Plumbing Shallow Waters: Episode Eight

Two episodes left.

I'm now almost completely convinced that if I could go back in time and meet my younger self, I would have so much advice about things to do and things not to do.

Things to do:  Invest in Apple back when the stock was ridiculously low and the company was almost going under.  Hold on to this list of strategically timed lotto numbers.  Write this book series I'm handing you called "Harry Potter."  Use a fake name if you have to.

Things to not do:  Don't take that huge hill getting home from your job in the future at a movie theater, the light is hard to see.  Don't tell the girl you tutor your freshman year you like her, she won't talk to you again.  Don't attend the new learning program at George Mason University, it'll go defunct in a year and you need a year off anyway.  Never watch a cartoon based on Mario and his friends.  EVER.


What kills me the most is that the cover distinctively says "The Best Of."  The episodes have, for the most part, been pretty terrible, and they omitted the live action bits which I remember being worse than the animated ones, with story lines like "Mario meets a robot and they fall in love with each other."  "Dracula meets the Mario Brothers."  "Sargent Slaughter shows up for no reason whatsoever."

Today's episode is titled Quest For Pizza which I'm not sure if it's a take-off of Superman IV or just using a regular phrase.  I guess we'll find out...but I'll admit, if the story is that Koopa takes one of Mario's hairs and launches it, with a nuclear bomb, so that it goes into the sun creating an evil "Nuclear Mario" ... well, that might actually be pretty awesome.

...maybe those are the Cosmic Clones from the later Super Mario Brothers games.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this.

The story opens in Caveman Land (I don't know why I'm surprised by these any more), where Mario and his friends are immediately chased around by a "Mousersaurus" which is essentially a T-Rex with Mouser's face and sunglasses and Mickey Mouse's hands.  Running away at the speed of two miles an hour ("Mousersaurus" is supposed to be chasing them but it seems to just be casually strolling behind them) until they hear a Tarzan-esque cry coming from above.

Sadly, it's not someone to their rescue, but it's King Koopa flying in on his mount which appears to be a pterodactyl that mated with Birdo.

Seriously, I'm not making this up.

Mario and the others try to run away from "Alley-Koop" as he's now calling himself (bonus points if you also get the reference), but Koopa simply chucks his staff after them which turns out to be a poisonous snake.

Koopa's pretty hardcore and doesn't mess around this time.

Luigi trips, with Mario falling over him, and Mario gets promptly bitten on the shin by the snake, but not before we have some more bad dubbing where Mario's voice comes out of Koopa and then comes out of empty air as nobody's mouth moves.

Luigi picks up Mario and the gang continues running, but they get cornered at a waterfall.  At this point a caveman version of Toad's people arrives and speaks in what the writers probably thought was clever caveman speak.  Princess Toadstool, speaking through Luigi's mouth, asks for a translation and Toad explains that they need to follow him to safety, pointing in the exact opposite direction that the caveman pointed while trying to save them.

Toad: Master of languages, terrible at navigation.

The caveman leads the good guys past other "cavetoads," all of whom have pronounced lower incisor teeth for some reason like they're the ancient ancestor of the Reverse Dracula.  They get lead to a "cavewoman medicine woman" who they hope can heal Mario, because I guess once he's injured now he doesn't simply shrink down to half his size to be healed by a mushroom.

Two terrible jokes here: Toad says, "I hope she takes credit cards" after Princess Toadstool essentially states she's Mario's only hope.  He also, after she freaks out at the sight of him, says, "Yeah, he ain't much to look at, but can you help him anyway?"

Toad: Worst bedside manner of all time.

Luigi tries to wake Mario up by holding various Italian dishes in front of his face, but Mario fails to stir, and we get some genuine human emotion as Luigi's voice cracks and tears stream down his face at the thought of losing his brother.  This is more emotion than Mario has ever shown when anybody else has been in danger.

Fortunately, ancient prophetic cave paintings (what?) predicted this, and show that to heal Mario, all Luigi needs to do is give him a pizza.  Without any delivery services in the area (Toad: "Man, caveman land really is primitive") they're forced to make their own.  First step: milking a prehistoric cow.

Now, I've seen how they make mozzarella cheese...it usually takes two days at best.  I guess Mario's poisoning isn't on any real time table here, so they can be casual about it.

Luigi uses a ladder to reach the cow's udder (meaning that this cow is quite possibly larger than the Mousersaurus) and winds up almost getting knocked down before able to grab an udder and hang there, draining the milk.  The "cowasaurus" looks back, sees, Luigi, kisses him, and then skips after him like Pepe Le Pew chasing a paint-stained cat.

You know, if the plot isn't going to try making sense, I'm just going to stop caring.

Luigi gets saved when the others swing by on vines (despite there being no trees overhead) and the cow just gives up.

Something similar happens when Luigi pilfers some acorns to grind up into flour for a crust (I don't think nuts work that way) and they get chased off by a giant squirrel.  All that's left is tomatoes, which fortunately grow at their normal size in a finely cared for garden, lined up in rows.  Because of course it is.

They're confronted by Koopa while picking tomatoes, and the bad guys start to chase the good guys back to the waterfall.  This time, however, one of the good guys apparently drops a bunch of tomatoes leading Koopa to the secret entrance behind the waterfall.  They smash a hole into the caveman hideout letting the waterfall in, which ruins the pizza and puts out the fire so they can't make another, just like Koopa planned-

Wait, how did Koopa know that a pizza would cure Mario?  It- But-

Anyway, we're about to cut to a commercial break with Koopa coming into the good guys' hide out and their luck about run out.

When we cut back to the show from blackness to find the hole has some boards nailed over it (what?), Koopa and his entire forces have left (What?), and the cavewoman medicine woman is checking the time with a sundial on her wrist while inside a cave with no access to the sun (WHAT?).

...must...stop...expecting...logic.

One of the cavetoads brings the pizza back, but the good guys claim it doesn't count as a pizza unless it's baked (...loooooogic), and the cavewoman draws a crude fire flower on the cave wall.  Apparently Alley-Koop has one hidden behind heavy guard, and the good guys decide to swipe it so they can save Mario (and, oh, I don't know, defeat Koopa once and for all, maybe?)

Koopa rallies his forces to protect the fire flower, and the good guys roll up in a prehistoric car complete with square wheels and I don't even care about what could power a prehistoric car that looks so primitive the Flintstones have the prehistoric equivalent of a flying car from any science fiction series ever made.  This is proven further when Luigi "invents" the wheel and turns the blocks attached to the car round.

The good guys encounter Mousersaurus, but Luigi (with no help from Mario, I might point out) defeats a giant T-Rex level monster and the good guys continue on their way.  They get to the fire flower, and Luigi jumps a spiked pit and climbs up a sandy hill, dodging spears all the while, and gets his hands on the fire flower.  Upon becoming Super Luigi, his first order of business is to lob fireballs at Koopa like there's no tomorrow.

It's about time!

Speaking of time, they're running out of it in order to cook a pizza and feed it to Mario to save him, but the cavetoad with them informs them they can take a shortcut back.

...so why did they take the long way t- NEVERMIND.

Upon holding the cooked pizza under Mario's nose, he promptly wakes up and scarfs the entire pizza down in one bite.  And, in true cartoon fashion, he:

a)  Thanks his brother and the two tighten their familial bond with a pledge to always have each other's back.

b) Thanks his brother and praises him for the lengths he had to go to just to save Mario's life.

c) Swear to topple Koopa once and for all, having been so close to death and now being aware of his own mortality.

d) Complain that they only made one pizza.

I'm not going to tell you what the correct answer is, I'm just going to say that "Mario is the worst character ever, if this is all we get to base his personality on."

Cue Dancing Lou.

The Good:

Well, we get to see Luigi be completely awesome twice, making me wish that it wasn't just this year that was the "Year of Luigi" but that every year would have one game that spotlights the Mario brother that isn't terrible to everyone around him.  We even got genuine emotion from Luigi, something Mario has never done (the guy once agreed to save a planet on the basis he'd be given lunch afterwards, for pete's sake).

Plus, Koopa was also pretty cool, riding around on dinosaurs, throwing snakes, and he almost got away with it again (which seems to be a recurring theme), though I can't for the life of me figure out why he just left the good guys behind once he smashed his way into their hideout.

The cavetoad was also pretty cool, and besides the language gap had his act pretty well together (he had a car in a world without pizza delivery).

The Bad:

Why did Koopa leave when he had the good guys at his mercy?  It's like Seal Team Six blowing open a wall in Osama Bin Laden's hideout, charging in, waving their guns in his face, and then leaving him to die from draftiness after stealing his space heater and television.

Plus, we got more of the same old same old bad animation and dubbing, and I think this episode actually had the most I saw where characters mouths didn't sync up either with their own dialogue or anybody else's dialogue that was put in.

Plus, I'm not really sure what Koopa's plan was.  Was he hunting for the cavemen?  Was he just trying to boss around dinosaurs?  Was he hoping to corner the market on tomatoes with his neatly landscaped gardens?

Overall:

Somehow this is both one of the better and one of the worst episodes of this show I've seen, in that it completely abandoned logic from the get-go, but we got some truly heroic moments from Luigi that have put anything Mario did to shame.  I mean, the guy finally tried his hand at taking out Koopa once and for all, which goes a long way in my book.

I just can't get over the way this show feels like it was assembled by a crew that just didn't care.  Now, I'm pretty sure nobody at the production team felt "meh, just crank it out so we can get kids to buy our products," if just because if it really was terrible then it would reflect poorly on game sales.  But somewhere along the line it all went wrong, and it shows.

So, one episode left, meaning I need to finally decide on what my next retrospective look is going to be!  I have a few programs in the running, but if anybody out there has any ideas, feel free to let me know what you want to see me watch/suffer through!