TV Review #4: The Wacky World of Tex Avery (1997)

 

I should discuss with you how I review TV shows for this blog, some lucky shows will get me to watch and discuss the entire thing and some terrible shows will get me to view a few episodes. I've been working on watching every episode of Tiny Toon Adventures for a later blog entry to this blog because well I loved that show as a kid and I'm curious how it holds up in the long run. Other shows I hear aren't as good I will watch one or two or three episodes of and get a minor view of how the whole show was. This blog is for silly fun and I'm not being paid for it. Unless you are giving me money, comic books, or other fine things I really do not want to sit down and watch all the episodes of something like The Wacky World of Tex Avery. It's even harder when some of the episodes are considered lost media. If I do enjoy a show that gets  a bad rap I will actually end up putting it on "the list of stuff to watch every episode of" so I'm not going to go along with the crowd unless I happen to agree with them. 

The Wacky World of Tex Avery was a DIC cartoon of the 1990s. From the mid 1990s. You know the DIC DARK PERIOD. It wasn't the highest of the high (like the 1980s/early 90s stuff) it was a lot of bad mixed in with admittedly some good but out of the 30 shows they made between 1994 and 2009, 20 of them sound like stuff I don't want to touch with a 30 foot pole and two of them sound amazingly weird/bad that I have to discuss them. I'm sure these TEN INTERESTING LATE ERA DIC shows will get touched on throughout this blog existence because I'm the type of person who wants to talk about Sherlock Holmes and the 22nd Century. 

Tex Avery was a cartoonist who worked with pretty much every major studio that was around between the 1930s too the 1950s. He created Droopy Dog and the Wolf guy and Daffy Duck and the RAID bugs and the Frito Bandito and all kindsa stuff. His animation was very vibrant and fun to watch, along with being funny. The Wild World of Tex Avery does not do his legacy justice in any way shape or form. First off the animation is cheap. Like very cheap looking. It cannot pull off the kind of jokes Tex Avery did in the very nice looking animation of the past. Secondly the characters they created for this show just feel like they were rushed and were like eh fuck it ones a fly and ones a cowboy. I mean the weird Italian guy from Pompeii showed a little bit of creativity but the rest not really. Thirdly a lot of the jokes carry on way too long, a lot of what made the old cartoons great were they went to the next joke at a rapid pace. Finally the show feels confused, there were several gross out jokes in one cartoon but not many in another. It's like it wants to be Tex Avery AND 1990s Nickelodeon cartoons and doesn't really know how to do either.

FINAL VERDICT:  Before watching this I watched a Droopy cartoon from 1943, Dumb-Hounded and was thoroughly amused throughout. I think I was like "you know that would have been a good joke with better animation" once throughout the one and a half episodes of this I watched. I remember seeing this for the first time in a video of "EVERY 90S CARTOON INTRO EVER" on YouTube and being amazed at how bad it was. This doesn't even have nostalgia behind it. At least I can go to my sister and say "Hey remember how awful Monster by Mistake was?" and still get a weird nostalgic kick off it. I can't even do this with that. I can't even say usually good voice actors did a good job here because they didn't. It felt like they were cashing in. I mean I ain't blaming them but still. The only thing that's even remotely interesting about this show was before they made it they went too Nancy Avery to get her okay and give her some money for using her fathers name. She wanted a bit more just so she could send her two kids to college and they were like "You know we don't actually have to give you anything" so she went to Chuck Jones who was still alive at the time and well I hope he raised hell because the people behind this trash deserved it, and you know I like to try to be positive about even the less then wonderful stuff I talk about but this doesn't deserve any positivity. 

The Final Episode #6: Full House (1987 - 1995)

 

It's time to tackle one of the shows I disliked the most as a kid. Up to this point in this series I had enjoyed all of the other shows as a kid/teen/whatever and was curious about how the last episodes of each had worked out. Full House however I loathed with a deep angry hatred which was weird because I loved every other show on TGIF. Family Matters? Urkel is my fucking hero. Boy Meets World? The guy who plays Eric is an underrated comedy genius. Dinosaurs? Hook that shit into my fucking veins. Point was I had no problem watching goofball sitcoms. Hell I watched Step By Step and that was fucking Full House with Patrick Duffy in it!

Full House started on September 22nd, 1987 and ended on May 23rd, 1995 for a total of 8 seasons. It was apart of a sub genre of sitcoms that I like to affectionately call "Boy There's A Lot of Fucking People in This Damn House, Jesus Christ" which includes The Brady Bunch, Step by Step and probably a lot more shit I can't think of right now. The last episode is a two parter. It involves a bunch of stories that pretty much lead no where but this ain't fucking Breaking Bad or something. One involves DJ trying to get a date for the Prom. One involves Stephanie trying to get a boy to notice her. One involves Uncle Joey and his best friend who just lives in the house with them because WHY THE FUCK NOT!? doing some tv show thing about weird jobs. The first episode would be about wrestling. So they have to pretend wrestle for some reason. I thought they would just ask questions about the weird job said person has not do the job with them! Damn weirdos.

The main plot really involves Michelle being a fan of horse-riding. She wants to do a contest, but Danny doesn't want her to do it until a bitchy rich woman comes by and pretty much makes him so angry that he puts her in the contest. Horse jumping or some shit. When the time comes Danny and the rich mom ruined their fun so they just decide to go off riding on some trail, which is where Michelle hits her head and you know what happens! She gets amnesia, because that's what happens when anyone in a sitcom gets hit on the head. Except they really don't try to get comedy out of it, everyone is feeling bad about this happening until she just randomly gets her memory back in a weirdo scene involving both the Olsen twins. Remember how creepy it was when gross old dudes were getting excited about them being of age? God damn that was freaky.

Final Verdict: This feels kinda lazy and thrown together but I honestly remembered the second part being a clip show and I was relieved that it wasn't so good on them for that. Of course this probably came about because they thought they were going to get a ninth season for the show but ABC stopped at the end because apparently each episode cost 1.3 million. Yet the show looked cheap as fuck. Weird. Anyway, to be honest I actually laughed at a few things in these two episodes. Not really enough to look forward to the day when I end up watching all 192 episodes to write an blog review of the show, but it was certainly a better time than either The Drew Carey Show or Transformers.

The Final Episode #4: Blossom

 

Apparently they made Blossom toys. And yes I want to own this. I am a cool guy.

Show Title: Blossom

How Long Show Ran: January 3rd, 1991 to May 22nd, 1995

Channel: NBC

Creator: Don Reo

Ahh, yes another Sitcom. Yes, this is the television sitcom probably mostly aimed around teenage girls that I enjoyed as a child. It was Blossom. A show that ran for 5 seasons between 1991 and 1995. It started off as a mid-season replacement for some show I'm too lazy to look up so we will just say Cop Rock because really what this blog needs is more mentions of Cop Rock. Anyway Blossom was the weekly adventures of a teenage girl named Blossom, her best friend Six (whats up with all these hippie names for girls in this show?) and the trials and tribulations that her, her friend and family go through. Joey Lawrence plays Joey and goes Woah a lot. I would have been yelled at if I did not mention that.

As mentioned above May 22nd, 1995 was the last episode of Blossom entitled "Goodbye". In this episode Blossom must come to terms with the fact that her dad is selling the house. He had gotten re-married sometime during the series run (Blossom's mother left) and he wants a fresh start in a fresh house. Blossom not wanting to lose the house devices A SITCOM SCHEME! She, Joey and Six try to keep the people from buying the house. They act like totally lunatics and Blossom even kisses the realtor. Six pretends to be a prostitute and we are all glad they are 18! It's amazing what you could do in 1995. 

It turns out like most SITCOM SCHEMES this one doesn't work. The people still put in a bid and Blossom's dad keeps going to look for other houses. In the end there's a really nice scene between Blossom and her dad, and another with her and Six promising to be friends 4eva!  The Show ends with a nice montage of moments from the show. 

FINAL VERDICT: The only problem is that I kinda wish Tony and the Grandfather character (unless he died in an episdoe I don't remember) could have had a role or at least be mentioned. It doesn't really feel complete because of that but other than that this is a pretty good finale. I laughed out loud several times and actually am excited to do a full review on the entire series, which I can't say for Drew Carey Show because wow those last seasons are gonna be rough. A fun episode to end off a fun series. I recommend it.