I really don't think it's going to get much better when the next episode is called Two Plumbers And A Baby.
Now, the thing that's either going to save or completely doom this episode is the fact that this is the first one I've seen that had two writers. Sean Roche and David Ehrman. David Ehrman I recognize, I've seen his name before on some other cartoons, but Sean Roche is a mystery to me. Let's see what IMDB has to say about his career.
Well, it appears he's also written for a bunch of shows, including Dork Hunters From Outer Space. We all remember what a classic that was, right?
The episode begins and I already know this is going to be painful, because Mario narrates that they've found themselves in the "Kingdom of Youth." Apparently there's a magical fountain there that "King Koo-goo-ga-ga Koopa" was using to "satisfy his thirst for doing bad."
"King Koo-goo-ga-ga Koopa." Seriously.
These guys got paid to think this plot up.
Now, three things I noticed immediately while Mario was droning on with setting up the plot. First, the heroes are walking around holding magnifying glasses like they're looking for something, but we aren't really sure what, because once they reach the end of a path of footprints, they completely drop the issue and never tell us what they were looking for in the first place.
Second, Mario's mouth moves during the narration, so either he's dictating to a hidden tape recorder, or he's simply reminding the people with him why they're there. Or it's just sloppy editing and this entire scene was supposed to be put somewhere else and they had to edit it down.
A group of old men show up and jump down a slide, and since none of our heroes ever think things through, they just jump onto the slide afterward without knowing where it goes or what it leads to.
This, of course, leads us to our first encounter with "King Koo-goo-ga-ga Koopa."
Words fail me.
Koopa's plan is really simple...he turns up the fountain so it reduces people to babies, then he captures the babies so they can serve him.
Now, in case that doesn't seem to make any sense, let me go into a bit more detail. Koopa turns old people into babies so he can make them do his chores, including dusting, carrying around wood, and wiping floors.
No, that still doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Mario and the others get wise to this plan, but trip over nothing making Koopa aware of their presence. They try to run away, but the Princess trips again and falls in the pool. When the good guys drag her out of it, she de-ages in front of their eyes and turns into a baby.
That isn't the outfit she was wearing when she fell in, by the way, apparently the magical water also transforms a full princess dress into a pair of baby overalls.
The good guys run for it again, but the bad guys have apparently figured out their weakness, because instead of dropping a net directly onto the good guys, one of the evil bird-monster things drops it onto the ground probably a good thirty feet ahead of the Mario Brothers. Mario, of course, trips over it, and falls down, with Luigi barely catching the Princess.
We're five minutes in, and the good guys have tripped and fallen down three times already.
As the good guys try to get away, there's one brief moment where, even though his plan is completely incomprehensible when it comes to logic, King Koopa does have one moment of self-awareness when he declares that if the good guys don't stop, then "he's telling." This is followed by another of his infamous dubious expressions and a "I've been around these babies too long."
Oh, and how they get away is Luigi and Toad stand on two see-saws, and then Mario trips on a roller skate and lands on the other end, tossing everybody over a wall to safety.
Less than six minutes in, and out trip/fall counter is up to: 4
The guys spend a bit of time discussing a plan while pushing the Princess on a swing, but things escalate when she somehow escapes the swing, climbs a tree, and goes after a bird. Mario scales after, but his weight cracks the branch and they both plummet.
Trip/fall counter: 5
The Princess is caught by a springy branch, and things seem fine, until it launches her up and over the edge of a ravine towards the river below.
...I'm going to give that a half point, because technically it both is and isn't the same fall.
Trip/fall counter: 5.5
Mario crafts together a crude hang glider (?) and soars down to catch the Princess, who is hanging precariously from a wayward branch sticking out of the cliff face. However, in a true moment of "what th-" the Princess tickles Mario, and he lets go while she holds on. Mario plummets down and lands in a giant puddle of mud.
Trip/fall counter: 6.5
Mario gets cleaned up, and the Princess (in true Baby's Day Out fashion) winds up on a raft floating down the river being attacked by what look like giant piranhas. Baby Princess, being the ultimate combat machine of this world, I guess, simply reaches into the water, fishes around (no pun intended), grabs one by the tail, and throws it a good fifty feet at the other good guys. They scale a tree, but the piranha eats his way through the tree (?) and it falls with them in it.
Trip/fall counter: 7.5
They manage to recover the Princess again and work on getting her to take a nap. Of course, as soon as they turn their back, she's gone again because they're terrible babysitters. They catch up with her again back at the fountain, and since Koopa took away the control panel for the fountain, the obvious solution is to simply reverse the flow of the waterfall. They st-
Wait, what?
THAT MAKES NO SENSE.
AND WE ALREADY ESTABLISHED THAT YOU COULD AGE SOMEONE IN A FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH BY MESSING WITH THE CONTROLS OF A DIAL, AND IT STILL MAKES NO SENSE.
Nnnnngh.
Koopa attacks while they're building their pipe set-up, and we get another huge smack of laziness. Look at this scene.
There are two big things wrong with this. One, Luigi's cap isn't supposed to be red. Second, it's the guy on the left doing all the talking, but it's with Luigi's voice.
The brothers vault Koopa into the fountain (trip/fall counter: 8.5) and he turns into a baby, and they're able to insert their fork into the slot for the controls to make the waterfall....
Sigh.
They make the waterfall start to go in reverse. I hate this show's lazy logic.
The babies under Koopa's control all jump in, and they and the Princess turn back to their original ages. The Princess comments that if they ever want to give up plumbing, the Mario Brothers would make great babysitters, meaning she's now a liar and a terrible one at that.
Insert a stupid pasta joke, cue Captain Lou.
The Good:
...man, this one's a stretch. Uh, let me think.
Well, it was only about thirteen minutes long, that's one thing.
Okay, okay, let's see. The sound effects were nice and nostalgic, and we got to see Luigi be really good at his athletic stunts that didn't involve falling when Mario fell. He caught an airborne baby twice, which is pretty impressive. Koopa was still one of the best characters in the show, even if his plan seemed to simply be based on the writers wanting to do something with babies or try to copy any number of bad 80s movies.
Oh, and one nice detail was the view of the river and how it seemed to be laid out like a Super Mario Bros. level. I think I saw some ? blocks scattered around.
The Bad:
In a series where we had an episode based on a guy trying to put the Princess in a harem, Koopa being a giant, and a lame rip-off of Star Wars, somehow this one makes the least sense. If Mario narrates that Koopa is involved at the very beginning, and that there's a fountain of youth, then why is he so surprised to see a) a fountain of youth, and b) Koopa? What were they following the footprints for at the beginning of the episode? How does making water defy gravity and go up a fountain age people?
Plus, again, there's just some real laziness in the details that are missed. How do you possibly mis-animate which character is talking when there's only two and one refers to the other by name?
Oh, and apparently all of our heroes are completely incompetent based on my trip/fall counter. In six minutes we have eight times someone (or a group of someones) falls for reasons that are meant to be funny, but most of the time they make no sense or just make them seem like the worst heroes ever. The Mushroom Kingdom would've been better off with Captain N or the "Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess!" version of Link.
Overall:
This is, by far, the worst episode I've seen, and it's pretty terrible by anybody's standards. If this is on the "best of" DVD, then I shudder to think of what didn't make the cut. I know for a fact there's an episode based off of Mad Max called The Toad Warrior, and yet somehow that one didn't make the list while this one did.
It boggles the mind, it does. But hey, I'm past the half-way point, just four more episodes left then I can move on to something more enjoyable!
Like, I don't know, watching paint dry.
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