Plumbing Shallow Waters: Episode Three

Another week has gone by, and it's time to take another look at the cartoons from the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, a program that, for some reason, I remember fondly despite the fact that trying to watch it now feels almost painful sometimes in just how low-quality it seems the show is willing to settle for.  If the show has standards, they just don't seem very high, and are getting lower as time goes on.

As one humorist I've followed once said, "The floor's the limit!"

The first episode was a terrible rip-off of Star Wars which felt out of place in every sense from the universe that Mario and Luigi supposedly exist in, and I'm keeping in consideration the fact that they have been to space (twice), and have even existed as paper-thin versions of themselves battling evil with the help of stickers.

The second episode seemed to fit better in the "strange worlds" theme, since it involved a beanstalk and giants, two things that are already established in canon.  Let's see if the third episode is more the former or the latter.

So far, it looks like it's going to be the former.

Is this supposed to be a "Pirates of the Carribean" play?  It would have to be off the ride, since the movies weren't out yet.  Maybe it's supposed to be a Pirates of Penzance parody?  Couldn't they have done "Pirates of the Mushroom Kingdom?"  "Koopas of the Carribean-Land?"  "Koopas of Pirate-Land?"

Wait, they wouldn't go so far as to name something "Pirate Land" would they?

Apparently not, the only real introduction we get is "pirate waters in a pirate world."  But again, everybody apparently had to hire on as a crew for a ship...isn't the Princess, y'know, a Princess?  Shouldn't she have her own ship?  Is a kingdom that has money just lying around in giant "?" blocks that refresh themselves every time you go on a short trip really so hard up for cash that it can't afford to own a boat?

Their captain is a three foot tall man with a two foot tall peg leg, meaning the animation becomes incredibly jarring when you see him (oh, and his parrot has the same thing going on).  But hey, maybe we'll just get bad pirate jokes instead of stupid pasta jokes!

...or not, since one of the first "jokes" is that Mario and Luigi are peeling potatoes to make "spa-tato-getti."

I'm just going to shut my brain down now, it'll hurt less later.

Oh, and hey, their captain says that "every sailor in the Carribean (so wait, is this happening in the real world?) is afraid of Blackbeard Koopa."  ...how many names does Koopa go by?  Can't he just be "Bowser King Koopa?"

I'd like to comment on three bits of sloppy animation here.  Somehow, Toad manages to push a mop across the deck and smack the captain in the face with it.  There's no animation showing him turning it, lifting it, or doing anything that would cause it to hit the captain.

Also, nobody's mouth syncs with their words.  Characters mouths keep moving for a second after they're done talking.  That's acceptable if this was first done in Japan and had to be dubbed over, but somehow I don't think "Ted Petersen" is a common Japanese name.

Third, there's a moment when Princess Toadstool comments about an approaching storm and Luigi says there isn't "a cloud in the sky."

I guess the animators didn't get that, since clouds are visible going past the ship as Luigi talks.

Oh, and that isn't the storm the Princess (while facing straight ahead) was talking about, she was talking about the storm that Luigi can't see (while looking backwards) that comes up from behind the ship.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy.

We get the cheap "saw a hole in a heavy cloud cover" joke, which is probably the least offensive joke they've done so far, and it turns out that Blackbeard Koopa has arrived.

Koopa fires several bob-ombs out of cannons at the good guys' ship, but since they're using a stock background picture and ran out of money to animate it, the explosions do no damage.  Koopa's forces are also completely useless since, despite the fact they're wielding swords, Mario is able to pretty much pimp slap one off a ledge onto the others, and Princess Toadstool is apparently strong enough to lift one up and chuck it off the side of the ship.

So, more bob-ombs get launched, again doing no damage to a stock image of a ship deck, but they're able to animate a smoke cloud so that Koopa can capture the Princess, with her voice-over yelling for him to let her go.  After the immediate cut she states that "you promised to let my friends go if I came willingly."

...that never happened.  We just went from her saying something akin to "get your hands off me" to saying "well, I came willingly, like per the agreement we discussed in the nanosecond between then and now."

It's terrible.  This is utter laziness.  It- ...well, hold on.  "Captain Koopa" points out that the Princess didn't come willingly...so wait, did he get a copy of the script and she didn't?  Is the Princess ad-libbing?  Did I miss something here?

Koopa tied the remaining characters to the mast of their ship and send it sailing off, which I guess works if, for some reason, the clouds didn't suddenly change direction as the ship sailed forward so that they're suddenly outracing the boat.  We get a brief moment where Koopa explains he's going to sell the Princess to the pirate who can steal the most coins, and when we jump back to the heroes, their ship is sinking.  Why?  I have no idea, they never bother to explain it.

So, the good guys are surrounded by things that look like pirahnas, they're tied to a mast and can't get away and can't free themselves...how are they going to get out of this one?  Well, here's the breakdown:

The captain's pirate flies up out of the crow's nest, dives down, and smacks its face against the edge of the crow's nest.  This causes it to see stars.  Mario casually frees an arm and calls for the parrot to toss him one of the stars.  He uses that to get invincibility after saying a chant involving "star man, star bright" and "pasta power."

I officially have no idea what's going on any more.

Mario saws the crow's nest off of the mast using what looks like a children's toy sword (because real swords aren't allowed in a children's cartoon, of course) and they start sailing across the water on that despite the fact that it has no sail.

Koopa starts the auction for the Princess as the Mario Brothers approach the pirate base, which is when Mario's "star power" runs out.  So instead of kicking down a wall and stomping on everything in sight, Mario instead has the idea to put on some striped pajamas, an eye patch, and wear a fake hook on his hand and lead the others in pretending to be pirates themselves.

Mario tries to talk Luigi up into "acting tough" leading to what might be the only slightly funny joke in the show, when Luigi walks up to a bar and orders milk.  After several dirty looks, Mario adds "in a dirty glass."

Koopa raises the bidding up to a million gold coins for the Princess, to which Luigi counters by bidding a billion gold coins.  Koopa immediately ends the bidding there, and starts throwing money that...honestly, I have no idea where this money came from.  If it's his money from before the sale, he's actually now losing money before he gets payment for a Princess, and if it's after then...where did it come from?

Toad tries to help the Princess escape, but they wind up alerting Koopa, and the Mario Brothers disguises fall apart.  We get a very brief chase to Koopa's ship, where it ends in a fight scene with Koopa, the good guys, and a bunch of no-name turtle pirates that's so boring that the music can't even bother to get worked up over it.  I'm not kidding, the music sounds like something that would be too boring for an elevator ride.  Maybe one of those airport moving walkways if it was stuck at half-speed.

Koopa gets launched into the air by being flung out of a net, the Princess keeps watching him fly through the air AFTER he's hit the water as she makes a joke about "sending him flying," everyone laughs, and my head hurts.

The Good:

As in other shows, it is nice to see things that actually relate to the Super Mario Brothers mythos.  Seeing a "super Mario" with star power is rather neat, even if his clothes just change to what they'd be after he touches a fire flower instead of flashing with invincibility.  Hearing some of the classic music during dangerous moments is nice and nostalgic, as are seeing some of the classic monsters from the game series.

Also, Koopa's plan does make more sense this time, since if he was able to get the bidding up to a million coins before the good guys threw in their bid, then a) he'd be rid of one Princess, and b) ridiculously rich.  It's actually a pretty decent plan, foiled by the fact that nobody can recognize the most recognizable mustache and Italian accent in the entire universe these characters live in.

The Bad:

This is, quite simply, the worst episode of the three I've seen so far.  The pacing of the story is absolutely ridiculous since you have lazy, dull music playing during the final huge fight sequence, the animation doesn't match what the characters are describing, the restrictions of the budget are pretty much shown with huge flashing neon lights highlighting them, and the story that isn't Koopa actively selling the Princess into a live of slavery to an (undoubtedly) lecherous pirate just makes no sense whatsoever.  The fight sequences were done with all the intensity of a poorly acted high school play where the cast was brought together and given the script a week before showtime, and then everybody was given horse tranquilizers before show time.

Overall:

I'm just going to summarize what I just said.  In other words, this episode is, for the most part, simply terrible.  I'm sure even a child would look at it these days and recognize it for how awful it is, which begs the question of why did I keep watching this show as a kid?  One "okay" episode out of three is not a pretty good track record, and these are episodes where I understood what they were referencing!

It isn't on this disc, but there is an episode called "The Toad Warrior."  You can probably guess what it's based on, and just imagine how many small children would be able to get THAT reference!

Man, the next episode seems to be Arabian-themed...maybe I'll get lucky and they'll have that killer sun that dives out of the sky and attacks you in it somewhere.  That thing was awesome, especially when you were able to kill it (which I never understood why that didn't just plunge the world into darkness immediately afterward).