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 the Disney Channel proper. So, let’s dive in! In this week’s episode, Gizmoduck tries to figure out how to be a hero and Mark Beaks has some ideas about that.
1. One Mark Beaks isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?
This episode took me on a little bit of a journey (which is more than I can say for any of the episode’s characters), and not a good one. I enjoyed Gizmoduck’s first appearance, so seeing that this would be an episode entirely focusing on him had me pretty excited. Then as the first part of the episode was progressing, I wondered if Gizmoduck could really be this boring. Was he just going to keep messing everything up the whole episode? (Spoiler: yes.) And then Mark Beaks showed up to confirm that this episode would indeed be a slog. I guess it makes sense since he was a big part of Gizmoduck’s last episode, but I still maintain hope that the writers will eventually realize how terrible of a character he is. There was a glimmer of hope when Beaks was introduced; for a moment I thought the show would turn him into a full-on villain. I was getting serious Lex Luthor vibes. The change was short-lived, however, and Beaks quickly returned to his usual insufferable self.
2. No Mark Beaks.
It’s official: Mark Beaks is the worst Ducktales character. He just feels like some old writers trying to both capture and make fun of millennial culture. Good satire can maintain that balancing act with its subject, but this is not that. Beaks’s shtick is never funny, and he also just doesn’t work as a great antagonist. The reason that Glomgold and the Beagle Boys work as good comedic villains is that their behavior isn’t a surprise to anyone. Everyone knows that they’re going to do something morally questionable… and probably fail at it. The show can then break that behavior occasionally to subvert expectations for a joke or emotional beat. An example of this was in “Day of the Only Child!” when Huey and the Beagle Boys found themselves in a falling tree because Huey had properly trained them. They ended up being too good at setting traps after starting the episode completely inept. Beaks is the same entitled one-percenter in every episode and still manages to surprise characters with his behavior. Even at his low point after getting fired, Fenton should have been able to see right through Beaks’s bullshit.
3. The epitome of failing upwards
Even Lin Manuel Miranda’s charismatic vocal performance can’t redeem his character in this episode. Fenton was allegedly learning how to be a hero, but if he did learn anything I must have missed it. He has sophisticated armor that he has no clue how to operate, and then keeps using it even though it puts people in danger every time. The ending of the episode was infuriating. Fenton didn’t actually learn any lessons, and then is rewarded by Scrooge for some reason. Scrooge has shown that he is loyal to a fault (ahem, Launchpad), but Fenton stole the armor and then brought it to Scrooge’s biggest competitor. Scrooge literally has no reason to retain Fenton other than he happened to have used the Gizmoduck armor first.
4. “Waddleduck”
The one redeeming portion of this episode was the Waddleduck montage and its musical accompaniment. The “Holding Out For A Hero“-inspired tune was the perfect way to underscore the ridiculousness of Gizmoduck reducing himself to working for Beaks and having to respond to meaningless requests via Beaks’s app. It’s pretty catchy in its own right and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been released in some form outside of the episode.
5. Age of Bulby
Now that Bulby has been converted to an A.I., I hope that eventually leads to an Ultron-style attack on Duckburg at some point. Gyro Gearloose’s lab seems like a treasure trove of future episode content, so now that Gizmoduck has been liberated from him, hopefully some more of his other inventions will be explored. I especially want more of Gearloose’s intern Manny, who I just realized is the same headless horse from the premiere episode. Manny is an example of the show’s great use of over-the-top, unnatural concepts and something they should do more of.
Continued belowAfterthoughts
- “Why are we wearing masks over our other masks again?”
