First Look: The 1996 TV Season

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First Look: A Squinty Glance at New Animated Shows
By Thomas E. Reed

Animation is big on television this year, but that is not necessarily a good thing. Besides new cartoon shows, Warner and Disney are producing new episodes of many returning series. In Hollywood, it's believed that there is a limited talent pool; if there are too many of one kind of show on the air (like sitcoms, Westerns, space shows, whatever) that talent is stretched thin, and a lot of tenth-rate material gets on the air. This is the challenge facing the major animation firms this year.

There is clearly a crunch in animation. Even the new series are in reruns already. After a few episodes, Superman: The Animated Series had to rerun its 90-minute pilot movie as three regular episodes. On satellite feeds, episodes of The Mighty Ducks are finished too late for their regular feed times; the stations have to get refeeds of the shows the next day.

We'll have to see if the new shows can grab and hang onto an audience, and whether they will manage to become memorable. At any rate, here ar my initial perceptions. They are my own; don't blame anyone else.

Superman:
If it wasn't for the art deco style of Batman: the Animated Series , this would have been hailed as a magnificent triumph of design. The show is brighter than Batman; instead of 1950's style buildings and vehicles, everything resembles the futuristic designs of alien cities from the 1960's Superman comics. The cars look like present-era vehicles, not Bulgemobiles.

The first episodes of the regular series also seemed to be inspired by the Adventures of You-Know-Who as he appeared in the comics of the late 50's and early 60's.In those years, Superman had no serious competition or serious plots, and the Man of Steel was more often the Man of Schtick. He would get involved in convoluted plots to confound flighty ol' Lois Lane's attempts to discover his secret identity, face a gimmack-based villain that would make Batman's Joker a model of sobriety, or get involved in a bit with guest-star Frankie Avalon.

In the premiere show, Superman confronts Toyman, the son of a disgraced toy manufacturer who sought vengeance against the criminal who ruined his late father's life. The story with a gigantic dollhouse - and Lois made up as a doll with painted cheeks - resembled the wackier plots of the 60's.As you may expect, the modern Lois is no passive victim,and gets in a few licks before Superman's inevitable rescue.

Later episodes featured Lex Luthor in his modern form as a corrupt businessman (rather than the mad scientist/constant jailbird of the 1960's), and Parasite, a mutant who absorbs Superman's powers. All of these shows were well animated, with few cheats. Tim Daly provides a confident, yet human, voice for Superman, and Dana Delaney adds a little smoky sexuality to Lois Lane.

The shows to date have easily handled the basic problem, "How do you provide challenging competition for a guy with a whole bunch of powers?" What I haven't seen yet, and what this series needs, is more of the human side of the Man of Steel. Anyone can animate action and fight sequences; bringing out the humanity inside a superhero is what makes us care for him.

Road Rovers:
There was no humanity, only a lot of formula, in this show's uneasy balance of action and comedy. Apparently some uncaring yuppie executive sent down an order from Time Warner Corporate; "Make a series that's just like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , only different! And make it with cute characters and vehicles suitable for toy sales and merchandising! And I want it out by next Thursday!"

Rovershas a mysterious scientist named The Master (who looks like the Thunder God guy in Mortal Kombat , with glowing eyes, flowing hair and only seen in strong backlight) who chooses several international canines. He mutates these animals into walking, armored warriors who fly jet planes and drive warp-drive autos. In the pilot, they fight The Master's ex-partner and his evil mutated dogs. In later episodes, they face a renegade paramilitary team and a plague of werewolves.

The one innovation is that the Road Rovers are an international team, reminiscent of DC's old Blackhawk flying team. The leader is an American Golden Retriever, there's a Russian Wolfhound (who projects freeze beams from his eyes), a German Pinscher with a Schwartzenegger voice, a female Irish Setter who's a martial artist, et cetera. There is even one insane dog, muzzled and strapped to a dolly like a canine Hannibal Lector. (Hey, educational consultants, is this your new approved pro-social image of mental health?) All of them are cliched, but at least there aren't any characters with "phony-baloney Middle European" accents; the Russian's a Russian.

After their mutation, The Master tells the Rovers to introduce themselves to each other. They start sniffing each other's butts (fortunately below the camera's field of vision), and The Master says, "I wonder if I should have started with cats." I thought, "That would make this show SWAT Cats , wouldn't it?" The Master kept saying "Good dogs! Good, good dogs!" to the characters - isn't this condescending to intelligent beings? I also wondered how the Irish Setter would feel, with her normal eight teats reduced to two human female breasts.

Then, I realized I was pondering these things because the all-important Suspension of Disblief was failing. And I started wondering why - especially with Warner, whose productions are usually a lot better.

There exists a set of rules among cheap animation companies which I call "The Export Protocol." The Protocol is an informal set of rules that supposedly make a cartoon sellable in foreign markets. Some of these rules are: Don't make visible English signs; use gibberish on all graphics. Don't base visual jokes on English puns that won't translate. Don't allow any content that might upset specific religions or nationalities. Don't make characters distinctive; if kept fuzzy and indecisive you can make them appear to fit any nation's preconcieved notions of proper behavior. Keep women around, but don't make them too prominent.

Most shows by Bohbot and Saban follow The Export Protocol, and are correspondingly bland. I don't even think The Protocol really does what it's supposed to do; it's mostly a security blanket for executives who don't really know or understand entertainment. Up to now, Warners hasn't needed The Export Protocol to soothe its suits. It looks like they have finally succumbed.

The Mighty Ducks:
Disney put a lot on the line for this show, since it seems to be the linchpin of their ABC kid's schedule. For their premiere, they showed two episodes back-to-back, providing an origin story with some complexity. It seems that on a planet called Puckworld, humanoid ducks (far beefier and more punk-looking than standard Disney ducks) were conquered by quasi-magical, quasi-scientific reptiles. In chasing down the ringleaders, a commando team winds up on Earth, where they become a hockey team in Anaheim, California. (And incidentally become streetwise crimefighters.)

Disney bucks support the Ducks; voice credits include Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue as (surprise) a police detective. But in content, the show is very derivitive. Maybe the same guy who demanded a Turtles clone at Warners, and came up with Road Rovers , visited the Disney lot. Is it incidental that both shows have martial artist female characters, leaders who appear clean-cut American, and vehicles that will undoubtedly end up on toy shelves this Christmas?

At least with Disney, The Export Protocol is not being obeyed. Disney knows it can sell anything. Consequently, the show is more entertaining than Road Rovers . The show can even laugh at its own premise: when someone is worried about exposing their secret identities one of the Ducks says, "What secret identities? We're the only talking ducks on this planet!" (Hope they don't make a road trip to Cleveland, where Howard The Duck is reportedly driving a cab these days.)

There is one striking visual annoyance in Mighty Ducks . The show uses computer animation for its "vehicle launch" scenes, showing the Ducks' ice rink opening up to launch their spaceship and the "Duckmobile" speeding up a CGI tunnel. This is different from using computers to create animated backgrounds for cel animation, as was done in Beauty and the Beast . The CGI jumps in, cheek-to-jowl next to cel-animated scenes. It looks as jarring as last year's Mutant League, which leaned on CGI sequences to stretch its minimal cel animation. Was Disney rushed? Did someone decide to try to cut corners?

The only other serious flaw with this show is the attitude towards the sport of hockey. As with Mutant League , "our" team is the only one who plays fairly and honorably; all the opponents the Ducks face on the ice are creeps, as violent as Standards and Practices will allow to be shown. As a show supposedly supported by the National Hockey League, it shows sportsmanship in a bad light. While The Mighty Ducks is not a really atrocious series, it isn't memorable either; I can't see Disney keeping it around very long.

Quack Pack:
Disney changed the name of these adventures of Donald Duck and his nephews, which was originally called Duck Daze . Some thought it was to lessen the connection with The Mighty Ducks . After looking at a few episodes, the real reason is clear. Disney wanted to cement the connection with Goof Troop .

Donald is out of his sailor suit and into a Hawaiian shirt, possibly purchased at the same beach shop where Dale of Rescue Rangers shops. He's a videographer for a TV show hosted by his girlfriend - um, "significant other" - Daisy. He's also accompanied by his three nephews, Huey, Louie and Dewey; no longer squawky, identical triplets, they are now preteens, old enough to drive cars but largely uninterested in girls.

The episodes so far could have been recycled plots from Goof Troop . Donald - who now gets called "Don" in what passes for Disney Hip - gets sneaky, angry and frustrated in the same way Pete does. The nephews act very much like Max Goof - despite being defined individuals (one brainy, one cool, one athletic), all of them get into "mischef." Even Daisy, who is much smarter and more sympathetic than the character from the comics, is a revision of Pete's wife Peg.

I suspect that Disney sticks with preteen kid characters because they think the intended audience, preteen kids, will identify with them. They seem to have forgotten that the most famous Mouskateer was Annette Funicello, who was a dating teenager. Younger kids like seeing adventures of teenagers, as a kind of preview of what their lives might be in a few years. I wish they'd aged the nephews up to dating age; seeing "Uncle Don" dealing with prospective dates would really cause him to boil over, and keep this show from being a Goof Troop clone.

Back during World War II, Donald Duck was called Disney's equivalent of Clark Gable; after Mickey Mouse got kicked up to the status of corporate symbol, the Duck was the studio's main star of short cartoons. His combination of temper and vindictiveness, which usually backfired on him, But most of the series is tied up with the nephews. I can't imagine Gable descending to doing a family sitcom, and to see The Duck descend to that level is troubling.

Because Donald is the most important of the classic Disney characters available to TV (I have heard that they will never, ever do The Mouse for TV) I can only hope that this show will eventually get better by developing its own character.

Thomas Reed is a television engineer in Orlando, Florida, and when not trying to cope with continuous hurricane coverage, he's publicity director for the SunQuest gaming conventions.

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