Tuesday, July 6, 2004

Firefly / Cartoon Chronicles: Teen Sleuth Toons #3

I'm back, biatches! Sorry about the month-long delay. I know some of you were waiting for eagerly for my review of Funky Phantom. Okay, so maybe not. Anyway, before I continue the Cartoon Chronicles, I want to do a little bit of my normal ranting. I bought Firfly on DVD. For those of you who don't know, Firefly is a deep space sci-fi series created by Joss Whedon, the man who brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series Angel. Set 500 years in the future, the show is about the crew of a firefly-class transport ship named Serenity. A firefly-class is usually very small, houses a little under a dozen people, and is good for shipping a fairly large amount of cargo. Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds fought in a war against the Allied forces who were going to unite all of the planets in the known galaxy under one government. His side lost. So now he's a ship captain living under a government he doesn't even want. There are no aliens on this show, so there's nowhere for him to go to escape the government. So what does he do? He turns into an outlaw. So the series basically follows the crew of the Serenity as they run smuggling jobs, ship illegal cargo, hunt a little bounty, and try to keep food on the table. The crew consists of the captain, Mal; the first mate, Zoe; the pilot and Zoe's husband, Wash; a space pirate on the payroll, the man they call Jayne; a young mechanic and ship engine genius, Kaylee; a shepard or religious preacher, Book; a doctor on the run for kidnapping his sister, Simon; a child genius who's on the run for escaping a government institute that tortured her, Simon's little sister River; and a prostitute living in a future where her job is not only legal but prestigious, Inara. But enough of that. Let's talk Hanna Barbera. The Funky Phantom Ghosts can be good guys, too. So a group of kids warnder into a spooky house for Godonlyknowswhatreason, and accidentally awakened the spirit of a long-dead soldier from the Revolutionary War. His name: Mudsy. Well, it was really Muddlemore, but they called him Mudsy. Rather than try to scare the kids away from the house while secretly using it as a base to smuggle gold bricks (ie. typical Scooby plot), he decides to team up with these meddling kids and help them solve mysteries. Oh yeah, and his ghost-cat named Boo is there, too. Don't let the title fool you. This show was not Funky. Funny on occasion, but not so much funky. His voice was done by Daws Butler, so he sounded exactly like Snagglepuss. Which is really disappointing, because Butler has so many other voices (Yogi Bear, Baba Looey, Huck Hound). You'd think he could come up with a voice that doesn't sound exactly like another. But I digress. This show's major downfall was the way it used the same background music as Scooby Doo. I kid you not. This show shared Scooby's score. If this show ever attempted to be different from Scooby, it wasn't trying hard enough. Would I recommend it? Eh... no. Heck, you can barely even catch this show on Boomerang. Next Time: Goober and the Ghost-Chasers. If Mulder and Scully were two meddling kids, X-Files would look a little something like this. Much Love.

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