GUEST BLOG: Cubing—The Looney Tunes Show
Once again, we turn the conch over to writer Duy Tano, of The Comics Cube!, a popular blog covering the comic book industry. This time, Duy has agreed to write a really serious piece for us about a really serious novel he read over Christmas, and we can't wait to see what he has to say!
I was considering writing this really serious piece
for Rich on this really serious novel I read over Christmas, but you know what,
I'm just gonna talk about Looney Tunes.
[ED. NOTE: Dammit! —Rich]
The Looney Tunes Show is a
cartoon sitcom that is currently 14 episodes into its second season, unless
Rich decides to hold off on posting this and they air more episodes in the
meantime, in which case, what're you doing to me, Rich? Have I not served my
time? Did I not atone for my past sins? Have I not repented enough for the time
you and I stole that—
Um, anyway, moving on...
The Looney Tunes Show is a
cartoon sitcom that is currently 14 episodes into its second season. The basic
premise is simple: Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are housemates. Or, more specifically,
Daffy Duck has been freeloading for five years off of Bugs Bunny, who is
independently wealthy. That's the premise of the show—two guys who by
any stretch of the imagination shouldn't even be friends or share a roof. I
know that some hardcore Looney Tunes fans (yes, I just typed
out "hardcore Looney Tunes fans") disapprove
strongly of this basic premise, but that's just the nature of comedy; the basic
premise can be absurd or ridiculous, because it leads to conflict and comedy.
The Looney Tunes Show takes a bit of getting used to, especially if your main exposure to Bugs Bunny and the gang is the short seven-minute features they made from the 30s to the 60s. That shouldn't come as a surprise, since what's funny in seven minutes isn't necessarily sustainable for 20, not to mention the fact that humor sensibilities have changed since then. Slapstick and a joke like "Rabbit season!" / "Duck season!", as seen in the classic "Rabbit Seasoning," works perfectly for a short feature, but the joke would run too long if they went further with it. So, a sitcom model was adapted for this show and the jokes are slapstick, situational, and verbal.
It's really funny, and every episode has a point to
make, even if none of the characters actually learn anything. The first
episode, titled "Best Friends," sees Bugs and Daffy go on a game show
called "Besties," where they have to answer questions about each
other in order to win. Up against Mac and Tosh, the inseparable and overly
polite gophers, Bugs realizes they have no chance because Daffy doesn't
actually know anything about him (even going so far as to believe that Bugs
comes from the planet Krypton, with that
sequence complete with John Williams' Superman music and a bunny Marlon
Brando). This puts Bugs in a bad mood, and causes Daffy (with some
advice from Speedy Gonzales) to try to be a better friend, and of course it
doesn't work, because Daffy's really, really bad at it, so finally Bugs tells
him to quit it. "Daffy, you're a mean-spirited, self-absorbed, disturbed
little weirdo. But for whatever reason, you're my best friend." The point
is there: You can't change your friends, but you can be honest with them... especially
friends as close as Mac and Tosh (who value each other's interests even to the
detriment of all others). Almost every episode is like this, in the sense that
yes, it can make a point, but they're first and foremost entertaining, and the
characters learn nothing from them.
The next episodes take some time setting up the
supporting cast, with the fourth episode, "Fish and Visitors,"
featuring Yosemite Sam (their next-door neighbor) moving in with them for a
while and, as you can imagine, being the worst possible house guest you can
imagine. In an effort to get rid of him, Bugs and Daffy throw a big party, but
it backfires because Sam apparently loves karaoke, and he
ends up singing "The Flame" by Cheap Trick!.
Porky Pig is the most important character on the
show next to Bugs and Daffy, and serves as Daffy's well-meaning but
unsuspecting sidekick. He's infinitely more practical and successful than
Daffy, but he's just so impressionable and wants to have friends
so much that he'll go along with whatever Daffy suggests,
even if it's something ridiculous like being Daffy's 24/7 bodyguard (which
happens after Daffy's purse gets stolen in "It's a Handbag").
And there are other characters on this show—some
radically reimagined, like single hypnotherist mom Witch Lezah and successful
business mogul Foghorn Leghorn; some new, like Tina Russo, Daffy's girlfriend;
and some who are pretty much their classic selves put in a new situation, like
Speedy Gonzales, who runs the local pizza store, Pizzarriba—but, for
my money, no one tops this cartoon's version of Lola Bunny. Reimagined as an
airy, flighty, stalkerish character whose thoughts and logic are all over the
place (but Bugs still dates her and is still inexplicably attracted to her),
Lola Bunny may be the funniest character I've been exposed to for a long while.
At one point, while she was giving one of her long monologues that don't really
go anywhere, I remarked to my wife that wow, it must be really hard to write
for Lola, because it's non-sequitur after non-sequitur, and when handled
carelessly, that's easy to screw up. But no, Lola cracks me up almost every
time she's on screen. This, seriously, may be the most laugh-out-loud thing I've
seen in a long, long time:
Lola is Bugs' girlfriend, but I find the funniest
scenes and episodes of the show tend to be the ones where she's paired up with
Daffy, probably because they're both screw-ups in completely different ways and
it can only lead to more trouble, and partly because Daffy is often presented
as the worst character on this show, and here he is, partnered with the one
character who can drag him down even further.
I think if I had to sum up the show really quickly,
it would be "Looney Tunes meets Seinfeld,"
because I genuinely see the fingerprints of Seinfeld (my
all-time favorite TV show) all over this cartoon, from the main characters (one
could say that Bugs, being the levelheaded one and prone to making the
sarcastic and witty remarks, is Jerry Seinfeld, while Daffy, whose situations
lead to a lot of the conflicts, and is funny on his own but is probably the
first one you'd get sick of during a marathon, is George Costanza, for example)
to the structure of the stories (like Seinfeld, The
Looney Tunes Show tends to have circular references, where the
resolution of one subplot reflects what's going on in the main plot).
But I think that's, in the end, not doing it
justice. The Looney Tunes Show is very much its own thing,
and stands on its own merits. And of course, because it's a cartoon that's
halfway nonsensical and with un-aging characters, it can be even more absurd.
In one episode, Daffy's parade float (he drives a parade float that's shaped
like a big version of himself) gets wrecked, so he cries in his room for a
number of years (we actually see the seasons pass), until Bugs decides to calm
him down. When he does, Daffy reveals that he knew that if he cried hard
enough, Bugs would build him a new parade float. When Bugs reveals that he didn't
and asks Daffy what he needs a parade float for in the first place, Daffy's
reply is simple: "You're my best friend. You know me better than anyone.
You see what a horrible person I am. That's why I have to drive a parade float."
I don't think you need to even be familiar with the
characters beforehand to find it entertaining, though it does enhance it for
those times that the show references the old versions, going "old school,"
as it were. In the seventh episode, "Casa de Calma," Daffy tries to
get close to an actress while he and Bugs are at the beach, and the actress'
bodyguard just cuts him off at every turn, with visual jokes that kind of
harken back to classics like Ali
Baba Bunny. And my favorite episode might be "Customer Service,"
in which Bugs Bunny is tortured by Cecil the Turtle, a customer service
representative who decides to randomly cut off Bugs' cable on the day of the
NBA Finals. For the first half of the episode, Bugs doesn't even know what he's
dealing with. Finally, in anger, he puts the phone down, and utters the words, "Of
course you realize... this means war!" It's the first time he says it in
33 episodes—and the episodes are good enough that you don't even
realize that he never says it or "What's up, Doc?" (unless he's
talking to a doctor)—so when he does say it, it's got a real effect.
It stands on its own, but if you're a longtime Bugs Bunny fan, then the effect
is compounded.
The Looney Tunes Show isn't
perfect. For the first season, they incorporated two extra features into just
about every episode: Merrie Melodies, which are short music
videos featuring some of the characters, and a 3D Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote
short. Very few of the Merrie Melodies were actually funny,
and virtually none of the Road Runner ones were. I guess that was the popular
reaction, because they're pretty much done away with in Season 2. Also, a lot
of episodes center around Daffy Duck and his antics. This is fair, because
Daffy as a main character is entertaining on his own, while Bugs depends too
much on his co-stars (compare Duck
Amuck with Rabbit
Rampage, for example), but Daffy Duck is a character created for
short seven-minute stories, and 20 minutes centering around him may be a bit
much.
Still, they're funny, they're entertaining, they're
hilarious, and they can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike. A while back, I
wrote on the Cube about Carl
Barks' and Don Rosa's work on Disney's Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck,
and I started wondering why the Looney Tunes characters didn't
have an equivalent, in terms of longer-form stories enjoyable for both kids and
adults (sorry, Space Jam, I do love you), and then realized
that it was happening right now. It's just happening on TV, in 20-minute
stretches. And it's called, simply enough, The Looney Tunes
Show.
Duy Tano is a popular Internet blogger and
comic book expert. Check out his blog, The Comics Cube!, at www.comicscube.com,
which tackles all sorts of different topics for all sorts of different forms of
sequential art. Superhero comics, indie comix, komiks, manga, BD—you
name it, it's a valid topic for discussion.
Labels: Comics Cube, Duy Tano, Guest Blog, Looney Tunes, Seinfeld
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