I have seen the face of God, and yea it was good.
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| Pictured: God |
Back to that in a second.
Fittingly this show is among the bedrock of modern animation, seeing as it was unto itself a deliberate and methodical effort to reconstruct icons of the golden age of animation into the then-current day. So of course a lot of times it can come across as being clever without really being funny. But hey, these things happen.
Since there's not a huge amount of continuity or overriding themes, unsurprisingly. So the most interesting aspects are how each character is used and who is most effective. Or something like that.
Buster- He's... a lot better as a host than as a star. Which is weird. Despite the easy label of Hamton as the straight man of the show, Buster much more often fulfills this role narratively; he's grounded and provides a rational response to most of the goings on. The main trait he shares with Bugs Bunny, primarily retaliating only when sufficiently provoked, plays into this well; he can employ cartoon logic but it's a conscious decision to do so.
Babs- Babs should by all rights be supremely annoying. She's always on and can't hold a train of thought. But because Tress MacNeille is God, she's instead the best character.
Plucky- He gets probably the second most focus episodes this season, understandably so because he's the most interesting lead. Not necessarily does this lead to the funniest material, but it's generally the most consistent.
Hamton- It's weird how many episodes in you get before he's even relevant. Once he is he's generally pretty good y'know.
Furball- Gets probably the most focus of this season which is fascinating. What I like about Furball is that despite having vicious cat behaviors he's otherwise immensely more sympathetic than this character is anywhere else. You almost want him to succeed in eating other characters because god, he deserves a win y'know?
Montana Max- Lots of fun. Creepily prescient too. I guess this mostly means that 80s style corporate raiders not only survived to the modern day but have if anything gotten so naked about their motives they resemble a goddamned cartoon character based on them. But no, the writers are great about giving him interesting and creative levels of cruelty to inflict on everyone else so you don't really get bored of his abject sociopathy.
Elmyra- The entire writing staff had animal-'loving' toddlers at this time. I'm convinced of this. Elmyra has just a couple of focus episodes but she is in EVERY other episode. She's... let's call it incredibly uneven. It depends entirely on how she's being used in an episode. She'll sometimes be treated as a sort of force of nature, who can be anticipated and enemies maneuvered into heading straight into her. She's quite good in this role. As a lead she'll usually be an oblivious bringer of doom, which is hard to sit through most of the time. And sometimes she'll be... treated realistically, a child-person with real feelings but an incomplete understanding of what she does and the writers try to make it sympathetic and it's... okay but clashes so bad with the other Elmyras. Blah.
Of course some of this is because the show has different... reality levels for lack of better way to put it. Sometimes bits are clearly actors performing, others dip in and out, others are clearly happening to the actors in their 'real' lives, but the show doesn't differentiate between them in a visible way most of the time. I assume it's a "we can do whatever's funniest" thing, but a lot of times it detracts from the humor for me because it's just a little dissonant. Or I'm watching too many things and confusing myself.
Best Episode- The Acme Acres Zone. Definitely the funniest episode overall. The first short is pretty average but everything about the Hamton one was good and I like the layers of humor in Babs' sketch.
Weakest Episode- Buster Bunny Time. The last sketch is great but the first is kinda insufferable. No. Bad Elmyra.
Rating- 6/10. Never really boring, and some scattered moments of good laughs, but not particularly standout.
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