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The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin: Tweeg Joins MAVO
Reviewed: 10/21/2018
The Beginning Of The Teddy/Quellor Feud.
Well; it's time to finally bring the beginning of the end of the Teddy Ruxpin: Storybook series and dive into the real meat of this show. When this episode is said and done; everything but this series and Teddy Ruxpin changes forever as Tweeg steals a book that is apparently the Crystal Book and MAVO accepts him...until the facade of the crystals on the wall render Tweeg's plan into dust, leading to Teddy's first true encounter with the No-Heart lookalike, Quellor. How does this episode fare? So; let's rant on shall we...?
Episode opens with a shot of Gimmick Valley pointing towards Tweeg Tower as Louie and his bicycle helicopter arrives with Louie claiming that there is just one more stop. Louie also wants to have fun with this one as we see Buffy on the railing complaining about Spike's snoring and I swear it was LB snoring. Another Bounder hops in complaining and then Louie arrives as all the Bounders bail and Louie throws the newspaper and it manages to whack Buffy in the back of the head with. Can we "metoo" Louie from this show now? That is clearly man-on-woman violence we just saw there. Buffy slides into the tower as Elinore arrives. So, are they going to explain how Elinore got away from the Mud Bulp King? Probably not. Elinore takes the newspaper and somehow Tweeg enters from the entrance of the tower instead of from downstairs inside the tower where it would make more sense. So, we discover that Elinore put an ad in the newspaper and at first I was thinking that Elinore was going to sell his son to the lowest bidder, because someone this rotton, you don't put past them to do something as heinous as selling your child on the market. Thankfully; this was not the case as she put in an ad to declare Tweeg a full member of MAVO for real; which is silly because he is a MAVO members, whose membership is still on the rocks at this point. LB calls Tweeg, Tweeb as in Dweeb. LB is clearly slipping on the name calling at this point. Apparently; Tweeg is still short on the MAVO bad deeds checklist and time is short, so Elinore and LB order Tweeg to go do something really horrible to Newton Gimmick, because LB is still Tweeg's supervisor and LB threatens to tell Quellor all the horrible things Tweeg said to him. Wait; if Tweeg did that, wouldn't that be a compliment to him; since Quellor is supposed to be a horrible character to begin with? No wonder being good is so easy; being bad forces you to twist yourself in knots, in a really toxic masculinity like fashion. So, Tweeg obeys and leaves as we fade to black. We return in Newton Gimmick's house in the living room with Fuzz and the Wooly Whatsit having a great time reading a book all about Fobs. Now when is Gimmick going to write about Wooly Whatsits?! Grubby comes in with the newspaper (called the Grundo Gazette) to inform us what Elinore said about a minute ago. Down comes Gimmick with the Crystal Sethoscope and Teddy comes down with the Crystal Book. Teddy's line is classic here:
Teddy: I hope Tweeg makes some new friends there.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's a good one, Teddy Dustbin! I can hear Tweeg saying that right now. So we exchange notes for a while as I just realize that the book about Fobs has a very similar locking mechanism as the Crystal Book. So, Teddy finishes up his explaination of the Crystal Book as Tweeg arrives at the front door with the worst shadow of all time. Tweeg of course, just cannot resist being so paranoid as he claims that they are trying to steal his buttermilk into gold recipe. It took him five episodes in this arc before he mentioned that recipe again, a new record of reeling in the paranoia in this series. So, the CS is used on Wooly after Wooly asks if it would hurt, Teddy assures him that it's safe. Vaccines are safer than this thing. I mean; Wooly almost got blinded by the light. Oh; and the crystal says he's loyal to his friends. Geez; I didn't need that thing to tell me that. Teddy shows Wooly the Crystal Book as we basically recap Wooly's days at the School Tree and reading with Leota; but Wooly skims the pages and doesn't get a headache. Probably because his friends cannot read the book either, since it's in an ancient language. So, Gimmick offers Wooly to come upstairs to see some more inventions and Gimmick puts what originally looks like the Crystal Book onto the bookshelf. I'll explain that at the end of this episode. So, the bad music plays and Tweeg comes in to practice the fine art of not being seen. Tweeg of course ruins it by talking and grabs the "Crystal Book" (and the animators did a fine job of making it look like the Crystal Book, too) and runs out laughing and screaming like he did something impressive. Fade to black and then for the first time since the MAVO trial; we head back to Quellor's throne room at MAVO headquarters with Quellor's bat familiar screeching and flying around. Quellor is sitting on his throne chair with GOUL the gaslighter as GOUL is claiming that according to the prophecy, when all six crystals are installed; darkness will fall across the land. But the sun has been out for weeks, though. Ironically; later on when they had the six crystals legit, darkness still didn't fall across the land because GOUL is an idiot for not reading that the seventh crystal was the key. Which was a brilliant booking move because it made GOUL look dumb and it also assured that Teddy's facade could still go on unnoticed.
Quellor thinks that this takes time as GOUL thinks the crystals are fake which Quellor calls impossible. Personally, I don't care because the bat fight is much more amusing than this silly exchanging of notes by the heels. The bats bump into a torch and it goes into the water bucket and the flame is doused. Somehow; this causes the entire room to go to black. Geez; they only had enough money for one torch in Quellor's throne room? Maybe Tweeg is not the only one hookwinking Miss Maggotheart on the MAVO dues, if you catch my drift. Also; these heels clearly believe that Occam's Razor is a razor that is owned by some guy named Occam; because Quellor believes that darkness has fallen and GOUL agrees with him as we go to the zoom out shot of MAVO Headquarters. Other problem: It's night time all the time at MAVO; how would they know the sun has been out all the time? I guess that Miss Maggotheart's job. So, we head back to Gimmick's house as everyone comes back downstairs after the invention session has concluded. Mr. Enter would have booed this out of the building if he reviewed this episode for sure. Wooly thought this was fun as he would like to look at "that book" again; and Gimmick agrees to it. Wooly didn't say what book it was, so that means the Crystal Book is the one Gimmick put on the bookshelf. Because Wooly likes Fobs. I don't think that needs to be explained as Gimmick notices that the book is gone from the coffee table and it's panic time. They all deduce that Tweeg stole the book and Teddy wants to get it back pronto. Gimmick stammers like an idiot and Grubby is shocked that Gimmick is acting this way because it's the Crystal Book Grubby and Teddy are talking about. So, it's time to prepare the Airship as Gimmick is confused; which implies that Gimmick knows that the book is really all about Fobs and not the Crystal Book. So, the trio goes towards the Airship as Wooly follows and we get a really dumb moment: Wooly bumps into a cannon ball on the ground and grabs it. He reads the message on the ball and my thought was: Why does he now notice this? He never mentioned the cannon balls until now. I realize that before he met Leota; he couldn't read a word, but even so; how could he never noticed the cannon balls. Did he assume Gimmick put them there for poop and giggles? Because even Newton Gimmick isn't strong enough to stoop that low.
Somehow; we get the out of nowhere sack as Wooly is putting cannon balls in it so he can return them to Tweeg personally. Oookkkkkaaayyy; Wooly throws the sack onto the Airship and Wooly will have to walk...AGAIN! I thought they already solved that problem. I guess Wooly and a sack of cannonballs are too much for the Airship. Wooly don't care, because he loves exercise, or something. Fade to black and we return to the mountain road with Tweeg pulling the wagon with Elinore and LB sitting in said wagon. I believe this will be the last time Tweeg pulls his weight around in this series before going back to a whining troll who fails at life again. We discover that Tweeg is going to hookwink MAVO by not paying the bills and completing the checklist, because Quellor's anger will pale in comparsion to the Crystal Book that he stole as we pan over to the shot of MAVO Headquarters and head inside with Elinore, Tweeg and LB entering and Quellor standing in the middle war room table hole like he usually appears. Tweeg sees a troll kid with a red/pink tunic and hat with a sucker and Tweeg causally and blantantly steals it from him and the kid is confused before he bails. Iggly warns Tweeg about it: Not because you are not allowed to steal candy from a heel kid; but because it's a jawbreaker. Which is not the lollipop; but the name of the poor kid's mother. In comes an angry mother who looks like the definition of a violent soccer mom and Tweeg panics and runs away. Of course! Jawbreaker looks nothing like the kid, so even trolls have zero problems with mixed marriages, or out of wedlock marriage. What a shocker?! Jawbreaker also has Wilma's hair style and a lot of gold jewelry; and they do the cheap technique of Tweeg and Jawbreaker running from side to side repeat, repeat, repeat. This will happen more than one in this episode as Elinore -- scoiopathic mother extraordinaire -- loves this moment and claims Tweeg is having fun. And she wonders why Elroy dumped her? So, we head outside MAVO headquarters with a west pan shot of the hiding spot where Teddy, Grubby and Gimmick are wearing catering gear as Grubby isn't thrilled by this and neither is Gimmick; but Teddy is in charge as Wooly is fine with this and will await for the signal. The dreaded signal of doom. Wooly bails south, the trio goes into MAVO headquarters and they go to the rear entrance which is clearly on the sign and into the cave of doom for a while. They make it to the double doors.
Teddy slams the knocking ring on the door and no answer. Grubby takes it as no one home and tries to bail; so Teddy has to grab the tail ends of Grubby's rear end to stop him, and that shot looks recycled from a previous episode. I see the power of lobster courage has struck again. Grubby is like Shaggy here, so Teddy is Freddy and Gimmick is Velma. I guess Grubby plays Scooby Doo as well. Oh, and the door opens and out comes Iggly and he's clearly not in the mood to reel of the MAVO rulebook today as he demands that they state their business. You know this episode is nothing when even Iggly isn't going to do his promo cutting anymore. Gimmick claims that they are here to serve the guests. The food if you will. Despite the flimiest disguises and Grubby being seen clearly as day in the second arc of this series, Iggly lets them in anyway. Not that it matters anymore because the whole facade for the last twenty years is slowly starting to unravel anyway. So, the trio enters with Iggly as we scene change to Iggly heading into the war room and addressing the crowd. Quellor gets up and we break the ice by singing the MAVO song, which is great because (a) the song is awesome and (b) we get to kill time without too much reaching. There was some knife cutting of a sack of money, some gossip, and a lot of showing up near pilliars; but not much else. Apparently; wild imaginations are the key to heeldom, and villains must wear weird disguises, which aren't weird at all. So, after singing this song, Quellor addresses Tweeg and asks if he completed the checklist and LB shakes his head and says no way. Wait; heels are suppose to lie, so he did complete the checklist after all. Then Miss Maggotheart complains and show the two gems from the Tweezles arc. You know; this would have been a darning piece of information if she had shown them during the MAVO trial; so chalk that up for the writers not knowing what they are doing. Quellor demands that Tweeg explain himself and Tweeg shows off the Crystal Book that he stole from an Illiop; and it contains secrets of the crystal. Thunder and lightning bolts ensue in the background as we get a very long sequence of a large stormcloud shooting bolts of lightning and it's raining. All the heels; like a bunch of religious zealots who pray for rain, deduce that impending darkness has fallen.
MAVO has gone from just a heel organization to being like a heel religious organization. How can anyone see this as anything other than a bunch of storm clouds from reality? I should have realized this when GOUL was clearly gaslighting everyone into believing that Illiops will cause them doom and gloom; but that was much more subtle than this. This organization is dangerously dumb now. Quellor and company accept Tweeg carte blanche and let the feast begin; with a warning from Iggly to be neat about because it was a mess last time. Wait; if they are heels, shouldn't Iggly say: "Be messier! The last time you were here, it was sparkling clean! Get it right this time! Rule 34; Subsection 34: Be messy at all times!"?! These heels sometimes...Head into the MAVO kitchen which apparently, slime is slang for beer as shown on the giant beer barrel. So, the trio is preparing the food in the kitchen as Grubby is clearly making root stew because he tastes the stuff before continuing on. Iggly comes in yelling and out comes the trio with steaming bowls of slime as we head into the war room and service the guests, so to speak. Meanwhile; it's raining hard and the war room has a roof that leaks so much, the inspector would have evicted the tennents a long time ago. That ceiling is leaking like crazy. Seriously; the holes on the roof are enough to causes mini waterfalls to form. The water was suddenly getting into the salt crystals in the slots on the wall as Teddy serves a bowl of slime to a green skinned troll with green horns; because the natural color of horns is too demonic for this show. Silly since Quellor's horns are normal colored. A drop of salt water hit the bowl of slime before the troll eats it; so the troll complains after eating it for being too salty. Teddy is walking over and then a huge drop of salt water pings his head and this leads to a long sequence of Teddy whispering to Gimmick to look up and Gimmick looks up. Now the trio is in deep trouble now because their facade is dying right before their eyes. Teddy grabs the bowl from the troll and bails to give him something else, as per the request. Teddy goes over to Gimmick and Gimmick stops because he sees Tweeg eating slime soup with the Crystal Book in plain sight. Jump cut to Grubby near the kitchen doors as drops of rainwater fall on his head.
Now here's a confusing scene: I think the spot was for Gimmick to point to the Crystal Book; Grubby sees it and then uses the conveniently placed torch to signal for Wooly to throw cannonballs at MAVO headquarters. That is what I thought it was. In this scene, they made it as if the washing away the salt crystals was the indication for Grubby to signal Wooly, which otherwise makes no sense. Thankfully; it only takes three seconds for Wooly to get the signal context and he dumps the sack of cannon balls from Tweeg and Wooly grabs them and throws them into MAVO headquarters causing huge holes in the wall. Quellor demands answers to this outrage; and yes, this is a legit case of outrage. Quellor literally says: This is tweech! Wait, what?! Something tells me that whoever wrote that didn't have a story editor check it to make sure it made sense. Even saying: "This is evil!" would make more sense. So, Quellor orders everyone to go outside and take care of this cannon ball throwing meance and I'm laughing out loud as I typed that, considering that this is the Wooly Whatsit we are talking about. And Tweeg parrot like the cowardly, jerky heel that he is...and gets away with it as all the monsters run out and none of them even try to throttle Tweeg for telling them what to do. Cut to outside as Wooly claims to be having fun with this wonton, brazan vandalism and destruction of heel property; but discovers the consequence that it's all fun and games until the monsters notice and run after you like a lynch mob. Wooly bails and we head back to a shot of the salt crystal being exposed to water and a lot of it falls on GOUL's head. She looks up and sees the situation and then calls on LB to operate the pulley chair as I realize that GOUL might have been voiced by two people because her voice up to now is much more different than the one I heard in the much later episodes. Almost like a snake's voice in the later episodes and more shrill and human in the early ones. LB uses his mouth to pull the pulley rope and hoist GOUL up to the crystal slot. GOUL licks the water off the salt crystal with her finger and realizes that the crystals are indeed fake. The facade is now officially dead in the sea water, so to speak. However; this only affects Tweeg since MAVO doesn't know about Teddy just yet. That's going to change real soon by the way.
Jump cut to Gimmick grabbing the "Crystal Book" from Tweeg and bailing as we get the Scooby-Doo chase sequence the "Crystal Book" edition for a while as out comes Grubby with the serving trays cart of food as the rain has stopped falling for some reason; like it matters anymore. This leads to an obvious logic break: Grubby pushes the cart towards Tweeg and Tweeg gets nailed by the cart and goes away stage right. The logic break is that Teddy and Gimmick were running stage left and forgot to turn into the camera; or side step the cart. So, it appeared that they teleported away from the cart altogether. This was so comically bad as a logic break; but then the big moment happens and this one was even worse than this logic break. So, earlier in the show; they showed a scene where Tweeg stole a lollipop from a troll kid in red and pink clothing; who got chased off by his mother named Jawbreaker. Well; for no reason whatsoever, the kid is back with his lollipop, so Tweeg was forced to give it back off-screen. That's fine. So, here's what happens: The kid is running with his lollipop stage right while Teddy is running stage left. Now, BS&P is clearly not going to allow Teddy to run over this poor kid because if he does, even unintentionally, would turn him into the biggest monster heel in all of Grundo. So, you would think that they would have Teddy trip over Jawbreaker; which unlike the troll kid, would be much more believable to trip over. Heck; even Iggly or even Tweeg himself on the rebound would make sense to bowl over and expose your cover. In fact; bowling over Tweeg and blowing your cover would have been perfect to set up this feud with Teddy and Quellor and give Quellor an excuse to throw Tweeg under the bus all at the same time. Of course; the writers and animators believe that Teddy tripping over a kid is funny even when it makes no sense whatsoever; and so Teddy trips over the kid, takes about eight rollover bumps, crashes into Grubby's cart with an out of nowhere loaf of French bread and lands on his rear end on the floor without his flimsy disguise. You just made your number one babyface look like a complete dork! Thunder ensues and the whole story of this series has changed forever because it's time for Quellor to finally meet Teddy. If the booking to the payoff wasn't so goofy, this would have been an epic moment. Getting to this point made sense otherwise.
And since GOUL gaslit everyone into believing Illiops are a threat to them, Quellor brings out his sword and in roundabout terms, threatens to murder Teddy. Legit I might add. And it's clear Teddy Ruxpin doesn't really know what to do here because he has never been taught how to fight and commit violence, because PRINCIPALS~! When someone has no scruples, this is where knowing how to fight on some level not only becomes important; but a matter of life and death. Evidence #1: Using a loaf of soft bread as a shield against a glorified knife that is normally used to cut such food. Teddy is done for and really has no one but himself to blame for this. He was dumb enough to go after the Crystal Book. He was dumb enough to not look where he is going and he was dumb enough not to change direction away from a troll kid. And he was dumb enough to be a pacifist without having a backup plan in case someone hated his principals so much that they wanted to kill him. Especially since he went to an organization that demonized his kind to the point where they have to kill him and think they are in the right to do so. And to make matters worse for Teddy; we head outside with Gimmick and Grubby in the pouring rain and Gimmick cannot find the Airship in his pocket in order to expand it and rescue Teddy, whatever good that would do. Then, out of nowhere; the rest of the MAVO monsters show up to cross the bridge as Gimmick and Grubby panic; but then Wooly runs in to run interference and then bails with the monsters following him. Because they are his size, you see. Gimmick finally finds the little Airship in his pocket and sets it down as he wants to get out of here in the worst way, and Grubby agrees. Back to the war room for more awkward and dorky dodging of Quellor's sword by Teddy as he continue to take this insane stupid bumps. Evidence #2: the RIC FLAIR BROOMSTICK OF DOOM; which Quellor cuts in two. I see Quellor is jealous as Teddy gets uppercutted in the process and goes over the cart and falls on the other side off-screen. Quellor leans on the cart looking for Teddy and pushing a bowl of slime and at this point, Teddy cannot take much more of this. So, here's how Teddy gets out of this: GOUL runs in and shows Quellor that the crystal is just made of salt and thus is faker than fake news.
Quellor is distracted, so Teddy finally kicks the serving cart right into Quellor, Quellor lands on top, goes backwards and crashes into the pew backwards. Making Quellor look like a complete dork because it appeared that when Teddy landed, he got concussed into one of the stone pillars. And then we fade to black for no reason and return with Gimmick enlarging the Airship with the Portable Reducing Machine and Teddy simply run in without further incident. Teddy, Grubby and Gimmick get into the Airship and they take off. Iggly comes out (and where was he all this time? Taking a smoke break?) as Wooly is crossing the bridge and we get a sequence of Iggly cutting the ropes on the east side of the bridge and Wooly breaks the wooden planks on the bridge; but manages to get up and walk. This is just a waste of time because I think this spot was supposed to be for Teddy, but Teddy already made it without incident and this would have been better with Teddy sliding around until Wooly made the save. But no; it's Wooly getting the spot and saving himself by swinging over the abyss and doing more bumps on the rocky ground and slobbering on cue afterwards. What a mess?! Wooly walks away and Quellor looks on from the window, looking like he wants Illiop blood. Oh wait; he really does want it. Quellor has a headache as the "Return To Tweeg" cannonball appears out of nowhere and he reads it. Iggly brings in Tweeg and LB as Elinore has now been written out completely by teleport and we'll never see her again...until either the Ying Zoo arc or the Wizardweek arc. Quellor is angry and accuses Tweeg of planning this assault on MAVO to take over it and this actually makes sense because Tweeg has had grandiose thoughts of being ruler of MAVO.
Tweeg shakes his head no and LB vouches for him because he's too dumb to plan out this attack and claims that LB has nothing to lose. Quellor counters by officially firing LB and basically putting him under MAVO arrest with Tweeg as both of them are taken away by Iggly. LB asks about the MAVO dental plan and that is that. Geez; this was awfully anticlimatic for a moment that started the Death of Innocence angle and lead to all the events, to a payoff of the Hate Plague arc. So, we head back outside as Wooly is waving goodbye to the Airship. The Airship flies into the sky as Gimmick takes out the book from the storage bin and shows it to Teddy. Gimmick is still confused as to why Teddy wanted the book back so bad and Teddy claims it to be a special book. Gimmick is surprised that Teddy thinks so highly of his writing, which confuses Teddy. Yup; the book they got back was all about Fobs. Gimmick put the Crystal Book on the bookshelf and even Gimmick points out that he would have been angry beyond belief if the Crystal Book was stolen. So, thanks to Teddy being unable to read non-verbal cues, he basically put himself at risk of being discovered by MAVO. So, it's all TEDDY's fault for every single thing that happens from here on out. And Teddy don't care at all as he's laughing. And they wonder why people didn't like this character? If I were Teddy; I would be worried right now because my kind is being demonized. I would be scared to death; especially since Teddy's fighting skills are HORRIBLE! So, we fade to black as the sun comes out of the clouds, and the Airship flies away to end the episode at 19:41. So, yes; this episode was an utter mess of logic breaks, but; at least now we have gotten somewhere and hopefully, will have a more focused show instead of channeling Quack Pack with two plots. Sadly; Teddy's idealogy is going to die right now because the character was designed without actual unforgivable monster heels and Teddy has zero idea how to counter that. Call it ** 3/4 (55%).
THE REVIEW LINE
Well; I will say this: The payoff to the beginning of the Quellor/Teddy feud would have been much more impressive if neither of them stumbled and fumbled like complete dorks. Teddy tripping over a mere kid without bowling him over was a BS&P decision if I ever saw one and they had Tweeg RIGHT THERE to use! And Teddy showed no worry at all after he got out safely, considering that MAVO, especially the Great Understander of Legends has been gaslighting Illiops since debuting in the second arc. If I were Teddy; I would be guarding the crystals and learning how to do hand to hand combat; because it's clear Teddy has no concept in defending himself. Even pacifists learn that at least because they realize that there are lots of monsters with no scruples around. Heeldom logic makes no sense; but that is sort of normal. Elinore was written out by teleport of course and the animation continuity was all over the place in the second half; although the first eight or so minutes was perfectly fine. And finally; after being the most compentent heel in this arc, Tweeg fails at life and this time, it costs him his freedom. Just peachy. As much as I am glad that we finally got to the real serious stuff of this show, getting there was an absolute mess and it shows the importance of knowing that making a serial based show is very different than an episodic show. So, next up is the dreaded Death of Innocence arc, but I'm working on that one next year because it's the biggest angle in the entire series, besides the Hate Plague Arc. MAVO goes on a rampage, steals the Airship blueprints, kidnaps Teddy's friends, plays the most stereotypical Air Pirates imaginable and Teddy near dies and this sets up the Hermit/Teddy angle that also changes everything. So...
Thumbs in the middle for this episode and I'll see you all next time.