Monday, July 15, 2013

Plumbing Shallow Waters: Episode Four

I've had a long-standing belief that "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."  Having lived in Virginia, I can say that it wasn't when the temperature would peak over 100 degrees that made it murder to go outside, it's when it was also so humid that it actually hurt to breathe and your clothing would immediately absorb all immediate water from around you.

It's rather warm where I live now (for, you know, Maine), but considering I was able to walk around in Phoenix when the temperature was over a hundred for several days, I stand by my notion that humidity is what makes warm weather uncomfortable.

So maybe today's Super Mario Brothers Super Show will help me out with this heat.  Maybe it'll be a funny little underwater adventure with those frog suits that never really did much, or perhaps a trip to some land covered in ice.


So much for that hope.



By the way, what is that up in the sky?  Is that supposed to be a hazy sun?  Is Mario's world passing a little too close to Jupiter?  Did someone leave half of a cupcake with orange frosting floating in the sky?

This episode is "Mario's Magic Carpet" (written by Rowby Goren which is a name I'm not making up) and this might be the least offensive of the pitches for an episode I've seen so far, because while the Beanstalk episode had some Mario-like themes (giant worlds, beanstalks), the story made little to no sense since it was just their attempting to tell a shoddy version of a fairy tale.

But man, they could have some real opportunities with a desert world-themed stage.  We know flying carpets existed in early games, and there are sentient cacti, evil murderous suns, cobras, and other desert-themed monsters to face.  So let's get started and see what classic Mario imagery we see first.


You know, I don't remember there being any camels in a Mario video game.

In fact, I only remember playing as a camel in one single video game, and that was King of Kings: The Early Years for the original Nintendo.  You played as one of the three wise men on a stage and you rode a camel whose spit could kill any enemy you faced (because that was part of the story, right?  The three wise men battled their way across the desert to reach Jesus?)


Seriously.  I'm not making that game up.

Apparently Princess Peach needs to find Aladdin's lamp and use the magic to "free her people from Koopa's evil clutches."  I'm not sure why, since a fire flower or an invincible star seem to get the job done quite well, and all you need for the latter is to smack a bird in the head.

Desperately trying to avoid succumbing to any mirages as the hot sun bakes down on them, they stumble upon what appears to be a swimming pool.  However, their attempts to dive in (including Luigi and Peach trying to simply jump in from the pool's edge) reveals it to be a trampoline which launches the foursome...oh, I'd say probably a good quarter mile away towards a palace with a flip-top roof that opens so they land in a tower.

I didn't make up a single word in that.

They land in the throne room of the sultan (whose voice is almost, but not quite, as insulting as Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit) who announces that the four of them will be his new slaves, and has a large, burly guard capture them to take them to their new quarters.  That is, until he says "but bring me the pretty one."

I have to admit, I chuckled for a moment at the long pause among the heroes before Toad points to the Princess and says "I guess he means her."  That was this episode's one single funny joke.

The Princess, showing herself to be the true master diplomat, refuses to join the Sultan's harem because "harems are from the stupid olden days."  That sentence is not edited.

Mario, Luigi, and Toad are lead away at spear point, but as they pass by a room full of treasure, Mario spots Aladdin's lamp sitting on a pedestal.  He whispers to Luigi that when the guard falls asleep, they'll sneak out, get the lamp, and use its magic to free the Princess and save her people.

Seriously, guys, I'm not kidding.  One fire flower, and I'm pretty sure you'd rule this kingdom.  You don't need "phenomenal cosmic power" or whatever.

The scene fades out, and opens with Luigi and Toad sitting on two piles of treasure as Mario approaches the lamp and- WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ESCAPE SCENE?  Seriously, that's it?  You have a guy whisper a plan that might lead to something interesting happening, or some actual tension in an episode, and instead you simply skip ahead to "oh, they did it during the commercial?"  Did you just not want to draw the scene?  Was the footage of Mario getting licked by a camel so important that you had to edit out an escape sequence to let it fit?

Mario looks over the glass sphere around the lamp, and pulls out a trusty pizza cutter ("This glass is pretty tough, but this baby's cut through some pretty tough pizzas!" ... sigh) and cuts a circle out of the glass before the animators once again get lazy and have him reach through the glass where the hole isn't and pull the lamp out sideways.

The sheer lack of caring in these episodes is what gets me.  I'm pretty sure that by doing this blog and noticing these things, I'm caring more than the editors ever did.

We get to see a scene where one of the Sultan's aids complains that the Princess is refusing to wear the traditional harem veils and roller skates (...okay, someone's bizarre fetish came through this episode), and the Sultan announces he's already put an ad out in the paper to sell her because he's "bored with her."

Mario and Luigi activate the lamp somewhere safe, but instead of Robin Williams (or even Dan Castanella) they get this:


It looks like Wilma Flintstone really let herself go and got desperate for cameo work.

Toad shows up and announces that Bowser King Koopa has shown up to buy the Princess, and Mario, Luigi, and the genie all gasp in shock despite the fact that the genie has never MET the Princess and has no idea who King Koopa is.  Maybe she's just appalled that harems still exist, since those were done in "stupid olden days."

Mario pleads with the genie to rescue the Princess (seriously, I'm not kidding.  Just wait until he jumps, run past him, hit the trigger, and drop him into the lava, it works every time) and she agrees to give it a try.  After pondering her options for a few seconds, she decides the best plan of action is to "cast a spell."

Genie, what did you think Mario intended for you to do?  Whip up a batch of cookies?  Fill out a formal protest letter?  Geezus.

But it gets better.  The genie waves her fingers, and black tendrils leave her hands and waft across the room, causing everyone to groan and cover their nose.  Quoth Mario: "You made a magic smell."  The Genie: "So I goofed."

I think I'm getting dumber just watching this episode.

Koopa makes his getaway with the Princess, and the others run after his flying carpet, but fall further and further behind.  Mario asks the genie to cast a spell to let them fly, but the genie refuses (what?) until he offers to "grease her palm" with a gold coin.  When did you have to bribe a genie?  Don't you get three wishes?  Isn't that the point?

The genie casts her spell, and Mario, Luigi, and Toad are flung high into the sky...at which point the spell immediately wears off and they crash into the ground somehow not dying upon impact.

We skipped a tense escape sequence for this, folks.

Finally get get their hands on the jalopy of "used flying carpets" and catch up with Koopa, whose plan is to simply fly over some quicksand, chuck the Princess into it head-first, wait for it to swallow her up, and then leave.  ...which isn't really a bad plan.  He isn't setting up an elaborate death trap, he isn't going to just toss her out and keep going, and he isn't going to bother with "keeping" her which never turns out well for giant monsters that have captured princesses.  Just ask Jabba the Hutt.

How is it King Koopa might just be the smartest character on this show, but just has to always be foiled due to Mario having Plot Immunity (tm)?  This is twice in a row where I've commented that King Koopa's plan isn't a bad plan.

An attempt to sneak up in a dust cloud is foiled when the genie sneezes the cloud away, and when the Princess tries to pretend it was her own sneeze (which sounds nothing like the genie's), King Koopa doesn't even react besides giving her his best "you must be kidding me" look like he gave in episode two.  It's official, King Koopa is my favorite character.  He does not buy your cockamamie story for a moment.

Koopa spots Mario in his rear-view mirror (don't ask) and promptly dumps the Princess out into the quicksand.  The Princess lands and immediately starts to sink, where she reacts by going "oh no, quicksand!"  This despite the fact that King Koopa explained that was his entire plan of what to do with her, and she spent the whole time staring at him with her arms crossed and an expression that belonged on her if she was told that Baskin Robbins was out of her favorite flavor of ice cream.

While Mario swoops the carpet down to try to save the Princess, King Koopa calls in a pidgit strike (you might remember them as the birds that ride flying carpets in the game), and they start pecking apart the threads of the good guys' carpet.  The genie jumps back in her lamp and takes off, abandoning ship, and things look bleak for our heroes.

That is, until Luigi remembers that he speaks pidgit.  No, seriously.  The man speaks pidgit.

He tells the birds that King Koopa's carpet is much tastier than theirs, and the pidgits fly off to eat his instead.  King Koopa drives away swearing revenge, and the genie's lamp lands in his passenger seat where the genie starts complaining about how Koopa's driving.

The heroes make another bad joke, and the episode ends...with them no closer to "freeing the Princess' people," minus one camel in exchange for a broken down carpet, and having just given the almighty Aladdin's lamp and genie magic to their biggest enemy.  Victory, I guess?

The Good:

King Koopa really is the best part of this show.  His plans are intelligent instead of overly complex, and the only reason he loses is because the plot demands it.  He sees through bluffs, he's charismatic, and despite trying to murder the Princess leading a four person rebellion against him and occasionally trying to blow up planets, I haven't seen any indication that the Mushroom Kingdom is much worse with him being around.

Also, Luigi once again saved the day.  He is truly the superior brother.

The Bad:

I know I keep hammering on this point, but the show just feels really lazy.  You have a chance for an interesting escape from a prison cell, but instead you go for a blatantly obvious jump cut.  I would've been happy if Mario just had a tiny little plunger tied to a string that he threw and stuck to the keys in order to escape their cell, at least that shows some thought is put into it.  So much of the show was just filler (the mirages, the magic "smell," stock footage of Mario's flying dust cloud just hanging in the air before they decided to dub over the voices of people coughing) that I really can't help but wonder if it was just edited extremely poorly or if the writer just didn't know what he was doing.

Plus, we didn't get to see the Princess in veils and roller skates.  The writer's also a tease.

Overall:

Not good by any means, but not the worst episode so far (that belongs to the Star Wars rip-off), this one is just completely forgettable.  The whole episode feels like it was put in to simply take up space between two other episodes, and on any other program I might think it was simply that they had an excellent episode just happen and needed a breather before another big thing happened, but I know in this case it's just foolish to believe such a thing.

The quality of animation also really went down in this one, where stock frames, recycled footage, and a lack of clear syncing of sound to pictures became so obvious you couldn't see anything else.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sit in the sun until this episode is baked out of my brain.

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