Louie tries his hand at business, and Donald reunites with an annoying roommate, on a fun, if perfunctory, DuckTales
TV Reviews Recap“The Most Dangerous Game… Night!” ended with Louie closing the door with a “LOUIE INC.” sign on the front. The episode provided the green triplet with enough confidence and inspiration to plan for the future. In the opening moments of “Storkules In Duckberg,” we see that he definitely has an endgame vision, but no idea how to start the process of getting there. He wants to be a businessman, and he wants to be rich, and it’s clear he’s ready to “do a business” to reach that point, but the old Louie is still thriving around inside there, with a nonsensical business pitch, a bunch of blustering corporate talk, and the request for 2.5 billion dollar “loan.” Scrooge laughs him out of the room, of course, but not before offering him advice: finding a problem, and offering a solution to that problem, should be the basic vision of his business. He, Huey, and Webby, try to brainstorm solutions, but they’re all a bust (Potato-ade has promise!). But then, during a “corporate retreat” at Funzo, he witnesses Storkules battle a number of Harpies who attack the sad, sad amusement park-themed business, and lo, his problem is solved. For now.
Remember Storkules? He was a favorite among the show’s writers who returns as Donald’s roommate, mostly to create a number of cartoonish and sitcom-esque, Odd Couple-like gags, which are fairly funny, if mainly because Donald is always great in these kinds of situations. He is eventually hired by Louie to fight off the Harpies around Duckberg in exchange for money, which allows LOUIE INC. to thrive. It goes so well that they eventually capture all the Harpies, which is an actual good thing, except that it puts Louie’s business in danger. He grows so desperate that he almost releases the Harpies to jumpstart it again (especially since he spent all the money on merchandise instead of actually paying his employees). A plot contrivance between Louie and Storkules inadvertently leads to the Harpies escaping anyway, and the winged creatures manage to lift Donald’s houseboat up into the sky, leaving Louie, Donald, and Storkules to fend for themselves. Yet an errant comment from Louie (the Harpies merchandise being his most loved possession) allows for the three to manipulate the Harpies into piloting the houseboat back to safety.
Honestly, there isn’t much to really say about this episode. It feels like a perfectly fine 10-pager of the comic, or one of the more average episodes of the original show. There isn’t much in terms of commentary (there’s a bit of Louie not listening to Huey or Webby making obvious or well-intentioned advice). There isn’t much in terms of thematic cohesion (a few characters reiterate a line about characters or situations being the problem and/or the solution, but it never ties into anything substantial or revealing). There’s isn’t much in term of character development (I like that the writers combined Louie’s new-found desire to be in business with his penchant for laziness, his gift of gab, and his get-rich-quick schemes, but he doesn’t seem to grow from this, except to exploit the whole situation with Scrooge when he conveniently arrives with the solution in a can). It’s fun, though–a nice, silly adventure with a couple of solid gags and one really exciting, visually-nifty climax on top of Donald’s houseboat as it’s being carted off by Harpies. I’m a bit lost on how they managed to get back home (Louie didn’t have that much merchandise to toss aside in order to control the direction of where the Harpies flew), but overall it’s an episode with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, with a tight, if perfunctory, adventure through it all. DuckTales is allowed to coast once in while, letting its characters be their silly, wild selves, with its sharp animation and passable Bob Snow script keeping things lively and moving.
Stray observations
- I’m not sure why Louie concluded Dewey would be a bad employee? It would be one thing if, say, Dewey didn’t bother helping because he knew it would be a waste of time “working” for Louie, but the way the episode plays that gag… it feels a bit funky, especially in relation to what we see of Dewey from “The Infernal Internship Of Mark Beaks!”
- I’m also not sure why the thing that the Harpies loved the most was lemons. It seems like it was established just to make the ending work, without establishing a narrative basis for that love. It’s not something from Greek mythology, that’s for sure!
- I last observed that Storkules was mostly another version of Glomgold in his first outing. But now that Glomgold has been re-established as a potential real threat, it looks like Storkules will replace him? Especially if he is indeed staying with Donald.
- This is the second episode that dealt with the fallout of not paying workers. DuckTales has always, if occasionally, reached for raw commentary of the insidious side of business, but has to be careful not to, you know, say too much about that, lest its young viewers start to question Disney themselves.
22 Comments
– So Storkules was basically The Tick in this episode, right?!- I wonder if Louie had to pay royalties for that Ghostbusters commercial ripoff.- I think you meant to write that they were fighting ‘Harpies’ not ‘Herpies’. (Unless you think that Storkules is like Russell Crowe)
Fixed those slip-ups, thanks!
I appreciated a library scene being included during the not-Ghostbusters montage.
Man I missed that.
This really did feel like Ghostbusters at times, complete with charging a comically ridiculous amount for their services, and the threat of their captured quarry breaking out and running amok again.
I finished this episode thinking it would’ve fit right in with the “Duckberg” episodes of the classic series, right down to the problem of the week being wrapped up nice and tidy and Scrooge finding a way to profit off it. Sure, the script being on-par with late 80s TV animation is probably the very definition of coasting in 2018, but the season 1 episodes had their problems finding the right balance of comedy versus drama, so I would consider it a win that this episode gets the formula right so effortlessly.
The montage in this ep reminded me of “Who Is Gizmoduck?!”I loved it when Webby punched Louie.
Hashtag cinematic parallels.
Hashtag corporate synergy
Maybe the plot wasn’t especially groundbreaking, but I really enjoyed this one, for a few reasons:
– Continuity, what with the returns of Louie Inc. and Dewey Dew-night and Officer Cabrera
– I’m just really liking all the Donald involvement so far this season.- An introductory “Capitalism is not your friend” lesson for the kids* (Providing the public a solution is secondary to making money off of them)- Lots of good visual/background gags: the “Creation of Adam” parody; Storkules’s apron and box of “Donald Fan Art”; Huey, Webby, and Storkules wobbling when they’re supposed to be frozen during the commercial; “Harpies Bazaar – Niche publication vindicated!”- The lack of a “person in danger pauses to record the danger on their phone, social media amirite” gag during the first harpy attack
– That exact same sleeping mask fake-out was in the Matilda movie. A shout-out or a more common trope than I realize?*Where I live, these episodes are premiering at 6:30 in the AM. When I was a wee lass I could and did get up that early for cartoons, but I wonder if they still do today or just DVR/On-Demand everything?
I had a good long laugh at the amphora illustrating the trials of Storkules. Very detailed!
Even if they never came out and said it, I did like that the episode snuck in a message saying “Companies don’t solve problems, they profit off them.” That’s really true and probably a good thing for kids to learn.As for the timeslot thing, I think at this point so many kids watch via DVR’s, the Disney phone app, and streaming on the official site, similar methods that Disney doesn’t actually care very much about the show’s premiere timeslot. Plus it gets repeated pretty often anyway. The show’s already been renewed for season 3 so we know they’re not just burning off episodes.
Anyway, I love that apparently this world’s version of modern-day Greece is exactly the same as Homeric mythological Greece and no one thinks that’s weird.
The real lesson is that BAD companies don’t solve problems. Some (large) companies manage to stay afloat despite not actually fixing things, but that’s more frequently because of of croneyism, not true capitalism.If Louie had released the harpies, it would eventually be realized that he was creating the problem he was “solving” and would have been strung up for it. “Ridden out of town on a rail” is the old term for it.
What do you mean that Storkules was like Glomgold? Don’t you mean Zeus?
Yeah that’s either an inscrutable error or a scorching hot take.
Only the AV Club would criticize a children’s cartoon for being “perfunctory”. Do you also judge Mountain Dew by the same standards as wine?
A perfectly serviceable episode.
Always love a good abacus joke.
I know this is a nitpick, but did it bother anyone else that the harpies wore clothes and jewelry? The episode writes them as though they’re basically wild animals, but at some point they were able to dress themselves and even develop individual senses of style. It’s weird and it kind of makes the ending (where Scrooge basically has an Oompa-Loompa-style “not slavery but sort of slavery” thing going on with them) more uncomfortable than it would otherwise be.It just felt like the episode was full of ideas that it tiptoed around but never really addressed.Also, the “Dewey would make a terrible employee” gag was really funny but also feels like the writers STILL don’t have a handle on his character even after all this time. Though this and the “he was dropped as an egg” gag from last week makes me think they might settle on him being “the dumb nephew.”
Yeah, the harpy thing would’ve worked better if they had been wearing what looked like shackles or something that implied servitude, so that it was like they traded one boss (Zeus) for another (Scrooge). The way they were actually depicted came off as disturbing as the idea of a dead butler continuing to serve the family as a ghost, like his contract with Scrooge had some awful Wolfram and Hart perpetuity clause.
I’m encouraged by the fact that Duckworth’s two appearances since “Mystery at McDuck Manor” both involve him refusing to work, which implies that he can come and go as he pleases.
Anyway, he apparently has a big part in next week’s Christmas episode, so we’ll see if he gives us more to work with then.
I have to ask, but am I the only one to notice that the title of the episode, “Storkules in Duckburg!,” is a play on the 1970 film “Hercules in New York,” starring a young Arnold Schwarzenegger?