Of Moons, Millionares and Mothers (S2 Ducktales Arcstrospective) Part 13: Timephoon! or Louie has Learned Absolutely NOTTTTHINNG
Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my look at the Season 2 story arcs of ducktales.
For those of you following week to week you may of noticed there wasn’t any entries last week. Yeah I had to take another week off and this time not by choice: I started getting severe muscle pain in my shoulders tuesday while working on my Bugs Bunny Birthday special. I tried powering through it because being a panicky and anxiety riden bundle of frayed nerves I wanted to prove i could keep working so my schedule wouldn’t get hurt, especially since the rest of the week was the reviews for this fully paid for retrospective and my friend emma’s monthly patreon review, and I don’t like letting people down especially people who are kind, work with me greatly and make me making a living off this at all possible.
Of couse doing the thing that likely contributed to said pain instead of resting only made it worse and I came to the hard relization I HAD to stop for my own good. So I took a few days to chill, watch Jellystone, catch up on Bob’s Burgers, watch the new batch of Kamp Korral with my niece, fight the giant monkey man and save the 9th dimension, what you do on time off.
So i’m back, rejuvenated, with off arthritis hot (off brand icy hot) to help ocasional flair ups, and ready to get back to work as we enter the final four of this long as hell retrospective! As such I can bring back something I used for the final four episodes of the series itself: my fantastic four themed countdown I cribbed from that arc where Johnny storm died for a bit fighting a bunch of bugs. He got better, it was still awesome I will defintely talk about it some day. So starting us off at...
We have Timephoon! Where Frank and Co take “Or Rewrite History” to a new horrifying level as Louie nearly kills everyone he ever loved, Della becomes Sonic the Hedgehog, Webby gets a cute moment with her papa, and Huey goes mad from realizing Encino Man is more accurate to cavemen life than his research paper.
But before we can get for that a quick plug: I’m currnetly having a membership for my patreon. Patreon is a site where you can pay creators some money a month to help them live and in return get neat stuff, in this case acess to exclusive reviews, to vote in shorts based specials and newest and most juicy and recen tof all: A FREE REVIEW UPON SIGNUP. Yes so if there’s any ducktales episode I haven’t gotten to yet you’ve been dying to see me cover, any darkwing duck you want me to darkwing do or any other animated or beyond show you want me to take a peak at, you get one free episode with signup.
And as an extra bonus I have some stretch goals: forever and always just one person singing up will result in reviews of Tuca and Bertie, the first season of Amphibia, and now as an extra just for this month super turbo bonus if someone signs up by the end of august: QUACK PACK. All of it. All 42 episodes, and all these stretch goal reviews are PUBLIC. And this is allf or as little as ONE DOLLAR A MONTH. You can contribute more, 5 nets you a guarnateed review of your choice a month, but just a dollar gets you allll of this so please consider it and if you can’t that’s fine. NO matter what you can join me under the cut as Louie rewrites and then erases history, this is timephoon.
We open with life literally being like a Hurricane, here in duckburg, as a freak intense hurricane has hit the city and our heroes are hard at work fortifying the mansion for the worst.. except, naturally Louie. But shockingly not for the usual reasons of him being Garfield’s other illigamate son. Unshockingly he’s hiding something and while he’s being overtly suspcious the others don’t notice as we see what their up to:
First up are Dewey and Webby who are gathering suplies.. specifically about 80 some cans of chilli for Chilli Dogs. Beakley is less concerend about the fact they clearly murdered Sonic the hedgehog to get that much chillidog chilli and more about the fact that it’s not healthy to have ONLY that in the pantry for weeks.. and is livid that Della not only signed off on this but isn’t concerned about Scurvy. Yup it’s time for yet another round of “Beakley is a big judgmeetnal but never gets called out on her own issues as a parent:
To be clear Beakley isn’t WITHOUT a point: Eating nothing but canned chilli and hot dogs probably will go badly after a day , let alone several weeks, and that being a parent is more than just making your kids happy it’s looking out for their best intrests. She’s right there. Not only that but this episode shows Webby listens to Della. And she should, Della is one of the adults in the manor and Webby is like a sister to her kids and Golden Armory already had Beakley letting webby go to an event with just Della. So Beakley NEEDS to know her daughter will be safe.
My problem is how the show frames her: for the first two seasons the show frames Beakley as this untouchable super grandma whose really a mom in disguise whose usually right when it comes to kids. The most the first 2/3 of the show come to acknoeldging her faults as a parent is “Terror of the Terrafirmians” where she overreacts to Lena, and treats her like garbage. The episode DOSEN’T portray Beakley as in the right: she’s not supscious of lena because at the time Lena WAS indeed working for the big bad, but beacause she feels Lena is a bad influence on flimsy evidence like showing her a horor movie, leading her into an abandoned train station (something frankly Webby woudl’ve done anyway had she thought of it and we all know it), and being a loveable scamp. I mean granted Webby loves Lena so much she’d follow her off a cliff, and probably has but you know Lena can fly now so they probably just did it so they could do the whole superman flying lois lane around schitck, so being a LITTLE worried the person your daughter has a massive crush on is kind of dangerous is understandable, if paranoid. But Beakley apologizes, realized she was wrong.. and ends up being RIGHT in trusting Lena overall as Lena dragged her feet betraying Webby and sacrified her life for the girl.
But otherwise.. the show just kinda tends to put Beakley on a pedastal... which just dosen’t work. One of the shows biggest charms.. is that the characters all, ironically, feel human. Their all three dimensional people with a lot of depth and character to them, just like a real person. For instance Della’s parenting here is a bit 90′s sitcom dad, but it’s understandable: She spent 10 years on the moon and clearly didn’t mature much past 25 as she was focused more on survivial. She DID grow as a person.. but it wasn’t as a parent and thus she’s still learning at it. But she’s also a loving mother who sincerly wants to bond with her kids. People aren’t just one thing.
And that’s what makes Beakley intresting as a character. I genuinely LIKE her as a character and i’m still annoyed the show didn’t give her more to do till season 3, and probably woudl’ve given us more in a season 4... you know if Disney woudlnt’ stop arbitrary endnig or shortening popular shows. Still holding out for a movie thoguh they need more of those for Disney+ that are exclusive that aren’t just dug up from a warehouse somewhere in the nevada desert.
Anyways the reason I like her is she has lairs: She’s compietnet, profesionally, dosen’t take shit, is badass as all hell, hilariously snarking and ALMOST always a treat to watch. She’s a needed straight man in a cast of more emotive characters. She also raised an adorable, badass 12 year old basically herself, only getting housing and food from scrooge, all while knowing her worst enemies might rise from the ashes some day to take her. She’s an excellent character and Toks is a wonderful voice actress who hopefully will return to voice acting some more after this. Some people just do one and bolt, it’s why I still haven’t seen Rider Strong again despite being objectively one of the best parts of Star Vs the forces of evil.
But she’s not perfect because no one is: While she was justifably paranoid some bad people would get webby, she also let that paranoia consumer her: she overtraind webby, didn’t let Webby ever leave the house despite the only other resident being an emotionally broken and preputially grumpy billionare, and left her struggling to relate to people normally when the poor girl was finally let loose. Granted I also think webby has a bit of auitism like myself but even autisim dosen’t account for thinking a cut it out gesture means “slit this guys throat”, all nearly done with the thousand yard stare that reads “please not again”. Beakley is a decent mom, but like any person or parent , she’s not perfect and the show NEVER acknoelwedges that or has Beakley grapple with what sheltering webby like she did cost the child.
Sure Donald screwed up as a parent too and was also overprtective.. but the show both showed that’s ab ad thing and didn’t wait til lthe final episode to give us a valid reason WHY: Donald lost his sister, is already not the most emotinally stable guy, was betrayed by his second dad, lost his original parents because Amanda Waller decided they knew too much, and the boys were al lhe had. It dosen’t excuse his own actions.. but the show dosent either. While it sidesteps him actually deling with it with della because shut up, it dosen’t frame his overprotectivness as the start as good and by the end he tearfully realizes he can’t keep shutting scrooge out and doing so has lead his boys to belivie tha’ts okay and to stunt their own emotinal growth out of bitterness just like donald idd. We just.. never get a moment of clarity like that for Beakley. The most she does is nearly walk away at the end which works, it was an uterly heartbreaking scene and webby subtly telling her to stay and that she was stil lher mom is one of the sweetest and most tear inducing moments in the entire series, but it’s just not enough overall. This episode would’ve been far more itnresting if Della fired back with this and we actually went into more of this stuff instea dof just “whelp mrs b is right”. Sadly it dosen’t and it hurts the episode as a whole. More on this as we go.
Next up, ding, Huey, whose going to submit his research on cave ducks to the JWG council , and if it’s good enough it’s going into the next edition of the guide book, making him, as Dewey lovingly puts it “A professional nerd”. Scrooge is securing all the heirlooms in the garage, specifically a collection of family canes including the first mcduck cane, a caveman’s club.
Finally we have Launchpad whose trying to batten down the windows and then accidnetly makes a hole. Not wanting them to die today Beakley has him go trail Louie as she notices he’s being even more shady than usual, which is an acomplishment. Granted this whole move dosen’t make a ton of sense; sure she wants him to stop goofing it up, that’s fair, but if she’s REALLY concerned about Louie... why is she sending the most easily trickable person they have? A wet mop would have more of a chance of actually doing something. I love the guy, and he is compitent in a clutch, but “dealing with a master con artist” is not in his skill set, which for the record is “flying” “Hitting things” “darkwing duck” “nude portraits of drake” “lovemaking” burrito making” “sandwitch making” “eating” “driving while asleep” and saving the best and most obvious “Crashing” and “Surviving a crash”. And it’s not like she dosen’t have options: While Della is understandably out as Beakley dosen’t trust and Della might not be willing to go spy on her kid as a trait this episode gives her is being unquestionably trusting of them, Beakley HERSELF could go up and check since Scrooge is down there to take over supervision for a second, and Scrooge HIMSELF would gladly go up and check on him since Scrooge has been mentoring/putting up with him all season. It’s not a hard sell to say “he might be doing something dangerous/illegal/or time destroying please go check on it.”.
But if Beakley were written as intellgent as she actually is we woudln’t have a plot so instead Launchpad goes up.. and finds Louie returning in Gyro’s Time Tub. Cue the opening credits:
So after that Louie explains what his latest scheme: to use Gyro’s stolen borrowed time tub to plunder treasures lost to history, demonstrating by taking Launchpad back to fetch an idol. .an idol being persued by a fairly familiar caveman. Louie’s theory is that if he’s the one who causes it to be lost, it creates a loop, he gets all the profit and no harm’s done... except said caveman gets zapped back with them unbenownst to Louie.
The episode also brilliant shows things are off already without overly explaning it, in a way I did’nt notice before as The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck wasn’t as fresh in my brain: the time tub is noticably not working as smoothly. When Gyro used it it ONLY took him with him and worked just fine, no distortion to time and space, no accidental passengers. But Louie using it messes it up.
The reason is simple: Gyro’s travel was a closed loop: He was supposed to go back and help a younger scrooge, and had ALWAYS done so. Louie THINKS he has one.. but dosen’t get that just because history SAYS something was lost at “blank time” dosen’t mean it stopped BEING a part of history. Sure there’s been plenty of time travel stories where something leaves the past but again those are closed loops: the person was supposed to take them and often it’s things like the souviner photo from back to the future part 3: something that WOULDN’T exist if the traveler hadn’t come back.
In contrast these items are enough historical or mystical signifigance for Louie to know of them.. meaning there’s no knowing just WHAT happened between now and present day with them. Just because they vanished dosen’t mean some rich asshole didn’t plunder them for a vault and simplymake it look like their lost, take notes Louie, someone found the item and simply kept it to themselves to keep it safe and faked the loss or that it was supposed to stay buried where it was for an event in the FUTURE. That someone, possibly Louie’s own family would find these lost treasures. Gyro simply created predestination paradox: Louie rewrote history and while doing it once or twice probably woudl’ve been fine if shaky, doing it clearly dozens of times is too much for time to ignore before it tries correcting thigns and as we’l lsee it dose so sloppily because i’ts broken and dosen’t know wha tit’s doing wrong.
It also fits his character: Louie , much like Glomgold funny enough but I think i’ll save that comparison for tommorow, dosen’t THINK through his plans. Sure he can analize.. but he dosen’t turn the lense onto his own plans and thus they’ve had gaping holes: running out of harpies, one of his marks posisbly being innocent, not just going to the patnent office early. He just goes with what seems easy and then is somehow suprised when it backfires. And this episode shows the end result of that: a scheme that dosen’t just put one or two peopl ein danger, but the entire UNVIERSE in danger because he thought it through.
Risk and Reward is one of the themes of the series as stated by Frank: adventure is all about taking some risk fo ra large reward and sometimes, like with della you gamble.. and you loose ten years. With Louie he thinks about the payout... but not about the risks of said payout. And that kind of thinking nearly gets him killed.
Back with everyone else as Louie tells Launchpad ot keep it secret keep it safe, Louie covers for himself before SOMETHING lands on the lawn and Della lets the kids run out ot investigate it because she’s the world’s best mom. They find a dead guy. Told you world’s best mom: not everyone would let their chlidren reinact stand by me in a hurricane. They bring him in and he’s alive.. and bubba, the caveduck from before.. which panics the shit out of Louie for obvious scam related reasons. Before we get back to Bubba we also get one of the best gagas and Webby figures Bubba was frozen in an ice berg and dethawed. The resulting exchange is golden father-daughter interactoin:
Scrooge: That’s perposterious Webby: (In a tone that indicates she’s just used to his shit by now) It happene dto you twice Scrooge: (Gives out a noise as if to say fair point)
Bubba is yet another example of the show taking a character who was either divisive (Webby and Beakley), not liked at all (Doofus) or was shockingly racist (Djonn), and giving them a neat coat of paint. And out of all the reinventions that weren’t of racist caractures, this is one of the most suprisingly successful.
As a refresher, Bubba was a cave duck who was added to the cast of season 2 of Ducktales during the 5 part season opener and came back with the ducks to stay with them alongside his pet triceratops tootsie. Bubba.. was not well liked by fans as from all accounts i’ve heard he was annoying, as I haven’t seen his episodes, and I don’t think the crew liked him much either. While they DID use Bubba for a bit, he only appeared 4 times outside of his 5 part introduction. In contrast fenton got TWICE as many episodes in Ducktales, and 5 more over in darkwing duck. Granted that version sucks lemons on toast but still, I think i’ve made my point.
It shows here too: Fenton is one of the major supporting cast along with the Saberwing Sisters and Darkwing: given major screen time, development and importance. Bubba is an excelent guest star but he only shows up ONCE. “ But unlike the other show this comes off less like favioritism and more that Frank simply had more to work with: fenton is an intresting dynamic character who while crossiing into some familiar superhero territoiry is his own character. Bubba would likely be eithe rretreading or paoryindg “caveman comes to the presnt stories’ And those stories can be good: I’ve heard Encino Man is good despite having Pauly Shore as one of the leads, and the comics themselves did a great story with Princess Oona, a caveduck who ends up in the present. It just dosen’t work for a show that already has 80 main characters and no where to put bubba that’s off to the side. Fenton lives with his mom, Lena got adopted, Drake lives a city away. They ahve ways to keep other major characters busy and out of the action. The only real places for him, Gyro and the manor, are already full enough with side characters. He just works best as a one shot here.
Since we’re talking about him anyway let’s go ahead and knock out most of Bubba’s subplot.. i’ll save his part in the climax and the final scene as one of the nice things about this episode story wise, and headachy reviewing wise, is that the two plots are neatly intwined and the pacing is REALLY good: it moves along fast and this comedy b-plot dosen’t slow down the main plot, instead feeding into it when necessary and creating tension as Bubba KNOWS Louie, meaning if someone connects the dots he’s screwed.
The plot is pretty basic: Huey wants to study Bubby for his research only to find out Bubba is WAY more advanced than he thought, taking a liking to chilli cheese dogs, picking up language quick, and grasping fire and the wheel years before Caveducks should have. Rather than you know, marvel at the fact history was wrong and Caveducks were super advanced, Huey, being very regimented in his head and thus not able to take being wrong well, slowly breaks down instead. It’s like Encino Man if one of the wacky teens was the kind of smarmy history nerd who will post without fail in any work that has dinos and humans at the same time WELL THAT’S NOT HOW THAT HAPPENED WHO CARES IF THI SIS FICTOIN GRRRRR. And you may scoff but keep in mind people sent the x-men team TONS of emails after the X-Men Terraformed mars recently, a thing that I will never stop bringing up because everyone needs to know this happened for all time, about how it wasn’ possible. In a comic booke world with a talking racoon, a giant purple two eyed planet eater, a living planet, and a naked silver man on a surf board, and the freaking hypno hustler. So people CAN get this pedantic and that makes this all the more fun. It’s just a nice pile of fun gags, includnig the iconic shot of bubba in sunglasses doing a fip while playing keytar, while Huey slowly looses his shit. Nothing relaly to dig into til lthe final scene and nothing to really mock: it’s just a good solid comedy subplot.
So back to Louie, whose now realized he done pooped the bed, made worse when Gyro shows up and reveals someone stole his time tub... and Scrooge and Beakley take all of five seconds to figure out it was one of the kids. Things only get worse as time and space start to collapse and drag stuff to the mansion including cowboys, ninjas (which leads to a great bit of Scrooge admitting their worst than termites), and knights all causing chaos.
So Louie runs off to go try and fix this in a panic while Della is dumbstruck as she can’t fathom one of her kids having done THIS and I like it: Dellas new at this and for once Beakley isn’t judgmental, instead explaning that even the best kids can still screw up badly. And i’td be a fine lesson for the show, and is a fine lesson in general: you can do everything right as a parent and have great kids... and something horrible can still happen with them because no one is perfect and as much as it hurts there needs to be conseequences fo rit. The problem is the framing: the episode frames it like this is SOMEHOW linked to Della’s permisivnesss.
Bear with me: they frame it like Della not reinging in louie and magically finding his scheme... is at fault and she grows a a character by coming down on him at the end. Now there is good story potetial here: Della possibly blaming herself, even though it’s not her fault for Louie’s actions because she wasn’t here to raise them, Louie manipulating her by guilt tripping her over the spear of selene.. ther’es rich material here.. but the episode simply goes to choose with “Well you gotta displince kids and don’t give em skurvy”
Della having to learn displince isn’t a bad subplot but the two plots just don’t connect that way: Louie would’ve done this if Della was here or not. Louie has been doing this all season. That’s the point the next episode tries to use poorly. We’ll get to that. Della being permissive isn’t even SHOWN on him it’s shown with Dewey, her faviorite child. Because we never got a proper Della and Louie episode before this like we did with the other sons it delutes the imapct. Sure she loves her kid.. but she’s BONDED with Huey and Louie. Which again coudl’ve helped the story: Louie, being the one who had the hardest time accepting her pushes her away and that’s why he acts the way he does in the climax and towards her authority. Instead they just... don’t really play it that way either time or even leave it to subtext and it ruins the story.
So yeah a big ole time fracas (TM) insues. Our heroes fight and it’s a lot of fun , including Launchpad getting lassoed with a cowboy. While the della louie stuff is really weak, the episode is still fun to watch with tons of great set pieces, and of course one of the best gags in the entire series when Scrooge sends gyro to find the tub:
And with that gag we also find out the storm is now sucking up anyone close to it: trying to replace the people lost in space and time but not knowing WHO to take> i’ts trying to complete a puzzle by jamming the wrong pieces in there, just like Louie himself whose desperatley trying to return the treasures but admits to forgetting where some go.
Two other bits before we move the plot along that are neat Scrooge gets protected from a pirate by webby and the two just give each other the most adorable look. It warms the heart so damn much.
The other continues the bubba plot as Tootsie, in this series a wild animal, nearly kills Huey, only for Bubba to save him and Huey to accept him.
Della gapes in horror as the storm picks up Beakley and goes up to find Louie responsible, pissed as all hell and devistated, likely again blaming herself as she takes him down to fix it.
They can, turns out there’s a reverse, but we get a great and horrifying sequence as each of Clan McDuck gets taken one by one into the past and Louie BARELY saves things. It’s a tense, horrifying scene that sells just how bad things are.
Louie fixes the world, the storm subsides literally, and our heroes are returned in fun otufits:
So once upon a time in the west, once upon a time in hollywood, a della in king arthur’s court, black beakly, and cultural apporration. Got it.
Thi is where the episode makes another mistake; Louie tries to apologize.. but it comes off as insenscre, like he wants to avoid the consequences of his actions, again, not like he’s as horrified as he was TWO SECONDS AGO. It’s probably to make what comes next more paltable but it just makes him come off as an unrepentant little monster who got his entire family scattered throughout time for who knows how long: sure they were only gone a moment but CLEARLY some time passed as each comes back with a neat outfit and all but Beakley’s are ENTIRELy diffrent. They ahd to be there at least a full day or two. Possibly longer judging by Launchpad’s stubble. And that’s just the personal consequences: his assholish actoins ALSO nearly DESTROYED TIME ITSELF AND THUS THE UNVIERSE. I mean if he’d been reptentant while it’d still be HORRIBLE, I could understand as just a kid messing up but the fact he dosen’t even seem MILDLY shaken by that, and is only shaken by the consequences of it REALLY bothers me.
But Della REFUSES to take it and points out he nearly destroyed them all for a scam, grounds him and ends Louie Inc, whicH I THOUGHT was harsh on first watch, and Loui’es broken reactoin is clear, but.... he again nearly got everyone trapped in time and destroyed time itself. The fact he’s not going to reform school is GENEROUS on her part. And i’m not even a guy who like sthose schools but Della is smart, she’d find a non abusive one and make sure Louie was being taken care of, but properly helped with his sociopathy. Louie even throws back the moon in her face which too Della’s credit she dosen’t deny.. but the scnearios’ aren’t compatable. BOth acted like morons.. but Della actually feels BAD about it. You don’t. Beakley does compliment Della on the right thing.
One final scene that feels like a weird place to end it but whatever: Huey gets his entry rejected for being unrelastic which...JWG guy.. my dudes.... you you know the world you live in right? And who this kid is right?
They muse on why Bubba was advanced, especially since the first mcduck cane is missing.. and thus Bubba’s true reinvetnion is revealed as millions of years ago, Bubba carves his own stone top hat and stands proud, First of the Clan McDuck.
Final Thoguhts: This episode as I said was patchy: The Bubba plot is briliant and that final twist shook me and the time travel shenanigans are fun.. but the main plot just falls apart the more you think about it and is failed by not having Della and Louie interact earlier. I mean... you coudl’ve had Louie be in her subplot for Golden Armory, at least set up this episode. Instead what we got was okay but coudlv’e been so much more
Next Time: Della nearly gets her son killed with shoddy parenting which would be a shame if Louie didn’t wholly deserve it, while Glomgold aseembles his own Legion of Doom to win the bet and we see Zan Owlson go completely dead inside.
