ever saw a second season episode, it was years after I did find out there even was one... and I was excited to find said episode... I had heard from a now defunct website known as Jump the Shark (where people discuss when any random TV show Jumped the Shark) and several people within that site said the introduction of Corporal Capeman (pictured above) was when the show jumped the shark... and yeah I can't disagree with them on that. This fucker is completely useless and not funny in the slightest, just like everyone on that site said... thankfully Townsend Coleman who voiced him went on to do much better work in a lot of much better cartoons.

Anyway, this episode is really nothing to write home about. It involves Inspector Gadget actually creating a seemingly worthwhile invention (which is weird in itself because the guy is a moron, like it's the whole show!) and Dr. Claw finds out about it so he gets this old gangster out of retirement to stop Gadget's new invention with his old invention a Tommy Gun that shoots out rotten potatoes and yes the gangster has a potato pun name (it's Spuds Malone... they should have just went and called him O'Riely and had him be an Irish gangster or something), anyway this episode has Gadget chase after Brain who leads him to the real Spuds Malone and it's done in a pretty uninteresting manner. No real jokes or crazy hijinx really.

FINAL THOUGHTS: It's not going to be the worst thing I'll watch for this blog but honestly, I can't really write much more about this episode cuz it's boring, so I'll just reiterate they should have gotten more money for better animation, made some actual jokes (the gun Gadget makes runs on acidic Sour Cream and when it hits Chief Quimby he goes "Needs chives, Gadget" which WAS pretty funny I thought.. but the rest of the episode wasn't) and not had made that stupid fucking Corporal Capeman at all.