DuckTales is back from hiatus to finish out the first season of the reboot, and now it’s made the jump from Saturday mornings on Disney XD, to prime time on the Disney Channel proper. So, let’s dive in! In this week’s episode, the boys’ plan a surprise birthday for Scrooge, and things get a bit out of hand.
1. Bottled
This episode was fine. It had plenty of gags and an entertaining-enough story, but there wasn’t really anything special about it. They played with the familiar trope of a locked room murder mystery and added enough DuckTales flair to make it entertaining. I was tying to figure out why this episode wasn’t feeling as good as the rest of the current run of episodes when I remembered that showrunner Frank Angones mentioned that it was a bottle episode. I guess I’m ignorant when it comes to animated shows, but I didn’t even realize that happened outside of live action television. It makes sense why this week’s episode didn’t feel as fun as some of the recent episodes; DuckTales is a show that thrives when the crew is globetrotting and exploring. By definition, a bottle episode, even in animation, restricts the locations and cast, so the episode relies heavily on the characters. And while the show does well with jokes and one-liners, they have been hit-or-miss with crafting a compelling story removed from all of the jokes and spectacle of the big adventures.
2. A nice twist on “the butler did it”
This current run of DuckTales has been expertly playing with storytelling tropes, and this episode is no exception. The locked room murder mystery is a scenario that has played out in all avenues of pop culture. Having the butler be the culprit is so cliche at this point that it’s not possible to do it without some sort of twist or parody. So it was nice to see that not only was Duckworth the instigator of the disappearances, but also the mastermind behind the game itself. Obviously he was involved in some capacity—the episode mentioned him too may times for him not to make an appearance—but I didn’t realize that he would be playing such a central role.
3. The return of Duckworth
Scrooge’s version of Alfred Pennyworth makes his welcome return to the franchise in this episode. Duckworth was a staple of the original series and will be a nice addition to the new series (assuming his ghost form does indeed stick around). In a world full of over-the-top characters and personalities, Duckworth’s dryness will be a welcome foil for the other characters to play off of. It will also be interesting to see the dynamic between Scrooge and someone that he genuinely respects, which up until this point hasn’t existed in the current iteration of the show. Scrooge is superior to everyone else in his orbit, and he makes it known. It really seems like he reveres Duckworth, and is also the only person that I recall who he sees on equal footing, as a friend.
4. Duckburg’s finest
This was finally an episode that gave us just the right amount of Mark Beaks (which was barely any at all). He was used as a punchline instead of a featured character. The little bits of Ma Beagle and Glomgold are always welcome, but the real star was Black Arts Beagle. I’m loving how this series is handling the Beagle Boys, with a seemingly infinite amount of them. Black Arts characterization was great. He had the right amount of insecurity to make his relationship with Ma believable, but still had the competency to summon the ghost of Duckworth. I thought the bit where he slowly revealed the Beagles’ plan as Ma Beagle kept yelling at him was hilarious. At this point, I’ve repeated this phrase a lot with various minor characters, but I really hope we get to see more of him in the future.
5. “Doin’ It Right”
DuckTales hasn’t had the best track record with the direct pop culture references, but I think Daft Duck, aka Dewey, was pretty successful. Even though Dewey was dressed in a Daft Punk costume, his role had little to do with parodying the EDM group. He basically played an anthropomorphic reaction GIF, and it worked. Dewey’s job was to provide the moist poignant emoticon and sound effect for whatever the scene called for, and kind of personified the millennial version of live-audience sitcom feedback for the various situations in the episode. (Although now that I know that it was a bottle episode, I wonder if it was mainly to limit the time Ben Schwartz was needed for voice work.) It was probably unintentional, but the way Dewey was used reminded me of a much less nuanced version Prince Robot in “Saga.”
Continued belowAfterthoughts:
There are a ton of great one-liners and gags that don’t make it into the main five points, so I’m stealing this idea from some of our other TV coverage.
- I realize there are probably budgetary reasons for not including Launchpad, but there is no way he skips out on Scrooge’s birthday.
- The “Mist Opportunity” branded mister.
- “Nik Nokturne… spelled with two K’s, because I made the C’s disappear.”
- Glomgold’s disguise equating to his beard being stuffed in his collar had me cracking up when he revealed himself by having it pop out like a balloon.
- “I preferred it when you were dead.”
