What I Learned From Watching All The _Popeye And Son_ Cartoons

And now, for real, I bring the Internet’s most-cherished Popeye and Son rewatch project to its conclusion with thoughts about the series as a whole.

I learned that Popeye and Son is fine, really. It’s not some lost gem of the pre-90s-Renaissance setting the stage for everything we’d love the next decade’s cartoons for. It’s also not some misbegotten-from-birth idea that couldn’t have done anything but exile Popeye from the pop culture. It’s also not something that shakes the Popeye canon in interesting ways, or even a weird enough take that it deserves some attention, the way the Bobby London daily strip was.

I admit going in kind of hoping that this would be a fiasco. Fiascos are exciting to watch and fun to tell other people about. My next hope was that it would be better than I thought, and that it was. Over and over I found the plots just a bit more thought-out and involved than they needed to be. Sometimes this involved actual shifts in what the cartoon was about, as when finding Eugene has a family lead into rescuing the littlest Jeep baby. Or the several times it turns out Bluto isn’t spending his fatherhood thinking of ways to mess with Popeye. His willingness to give Junior a job, and be reasonable about what he does, stands out. Or doing a Jekyll and Hyde story with two Hydes, a twist I don’t remember seeing anywhere else.

The better-than-needed air extends to the things that fill up episodes. Poopdeck Pappy emerging from the sea riding a turtle. Olive in a lost world hanging out with a pack of Flintstones day players, when one or two would have sufficed. Fred and Eileen Furple from Fearville, Florida, hanging around just to be odd corners of the story. And, occasionally, Popeye muttering in nice fun asides. I don’t know whether they were all scripted or whether Maurice LaMarche was improvising, or if there was a blend of both. I’m guessing scripted, but that’s just how I explain the episodes that didn’t have anything to speak of.

So if these cartoons are so good why does nobody care about them? Fair question. First, I suppose, is that while they’re better than expected they’re not great. There’s the problem that Junior is a generically pleasant kid, and his friends even more so. There’s like one episode where Junior really wants something and I can’t think of any good quips or lines of dialogue or anything. “Like Popeye, but hates spinach” is a good first thought for a character, but without signifiers like Popeye’s speech mannerisms or the pre-domesticated Popeye’s eagerness for mayhem there’s not a lot left.

Tank is a failed antagonist, something I think the show even sensed given how much of the series he disappeared for. I’m not sure if that’s more because they couldn’t find a way to distinguish him from Bluto, or that the more promising stories for Junior didn’t need a bully in them. (His subordinate bullies fare even worse; I can’t remember if they even get names.) Francis coasts on being something-like-Uncle-Wimpy, which is almost enough. I’m not sure whether that’s more because Wimpy is that solid a character or because we see pretty little of Francis after all. He starts to emerge into his own with that Sherlock Holmes bit. If he were more of a determined but maybe inept kid investigator they might have found a role that was Wimpy-ish but original enough to feel fresh.

And remember, no matter what the opening credits suggest, don’t inflate your sea serpents to gigantic size and send them jetting off like popped balloons. Just let them canoodle, why are you making life hard for sea serpents?

Sweethaven as a setting is okay enough. Tying the series to a specific location makes sense for the production, even if it’s out of line with the way the pre-Hanna-Barbera Popeye cartoons worked. (Though it does match the comic strip.) The advantage of a specific setting, other than saving on background animation, is that you should be able to build stories out of the setting. That’s not done here, perhaps because the cartoon didn’t run long enough to build up lore. As a setting it’s not a bad one; it’s much more sensible for Popeye to be in a shore town sometimes building boats than it ever did to have him in a generic suburb. Popeye also has a job running a fitness club. We saw the building, although I think there’s only one or two episodes where we see him at that work and my memory is it didn’t matter to the plot. Olive Oyl gets a juice bar that I don’t think we ever look into.

These settings, though, do suggest they thought there would be story potential in them. That none developed might reflect poor choice, although I’m not sure what would make a better choice. Wimpy running a shore restaurant is fine. It’s built entirely on the association that Wimpy has stuff to do with hamburgers, and doens’t think further that you can’t run a restaurant when you’re as quintessentially lazy as Wimpy.

The most curious bit of background setting is Bluto. He’s reimagined as a guy with a life outside of Popeye. Past that we get a bit hazy — one episode he’s the town used-car dealer, another he owns a waterpark, yet another he has a fancy restaurant — but the personality change is the thing that stands out. Considering Bluto only exists because Popeye needed a regular foil you’d think removing that would drain him of interest and that didn’t happen. I don’t believe this was a conscious choice. Bluto’s empty squabbling with Popeye in the first episode hints that they expected he’d do more of that. But characters are interesting in how they surprise you and a Bluto who mostly has better stuff to do is surprising.

Can I say there was any grand mistake in the execution of Popeye and Son that kept it from greatness? No, not really. There’d need to be some stroke of luck to get the series a second or third season. And it probably could not ever have reached enough episodes to be part of a syndication package on its own. Most Saturday morning cartoons of the 80s got one season and that’s all they needed. And with the dwindling of independent stations needing plenty of old cartoon airing blocks there’s not much that could have kept Popeye as a franchise going in the 90s, even if these were the most compelling cartoons of the decade.

The cartoon’s fine. You won’t feel bad for watching it, but you’re not missing anything if you don’t. The episodes with the Sea Hag are pretty good.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 1: Happy Anniversary

Today we come at last to the final cartoon of the final episode of my Popeye and Son reviews. I too regret that the world’s leading Popeye and Son blog has run out of new episodes to review, but I hope to have a postscript essay about what I learned from all this. You know, my usual after finishing a project.

Today’s episode, Happy Anniversary, is another credited to John Loy, cementing my early impression that he and Eric Lewald defined the series. This episode tells the story I would have thought might be Episode 1, Cartoon 1, how Popeye and Olive got married. Write down your guesses for how it came to pass and then watch the episode. We’ll see how close you came.

The Plot: After Popeye and Olive have a fight on their anniversary the kids learn, in separate flashbacks, the story of their wedding day. On their wedding day — the last of many attempts — Popeye has to navigate Bluto’s dirty tricks and kidnapping, while Olive Oyl has to fend of Lizzie pointing out how Popeye is not large. But Popeye has his spinach, and Olive has a motorbike. Before the day is done, Bluto’s married Lizzie and Popeye and Olive Oyl exchange vows before the captain of a garbage scow. Retelling their parts of the tale rekindles Olive’s and Popeye’s affections, and hey, Popeye did too remember their anniversary, giving a diamond-ed up version of the bolt that was their original ad hoc wedding ring. On to the surprise party!

The Thoughts: Nana Oyl is in this one! I teased you yesterday about the obscure characters and here she is, getting her second animated appearance ever, if the Popeye Wikia is complete. Her father, Cole Oyl, gets to appear too, pacing while checking his watch and not demanding apologies.

The cartoon has a nice story structure, told in parallel flashbacks from Popeye and Olive. It’s also good emotional structure, as telling the story of their wedding day, overcoming Bluto’s sabotage, gives both the chance to calm down and realize they didn’t want to fight. Popeye finds his lost anniversary present earlier in the cartoon than I expected; his impulse to throw it away is understandable in the moment. Good reflexes on Junior in catching it.

The wedding day being sabotaged by Bluto brings to mind Nearlyweds, the last Famous Studios Popeye cartoon (the handful theatrically produced after that were under the Paramount Cartoon Studios name). But there’s not a repetition in any of the stunts used. There’s rather fewer tricks Bluto uses than he did in the theatrical cartoon, in fact, amounting to just swiping Popeye’s tuxedo and then driving him out of town. The flashback structure, and splitting the story between Popeye and Olive, keeps this from feeling like an under-plotted episode.

There’s also some nice bits of filling in the setting of the series. We see Popeye’s Fitness Club and Olive Oyl’s Juice Bar. The juice bar turns out never to play into the series, but this establishes what they thought they were setting up. It also gives us a first look at Bluto’s wife, as well as her name, Lizzie, which we otherwise didn’t hear until episode five. Making her Olive’s bridesmaid was probably done for dramatic economy. It suggests an angle that could have been done for the series, though, where Olive and Lizzie were as good friends as Popeye and Bluto were rivals. It turned out Bluto had little to do with the series and Lizzie even less, but there was plot-generating potential here.

I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking it too: so who served as witnesses for Olive and Popeye? For that matter, how could Lizzie and Bluto get married without a license? Granted perhaps Sweethaven is in a state where you can get same-day licenses but it is explicitly late in the day, surely past when the county clerk would be taking new applications. On reflection, I understand why everyone treated me like that in middle school.

So what do you think of Popeye and Olive’s wedding, done by the dubious legal theory that the captain of a ship can marry couples? I had expected Popeye to use his spinach power-up to race to the Oyl house in time. I’m still not sure why he didn’t. Or at least call Olive’s parents to promise they were on their way, but maybe that promise was spoiled by past failed weddings. Still, one running theme of this series has been how it beat my expectations, often taking an idea in a novel direction.

I liked this. It was a surprising way to get to what we knew was there, with surprise being the hardest thing to get in a prequel. Popeye being married by a ship captain makes startling emotional sense; once seen, it felt inevitable. Having it be captain of a garbage scow is also a good touch of the scruffy, disreputable start that Popeye had. He’s cleaned up considerably since 1929. It’s good he can still touch that without losing his dignity.

There’s some nice animation touches here too. Popeye spinning his pipe around, startled, which is always a fun bit of business. Olive Oyl’s head shaking causing her eyes to swing back and forth, like her face is rubber. And Popeye peeling the roof of Bluto’s cab open has just the sort of style you’d expect from the theatrical cartoons.

As bachelor, apparently, Popeye lived at Ma Wimpy’s Boarding House. I had thought this was the first time we’ve ever seen a hint that Wimpy even has a mother, though Wikipedia tells me in an incited paragraph that she appeared in the Sunday comics. (The Popeye wikia offers no hint of this, listing just his cousin Francis, introduced in this cartoon, and his cousins Otis O Otis, whom I’ve seen in the Sagendorf reruns, and Meldew, who I never heard of before either.) Shame they couldn’t have outdone even Randy Millholland in bringing out the obscurities.

When Olive finishes her story, at about 22:04 in the video, her mouth quivers. I think this is an animation error: note how it stops the moment the off-screen character stops talking. However, it works in making Olive’s crying a better-acted thing. There have been a couple animation errors this series, most of them small enough to not be worth mentioning. I just want to highlight one that’s making things better.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 1: Attack of the Sea Hag

Surprised to see the world’s leading Popeye and Son blog posting about the cartoon again? Me too, though not for the reasons you’d think. I mentioned back when this started that King Features’s YouTube playlist with the series on it lacked the first video, episode 1, which was hidden. I didn’t know why they would hide the first episode but imagined they had their reasons. Whatever those reasons are, they still have them. The playlist of the show starts from episode 2, just as my Internet-favorite Popeye and Son episode reviews have done.

But what I didn’t think to check, until well into these reviews, was whether the episode was available as a standalone thing, not in the playlists. And it is, sitting there just on his own, where we can watch it. So now, let’s get to the first episode of the show, written by John Loy, who also co-wrote the final cartoon of the series. And a good number of those in-between.

The Plot: While surfing after school Junior runs across a curious wooden mermaid which Tank then steals, and Bluto takes from the both of them for his yacht. Popeye won’t fight Bluto for it, though, as he recognizes the mermaid as the Sea Hag’s figurehead. During an evening party the mermaid’s eyes light, making the yacht float up to the Sea Hag, who demands Bluto return the slab mermaid. When Bluto won’t take a hint, Junior takes his spinach and throws the mermaid, the Sea Hag, and the storm behind her out of the cartoon.

The Thoughts: I’m glad to come to this episode at the end. It gives me the chance to compare the series as it came out to what they thought they would make. The opening sequence, for example, with Popeye and Bluto called in to deal with their sons who were fighting in class? It suggests they expected the series to be, much like the opening credits show, one where Junior and Tank are always fighting, just as their fathers are. As the show turned out, Popeye and Bluto had almost nothing to do with each other, and even Tank disappeared.

The Sea Hag’s presence suggests they figured to work in some of Popeye’s old supporting cast. We’d get some of that, Poopdeck Pappy and the Goons getting episodes and the Sea Hag getting another appearance. And Eugene the Jeep getting an episode where it turns out he has a family. No deep cuts, though, nothing like the cast Randy Millholland has pulled out of obscurity for the revived comic strip. (But watch this space.) (Swee’Pea, a probably unresolvable character, stays out of the show.) We get a take on the Sea Hag that’s more mysterious and arbitrary and inscrutable than she was in the King Features cartons of the 60s. That’s a good take on the character. I haven’t seen the late-70s Hanna-Barbera cartoons recently enough to remember if that’s a new take for this series. But it’s in line with the decision to make the Goons a remote, menacing presence too.

I’ll dismiss the main body of the story soon. I want to continue cross-examining the meeting-with-the-principal scene. Popeye and Bluto getting into a fight over which of their kids started a fight makes sense. Their getting so caught up in their fight everyone quietly leaves the room and they never notice works too. But listen to their words. Besides being the same “like father like son” dialogue from the opening credits, the argument is nothing.

Sometime in Like 1989 I read a TV scriptwriting book by some writer for the series Moonlighting, renowned for the snappy arguments between Cybill Shepherd’s and Bruce Willis’s characters. He mentioned one common failure, enough to mark the writer as someone who didn’t understand the series, was to have an argument scene devolve into “All right then!” “All right!” “Fine!” “FINE!”. (Or something like that.) The problem is this exchange isn’t about anything; it’s an argument without content. And without personality; you could drop it into any argument in any movie or TV show without affecting anything.

Popeye and Bluto’s dialogue is all this filler, devoid even of any good insults. The cartoon may have been under restrictions about how much Popeye and Bluto could punch each other, but surely they could have said insulting things? Or at least made preposterous boasts about how hard they would punch the other? Right there we have almost my opinion on the whole series. Sensible enough premise, some good bits, but limited by this genericness that strikes even the central characters.

Sea Hag isn’t being paid enough to open her eyes this series. And please welcome as the mermaid shiphead special guest star Richie Rich’s girlfriend Gloria Glad!

When we get into the real story, things pick up some. We get to meet Junior’s friends although the girls remain just “the girls” and Tank’s sub-bullies not even that. Popeye spotting the mermaid as the Sea Hag’s and backing out of it is also a good bit. It shows Popeye as smart enough to avoid needless trouble. It presents Popeye as stuffing Junior’s head full of old adventures that Junior doesn’t necessarily believe. And the mermaid’s eyes lighting up with some old Superfriends sound effects and causing the yacht to just … sail itself away, into a storm … is this nice eerie bit. It’s got some good mystery and danger to it.

I’m not clear why everyone at Bluto’s party is so scared of this. It’s weird for the ship to float away from the dock on its own but, like, it has engines. Bluto owns it. He should be able to get it back to dock. Maybe they cut, or didn’t think to write, a scene where that won’t work. Bluto’s pigheaded about not returning the Sea Hag’s mermaid. Popeye didn’t tell him it was the Sea Hag’s, although Bluto’s continued refusal once he sees her suggests he doesn’t know who the Sea Hag is. Which might be, come to think of it, at least in this continuity. Would have helped if there were a line making clear he doesn’t recognize her. Bit of a jerk move on Popeye’s part to not at least give Bluto a heads-up, but how many favors does Popeye need to do Bluto?

Popeye has nothing to do with the resolution of the crisis. I think I like that as a way of building up Junior as protagonist, or at least his own character. I do like that he takes the obvious, direct way out of throwing the mermaid so hard at the Sea Hag that she and her ship leave. No punching necessary! I also like how much time at Bluto’s party is spent having vaguely Margaret Dumontesque dowagers fainting on each other. Might be a bit much of that for your tastes, but it didn’t wear me out.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 13: Damsel in Distress

For this, the final cartoon of the last episode of the series, writing credit goes to Eric Lewald and John Loy. Between the two they’ve written cartoons for almost all the episodes of the series. John Loy has writing credits for Here Today, Goon Tomorrow, for Don’t Give Up The Picnic, and Junior Gets A Job.

Eric Lewald, meanwhile, is the voice of the show, with credits for Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree, for The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove, for Junior’s Genie, for Mighty Olive at the Bat, for Redbeard, for both Dr Junior and Mr Hyde, and for There Goes The Neighborhood.

If you’d like to see my essays on the episodes listed above, they’re right there. Or you can get everything I have to say on the Internet’s most esteemed Popeye And Son blog at this link. And now, let’s see the concluding thought of Popeye’s most recent television cartoon series.

The Plot: Popeye and Bluto race to a remote island in hopes of answering a bottled message from a damsel in distress. But! The damsel turns out to be the Sea Hag! Who wants to find the strongest man, a contest neither of them is willing to lose until she promises the winner a kiss. Also facing the winner: a battle against the two-headed giant of the island. Popeye is happy to take a dive and let Bluto get the kiss, but is he willing to let Bluto get murderized by the giant? No, of course not, but what can he do with only his wits and spinach about him? Oh yeah, he can punch!

The Thoughts: It’s an interesting choice to have the finale of Popeye and Son ditch Son. The cartoon doesn’t suffer for it, really. It’s a Popeye-and-Bluto-compete episode, and there’s not much Junior could add besides taking up lines that Popeye delivers better. I’m still surprised that Junior and Tank weren’t brought along as a reflex. Instead, we get a throwback to the theatrical-type cartoons. Two of them, really, with a Popeye-and-Bluto-compete story feeding into a Popeye-needs-Bluto story. And a twist I didn’t see coming, the Sea Hag turning up to stir up trouble and enjoy the chaos. I knew the Sea Hag was in the first episode of the cartoon, but I supposed her appearances were done.

The cartoon also evokes the most renowned of the two-reeler cartoons, Popeye The Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor. The two-headed giant here seems to be Boola, although redesigned, as many characters were for this series. Less hair, pattered leotard with a tail for some reason. He’s lost the difficult-to-parse accent. And he’s less fat. Still read as the same character to me. Another, subtler callback is the point where Popeye yanks the far side of a canyon over to walking distance. The land has a similar sort of perspective-defying lower level that’s a bit hard to parse from Sindbad’s island. Pulling a canyon closed — before he’s had his spinach — is another traditional black-and-white Popeye theatrical gag. The cave with the signs about ‘This is it!’ and ‘Strongest man enter here!’ reminds me of the entrance to Sindbad’s island, but that might be coincidence.

Actual footage of me doing any cartoon reviews or story strip plot recaps.

There’s little I dislike here. I’m confused by the Sea Hag’s goal, I suppose. If she just wanted Boola knocked out why choose an unreliable method like a message in a bottle? (Also why would she want Boola knocked out?) If she wanted Popeye killed, it makes sense that she’d leave the bottle where Popeye, or Junior, would find it quickly, but then was she surprised Popeye turned up? Or both Popeye and Bluto? Her whole deal seems to be wanting to make people go to a lot of trouble for her own entertainment, which is legitimate enough, I guess. I do like how she keeps Popeye and Bluto from nope’ing out of her scheme by calling them chicken, basically. Good thinking on her part.

And the interactions of Popeye and Bluto, in what feels like their most prolonged interaction this series, crackle nicely. Popeye gets a good number of solid lines in too. You can take your choice for best but mine is Popeye sneering at Bluto’s tunneling through a mountain by declaring, “I don’t know if I’s that strong but I’s not that dumb either” before picking up and tossing the mountain out of his way. “Who was you expectorating?” is also a good line. I don’t know how much of this is the writers and how much is Maurice LaMarche but they’ve got Popeye’s voice.

I’d love to know more about how this cartoon got made. At what point did they decide it would be such a traditional Popeye, No Son story? Neither John Loy nor Eric Lewald have cartoon writing credentials going back to the previous Hanna-Barbera Popeye series, which seems likely to rule out that it was a trunk script. (And if it were, why would a solid story like that this have been put in the trunk?)

So this is how Popeye concluded his last regular TV series. It’s a high point, stuffed with nice surprises. If the series were all at this level it’d be a lost gem of a show.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 13: Olive’s Day Off

Bryce Malek gets another outing in today’s episode of Popeye and Son. You’ll remember Malek from Olive’s Dinosaur Dilemma and The Mystery Of Who’s Stealing Burgers Of Course It’s Wimpy.

And if you missed those, you can catch them and the rest of the Internet’s most popular Popeye and Son reviews at this link.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the first cartoon of the final episode of the show and see what it’s like.

The Plot: Olive, fed up with being taken for granted, takes the day off. Will Popeye and Junior be able to clean the house, do the laundry, and prepare dinner before his granny comes over? Or will it create an impossible, huge mess as they can’t do basic household chores? And who will eat spinach to set everything right in a minute?

The Thoughts: This is one of those rare new premises for a Popeye cartoon. I don’t mean the premise that Olive Oyl has been an important character in the Popeye and Son universe. I mean that without Popeye and Olive married, the sailor man can’t be made to do the household work. Even cartoons that come close, such as Nurse-Mates, Popeye’s more or less volunteering to take a load off. So this offers the different dynamic that he can’t, in principle, just forget it.

Still, seeing how incompetent the man is at woman’s work is a premise that I’ve never liked. Even as a kid, the hubris of the guy declaring that of course he could do his wife/girlfriend’s job without even practicing offended me. Did I mention how everyone treated me in middle school? Anyway it’s my problem that I’m a reluctant audience, not going along with the premise that Popeye and Junior will find themselves overwhelmed with laundry, shopping, and cooking.

Hey, uh … I think someone needed that life preserver.

If you’re willing to grant that then, well, the cartoon is all fine enough. All the bits that follow make sense from it and if there’s nothing surprising, there’s also nothing done wrong. Junior figures he can stuff all the laundry in one load and he and Popeye figure they need to use all the soap in the world and it makes a tidal wave of phosphorous compounds, fine. They have half the time they need to cook dinner, so just turn the oven up twice as high, sure. They don’t have the common sense needed to know three tablespoons of sugar doesn’t mean you put the spoons in the mix.

Popeye and Junior repeating to each other how they’re using their brains makes the jokes too obvious to me. I imagine it works well for the target audience, though, which hasn’t burned out on this sort of story. And that likes being signalled that that the characters are wrong and are getting their comeuppance soon.

Another weakness to the story, and one that might have bothered me as a kid, is that whatever disaster unfolds, Popeye just has to eat his spinach and he can fix everything in a cloud of activity. So it turns out, although I appreciate the touch that in the supermarket they pick up an extra two cans of spinach just in case. But given Popeye’s spinach as a magic wand how much fun can it be having everything turn to shambles?

Here’s how I would fix it in rewrite. The cartoon is called Olive’s Day Off; why not see that? We get some glimpses of what she’s doing to enjoy herself and that’s fine. Why not spend most of the time on Olive doing stuff, with quick cuts back to see that Popeye and Junior are making a mess of things? Olive can even come back from her day off, see that it’s a disaster, and herself eat the spinach to set things right. Nothing unexpected happens in the Popeye-and-Junior side of things, so why not cut it down to the bare minimums?

I’m startled to learn that apparently all this time Olive Oyl’s had her own thing and we never heard it mentioned or anything? Also, the design of the Popeye’s Health Club/Olive Oyl’s Juice Bar delights me as if you wanted to make something look over-the-top 80s you wouldn’t think to come up with this. It’s wonderful in its crafting.

The obvious answer is there’s nobody Olive can interact with. In this series the Goons are mysterious shadowy villains so she can’t hang out with Alice. She won’t hang out with the Sea Hag. And after that you get into the obscure characters, or make some up for the series. Or use Bluto’s wife, who I feel very sure had a name given at some point. But what’s wrong with that? If we can see Popeye’s Granny in what might be her only animated appearance (I haven’t checked the 70s Hanna-Barbera series), why not see Nana Oyl? Or any of her inexhaustible set of cousins? If Bluto can be a pretty reasonable guy this whole series, why not give his wife a little attention?

Understand me, this isn’t a bad cartoon. There’s a basic level of competence that, by this time, Hanna-Barbera could not fall under. And there are good bits, such as Popeye fixing the accident where they pour the whole sack of flour in by rewriting the recipe. I’m just disappointed that given the chance to do a story the characters could not have ever done before, you get a story exhausted before The Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show did it.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 12: Prince of a Fellow

The Internet’s top site for Popeye and Son reviews comes today to another episode written by Kelly Ward. You know Ward’s voice from Junior’s Birthday Round-Up and with Junior’s Genie. But now how will Ward handle writing a script that doesn’t have “Junior” in the title? There’s two ways to find out. One is watching the cartoon to make up your own mind and the other is to read this and any other Popeye and Son essays at this link. You alone know what you choose.

The Plot: Junior turns out to look and sound just like Rex, the prince of Portnovia! Wouldn’t it be a fun idea if they swap positions in life just for a couple hours? Oh, but what if in those couple hours the prince of Portnovia is getting betrothed to a guh-guh-guh-girl? And what if Popeye needs his son to help him build a boat? How are they going to get swapped back under the watchful eye of the royal butler?

The Thoughts: I’ve never read The Prince and the Pauper. Is it any good? Does it hold up when you’ve seen its basic outline done to death? The Prisoner of Zenda turned out to be decent and that’s had almost as many remakes.

And I know, these stories keep getting mined for remakes because the story practically writes itself. And everyone fantasizes about being whisked into positions of power and luxury. Or, if you’re an adult, being whisked away from true responsibility. But I can’t imagine many of the cartoon’s audience felt weary from the world’s burdens and could sympathize with Rex hiding from them.

So that makes it a bit interesting so much of the cartoon focuses on Rex filling Junior’s spot. I understand it, since that’s the position with Popeye to interact with, which can paper over how faint a character he is. Junior aboard the royal yacht, running away from Snipes, has no such advantage. Also working against Junior is that after five(?) solid hours of screen time I still don’t know what his deal is. He says ‘yuck’ after eating spinach and that’s it.

“Theres ya go! Ya don’t look a think like yer wearing Lon’s weird costume from lask episode!”

I guess time limits kept Junior and Rex from interacting with more characters. But that seems weird, given they have eleven minutes, or two-thirds the run time of Popeye Meets Sinbad the Sailor. You know if they had ever done a theatrical “Prince and the Popeye” short we’d have at least seen some good quick feats-of-strength jokes. Also I have no idea how they never made a “Prince and the Popeye”, unless it’s in the late-70s cartoons I haven’t reviewed yet.

I like seeing Rex try to fit into Junior’s role; he gets to show some cleverness and adaptation to circumstances. Junior’s not nearly so successful, which makes it curious that Snipes doesn’t catch on. Popeye at least asks how Rex doesn’t recognize his own father. Also that Popeye immediately accepts Rex’s declaration when he comes clean; an easier but worse dramatic build would be Popeye calling that a fantasy to shirk his chores.

For the first and I imagine last time we learn what Popeye does for a living now: he builds boats. I didn’t know gift boats were built on a just-in-time commission. But since this event lets so many important story beats happen I’m not snarking, just grinning a little bit. It pulls a lot of weight. It gives Rex-as-Junior a chore he has to do today, nailing in boards. And do poorly so he looks for a clever way around his bad nailing skills, gluing wood down. And then why they’d be in danger sailing out to the royal yacht, as the glue fails completely put to sea so soon. And gives Junior chance to escape the royal yacht by way of a spinach power-up and saving the day. I’d call that the most elegant bit of the story.

This is far from an important point but why were neither of the kingdoms involved Spinachovia? King Blozo is an engagingly ineffective character, and Rex could be his son as well as anyone’s. Or his daughter could be the to-be-betrothed one. I know it wouldn’t have affected the story any, but why not stuff it with people funny to watch?

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 12: There Goes The Neighborhood

Today’s cartoon is another penned by series stalwart Eric Lewald. Is it his last contribution? Who knows? In another two weeks I should have a complete archive of everything there is to say about Popeye and Son at this link, though. Right now, let’s jump into the action and see what happened to the neighborhood.

The Plot: A family moves into the spooky haunted house you remember is up on the hill! Lon, the child, tries to fit in at school but dresses and acts all weird. When he shows up Tank’s bullying, though, Junior and his friends accept an invite to what turns out to be Lon’s birthday party. And his family are monsters! A frightened Tank gets his father to bring a torch-wielding mob against the family, setting their house on fire and threatening to kill most everyone. But Lon’s family saves the mob, and Junior uses the town water tank to save Lon’s family, and all’s well apart from Sweethaven not having a water supply for the duration.

The Thoughts: I do not like seeing J Wellington Wimpy near the head of a lynch mob. That’s not me imposing my headcanon idea of Our Heroes as flawless beings. It’s that a mob is, among other things, passion without reason. And Wimpy does not have passions outside eating, particularly hamburgers. Bluto, yes, that makes sense. Not Wimpy.

The premise of the weird new kid moves into the neighborhood is fine enough, although the cast of Popeye and Son is vague enough I’m not sure it can support even temporary new guys. Having it be a family of goofy monsters feels like the sort of thing a worn-out show mixes in its last season to spruce things up which … all right, I withdraw the objection, with reluctance.

There’s some kind of story about being nice to the new kid, and to the weird kid, and all. I appreciate that the storyline isn’t perfectly linear. Junior and his friends, hereafter the Good Kids, start out suspicious of the strange family, figure to give him a chance, think he’s weird after biting the Climb Rope in gym glass, figure he’s maybe okay when he shows up Tank and the subordinate bullies, then freak out when his home is a little too Munster. It avoids making the story too much one of “if you get a bad vibe off someone you’re the one who’s wrong”.

Lon’s talk about how this has happened so many times before leaves me wondering how bad that went that this is his best attempt to not freak out the kids at the new school. And I know, that’s me over-thinking the logic of the premise. The story has to be introduced, developed, and resolved in eleven minutes; Lon’s weirdness has to be established clearly and unmistakably in ways the kid audience will recognize. He has to dress like 1905 comic strip superstar Buster Brown and bite the gym class rope in his mouth even though a more realistic Lon would have noticed that makes him look like a weirdo. Or at least his parents, postgaming what went wrong, should have offered that advice. But if we do that we need way more time and animation than the show could have. (On the other hand, I keep reconsidering middle school and realizing that I could have been true to myself without being weird in ways that made me a target.)

Is … is that kid on the right off by himself supposed to be Oscar’s kid? Or does any scrawny-looking guy with buck teeth look faintly like the overlookable supporting castmember naturally?

That could be patched. I love the comedy creepy monster family, the more cornball the better. Always have, whether the Addamses, the Munsters, the Gruesomes (on the Flintstones less often than I remembered), Drak Pack, whatever. The more intensely they tried to understand things through a monster lens the more Lon’s bad game plan makes sense. I’d have liked to better understand the logic that leads them to have a birthday cake labelled ‘RIP’. Even if it’s goofy, like they meant it to be short for ‘R [for our] 1st Party’. Maybe especially so.

Given how most of the characters go in with good intentions I’m not sure I like that it takes the repeated threat of death to get the mob broken up. I totally buy Bluto leading the mob. It also feels … reasonable, that once the moment has passed Bluto realizes his son was playing him for a fool again, and we get another episode ending with Tank in trouble for his shenanigans. It’s also another episode where Bluto and Popeye don’t interact at all. The impression one gets is that this is a Bluto who has stuff in his life that doesn’t revolve around Popeye and I guess that’s good for him as a person, even if it leaves the show without a good built-in antagonist. Tank makes sense, especially for a kid-centered story like this, as the replacement antagonist, but he’s not as good at it as his father is.

The initial sequence, Junior’s dream, is an unusually good bit. There’s a strong opening-credits-to-Scooby-Doo vibe (I was disappointed not to have a zoom in on the eyes in the dark), aided by music that’s trying for spooky, at least at first. Music has been the weakest leg of this series, and a moment of it doing the work well shows how much the series was hobbled. I don’t know how much custom scoring the show could possibly have had — not much, I imagine — but I’m sorry they couldn’t get more spooky or suspenseful stock music for stories that needed it. The cranky-looking Eugene when Junior wakes up is also an unusually good bit of animation.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 11: Ain’t Mythbehavin’

Today’s Popeye and Son is the first episode with writing credits to Ken Koonce and David Weimers. Both are people with a healthy number of writing credits for kids’ cartoons. Weimers’ credits range from 1985 to 2003, with particular story editor credits for DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin. Koonce has a similar history, reaching out a little longer and including credits for The Wuzzles, Galaxy High School, 101 Dalmatians: The Series, and both the Hercules and the Buzz Lightyear cartoons.

If you’d like to see the cartoon before I write about it, here’s the direct link on YouTube, before even the video that should be embedded. And as ever if you’d like to read all of the Internet’s best Popeye and Son reviews, look here. No, I don’t know what I’m doing in three weeks when I run out of these.

The Plot: After being laughed at for Popeye’s claim he found the Golden Fleece years ago, Popeye and Junior set out to find it again. Olive, bringing lunch along, follows them to Greece, where they counter a skeleton squadron (it’s too small for an army), a flock of harpies, a big ol’ purple dragon and discover what stinks about the Golden Fleece.

The Thoughts: While Thimble Theater is a continuity strip, the cartoons are not. Apart from clip cartoons I can think of only one case where any cartoon mentioned the events of another. Popeye and Son is the first time a Popeye cartoon series reasonably could show continuity. I mention because Popeye has, in an earlier TV cartoon, gone in search of the Golden Fleece. His retelling of the story to Junior doesn’t match the adventure in the King Features cartoon Golden-Type Fleece (and I guess it was Jason as played by Popeye anyway), but they could have written in a punch line like the Golden Fleece having fleas, a good-enough reference to the earlier cartoon. This never happened. I wonder if it was ever thought of.

I liked the start of the cartoon. I’m not sure that having the Sweethaven setting makes the Popeye and Son cartoons less adventurous than older ones. It may just motivate why he has this boring suburban house than what he did in the King Features or the 1950s days. There’ve been a couple Popeye and Son episodes with adventures — to Here Today, Goon Tomorrow, for example, or Olive’s Dinosaur Dilemma. I’m glad getting at least one more before the series ends, even if Greece is kind of a known land. Popeye and Junior first encountering a Golden Fleece tourist trap was an interesting direction, and I wondered if Popeye would remember he couldn’t take the Fleece without spoiling the local economy.

Why … why are the harpies Archie Andrews’s teacher Miss Grundy?

But after that twist — a good idea, at least — things went to a more normal direction. Popeye, Junior, and Olive face the perils that Popeye told Junior he’d faced before. There’s some good structure here in that Olive, without Popeye or Junior, faces the skeletons, and we get to see how Popeye defeated them before when nothing happens to them here. Junior’s the one who has trouble with the harpies, apart from them stealing Popeye’s spinach. We miss in the flashback how Popeye beat the dragon, so there’s room for it to be a fresh angle when we go see it. Popeye and Junior using their spinach power-ups to throw the Sleepless Dragon into a wooden crib is also a good joke too, better than usual for the punch-the-bad-guy-into-a-trap moment.

I think this cartoon’s poorly-served by its music, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the screen action. It’s not distracting, it just doesn’t convey suspense or mystery or danger or anything particular. There’s enough good touches, like Olive Oyl’s poor outboard motor deflating from exhaustion, or the Skeletons’ marching cadence, that I’m distracted by the great cartoon I can see waiting for a little attention to bring out.

Bluto and Tank get back into the series, although only as motivators. The opening credits’ idea that they’re the steady antagonists for Popeye and Junior seems forgotten. I can imagine a version of this where the two were trying to sabotage Popeye, or race him to the Golden Fleece. That might have needed a faster pace than the cartoon was designed for.

And for all that we do get a continuity touch, Popeye mentioning Polecat Popeye, who never took a bath. That’s a cute something.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 11: Orchid You Not

Today’s Popeye and Son cartoon was penned by Scott Shaw!. You probably know him as the guy who wrote for every comic book company ever. Also the guy Steve Gerber wants to know, why is every comic book company picking that guy to screw over so hard? In animation Shaw! has a huge number of credits for Muppet Babies, Garfield and Friends, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, all the way up to The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange, which I’m told is a thing that exists.

If you’d like to see all the writing that’s made this the Internet’s top Popeye and Son review blog, look here. And if you just want to see the cartoon I’m writing about before I share my thoughts, you can watch it here or, so far as I know, the embedded video below.

The Plot: Eugene the Jeep has entered an Orchid Pon Farr, going around swiping the flowers from everywhere in Sweethaven that has them! And it turns out everywhere in Sweethaven has them! But how can Popeye and Junior track down a magical fourth-dimensional dog who can pop in and out of our reality wherever he wants? And why is he grabbing enough orchids to feed a family of eight Jeeps suddenly?

The Thoughts: After Eugene’s first couple thefts Popeye tells Junior how a Jeep in an orchid frenzy isn’t a pretty sight. It’s spoken as something that Popeye’s seen before, which is what held me off figuring the mystery. But the mystery is pretty well-constrained. Eugene wouldn’t be stealing orchids for no problem, orchids are what a Jeep eats, there we go. I guess that makes the red herring a success, and I guess more successful for the kids in the target audience. I wanted to know more about these orchid frenzies Popeye has endured. A magic animal going wild on something basically harmless could be a lot of fun.

My calculations tell me there was a lot of fun here. Popeye builds a homing beacon in a fake orchid and track Eugene through town. We get a string of running into buildings, making messes, and running into another building. The mayhem wasn’t doing it for me, though. I’m not sure if it’s the pacing or the animation, which — as I’ve said before — is better from what they would have had a decade ago, but still has that thing where stuff doesn’t seem to touch other stuff. The problem might be me being a bad audience member: I got locked on thinking it was a mistake to obviously chase after Eugene, instead of following quietly, so all Popeye and Junior’s problems seemed to be their own fault.

So I guess Eugene is a nudist Jeep and his kids are going to be so embarrassed when they’re old enough to realize.

Anyway the secret is, of course, that Eugene the Jeep has a family to support now and a litter of many cute Jeep babies dressed more individually than Popeye’s nephews ever were. Popeye and Junior are surprised but quickly turn to congratulating Eugene. “You is had sex, likes me and Olive Oyl! Or likes Bluto and whatskever his wife’s name is! Wow!” (I really thought Eugene’s family would be a bunch of foundling Jeeps.)

That’s not quite enough story for the episode, so they discover one of the baby Jeeps missing, grabbed by a roc. Popeye calls on Junior to help with foisting the giant bird and I’m not clear why at first. This is the sort of menace Popeye’s dealt with by himself, with spinach, plenty. I guess he sees this as a chance to train his son in doing this sort of rescue. It turns out well. While Popeye harasses the roc, Junior punches a birdcage into existence, and punches the roc into a pretty cute captivity, really. Happy ending all around, except for the bird.

The premise is a great one, right down to Eugene turning out to have a family. And either storyline, discovering the kids or rescuing the lost one, is a fine cartoon on its own and I could see either as theatrical shorts. (Oh, imagine a Fleischer-drawn pack of baby Jeeps.) And I can’t find anything wrong with the plotting. It’s unusual to switch from one premise to another but that’s not a problem, just an episodic story. I really like the whole family of Jeeps squeaking anxiously when the littlest one’s captured. I don’t know why it isn’t landing for me. Maybe I just was having a bad day when I watched this and would feel different next week. Guess we’ll know then.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 10: The Case of the Burger Burglar

Today’s installment of the Internet’s most popular Popeye and Son review blog takes us to The Case Of The Burger Burglar. The writing here is credited to Bryce Malek, who already gave us Olive’s Dinosaur Dilemma, a lost-world story where Olive faced no dilemmas.

If you’d like to see all my award-winning thoughts about this series, you can give me an award for writing about Popeye and Son and then check the essays at this link. Until then, here’s The Case Of the Burger Burglar.

The Plot: Someone is stealing all of Wimpy’s hamburgers before he can even serve them! Who is it, considering it’s Wimpy, and how can we find out? Wimpy’s nephew Francis teams up with Junior to do a Sherlock-and-Watson to figure out why it isn’t the other person in the story and has to be Wimpy doing it.

The Thoughts: I am not the target audience for this series. I looked at the title and thought, why not just say it’s Wimpy? But maybe Wimpy was stealing burgers and the mystery would be figuring out how he was doing it, or why, or something. After it was established Wimpy was having his working burgers stolen, my thoughts shifted, mostly to how the story was going to make Wimpy not the bad guy. It’s hard to recover from stealing enough of your own burger stock to endanger your restaurant. So I was wondering whether it would be sleepwalking or hypnosis or what.

Popeye and Junior recede into the background again, Popeye skipping the story altogether. (This might be the first Popeye-branded cartoon where he doesn’t appear, but I must do more research.) Wimpy’s nephew Francis takes the lead, playing one of the screen’s many inept Sherlock Holmes followers. He does well, though, not finding anything truly irrelevant and not jumping to any absurd conclusions. Suspecting Bluto, who’s now an oddly themed restaurant magnate, makes sense on every count and it’s a little surprising he’s once again innocent.

I bet when this scene was storyboarded everyone figured this was going to be one of the most fun episodes they did on this series. I’m not being snarky in this. This still is a great writing prompt for either setting up the scene leading to this or for writing what follows. Just a little sad there’s generic Flintstons-characters-with-Jetsons-hairdos in the background instead of anyone we’d recognize.

Also interesting is Bluto’s burger supplier of Red Herring. Partly for letting us viewers know Bluto really is innocent. But also because this foreshadows one of the big innovations A Pup Named Scooby-Doo brought to that formula. A different Red Herring would become part of the ancillary Scooby cast after this series was done, and neither the Internet Movie Database nor Wikipedia indicate that Bryce Malek contributed to that show at all. But I’m sure there was overlap in production people. Maybe it was in the air to have a character whose name made some of the audience cheer that they got the reference.

Using Eugene the Jeep as bloodhound makes sense and, as traditional, doesn’t help at all. I’m not sure Eugene is meant to be shown as causing trouble. It does keep having a magic four-dimensional dog from solving all your problems if his good sense is overwhelmed by his appetite. And we do get the classic scene of a couple kids in a trenchcoat trying to sneak in among the adults. You’d almost think these things never happened.

A moment that confuses me. Francis decides not to close the secret panel, noting how the burglar already knows where the freezer is. It’s true, but in the story is that meant as just a joke? It feels like something setting up something, but all it does is confuse Junior and, I guess, me. I like tossing off jokes that serve no narrative purpose — it’s one of Popeye’s most endearing traits, as a character and a series — but this feels too singular a beat in a story that otherwise didn’t have such word play.

I like Wimpy’s little push-button pop-up burger stand on the beach. Junior probably likes that he never has to eat spinach.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 10: Split Decision

Today’s episode of Popeye and Son is credited to the wife-and-husband team of Pamela Hickey and Dennys McCoy. They’re new here, but they’ve got credits going back to 1984, including The Get Along Gang, Bionic Six, and Denver the Last Dinosaur. And they’re still writing, writing or story-editing for things I hadn’t heard of including 2022’s My Fairy Troublemaker, 2019’s Smighties: Small and Mighty Friends, and something called Skunk Fu!.

I don’t mean to brag but I have the most successful Popeye and Son rewatch blog on the Internet. If you’d like to see all my cherished thoughts about the episodes, read this link. Otherwise, let’s step in right now and watch the cartoon.

The Plot: Polly gets onto the school basketball team! But Dee Dee doesn’t. With Polly spending all her time on school basketball-related activities like beach barbecues and team picnics and maybe even practice, will Dee Dee lose her friend? Or will a freak hang-gliding accident bring them back together?

The Thoughts: do you have the feeling this script was written for another show? Or a generic show, with the Popeye and Son characters doppled into it? We’ve had stories with almost no Popeye in them; this is one with barely any Junior either, at least in a plot-relevant style.

That’s not by itself wrong, and having the focus be on Polly and Dee Dee also isn’t a mistake. They’ve been minor characters in the series, but you make a major character by giving them an episode where they do good stuff. And I like the lesson Dee Dee learns about being glad for your friends even when their good stuff means they’re spending less time on you. It’s a piece of maturity many of us never quite master. (And it’s especially important for kids where your first circle of friends is, basically, the people in school with you rather than people you might choose to interact with.)

So this is an episode I appreciate more than I like. My big structural complaint is that there’s no link between Dee Dee’s experiences and the godo moral she draws from it. She doesn’t have to be the person who saves Polly from the freak hanggliding accident. But she should at least realize her feeling bad isn’t about something Polly is doing wrong. My minor structural complaint is that Polly’s basketball team seems to do everything except play basketball. There’s some mention of practice, but a few scenes of Polly having the thrill of playing a high-stakes game while Dee Dee’s stuck messing around with Junior and Woody would have helped.

The path to basketball glory goes through hang-gliding with A-tor? Man, these Gil Thorp plots really are complicated.

There are things I like. The title led me to expect that Polly and Dee Dee — actually, that Woody and Junior — would be put on opposite teams and let their competitiveness spoil their friendship. So points to the episode for doing a different and subtler sort of character drama.

And as much as the basketball team seems not to play basketball, that they’re always doing fun-sounding things together suggests that they are a good, functional team having a story we happen not to see. It also makes the story a little more generalizable as it could be about anyone who sees their friend hit a stroke of fortune that can’t be shared. I also like Polly and Dee Dee’s confidence going in to tryouts and discovering that other people are good too. Maybe better.

I also like Wimpy taking two burgers as his reward for not taking more burgers. Who knew Wimpy was pre-adapted to being a Dad Joke guy? On a similar vein, Junior asking Popeye if Polly had come “this way”, and Popeye says no, she was on a hang glider? That’s good dialogue. I’d like more moments like that. It’s a shame Junior doesn’t get any lines as good; his closest is “we could’ve been basketballed to death!” after discovering a lot of basketballs were flying free at tryouts. This might reflect Wimpy and Popeye being better-established characters than Junior. Or that Maurice LaMarche and Allan Melvin have experience beyond then-13-year-old Josh Rodine.

Why was the hang-gliding expedition not called off ahead of the oncoming storm? I remember weather forecasting being lousy in 1987 but they could see the storm rolling in, you know?

Popeye artist has yet another side gig

At this point you know me well enough to know this is true. I would love very much to spend this time telling you what Rufus and Joel are doing in Charlotte, North Carolina. And the rest of the Gasoline Alley goings-on. My time isn’t allowing it for just right now, though. I hope to have the chance tomorrow and to look seriously at what I’m doing, like, Thursdays and Fridays and such that I’m not getting the hard work out of the way sooner.

Rather than leave you with nothing to read, though, I wanted to mention something Randy Milholland — the creator for the Sunday Popeye strips, and half of the Olive and Popeye team — is doing. It’s not Popeye related. Like many people he noted the public — including you and me — taking ownership of Steamboat Willy this year. His response is Mousetrapped, a comic about what that particular Mickey does after the end of that particular cartoon.

Milholland wants this to not be a cheap cynical plucking of Disney’s beard, nor to remake Floyd Gottfredson’s serialized Mickey Mouse comics. As you’d imagine this is pulling in a lot of deep cuts of 1920s animation and Milholland’s been kind enough to explain all this. Not explained to me is how he has the time for another web comic, what with I assume his interest in sleeping and eating and having a job that pays for his sleeping, eating, and web comic habits. Well, he probably knows his business. Just wanted to flag a web comic I’m enjoying, one week in.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 9: Popeye’s Surfin’ Adventure

Today’s is another Popeye and Son cartoon with writing credited to John Loy. So, much like Eric Lewald, the Internet Movie Database just lies about this show. We also saw his work giving Junior a job, and doing the father/son picnic competition, and sailing to Goon Island. If you want to read my thoughts about those, there you go. If you want to see all my Popeye and Son essays, they’re at this link.

And now for today’s cartoon, Popeye’s Surfin’ Adventure.

The Plot: when Popeye dismisses Junior’s interest in the surfing lifestyle, his son challenges him to show his surfing prowess. Can Popeye pick up a skill he’s regarded as trivial? Or will he putter around a while until he finally eats his spinach? And will there be any survivors in Sweethaven?

The Thoughts: this will sound like a complaint so I want to be clear it is not. This has to be the lowest-stakes cartoon for decades in either direction in the Popeye universe. It is basically hanging out with Popeye and Junior while they mess around at the beach. This is not a complaint. Junior is generically pleasant, just enough of a person to give Popeye, one of the all-time great characters, something to respond to. Spending an episode doing blackout gags with a surfing theme is fine. I like Junior more after this story where it made no difference how anything happens.

So after Olive’s ominous warning that she thinks Popeye’s going to learn a lesson in this surfing challenge we get a comfortable string of similar jokes. Junior does something on the surfboard, Popeye does a clumsier version of it. The structure is one that’s been done back to the Fleischer era, usually Bluto and Popeye competing to show their prowess at something. In some of these cartoons — I feel like they’re all black-and-white ones, but I’m not sure I’m right — Popeye is inept, until the spinach power-up. This may be the first time it’s structured to be against someone Popeye would probably be okay losing to. It makes this more casual, more of a hangout than anything else.

Hanging over this episode is the question, why does anyone doubt Popeye could surf if he wanted? He can learn the old-fashioned way, sure, but one can of spinach and he can do anything. If he resorts to spinach, hasn’t he just proven that he can’t do it without supernatural support? There’s an argument to make that he doesn’t know how to surf even with spinach, since for some reason his surfing turns into a whirlpool so extreme it digs a hole to the seabed and floods the shoreline and, one infers, the whole of Sweethaven before he’s done. We’ve sometimes had the idea that spinach overpowers someone’s good sense, usually when Popeye force-feeds his enemy spinach to make Bluto beat him up. (There’s always a reason in-script for that.) I don’t remember this hitting Popeye before.

“Popeye asked if he thinks spinach will work. Isn’t it adorable how after 58 years he can still pretend he doesn’t know the rules of this?”

If the series had a little more emotional depth — if it were made today — they might have had, or suggested, that Popeye was deliberately taking this dive so his son could save him and show him up. Popeye coming to realize that his son has worked hard to build skills at a challenging task would resolve his storyline.

Here’s my biggest problem: I don’t know how to tell good surfing from bad. I guess if you fall in that’s bad but otherwise, all my surfing knowledge comes from kind-of watching movies where you feel bad for Buster Keaton. [*] Context says Junior must be surfing well and Popeye poorly. But the animation wants to have things be exaggerated and big and wild, for good reason. So we get Junior doing so many loops you’d think he was on a portable German roller coaster at Oktoberfest [**], while Popeye just rides his wave upside-down. Which of these is astounding and which is hilariously wrong? This cartoon would benefit from having been done as a theatrical short, in the 30s or 40s, when there’d be a rigid enough sense of volume and direction that what was outlandish would be clear. The limits of TV animation, even for the late 80s when everything was getting better fast, work against this.

[*] And, of course, that Bobby Bumps cartoon from 1917.

[**] Please trust me that this is a correct and therefore funny roller coaster joke.

Still, if I weren’t charitable toward the animation I wouldn’t be reviewing any Popeye cartoon made after like 1952, or whenever they started cutting Popeye’s nephews down to save on budget.

I like the understated running gag of Olive and Eugene the Jeep playing games at the beach, waiting for all this nonsense to pass. They’re doing something different every time, finishing with Olive and Eugene both laying down floating in the air. Good stuff.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 9: Dr Junior and Mr Hyde

Back to the Popeye and Son walkthrough! Episode 1 has yet to reappear on King Features’s YouTube page, so I’ll instead resume with Episode 9, Cartoon 1, Dr Junior and Mr Hyde. This is another episode written by Eric Lewald, whose Internet Movie Database page needs to be corrected. Fellow deserves credit for what he does.

I’m not the one to do it, though; I haven’t made an IMDB edit since like 1995. If you want to, though, please feel free to use me as a reference. And feel free to use any of my Popeye and Son reviews as references to improve descriptions of these episodes. Just, you know, no AI wordwooze, thank you.

The Plot: a large, purple-and-pink monster haunts Sweethaven! Could it have something to do with Professor O G Wotasnozzle’s new potion that spilled into Junior or Woody’s milk? And can the right kid get the antidote before the monster causes property damage that would be really annoying in real life but seems about average for a Popeye cartoon? And is there a second monster?

The Thoughts: do you remember when you first learned the Jekyll-and-Hyde story? I can’t, myself. I only read the original after decades of remakes and riffs and spoofs and semi-spoofs. The original still has its thrills, as it should. But having a million riffs on it in my memory as I read the original does leave me waiting for people to figure it out already what is taking you so long? But it’s a story so culturally engrained that, as with A Christmas Carol, it’s amazing to think someone had to think it up first and we know specifically who.

Eric Lewald offers a twist that I do not remember seeing elsewhere and that’s just short of genius. There’s not just the one Hyde here, there’s two, and they don’t transform together. This is a great way of injecting mystery and even horror back into a premise I guess we’re born knowing. The Popeye universe is already one crammed with the magic and the strange and the alien; why does a Hyde monster have to have anything to do with anything? Especially if the two possible Jekylls can alibi one another?

My love for the twist makes me more disappointed with what happens afterward. Not so much that we the audience know there’s two monsters. I’m not sure you could set it up so the transformation serum is secret. Besides, it can be good suspense if we know the characters understand the situation wrong. But the interval between Wotasnozzle thinking there’s one monster and learning both kids need the antidote is barely anything, not enough to do anything that complicates the solution. And then the story collapses into how will you squirt antidote into two monster mouths, when all you have helping you is Popeye and spinach? Popeye for some reason splits the hose in two to squirt both at once. It’s flamboyant but, eh, it’s Popeye, what do you expect? (I wonder if there had been a draft where there was a deadline to give the antidote, so that they couldn’t just squirt one and then the other.)

They look like nothing Popeye’s ever seen before, in that they don’t have that Eugene the Jeep/Alice the Goon head!

I’m not sure about the logic of the Hyde transformations. Like, the original premise is that they reflect the rage we normally control. So Junior and Woody changing after accidents while bicycling through a stormy forest? Or when bullies (Tank, finally back in the series) are being themselves? Even when Junior’s sent to clean his room after his monster story gets written off as another story? Those make sense. (Also what are these tall tales Junior keeps telling off-screen?) The final change right before they go to the supermarket? Why that, and why then? Why be angry at Popeye bringing what he says is the cure? (Maybe if there was a deadline in a former draft, this reflected the change about to become permanent?)

While the cartoon didn’t live up to my hopes for the twist there was much I liked in it. Even besides the twist. Wimpy muttering to himself about ’tis meat, ’tis meat that makes the world go ’round? That’s finally getting his voice. Scolding Junior and Woody for being ‘so rude’ to his furniture too. Popeye using one of those old-time cartoon phones. Popeye trying to walk the monsters over and just making zero progress.

The Sweethaven grocery has a banner about being in its 37th year. I’m curious why 37. That would put their opening in 1950, a year of (as far as I know) no significance to the Popeye universe. Maybe it was somebody’s birthday.

The unknown ingredient in the antidote was absolutely spinach, right? I get that it’s a callback to Wotasnozzle’s cookies being made of seaweed and cod-liver oil, but the curing ingredient had to be spinach. I know this universe better than that.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 8: Olive’s Dinosaur Dilemma

Today’s Popeye and Son adventure is a writing credit for Bryce Malek. Malek has only a handful of writing credits, including individual episodes of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy Doo, Kwicky Koala, and Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers. He has much more work as a story editor, including on The Moncchichis (a theme song that’s going on forty years play in my head), the 1980s Transformers, Rescue Rangers, and James Bond Jr. Also — something that might be in my future — story editor for Defenders of the Earth, with the animated adventures of the 21st Phantom.

Olive’s Dinosaur Dilemma makes no promise of a Ghost Who Walks. But what does it offer? Let’s see. And if you would like to see all the thousands of words I’ve written about Popeye and Son, you can find them here anytime this web site is open.

The Plot: a freak hot-air-balloon accident strands Olive Oyl on an island that time forgot. As Popeye and Junior race to her rescue, she confronts strangely cute dinosaurs and a pack of day players from some 80s Flintstones project I don’t know. Will the volcano end all the fun? Nah.

The Thoughts: oooh, a Lost Continent story! Haven’t had one of these in ages. I don’t remember one from the King Features cartoons. Famous Studios did one, 1948’s Pre-Hysterical Man, but the gimmick is still an under-explored one for the characters. I like that Olive does fine in her new setting. I mean, the dinosaurs are a bit of a bother but she doesn’t seem all that harassed by them. And when she falls in with the bunch of very 80s cave people it’s some good stuff. Starting out trying to teach them how to make fire and accidentally teaching cave painting, for example. Or two scenes later having got to teaching good table manners. That’s all going well.

I don’t like the cartoon the way I’ve liked the last couple, though. Olive’s adventures on the island feel rushed. It’s a peculiar effect. These episodes run about eleven minutes, three to four minutes more than any theatrical cartoons did and about twice what the King Features did, and I don’t know how they could have run out of time for this.

What do you think, gang? Big, thirsty Dino or tiny, overreacting Olive?

Too much time spent in the setup, is my suspicion. Even though we get to the hot air balloon accident pretty fast, it seems to take too long for Olive Oyl to get to the time-forgotten place. I’m not sure what to cut, though. You want to have Popeye and Junior trailing after her. And you need a storm or some other strange event to pass into a time-forgot location. The Wizard of Oz books taught us how you can’t go to a magic place by wholly mundane means. Popeye’s airplane malfunctioning and needing a can of spinach for power is a good bit of business, and it means Popeye’s spinach isn’t available for a quick cut to the end of the cartoon. (It’s also a good harkening-back to theatrical shorts where the cans become cylinders for airplanes and racecars and such.) But Popeye gets the spinach back in time and without any effort so why not drop that altogether?

Olive having basically good experiences among the time-forgotten is the good stuff anyway. Especially once she’s teamed up with the pack of forgotten Flintstones day players. But she’s giving an almost nonstop commentary on what she’s thinking and what she’s doing and that gets in the way of learning, like, can she actually talk with the cave people? (I mean, by all reason, no. But it’s a cartoon, they can speak Valley Girl if they want.) Do they actually need to learn anything? It’s great fun that Olive dives into this and everyone’s friends start to finish. I also quite like how the Flintstones day player who kind of looks like the Shaggy-ish guy from Speed Buggy is also an airplane mechanic because why not. Somehow it feels like a merry goof instead of a ramshackle project.

Popeye and Junior are jerks for mocking the Flintstones day player’s picture of her.

I am a curious why so many Flintstones day players. They all move as a pack and don’t have distinguishable personalities, so what role’s served by having six of them that having three wouldn’t do much cheaper? Maybe Hanna-Barbera wanted to show off they don’t have to be the budget studio. And if they are left over from some Flintstones project (are the dinosaurs also?), so that the model sheets and all were set up, it may be the studio figured why not do more than they have to? A recurring theme these essays has been how the cartoon put in a bit more work than it strictly needed. Maybe that extends even to the hard part of drawing.

At no point in this does Olive have a dilemma.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 8: The Girl From Down Under

Are you, like me, interested in knowing what I think of Popeye and Son? You can read all the articles I’ve posted on the series here. For example, you should be able to find my thoughts about The Girl From Down Under there now.

Today’s episode, as mentioned The Girl From Down Under, has writing credit given to Anthony Adams. He also has a credit for Bluto’s Wave Pool, the water park episode. It seems like Adams has an interest, at least for this series, he had an interest in water attractions. And how does that come to play? Let’s watch.

The Plot: mysterious new kid Shelly, from “Down Under”, appears in town. Meanwhile strange things happen. Fish disappear from Wimpy’s restaurant. A dolphin disappears the Sea Park. Popeye follows a trenchcoated man who’s been messing with the fish catch. And then at the Sea Park Shelly starts letting every animal loose — and in the chaos appears to be stealing a dolphin. The mysterious man reveals himself as Shelly’s father. And it turns out Shelly is a mermaid, looking for her accidentally-stolen dolphin friend.

The Thoughts: Well, they got me. I mean, yes, I realized Shelly had to be a mermaid before it was revealed to the audience, but not by much. I choose to take this as me being a good audience, willing to take entertainment as an experience rather than a puzzle to beat. I can’t control your interpretation.

This is another episode I really like. It’s got narrative structure. It’s got a mystery, in a way Popeye cartoons don’t often. And it plays fair, with Shelly’s big secret correctly foreshadowed from her first scene on. All her strangeness seems explained by the supposition she’s from Australia which might as well be the Moon. We get hints that something weird is up, such as talking about how hungry she was because of all this walking (from the shoreline to Wimpy’s beachfront restaurant) and sneaking around after bedtime and wanting some plankton.

Ray Davies: o/` People take pictures of each walrus … o/`

While I claimed to be willing to just let the show entertain me, yes, I was trying to figure what her deal was. My guess, from the newsboy crying about the disappearing dolphin, was that sort of environmental activist you see in pop culture. You know, the one whose ideals are good what with this “we should avoid eating every fish species into extinction and driving dolphins and whales insane in captivity at sea parks” idea, but who goes about it all wrong by taking effective action. I think of the Environmental Episode as a thing for 1990-and-after (or for the 1970s), but it’s not like a trend is a law of nature.

I liked the mystery of Popeye investigating the trenchcoated figure. His trailing of Shelly’s Dad had the string of quick little jokes I’d hope for. And then when we get to the Sea Park, a sequence I was ready to be really terrible, we get joy. While one could fault Sea Park’s animal-containment protocols, no one can fault what the animals do once they’re loose. It’s a lot of silly mayhem. Popeye and Junior eating their spinach to wrangle everything back in order is even more fun. They chase the penguins back to the enclosure, and the penguins form a chorus line. The walruses are taking pictures — Popeye photobombs it — and leaves the heap of them in a stacked pile. Popeye and Junior rescue Shelly from polar bears by dancing them out of their enclosure and … well, they seem to land back where they started. But it gave some time to get Shelly and her dolphin out of the way.

Anyway, Shelly is out on a quest to get her dolphin friend back from the Sea Park. I don’t know why well before that the newsboy cries out how a dolphin’s missing from the Sea Park. There’s also the odd bit of all the fish at Wimpy’s restaurant being stolen. My best guess is Shelly’s Dad took them, liberating what I assume were intended to be still-live fish. I’m not sure the episode means to be that clever. It feels more like scraps left over from earlier drafts. I’m entertained with the whole thing, even several re-watches in. How much can I complain?

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 7: Redbeard

Today’s episode of Popeye and Son, as I continue my award-winning series about the neglected show, comes to us by Eric Lewald. You know him from like every episode, now, at this point. And we’ve got pirates! A stowaway! Tourists! Everything we might hope for. Let’s look and see what the episode is like.

The Plot: When an old pirate-hunting friend of Popeye’s can’t talk him into chasing down one more ship, Junior stows away to a life of adventure and shipboard duties. But when the pirates get the drop on Redbeard who’s going to save the day? Popeye, yes, but how is Junior going to help? Oh, by having some cans of spinach. Well, that all makes sense then.

This is a cartoon full of welcome surprises. It starts right away with Junior having an interest and wanting a thing, adventure. Wanting it enough to take up the call to fight pirates that his father turns down. Popeye being dragged on into the adventure when he finds his son missing. Popeye having a reputation. The wonderfully unnecessary but welcome intrusion of a couple tourists from Florida. Some top-notch mutterings by Popeye; Maurice LaMarche seems to have finally got his voice to where it sounds right and says things right.

Waiting for me to come up with gripes anyway? Sorry, I’m mostly going to top out at “the audio is mixed badly, early on, so Junior complains about something we don’t hear happening right at the good part of his story”. And we do hear it, it’s just not loud enough for my tastes. We may also ask why Junior is hiding under his bed reading a book by flashlight when his room lights are on, but maybe he’s a kid and doesn’t quite understand the reading-under-the-covers thing. Maybe that Olive talks about how Redbeard is filling Junior’s head with tall tales and we get maybe one sentence of that stuff.

There is a side I’m sorry wasn’t explored more. Redbeard came by to invite Popeye to another adventure in pirate-busting. Popeye turns him down, because there’s navies to do that stuff and besides he’s got a respectable life now. I complained so many times in the King Features cartoon reviews about Popeye’s Boring Suburban House. And if I ever talked about the Famous Studios cartoons that would come up too. I would like to see Popeye wondering when he last was the guy going out looking for someone who’d give him a good enough fistfight.

I’m not sure there’s anything to cut to fit that, though. And it would take the focus away from Junior, who’s doing well now that he has something we wants to do. I’m a little sorry Popeye swoops in and demotes him to a secondary role, but Popeye is doing great here, with a lovely ridiculous disguise and good solid commentary as he’s captured and all. And having it shown that his name brings pirates to full alert.

“Did you hear that, honey? Randy Milholland is casting us in a four-Sunday story with Sappo’s wife and Mister Bigdome!”

And then there’s Fred and Eileen Furple from Fearville Florida, the tourists chained up in the dungeon. I called them unnecessary above, but that’s only from a strict plotting point of view. The same events would unfold without them. But story is more than plot; it’s also about what fills the space you have. These characters are great marginalia doodles, making the world a little more silly. I guess you could argue that, as tourists captured by the pirates, they’re foreshadowing Popeye’s scheme to get in. But I doubt their role prevented any questions about the plausibility of Popeye’s scheme.

With this episode we’ve crossed over into the second half of Popeye and Son’s existence. At least until Randy Milholland brings them back in some weird multiverse event. If the rest of the series is at this level I’m going to become an annoying nag demanding to see more of these folks. We’ll see how things develop next week.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 7: Junior’s Birthday Round-Up

Today’s entry in my amazingly well-received string of Popeye and Son reviews uncovers a failing in the Internet Movie Database. This episode, Junior’s Birthday Round-Up, is credited to Kelly Ward, story editor for the series. IMDB credits Ward with only the story-by for Junior’s Genie and doesn’t mention this at all. I imagine this reflects volunteers not having gone through and adding full credits for the series. This also means when I’ve gone and described something as someone’s lone or last entry for the series I might have just been wrong.

With that in mind let’s now look at the episode and see what we can learn and maybe someday correct IMDB about. Quick content warning: there’s kids dressed in your cowboys-and-Indians style Indians. It doesn’t figure into the plot, but, gah, did we need this?

The Plot: Tank and Junior recall what happened at Junior’s birthday party last year. Tank tells of many cases of coming to harm or humiliation at Junior’s hand. Junior explains how each of those humiliations was Tank’s traps for Junior backfiring. Ah, but Junior invites him to this year’s birthday party, and Tank’s attempt to humiliate Junior backfires again!

This has the structure of a clip cartoon. Particularly, of clip cartons like the Fleischer studio’s Doing Impossikible Stunts or I’m In The Army Now, where Bluto shows a bit of an adventure to make him look good and then Popeye shows what happened next. The clips here are all new, which I would expect would make it more appealing. I don’t know how the clips turn out, after all.

So I can’t pin down a structural reason this doesn’t work for me. The attempts at sabotage all seem adequate. Nothing catches me as particularly funny or wild or over-the-top; if anything, they’re a bit mundane. On the other hand when Tank pumped oilmud all over the beach, I thought that was too much. So I’m holding these cartoons to an inconsistent standard. I do feel sure that in the theatrical version, Bluto would have blown up Popeye’s cake using a stick of dynamite, though, like Aunt Slappy taught.

Got to feel for the underling bully on the left there, having both his childhood and his adult incisors growing in at once.

I was also hung up on two things. One of them’s fair, as it goes to character motivation: why does anyone, Tank included, want Tank at Junior’s birthday party? This premise would sort of make sense as a Popeye-and-Bluto cartoon because Olive Oyl could insist on having both her potential beaus there. But who among Junior’s friends or family even likes Tank, let alone enough to want him at the party? I could get behind Tank wanting to be invited so he could do mischief, or at least not wanting to be left out. It’s not there, though.

The other thing, and something that might have been a patch on the above problem: isn’t it Tank’s birthday too? Or near enough? If we take the opening credits literally, they were born close enough together they were in the Parent-Infant Clinical ABiotic Uniform Inspection Care Unit (or PICABUICU) at the same time. If this were addressed we could handle the motivation problem. Have their parents wanting Tank and Junior to hold a joint birthday party, and then everyone has to get both to agree. (Why do Bluto and Popeye want this? Eh, Olive Oyl wants them to be friendly. That’ll do.)

Overall, this is a very okay episode that I don’t figure I’ll think about ever again. See you tomorrow, Junior fans.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 6: Surf Movie

Today’s Popeye and Son is the lone entry written by Charles M Howell, IV. Howell’s had a pretty long writing history, starting with the Filmation Tom and Jerry Cartoon Show and not done yet; he’s got a credit in 2022 for Octonauts. Along the way are fourteen Tiny Toon Adventures, eleven Animaniacs, and forty Pinky and the Brain credits (as staff writer). Plus some Snorks and something called The 7D. Also one of those Darkwing Duck episodes with the mind-controlling alien space hats. And it’s a story about making a movie; so Surf Movie is sure to land some good solid jokes, right?

Before we get into that, a reminder that you can find all my recaps and discussions of Popeye and Son at this link, with new essays added every week until I run out of show to watch. After that, who knows what I’ll do?

The plot: movie director Berkely Busby is coming to town! And the Sweethavenite he picks out for stardom is Junior. Can the production overcome Junior’s indifference to movie stardom, Bluto sabotaging the production to promote Tank instead, and trying to do a shoot on the beach with what seems to be almost no script or preproduction work? No. Bluto’s attempt to commandeer a giant lobster prop sets disaster going and while Junior and Popeye can eat spinach and make things better, the movie retools around Eugene the Jeep.

This episode got me to wondering: Muskmellen’s? Did they make that up for the show? Or is that the canonical name of the Thimble Theatre greengrocer? Does it say ominous things about the cartoon that I’m wondering that? I’d have to judge that as neutral. You’ve met me. My brain does this kind of stupid thing all the time.

Ah yes, my third-most-popular story comic series, What’s Going On In The Phantom (Surfer)?
Also this outfit is not helping me get over my hypothesis that Hanna-Barbera just pulled their Richie Rich model sheet ouf the drawer and tousled his hair.

Granting that. This isn’t a good episode. There are good moments, such as Olive holding a wall of paper bags when she gets the news about the movie. And finally poking her head out the center, and running off sending people spinning in place, and running back to catch the not-yet-fallen bags. Good cartoony concept, pretty well animated, diminished only by that 80s cartoon style I mentioned where stuff doesn’t quite touch. And there is a good comic idea circled by director Berkely Busby explaining how this isn’t a musical, this is a serious drama, and it’s some vaguely nonsense about a superhero surfer fighting aliens with giant robot(?) lobsters. That thread doesn’t have a real punch line, but it should be good for the characters to be funny.

That doesn’t happen, and I blame Junior. Not so much that he doesn’t want or seem to know why he’s there. You can get a lot of great stuff out of the protagonist who thinks he’s there by some mistake. And it’s nice of him that he isn’t trying to get out of the acting. But he doesn’t want to be there, he doesn’t want to not be there, could he at least say something funny along the way? When a Robert Benchley character or a Woody Allen character from (say) Sleeper or Bananas or, heck, even Chance Gardener is lost in the scene they have some reaction.

I dislike being negative, at least when I can’t be creative or bombastic about it. This episode, I completely forgot between when I first watched it last Monday and when I re-watched on Friday. I didn’t get that with too many of those Jack Kinney shorts.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 6: Junior Gets A Job

Today’s in my walk through the Popeye and Son cartoon series is the first cartoon of episode six, Junior Gets A Job. Wonder what that’s going to be about.

The cartoon is credited to John Loy, making the last of three appearances here. He’s also got teleplay credit on Here Today, Goon Tomorrow and full writing credit on Don’t Give Up The Picnic. He also has writing credits for both cartoons in episode one, Attack Of The Sea Hag and Happy Anniversary, but since YouTube still lists that cartoon as hidden for some reason, I can’t say anything about that except by looking at a different YouTube link. But who could do that?

The plot: to buy his mother a birthday present Junior takes a job … for Bluto! Tank spends the whole day sabotaging Junior’s car- and boat-cleaning efforts, only for Bluto to catch him in his last stunt. Junior manages, through the power of spinach cookies, to finish, and Bluto tells him how he did a good job. And when Bluto realizes he’s just reserved the jewelry Junior had been planning to buy, he walks ostentatiously away so Junior can get Olive the birthday present he wanted.

I like how much personality we see from Bluto this cartoon. First, we learn how he’s got his fortune, which is that he’s the car-and-boat dealer for Sweethaven. That makes so much sense it’s amazing “car salesman” isn’t Bluto’s default job. Also that he’s willing to hire Junior even if there isn’t a specific way to harass Popeye this way. That he’s willing to side with Junior over his own son, in the end, when the car-washing is done late. And that he’s willing to skip out on buying his wife a gift so Junior can have the reward for his hard work. I also enjoy the ambiguity of Bluto’s motivations, in not going with his wife to her parents’. Was he legitimately thinking of the family business — the thing that makes it impossible for him not to punish Tank — or was he just trying not to spend time with his mother-in-law?

There’s also two things about Junior I’d like to draw attention to. The first is in the last scene, when he presents the necklace and Olive hugs him. His elbows are more knobbly and his arms more bulged than usual; he’s looking more like Popeye than he usually does. If this were the sort of show that did character progression, this would be a marker of his maturing and taking up the good sides of his parents. It was probably more an animation error, but it’s one that serves the story.

Have to say, that purple car in the center? That’s a cute one. I don’t know why it looks so suspicious.

The other bit shows what’s dissatisfying about Popeye and Son as a project. At Tank’s last bit of sabotage, with the dogs chasing the cat (about 9:30 in the video), Junior cries out, “That’s it, Tank! I’ve had it!” His father would have said, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”, and that is a declaration with personality. Junior’s has none. Why not do his own take on one of his father’s iconic lines? If anyone has rights to copy Popeye his son does. (It strikes me the episode title reflects this too: it’s descriptive, but hasn’t got the hint of a joke. Why not ‘Junior Cleans Up’ or something?)

Particularly as the bulk of the short is quite the Popeye-and-Bluto cartoon. There’s almost nothing that would need changing to have the Fleischer studios do it, including the sight gags. Junior does a lot of inventive physical comedy in finding ways to scrub boats clean, including stunts like hanging from a mast or wearing some scrub brushes as ice skates. This is hampered by the animation being in that 80s style where things don’t actually touch each other, they just move in the vicinity of one another. But Tank running through a series of cars, and Junior following, slamming each door closed behind him? That’s good concept, good editing, good sound design and just a shame the animators missed a door.

I keep noticing things to like in these cartoons. I doubt I’m going to convince anyone, even myself, Popeye and Son is a neglected masterpiece. But I am glad that I don’t have to find new ways to describe how the short sat on my head and made me beg for mercy.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who’s the guy capturing Popeye in a bubble? September – December 2023

Don’t know yet. Popeye and his gang arrived on an island, in search of Plaidfoot’s Treasure. The party’s arrival was noticed by the robots serving some mysterious, not-yet-seen figure. We haven’t seen their face or an obvious gimmick. It’s not just my lack here; from the comments others haven’t reached a consensus. The Grand Archivist is the only guess people have and this doesn’t feel like his vibe to me. And, we’ve seen, Randy Milholland is willing to draw on the entire roster of every Popeye villain ever in the comic strip, cartoons, or old time radio for his appearances. We’ll see.

So this should catch you up to early December 2023 in Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye. If you’re reading this after March 2024 there’s likely a more up-to-date plot recap here. You’ll also find all my recaps of the various Olive And Popeye strips there, as I try to become the world’s premiere Popeye blogger against maybe competition? Enjoy, please.

Olive and Popeye.

12 September – 5 December 2023.

Last time you’ll recall, Olive Oyl has decided to help the ghosts she now sees all over the world. It turns out there are a lot of ghosts around Sweethaven. And we spend a good bit of time chatting with ones who mostly met their ends in ridiculous ways.

This coincides with a series of the Olive strips drawn by Ryan Milholland. Milholland’s been drawing the Thursday, Popeye-focused strips, as well as the Sunday strips for Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye. But for the gap between Shadia Amin leaving — in late August, with Olive and company declaring they’re going on an adventure — and Emi Burdge taking over in early October Milholland drew both sides of the strip. (I don’t know how far ahead the scripts were written, or how they were coordinated during the transition.)

Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 14th of November, 2023. I agree, this sure seems like it’s got to be Charon they’re talking about, and the character acknowledge as much today. But is it? … Probably something sillier than that. Does it have any link to Popeye and his adventure and the mysterious figure there? I don’t know. Seems imaginable, but I’m not sure how.

From talking with the many, many, many ghosts wanting her attention Olive finds a mystery: the “old boatman” who’d escort them to the other side has disappeared. And the ghosts are desperate. Also, Olive’s desperate for a night’s sleep. One sympathizes. Also along the way we the readers learn that Cylinda Oyl can see and talk to ghosts, something that Mae can’t. That or she’s just saying that every now and then and got lucky.

---

Meanwhile on Popeye’s side of things. He and his fathers — Poopdeck Pappy and Whaler Joe — meet up with Pommy. Sir Pomeroy, 10th Earl of Vauxhall, I’m told by the Popeye wikia was a regular adventure partner back in the 1950s, when Ralph Stein wrote Thimble Theatre. He’s new to me too. Pommy’s investigating, first, a town rampaged by some kind of thing. Also the map to Plaidfoot’s Treasure. Plaidfoot the Pirate said it was a treasure sacred to a race of easily-fooled monsters he swiped it from.

So here’s where they’re noticed by that shadowy figure mentioned above. The figure knows who Popeye is and that he’ll ruin everything. Also the figure has Professor O G Wotasnozzle in captivity. And some of Wotasnozzle’s rather cute robots serving him. The figure sends the robots, who’ve captured Popeye in a bubble. And that’s where we stand, this week.

Next Week!

Journey through time, space, and history-warping insects with Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop … unless something happens to change the timeline and the schedule!

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 5: Mighty Olive at the Bat

Today’s adventure in Popeye and Son comes to you courtesy of sticks. Sticks: good things to hit balls with, don’t you agree? I thought you might. If you’d like to see all of my Popeye and Son reviews, whatever their sponsor, please try this link. If you don’t see anything there please let me know. I don’t know how.

This episode, Mighty Olive at the Bat, is credited to Eric Lewald. This is the last of Lewald’s credits for the show, according to the Internet Movie Database. He’s credited with The Sea Monster, Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree, The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove, and Junior’s Genie, so he’s had quite the hand in setting the tone of the series. What’s his farewell like? If IMDB is right and he doesn’t have other credits?

The Plot: Junior foresees doom when Olive has to take Popeye’s place in the parent-child baseball tournament. But Olive’s relentless, practicing first with Junior and then with Eugene to get the hang of baseball. On the day of the big game she’s exhausted, but she’s able with some dumb luck to not just make the winning out but also hit the winning home run. Everyone’s thrilled.

This isn’t the first cartoon to sideline Popeye. Unlike the pirates cartoon, Popeye takes an injury from his twisker pitch. It’s an adequate reason for Popeye to sit out the action and make jokes. (I’m disappointed that Popeye’s “well, I sure wouldn’t claim him, that’s for sure” after Mrs Bluto says that’s her Tank is so muddled. On the other hand, isn’t that the essence of a good Popeye Mutter?)

I don’t think I like Popeye suffering the indignities of age. It gives frailty to a character whose defining trait is indestructibility. In any other cartoon Popeye would eat his spinach and the bandage would unravel from his arm — just as it does, at the end. Was he afraid of trying the thing that always works? It makes most sense if Popeye was nursing his hurt arm to give Olive a chance to shine.

I’m not sure how I would fix this. Maybe make it a mother-son baseball game. That would also give Mrs Bluto the chance to be in a cartoon and maybe get a name. (It’s Lizzie, identified by Popeye as ‘an adversary in me midsk’.)

Eugene, being a magical fourth-dimensional creature, is able to pitch both left- and right-handed, making him the extremely rare southpaw and northpaw.

Once we have the premise things carry on about like you’d imagine. Olive tries to learn something about baseball, after apparently having aced a course in Wrong Things About Baseball. After a full day of practicing she overhears Junior talking about how doomed he is. This is when she realizes the game is important to him, somehow. Again, I understand the dramatic need in Olive gaining new resolve and practicing all night to get some skills down. But it does seem like she had already understood it was important and she was already doing her best.

We get another appearance of Eugene the Jeep that would baffle someone who hadn’t seen Eugene before, except that I think kids in this target audience are harder to baffle than adults are. Using Eugene as an inexhaustible training partner’s a new take on him, and it’s not a bad one. There’s not a whisper of using Eugene to magically graft baseball ability onto Olive, which feels like it would have undercut the moral of Junior’s Genie even though that’s not really the moral there.

I have several expectations subverted. Olive Oyl’s exhaustion plays into fewer jokes than I had thought. There’s no hint that Bluto and his Maulers are cheating, or ringers, or anything. And while they have an advantage in the last inning, it’s hardly an intimidating one. For all that Junior foresees a long day, the score is only 3 to 2, pretty tight even for professionals. For amateur baseball this is pretty near dueling perfect games. And neither Junior nor Olive Oyl eat spinach to make the final rallies and win the game.

So for all that the basic story is unsurprising, the specific path taken there is. It feels like a foreshadowing of more modern cartoons that take a goofball premise but try to infuse emotional realism. I can’t say this is a great cartoon, but it is an interesting one.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 5: Junior’s Genie

And welcome back to another week’s worth of exploring the world of Popeye and Son. All of my reviews of these episodes should be at this link, soon as they exist and whatnot.

Today I’m looking at Episode Five, cartoon one, Junior’s Genie. The Internet Movie Database credits the story here to Kelly Ward and Mike Cassutt. Ward you’ll remember at “Putzie” in the movie Grease, IMDB tells me. He’s also got writing credits with stuff I know better, including Challenge of the GoBots, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, Fantastic Max, and so on. He seems to have moved into being a voice or dialogue director in recent years. Mike Cassutt, meanwhile, is known for episodes of Foofur, Dinosaucers, The Munsters Today, and also several good space history books. Eric Lewald we know from The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove and from The Sea Monster. Now let’s watch.

The plot: Junior’s discovery of a genie gives him the chance to win the big bike race. Also to buy the friendship of all the kids in Sweethaven. But his old friends are put off when Junior uses the genie to steal the victory Woody had earned. Ashamed, Junior sets the genie free, but not before the confused genie sets a tornado into town for the reasons. Can Popeye and Junior team up to throw a magic tornado out of the story? Yes, of course they can. They have spinach, remember? And Junior apologizes to and reconciles with his friends.

If nothing else this story is a reminder that the three-wishes thing is not inherent to genie stories. It’s not even inherent to Aladdin stories, although the influence of the Disney movie is probably going to make it so. The three-wishes limitation does allow dramatic focus, forcing the protagonist to learn how to make good wishes. This story instead has Junior do some growing up in a different way. It’s going for Junior mistaking his good luck for something he deserves, and repenting.

So I like what the cartoon is trying to do. If you’re a generous reader you can even see this as trying to say something about class, and people mistaking wealth for virtue. We get a point about this early on when Popeye refuses to buy Junior a new bike, insisting that his skills are more important than the bike hardware. It’s a fair parenting lesson to provide and to a great extent true. (I can’t help noticing that, say, swimmers representing the United States at the Olympics get high-tech super-swimsuits that are inherently faster than what smaller, less-wealthy countries can get.) But Popeye is proven right when Junior drives his genie-provided super-bike off the track anyway. And this does set up a good moment when Junior uses a wish to take Woody’s place and steal his victory. Better that it’s Woody rather than Tank that he cheats; the crisis wouldn’t work as well the other way.

Genie here looking very nervous as the kids ask why he looks more like Popeye than Junior does. Also a question: how is there a Bored Ape holding a boombox on the left there?

As I write this review I notice I keep finding things I like, mostly in the story structure. But I also remember watching it feeling faintly disappointed. I’m going to say the implementation is weaker than the design of the cartoon. It’s in little things, like how well one plot point leads to another. Junior’s friends being disenchanted with him, for example, has to happen, but they’re casting meaningful glances and greeting him without enthusiasm at a point where all he’s done is give every kid on the island some stuff they want and bragged he’s going to win the race. Or, after a short full of granting wishes without mishap, the genie (Howard Morris, whose voice you’ll remember from everything; the character you were trying to remember who he sounds like is Mr Peebles) figures Junior wants a tornado to flip the town over. Or in little things, after being wished free, the genie says he can have his first vacation in 800 years. What he was doing sitting in that bottle that he needed the vacation from?

These aren’t problems I imagine nagging at the intended audience, but I can only watch as me. I liked the similarities in Junior’s and Tank’s behaviors, in letting the genie or his parents buy an advantage. I’m hesitant to say this should have been made more explicit, since a theme can often play best when it’s noticed in retrospect. But I suspect this wasn’t a cartoon people thought back on much. Maybe it would have been a better use of time to focus on Tank thinking of the injustice of this and realizing he’s used his family’s money the same way. Could drop the ship-cleaning scene for that.

When the cartoon gets deft it does quite well. Junior eating the spinach on his own and saving the day is new to the series as far as I remember. And grabbing the magic tornado and spinning it around is, again, the sort of thing you’d see in the Fleischer era and a welcome sight.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 4: The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove

Are you still interested in my journey through the 1987 series Popeye and Son? You can see all my reviews of the series here. Today’s episode, the second cartoon of episode four, is The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove. Its writing is credited to Eric Lewald, whom we know for bringing us The Sea Monster. And what’s he giving us now?

The Plot: Junior and his friends take an unsupervised afternoon to go shallow-sea diving in search of buried treasure. Despite mishaps including being carried off in a giant fish’s mouth, they find a sunken ship with a treasure chest. Ah, but Tank and his friends, pretending to be ghosts, steal the treasure chest — only for real actual pirate ghosts to help Junior get some spinach, rescue his friends, and get back home, never suspecting that the real treasure is the cabin full of gold coins he passed along the way.

So for the first time (to my knowledge) we have a story just with Junior and his generation. Popeye and Olive go off to tea, and to tease me with the prospect of seeing her parents. Maybe they turn up in another episode; I imagine the writers were encouraged to use whatever minor characters they felt like. It’s a good excuse to let Junior drive the story, which turns into what at least some Internet corners call a “Kids on Bikes” movie. In eleven minutes.

Most of the action is drifting between underwater jokes. That’s in a good tradition of sunken-treasure cartoons, including in the Popeye universe. The scene of the fish playing baseball was included in the teaser before the opening credits, and it had me wondering what kind of pun was being demonstrated. Was there a ”batfish” I never heard of? A ”basefish”? No, turns out it’s just a school of fish at recess. It’s a corner of the joke I haven’t seen before, will credit that. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s your business. Junior talking a couple eels into becoming an electric light is a solid one, and would be right in line with the 1930s version of this cartoon. It’s undercut only by the animation not making the setting dark enough before and bright enough after.

Oh hey, some fans of the Marlins.

The story is almost written from the moment you know the premise. The big uncertainty to me was whether it would turn out the map was some prank (by Popeye, maybe, or perhaps a promotion for Pirate Cereal or something) or accidentally sincere. I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t sure until Tank and his friends, whose names I still don’t have, turned up as ghosts. From that, with the time remaining in the episode, I knew there had to be at least one real ghost. So the story didn’t have great surprises, but it was amiable enough and the jokes along the way were fair enough.

Where I’m dissatisfied is in characterization. I continue to have no idea who these people are. The one thing that’s certain is that Popeye Junior does not like spinach but eats it anyway, which is why he makes this little ‘yuck’ noise after eating it. It’s an obvious but workable way to distinguish Junior from Popeye. But since they never talk about it, and it never even slows Junior down from his spinach power-up, it doesn’t affect anything. Tank hasn’t even got that to distinguish him from Bluto, and then there’s five other characters before the Pirate Ghosts come up. Granting the Pirate Ghosts don’t need personalities. But why stuff the cartoon so full of characters and not give them a verbal hook?

Since I mentioned the cartoon undercutting the electric light eels by not being shaded enough let me complain about animation some. Any given still of the cartoon is fine; Hanna-Barbera of this era had enough time to design characters and draw them right. But the motion is sloppy, and has been throughout the series. The fun in seeing some feat of ability, like Junior tossing the ship up and having it land back where it was, is seeing the movement come together. Seeing the ship slide off to the right and then drop into place from the left is unsatisfying. Every episode so far has had something like this. I understand they’re working with limited time and budget to plan out complex movement, and you can’t write cartoons where no interesting movement happens. But animation where the stunts match what the story wants them to be would bump the cartoon up a full letter grade.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 4: Don’t Give Up The Picnic

Today’s Popeye and Son adventure is the first cartoon of episode four, Don’t Give Up The Picnic. It’s written by John Loy, whom we already know from Here Today, Goon Tomorrow. If you want to read my review of that, all of my Popeye and Son reviews should be at this link. And now, on with today’s show.

The plot: It’s Picnic Games Day! But after Bluto swipes his burgers, J Wellington Wimpy joins forces with nephew Francis to beat him in feats of athletic-themed ability. When Bluto and Tank’s mischief sends the Wimpys’ rowboat towards the Falls, Popeye and Junior give up their chances to win to build a canal that lets the Wimpys beat Bluto, and everyone agrees that’s as nearly a fair competition as they can hope for.

This is a decently-crafted cartoon. The premise of competing in a bunch of stunts with one party cheating is well-established in the Popeye animated universes alone. It’s likely never going to leave us; it’s too good a hook to hang a bunch of simple little competition jokes on.

What this short brings that’s new is quantity, particularly the number of teams playing. There’s only three that matter, but having Popeye and Junior take a dive so Wimpy and Francis can beat out Bluto and Tank is more interesting than just two teams competing. Popeye’s other friends and their parents(?) get some screen time too, although not names or much to help me understand their personalities. We also get the warning that teams that don’t finish an event are eliminated, which seems harsh for a casual contest like this. I guess that it prevents Wimpy and Francis’s victory from being a plot hole when Bluto and Tank finish ahead of them in more events, but was that a plot hole anyone was going to care about? The elimination rule doesn’t sem to diminish the crowd of competitors enough to help either, except I guess for the final race when Bluto sinks the competition.

Also they preemptively close the plot hole of how Wimpy and Francis can win the competition, but leave open the question of why the rowboat race was over a path that forked into dangerous rapids and a waterfall? And didn’t even fence off the dangerous path? But it is hard to find half-mile long rivers that lead back to where you started so I guess you accept sme undesirable features.

“What’s that? You can get me an audition for Norm Feuti’s Gil? I’LL TAKE IT!”

There’s a fair bit I like here. Wimpy’s voice, for one, feels more natural than it did back in The Sea Monster. I mean the voice acting, but the rococo dialogue worked better for me too. Maybe the production staff just need some practice to get it more right. I also liked Wimpy’s characterization of joining the contest in a moment of angry revenge and then wanting nothing more to do with it.

And smaller stuff to, particularly little throwaway gags. Popeye using a ship’s wheel to turn the food on the grill. Olive’s picnic stuff exploding out of the basket to land in perfect order. Wimpy telling Francis to ask the others in the chariot race to slow down. Wimpy facing the waterfall, resigned to how they are going to get wet. This is the kind of thing that gives a cartoon character.

Bluto sure got lucky picking the palm tree to put the tree-elevation-change button in, didn’t he? I guess he had his people install trees ahead of time so he could try to win the contest. Still a smarter use of money than buying Twitter. There’s a similar point to make about the rowboats. I’m not sure what it says about the worldbuilding that the contest has a no-spinach rule, when Popeye claims not to have used it in past wins, That noen of the referees ever notices Bluto’s cheating is built into the premise. But Popeye threatening to reveal Bluto’s magic palm tree button is weird then. Is Popeye accepting that there’s no stopping Bluto from cheating? Or is he unwilling to beat Bluto by appealing to the judges, only his spinach?

I liked Junior’s hesitation at breaking out the spinach and forfeiting the contest. I also liked Popeye’s declaring that people are at risk. Part of me feels like Popeye should have underscored his reasoning. But the terse explanation teaches as well, and maybe better than a monologue would.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 3: Here Today, Goon Tomorrow

Today’s Popeye and Son is Episode 3, cartoon 2, Here Today, Goon Tomorrow, which has to be at least the eighteenth time Popeye has used that title. I haven’t checked but I’ve got to be right. What I have checked is that you can read all my Popeye and Son episode reviews at this link, should you feel so moved.

We have a split credit this time. The story’s credited to Bruce Falk, his only entry in the Popeye and Son world. He has a handful of writing credits on IMDB, with an episode of the New Kids On The Block cartoon and the 1986 My Little Pony and something called the Potato Head Kids that I assume is a prank I slipped in there. The teleplay’s credited to John Loy, who’s got many more titles including some that command respect. Three episodes of the Challenge of the GoBots, alone. Also two episodes of the 1985 Super Friends, making him one of the early scriptwriters to do the Death Of Superman story. But also 13 episodes of The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, a couple episodes of Pinky and the Brain, two of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures, and four of the Back To The Future cartoon. Let’s watch.

The plot: Woody, sulking after losing the volleyball tournament to Junior, disappears. Popeye and Junior follow their one clue, a Goon necklace, to the dread Goon Island. Popeye and Junior escape an Audrey II plant, but get captured by Goons anyway, with their spinach ending up in the Goon Queen’s hat. It happens. Their fears that the Goons have cooked Woody are wrong: Woody’s ben doing the cooking. And more, as Goons have (sigh) taken him for their lost prince. Woody’s pleas to the Goon Queen to let his friends go backfires, as the Gons let them go … into a shark pit. Woody recovers the spinach, though, and tosses it to Popeye and Junior, who overcome the sharks, grab Woody, and flee. And reassure Woody that he’s a hero where it counts.

So, the Goons. Everyone loves them. Everyone’s not completely sure whether they’re racist or what. The Goons sure seem like Elzie Segar, and his successors, were saying something about colonialism and imperialism, but never worked out what. As often happened, what might have started as terrors got to be pleasant, familiar companions, while staying “almosk human”. So we would get a lot of poachers doing mean things to Goons and seeing that as wrong. And it opens a chance for stories where you spoof the audience’s familiar society by doing things goofily and leave people like me to ponder the deeper issues.

“Pop, is … is this the right place for so many Dad Jokes?” “Oh, son, these ain’t me Dad Jokes, they’s me Dead Jokes! Ak ak ak ak ak ak ak ak.”

Or, as this cartoon does, just straight-out use them to do the sort of Primitive Cannibal Tribe that you can’t cast humans for without the CBS Head of Programming coming down personally to slap you silly. I can’t say it’s wrong to try repositioning the Goons as strange, mysterious, dangerous creatures. But the cartoon is strongest, as usual, when it’s avoiding the cliches of these tribes of jungle cannibals. Not to brag but I did spot right away that Woody was cooking, not being cooked; sure, this reflects that I know how stories work and can see the runtime remaining. But I was glad for that. Also I was glad that we don’t see that Woody was abducted. Even at the end, it’s plausible the Goons asked Woody to come to their island and he chose to. It leaves unanswered what his parents thought of that, but Woody’s parents haven’t even been off-screen presences yet, so they don’t get opinions.

There’s several things I like a good bit here. Popeye’s voice sounds right, both in Maurice LaMarche’s acting and in lines like “ya can’t see your hand in front of your fist”. Junior opening the fog up like a shower curtain. The editing in which Popeye and Junior start off on a trail, worry they’re on the wrong one, and it transpires they’re neck-deep in quicksand. Seeing Woody’s face in a bowl of soup, turning out not to be a grief-induced hallucination but rather Woody’s geometrically dubious reflection.

Or there’s the whole scene of Popeye asking the skeleton for directions. That captures a Fleischer-era loopy feeling perfectly, down to the wind making the skeleton seem to answer. Given that Junior needed his father to clarify that “this Okefenokee oatmeal” was the quicksand they were in, I have to wonder what he thought Popeye was doing here. My only disappointment with this is the music. Imagine this but played with spooky music, or even no music, just rattling bone noises. It’d hit a great blend of funny and unsettling. Instead the soundtrack kneecaps the scene. They should have had this scene scored by a person who’s ever been frightened, even once, in their life.

Let me mention something I would have bet you couldn’t do in Saturday morning cartoons in 1987. When getting out of the shark pit, Popeye roars mightily. The shark’s teeth drop out and the shark shrinks. That’s satisfying; it gets the shark out of the plot, it’s preposterous, and Popeye doesn’t have to commit imitable violence against an animal. Son, then, grabs his shark by the tail and throws them into a tree so hard the shark shatters into luggage. I couldn’t tell you how many times Popeye did this to sharks or alligators or anything with scales, really. That was in theatrical cartoons, in a time when the concerns of distributors/networks were different.

I know, the shark was just an actor, paid as well as all the other non-speaking roles this cartoon. It has got me wondering what the rules were, though, about what kinds of fighting they could show and who could get punched and what for.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 3: Bluto’s Wave Pool

As I continue exploring the strange new world of Popeye and Son I draw now to the third episode, cartoon one: Bluto’s Wave Pool. Writing is credited to Anthony Adams, whom the Internet Movie Database credits with two episodes of this show, one episode of Foofur, two episodes of Fraggle Rock, and seven episodes of Darkwing Duck, all from the first season. So I don’t know about his whole work but he’s apparently someone good at the first seasons of things. Let’s watch.

Quick plot summary. Bluto’s annoyed that his new water park hasn’t got any attendees. Tank and his underbullies sabotage the public beach that is, after all, free and right there for everyone. Junior and Young VelmaDee Dee conclude Bluto’s responsible, and with Popeye start cleaning up the beach. To impress Young Daphne, Tank turns the computerized park controls up to “Action Park” and the resulting tidal wave threatens to destroy Sweethaven. Fortunately Popeye and Son are on hand to build a dike out of the palm trees, cleaning up the beach and sweeping everyone back to where they belong.

Quick thoughts. Am I a softie? Because I kind of liked this one. Things that I was dissatisfied with last episode, like not having any handle on the characters, got a bit better. Like, Young Shaggy turns out to be named Woody, and he’s a young surfer dude. This isn’t a lot of characterization, but it’s something to remember him by. You can add subtlety once you’ve got the base down. And the story makes sense in the Popeye Animated Universe without being quite a repeat of anything particular.

The most curious aspect to this is that Bluto doesn’t commit any villainry this episode. He opens a water park, yes, but his only idea to drive people to the park is to try advertising. And all right, advertising is evil, but it’s a socially accepted kind. Tank and his sub-bullies go out doing all the mischief, planting crabs in the water and army ants on land. And then pulling out a tanker to pump what I thought was oil all over the beach. Which shocked me since that felt like something Tank couldn’t ever be redeemed from. Maybe the script editors thought so too; we’re told later that this mud. You know, like those mud tankers you see driving up to homes ahead of winter.

In any case, Bluto doesn’t do anything villainous this episode. Perhaps in consequence, he never has a scene with Popeye. I know, right? You never see that. The most we get is he starts beating up on the computer that controls his water park, after Tank has told the lie that it’s broken and causing all this mayhem. This does also mean Junior and Popeye never learn that Bluto really and truly isn’t responsible for any of this, though.

And we get our first appearance of Eugene the Jeep, so far as I know, this series. He pops in to be harassed by crabs, and then to rescue Junior and VelmaDee Dee from the crab/army-ant alliance. I would think this a baffling appearance to people watching this for the first time. On the other hand, 1987 was an era where, like, you’d still see Popeye cartoons in the afternoon on WNEW-TV. So maybe Eugene didn’t need to be explained the way he would if this series were airing for the first time now.

Why are you asking where they got three giant anteater costume heads from? Sweethaven is a shore town, these places are lousy with giant anteater costume heads.

Oh, now, something I did like here was the army ants. They collect together to become construction equipment and walls and stuff like that. It’s a fanciful behavior, very much in the spirit of the Fleischer cartoons. Or even color cartoons, not all of them Paramount’s, where a swarm of insects would collect into a fist or a pair of scissors or whatever gets the scene going. The crabs don’t get as good an appearance, but Popeye, Junior, and Velma catching them by using underwear as bait is fun. Their using anteater hoods to shoo off the ants is also fun, again in this nice freewheeling spirit.

The climax, Popeye and Junior teaming up to save the town from the flood, inspired ambivalence in me. I like that they had this team-up. It makes the show feel more shared between generations. And it shows Popeye teaching Junior how to be a hero. Knocking down the palm trees lining the road to build a dike is the sort of spontaneous clever thing Popeye would do all the time, especially the farther back the cartoons go. However, Popeye explaining his thinking to Junior, however logically necessary this may be, kept the scheme from feeling spontaneous. It drained surprise from what they were doing. And something that might reflect me accepting too much of this Sweethaven as an established place. When Popeye knocked down those trees I thought oh, it’s going to be years before that road’s as nice again.

That might just be me affected by local events. We got hit this summer with a couple severe windstorms, one of which destroyed so many trees in a three-block radius of our house. (Fortunately none of ours, although it did knock one large bough off the front yard tree, and blow it across the yard into the driveway). And then another storm turned into a tornado that destroyed a wide swath along the Interstate, including where the good corn maze was. But it might also be my getting old. I rewatched Superman: The Movie recently and was bothered by how much of the Not Grand Canyon that Superman ripped apart to build that coffer dam when Not The Hoover Dam broke. Maybe it’s just me.

It says something about Bluto that he failed to consider advertising his water park. But since water parks have always been money factories for the owners, and there’d have to have been some talk about the place as it was getting built, maybe he figured word-of-mouth was all he needed? Still seems odd.

---

Tomorrow: Goons! Join me for that, or the rest of my Popeye and Son adventures, at this link. Thanks.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 2: Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree

And now the other half of the first, second, episode of my Popeye and Son reviews. All my Popeye and Son reviews should be at this link.

Season One-and-Only, Episode Two, Cartoon Two Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree, gives writing credit to Eric Lewald. Lewald also wrote for Challenge of the GoBots, the 1986 New Adventures of Galaxy Quest, Bionic Six, and Ultraman: The Adventure Begins, so he’s well-versed in writing for unloved properties. Let’s see how he did with this one.

This episode has the introduction, so far as I know, of Poopdeck Pappy to the Popeye and Son setting. I always liked him in the theatrical cartoons, as a wonderful agent of chaos. In the King Features cartoons he was less good as the zany loose cannon, but was still good. Here?

Quick now, the story: the class homework assignment is to learn something about your family tree. Tank and his bully friends sneer at the garbage that must come from Junior’s tree. Ah, but Poopdeck Pappy comes ashore and he’d love to talk about Popeye relatives. His examples are all humiliating and bad, and Junior wants to curl up and die. Pappy, too, is hurt and goes off to live in a cave with Rufus and Joel. The school field trip to an actual field finds an actual bear, who’s actually a bit of a jerk. Pappy comes to the rescue, saving them from the bear and from arbitrarily faulty school bus brakes. And now the kids can’t get enough of Pappy talking about ridiculous Popeye relatives.

Pappy’s story of accidentally humiliating a loved one, going off to hide, and re-emerging to save the day is one I could see animated anytime after Pappy’s first appearance. One may complain that Pappy’s original incarnation, as the skein onto which all Popeye’s disreputable fun aspects could be dumped after Popeye became respectable, is at odds with this. But since “Goonland” he’s been a lovable character, despite some work by Randy Milholland to bring him back to unbearable jerkface status. And it’s easy to imagine even a misanthrope like Pappy feeling like his grandson is a special case. Even Ray Walton’s Commodore Pappy liked Swee’Pea.

This is going to sound like an insult but: yes, there’s the mild body horror we’ve been missing from Popeye. Remember that time in the Fleischer cartoons that Popeye whistled through his eye? That’s what this is trying to evoke and credit to them for trying.

So no complaints, no notes about the story structure. The execution’s decent, too. Pappy emerging from the sea, riding a turtle covered in those travel stickers that cartoons tell us were ever a thing, again evokes the good stuff from the 30s cartoons. He even calls the turtle Seabiscuit, just like this was 1938 or something. And there’s Pappy approaching, using his pipe as a periscope. Classic move. I also like Mr Snoot or whatever is name is leading the field trip, and everyone following, same pose and mm-hmm intonations. Some of the dialogue is getting there too, such as Olive Oyl’s tautological declaration “there’s nothing like nature. It’s so natural” or Mr Snoot(?)’s slow recognition of the bear as a bear. (I appreciate that he never actually cries out “a bear”; it shows at least some trust that the audience is paying attention).

I’m disappointed that the embarrassing Popeye family members don’t seem all that funny to me. I have no trouble with Pappy sharing figures that he doesn’t realize are humiliating. If he had emotional awareness he wouldn’t be Pappy. His examples are freak show spectacle Rubber Puss Popeye, renowned non-bather Polecat Popeye, and then Chicken-Plucker Popeye, fastest chicken-plucker in the world. In the conclusion we get Piggy-Back Popeye, the champion hog-rider. Maybe I’m out of touch with the sense of humor of a ten-year-old but these don’t make me giggle so much. At least Polecat Popeye fits as a humiliating figure. (I do like the chicken-in-boxers from the Chicken-Plucker Popeye view. I find Rubber Puss Popeye a bit horrifying but I credit them for trying.) But notice I don’t have better suggestions, and maybe Eric Lewald had a better feel for the pulse of eight(?)-year-olds in 1987.

Couple of stray observations. Tank has almost nothing to do with this story, although we get told the Bluto family is one of real blue-bloods. Does make me wonder what Bluto, or Bluto’s Dad, did that this scion spends his days in a remote backwater failing to punch a sailor who gets shipwrecked an awful lot. We also learn that Popeye is the family name, as in Poopdeck Pappy Popeye. I don’t know if this implies the sailor man with the spinach can is Popeye Popeye. If he is that makes a fun and even richer foreshadowing of Mario Mario.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 2: The Sea Monster

After my false start in reviewing the Popeye and Son cartoon last week, let’s start with a real start, at the cartoon that doesn’t start — you know, I’m not going to salvage that sentence. Never mind. What I’m getting at is let’s sit down and watch episode two, cartoon one, of Popeye and Son, “The Sea Monster”. Oh, I like sea monsters, so this should be good.

The writing is credited to Cliff Roberts, who also wrote for The All-New Popeye Hour (1978 – 1981), so you can trust he’s got the older characters down. He also wrote for Pink Panther and Sons, so we can trust his ability at writing brand extensions. He also wrote for The Skatebirds, so, y’know. He was a survivor.

My first thought was it’s a shame the new series didn’t have a theme song. There’s some ambient thing going on, but it’s too generic to provide any information about the series or the setting or anything. It just vaguely promises we’re having fun. I was hoping for something that introduced the characters because — to their credit — the creators of Popeye and Son avoided the easy way. That would be to make Popeye Junior, Bluto Junior, Olive Junio, Wimpy Junior, and Sea Hag Junior and send them on their way. Instead we have a Popeye Junior and Tank as Bluto Junior, but that’s it. If there’s any relationship between the other characters and the older generation it’s not explained this episode.

So credit to them for not taking the lazy way in series setup. The drawback is I don’t have any idea who these new characters are. My first reaction was they looked like a near-final draft of the Pup Named Scooby-Doo character designs, and the decision to not have everyone say each other’s names all the time didn’t help my note-taking.

The story in a paragraph: Young Daphne Polly rescues a sea monster from a 500-pound sea-monster-eating clam. The sea monster, whose size obeys no known laws of perspective, follows her with excessive, unwanted devotion. She shoos it off, allowing Bluto and Tank to capture and sell it to some Captain Planet villain. Guilt-ridden Daphne Polly swims out to save the sea monster, but Popeye Junior takes his father’s advice, and spinach, to break the sea monster’s bonds. Fortunately before Polly has to figure how to chase the sea monster of her life, he finds a girl sea monster and they go off together.

On first viewing I thought oh, this whole Popeye and Son project was a mistake. This shows how great the shock of the new can be, even for someone like me who claims to be open-minded. Most of what turned me off was mere unfamiliarity. The second time I watched the cartoon, not distracted by not knowing anyone’s names or getting used to the ‘wrong’ voice for Wimpy (who’s had more voices than any of the main cast) I enjoyed it more.

Left: actual footage of me when someone shows any interest in what I’m talking about.

The story is adequate. It’s no great breakthrough in narrative to have a kid pick up a wild animal as strange companion, or to have it go away at the end. My question: why does the sea monster have to go away? It’s one thing when you have to restore the status quo, but this is episode two of a new series. I suppose there is a strong tradition of the strange novel pet having to go away. Maybe it’s also meant to avoid teaching kids there’s no reason not to keep a squirrel as a pet, if you can get one. Was there ever thought put into having Polly turn out to have a pet sea monster? You’d think that would inspire some stories, or at least allow stories to take new directions. And the animation is fine, in that way Saturday Morning cartons had in that slow rise between Mighty Mann and Yukk and Batman: The Animated Series.

To add a nice thing: Polly gets the giant clam off the sea monster by wit rather than physical strength. This feels in line with, especially, the 1930s cartoons that every Popeye project must bow towards. Good choice, especially for the era. Funny cleverness will cover for a lot of action you can’t show on-screen.

Most interesting to me was the climax, Junior eating his father’s spinach to go off and save the day, while Popeye remains in the background. The hardest thing to get right must be balancing who saves the day. Here we get Popeye telling his son to save the day, and stepping back, letting Junior take the lead. This feels like good parenting to me, especially as Popeye watches, I trust ready to step in if the problem gets beyond Junior’s capabilities. It seems at odds with Popeye’s past, long track record of father and mother to Swee’Pea, but Swee’Pea was much younger than Junior is.

I don’t care much for Junior’s design. He looks to me much more like Young Fred Scooby-Doo than anything else, only wearing a Wesley Crusher shirt. But I do like that part of what the spinach power-up gives him is bulked-out arms and legs to better resemble his father. That’s some thoughtful design.

Less thoughtful: the opening credits use the same sea monster design for something endangering Popeye and Son. They foil it by blowing it up like a balloon, which is pleasantly silly enough. But it did lead me to expect developments this story that didn’t happen. If the scene depicts something from another story we may have an irresolvable continuity error that forces the whole series to be nullified. We’ll see.

Yes, I too wonder what Swee’Pea’s part in this series is going to be. We’ll see that, too, maybe.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_: Episode 1

Ever since wrapping up my reviews of the 1960s Popeye cartoons I’ve been casting about for a fresh project. Not urgently, no, but I gave up doing urgent for a fun sideline like this blog long ago. Even sticking just to Popeye projects there’s many things to look at. And I decided on the most footnote of those projects. What draws me to the least-loved Popeye series of all time?

Partly, the contrarian impulse that has never helped me in anything in life. Partly a belief that I’m better off using my time and space on the unusual. I can’t add anything but bulk to the words said, mostly in praise, about the Fleischer cartoons of the 30s. Here, I can start the conversation. And with a series of cartoons that, so far as it has a reputation, has a reputation of “ew”? I can be pleasantly surprised by whatever it does well, or at least interestingly.

Having answered why I’m looking at Popeye and Son, the next question is why is there a Popeye and Son at all? Among the trends in the 80s was an attempt at brand extension by making kiddie versions of existing shows. This was done brilliantly with Muppet Babies. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo brought fresh life to a tired series. Tiny Toon Adventures gets to represent the start of the modern era of cartoons that are, you know, trying. (The reality is more complicated. But there was a time we got The Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show, and there’s a time we got Steven Universe, and something changed between them.)

And then there’s cartoons that are just kind of there. The Flintstone Kids, for example, which I remember as being fine but eh. (Also, I think, contradicting what the 60s series said about how Fred and Wilma met, in case anyone gets worked up about that.) Tom and Jerry Kids set their theme song running in my head for 33 years but that’s all it accomplished. So far as I’ve heard anything about Popeye and Son, it’s been that it didn’t have enough fighting and that Popeye isn’t interesting when he’s a father. I can’t take that literally, since Popeye’s been both a father and a mother ever since Swee’Pea was introduced to the strip. But a lot of his antics aren’t about parenting, must be said.

I didn’t watch Popeye and Son in the 80s. When it came out I was more interested in sleeping through Saturday mornings than watching cartoons. And they haven’t been aired much, or maybe at all, since then. When I lived in Singapore in the early 2000s I did see some video CDs offering the series for sale. I concede it’s just remotely possible these might have been bootlegs. But I didn’t feel like dropping the three Singapore dollars (two US dollars) to find out. Also, every video CD sold in Singapore in the early 2000s was a bootleg. The result is that this is the only set of Popeye cartoons I’ve never seen before. (There are individual Popeye cartoons, or things including Popeye, which I haven’t, though.)

So join me, won’t you, as I look to the last Popeye series made for movies or TV — and his last series before the Popeye’s Island Adventure cartoons that got me into the Popeye Blogging World — and watch these cartoons for the first time with me?

And now we go to King Features’s Popeye And Son feed on YouTube and start out Episode 1. …

…

…

… …

… … …

OK, so they’ve made Episode 1 unavailable, for some reason. I don’t know why. I must suppose that someone looked over it and found that, as an entertainment product of the 1980s, it had a weird subplot about drug smuggling and featured a racial stereotype that white people now notice is inappropriate. I’m sorry for getting all your hopes up like that.