A gratifying DuckTales has a few noticeable flaws when the mantel is lifted
“The Golden Armory Of Cornelius Coot!” is exciting and a little silly, a bit self-aware, and ultimately satisfying.
TV Reviews DuckTales
“The Golden Armory Of Cornelius Coot!” is essentially the kind of fun, straight-forward adventure story that any iteration of DuckTales could pull out of its tailfeathers in a heartbeat. There’s secret tunnels, creepy spiders, mine cart chases (sort of), dangerous enemies lurking, hidden “treasure,” and revelations about said hidden treasure. It’s exciting and a little silly, a bit self-aware (that mine cart “chase”), and ultimately satisfying. It’s propped up by a hilarious B-story, involving Della trying to stay calm while dealing with Launchpad’s aerial ignorance. And it has the quiet depth of a young girl desperately trying to live up to the sheer adventure prowess of her own personal idol. So why does this episode feel… off?
To be clear, I actually really liked this episode in the broadest strokes. The animation, in particular, was especially stellar in the details. The moment where Della temporary freaks out on the plane, her eyes literally distorting in different shapes, was a highlight; Webby’s eccentric excitability and hyperactive movements were another. The main story was solid: again, having Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby all together to play off each other pays dividends, and even if the triplets’ lack of enthusiasm in the adventure kills the energy a bit (even from Dewey???), the rapport is still strong. I have a soft spot for adventure tales that don’t end in treasure-treasure, but end with key revelations about the folklore or legend involved (yes, I’m a fan of the Uncharted series), so Coot popping all his corn to simulate “shots from all sides” is cartoonishly clever, by which I mean it’s clever and can only make sense in a cartoon. And the Launchpad/Della story was pretty funny, sold by expert facial animations, wild gesticulations, and over-the-top reactions. It has all the elements of a solid, pumping episode the likes of which DuckTales is perfectly suited for delivering.
So why do I feel less than gung-ho about this episode? Something feels messy about it. Not messy enough to derail the episode, but messy enough that they’re glaring. Take for instance the beginning when Ma Beagle kidnaps the host to force her to tell them where the treasure is. Off screen, in the back, something happens, and the host is back. What happened? It looks like the host was able to fend off the beagle family with ease, a classic joke The Simpsons did here. But it was really unclear, and it didn’t really make sense (nothing implied the host was a great fighter, it happens too far in the background to register comedically, the beagle family don’t reference this at all afterwards, the irony of losing this fight after Ma kicks Big Time out the gang for past failures is completely lost). It seemed to imply then that the host was also secretly part of the grand mystery of Cornelius Coot, but she never shows up again. I’ve watched this scene a few times and it just doesn’t click, and it feels undercooked.
I know it’s coming off nit-picky to harp on one gag, but it feels emblematic of a few other oddities throughout “The Golden Armory Of Cornelius Coot!” Louie asks at one point if Webby seems “more Webby” than usual, and the other brothers agree, but I had to ask myself: did she? The underlying thematic point the episode aims for is worthwhile: Webby feels unworthy compared to Della’s exploits and accomplishments when she was her age, and no doubt eyeballing Della’s journal filled her with a sense of discouragement. Della conveniently sweeping in to save everyone only adds to her disappointment. Webby always admired Della, so the emotional beats of this work well enough, especially the final heart-to-heart the two have at the end. But, again, it feels off somehow. I don’t know if the episode needed to weave Webby’s desperation a bit more frequently or hit some of those beats harder, because honestly Webby didn’t seem “more” Webby, not until the end at least.
Again, none of these issues derail things too much, they just kind of seem as if they could have been given another pass during the storyboarding process. The mine cart chase “uphill” is funny on paper, but watching it is a bit of a drag. Big Time becoming one with the spiders is so woefully dumb that it’s kind of funny, but it also comes off like they weren’t sure what else to do with him. There are some specific moments where the timing and pacing seemed to not quite gel, or like they were stretched out a bit to pad for time: longer close-ups, frames sitting on a shot a beat or two longer than necessary, maybe too much Webby jumping around excitedly for a couple extra seconds. This review is coming off a bit harsher than I intend–again, this is a fine, fun episode, the kind of one-off that DuckTales is literally built for. It’s more or less the technical and aesthetic hiccups that keep it from being that perfect adventure.
Stray observations
- I meant to mention/ask this about yesterday’s episode: “Killmotor Hill” is the hill upon which the Money Bin was bit. What that has to do with Lena’s dreams/nightmares though, I’ve yet to figure out.
- I caught this while doing a bit of research, and I just want to roll my eyes to be honest. Of all the cliches to avoid, that’s the one you decide on? The mine cart chase was arguably the best animated sequence in the original show, so passing on the opportunity mimic it is a mistake. Seriously, if you can find it out there, watch it.
- Another small thing was the bit concerning the smoke that emerged in the cockpit of the Sunchaser. Launchpad said he uses gum to vent the hoses, but the part that Della places on that specific component looked like it was perfect for venting? I mean we’re assuming Della knows what’s she doing, so even making that specific plot point/gag occur was a bit forced. I get, like, that the Sunchaser is so messed up at this point that Launchpad would be the only person who knew about its weirder, funkier quirks, but it doesn’t play that way. (I put this one in the stay observations because it’s particularly nit-picky.)
40 Comments
what?
“Off screen, in the back, something happens, and the host is back. What happened?”What happened is that the host is Mrs. Quackfaster, though in enough of a disguise that I don’t blame anyone for missing it.
OMG, you’re totally right. She is Mrs. Quackfaster. How weird!
I will 100% admit I totally missed that it was Quackfaster! That explains a portion of that bit, although I still believe the overall gag was poorly executed.
The whole thing with that being Quackfaster in disguise was weird.
My biggest problem with the episode was its unquestioned assumption that a vast storehouse of corn would somehow not be considered a precious resource in a frontier town. Also, how the heck is the corn still fresh after two or three centuries? (Different works portray Cornelius Coot as a contemporary of either the Pilgrims or George Washington, apparently.)Also, this show’s version of Launchpad is just too stupid, to the point that it’s implausible he can even dress or feed himself. Though that’s a problem with the show as a whole.
When I saw the corn, I thought, “Of course it’s treasure.”
Also, how the heck is the corn still fresh after two or three centuries? It’s not, it’s dried corn. That’s how it was able to pop into popcorn. They even mention that it’s dry and old in the dialogue.
Launchpad has been probably my least favorite character in this version, mostly because I think Beck Bennet is just phoning it in.
I’m in the camp that thinks they’re prepping a DW spinoff and will move him over. Hopefully that’ll get him going.
I pretty much agree with everything in this review. This was a fine episode, not great but fine.
HERE STANDS CORNELIUS COOTGreat Hero Who VanquishedThe BrutesAnd Founded Our Duckburg Fair.To Him We Dedicate This Square.
Nice detail: In the beginning of the episode, the statue of Coot has a gun and a sword. In the end, it has two ears of corn.
The ears of corn are how Cornelius’ statue was originally depicted by Barks. It also appeared at Mickey’s Toontown Fair at the Magic Kingdom.
To quote Launchpad, “Needs less spiders.”
As Huey notes, the carts weren’t mine carts; they were corn carts. The show should have used that line as a winking way for us to have our chase without breaking the “no mine cart chase” rule.
The triplets summed up:Louie: “Treasure!”Dewey: “Adventure!”Huey: “Historical accuracy!”
The Page We See of Della’s Journal:Next Adventures:The Sands of Time – [check][check] – Menehune MysteryBeast Beneath the Bin -[check]Treasure of Cornelius Coot“The Arrow Points the Way”NEVER FOUND
Magica uses the Sands of Time to send Scrooge to the future in the OG series episode “Duck to the Future.” “The Menehune Mystery” is a DuckTales comic set in Hawaii involving Scrooge, Donald, the triplets, and the Beagle Boys. I don’t know if “the Beast Beneath the Bin” is a reference to something specific under the Money Bin, but it sounds cool.
What stopped Della from reaching the corn in the first place? This adventure wasn’t mysterious. Once you find the secret entrance under the statue, you basically just keep going, right?
As long as we’re being nitpicky, TarantuMa was clearly not a Tarantula.
Well, I don’t think Big Time knows that.
Theoretically, aren’t the triplets and Webby at Fort Duckburg in the first place to see Della skywrite the “C” in honor of Cornelius Coot? There’s no way they can do that if they’re underground. I don’t think anyone mentions this, though.
Are they or was that just a byproduct?
Whenever Ma Beagle and the Beagle Boys show up I’m always a little sad they don’t have Jeremy Davies, AJ Buckley and Brad William Henke playing the boys.The stuff with the spiders in this episode was just off kilter enough to paper over the other flaws, like that way too subtle runner about the host.
The voices are fine for me, but their look in this animation style still trips me out.
– Yay, more comics characters! If I remember correctly, Scrooge and his sisters (would love to see them sometime) are the defenders of Fort Duckburg in The Life and Times, but I appreciate the spreading around of the grand exploits.
– With the whole “He was everywhere at once!” introduction, my immediate guess was that the kids would be traveling back in time and pulling a Three Amigos.
– Well, of course she’s webbier than usual, she just passed through a pit of spiders! : D- I personally liked the saga of Bug Time and his tarantuma – she even had a little hat!- “Even worse, here comes the key change!” Slightly off-topic, but did anyone else see that Launchpad “theme song takeover”?- Very off-topic: I don’t even watch Big City Greens, but that “Cricket Calls a Karate School” short was pretty funny, too.
Bug Time was a fun beat.
Big City Greens is pretty funny, imo. Cute show, some neat character design.
I loved the mine cart race.Not only were the Beagles cheated out of the town deed, they were also vanquished in frontier times. Now their descendants live in a junkyard. Are the Beagles analogues for Native Americans? Why aren’t we supposed to root for them over the rich white-coded ducks?
Are the Beagles analogues for Native Americans? No? You can even see their ancestors wearing the stereotypical Puritan hats. They’re supposed to be rival settlers. The whole thing is based very loosely on a comic where Coot was able to drive off a band of Spanish invaders from the last bit of land in Calisota still owned by the British and thus became the owner of the place.
We’re certainly not supposed to root for the Frontier Beagles. They vastly outnumbered Coot, who had to get creative with his Golden Armory to keep them from crushing him.
I meant to mention/ask this about yesterday’s episode: “Killmotor Hill” is the hill upon which the Money Bin was bit. What that has to do with Lena’s dreams/nightmares though, I’ve yet to figure out.Since the Money Bin is no longer on a hill in this series, Killmotor Hill is now presumably the hill on which Scrooge’s mansion stands on. And since Lena had her nightmares in the mansion, it’s literally the Nightmare on Killmotor Hill.
Fort Duckburg was originally at the top of Killmotor (then Killmule) hill, too.
I had the same confusion about the plane filling with smoke. I didn’t follow how that would have happened at all.
I just took it to be one of those ‘even a broken clock is right twice a day’ moments, with the episode saying, for as foolish as it is for Launchpad to use gum everywhere, it’s actually pretty useful for this one little thing.
It’s a figurative gag, rather than a logical one.
So as we all know, there’s the theory that they’ve been setting up a DW spinoff and that LaunchPad might move over. Now it’s debated how much the OG DW was or wasn’t a spinoff of OG DuckTales and neither cared about continuity (often as an advantage). Now does this show care about continuity and is laying the groundwork for a whole Disney Afternoon Universe. There was a dichotomy between how LaunchPad was in DuckTales vs Darkwing. I had the thought during this episode they might be prepping him to be more competent before the move.
Did anyone else think that there was going to be a twist where Coot was someone who antagonized the Beagle Boys because he wanted a mammal-free town, resulting in the Beagles becoming criminals due to bigotry?
Since Webby was acting rather spider-ish (tracking the ones out of Louie’s hoodie by mimicking them), I figure the joke was just a pun with an extra layer to it?
Nice, I missed this meaning.