One of the things that Maribou and I try to do is have little mini-dates when we can. I mean, we’ve been married for a couple of decades and, let’s face it, we’ve spent the last year in the same house where the other person is pretty much the only person we’ve seen maskless for the last 11 months. So we’re getting a *LOT* of each other.
As such, the question comes about how to have little dates in the present crisis. One of the things we’ve decided on is to watch a short television show together before bed during the week. We watched Batman: The Animated Series. We watched Superman: The Animated Series. I had assumed that next in line would be Justice League: The Animated Series but no!
We switched to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, a little cartoon from 1959-1964. I remembered watching it in syndication when I was a little kid and enjoying it more because it was a cartoon than because I was getting the jokes. Now that I am an adult, holy cow, this show is brilliant… and, yes, not really laugh out loud funny but incredibly clever (and even sophisticated!).
When I was a kid, one of the things that frustrated me about the show was that it was done as a bunch of serials. Like, the entire season covered one story arc and each episode had two little chapters in the story arc. So, like, you’ve got this story arc that involves Rocky and Bullwinkle baking a cake that blew themselves and their oven to the moon (this is 1959, remember). On the moon, they baked a second cake to send them back. The arc is devoted to recreating the recipe. A given episode might start with Boris and Natasha hypnotizing Bullwinkle and having him tell them “all he knows”. Of course, this begins with him as a little boy and the story takes so long that Boris/Natasha fall asleep. The Moon Men overhear the recipe and decide, yes, Bullwinkle needs to get Scrooched and they Scrooch him (shoot him and freeze him). Then you’ve got some Fractured Fairy Tales, some Sherman and Mr. Peabody, and then the story where Boris and Natasha wake up, catch up to Bullwinkle, and make him make the cake (but he gets embarrassed by his lack of Chemistry knowledge and starts making up ingredients to sound smarter, causing the spies listening in to his recipe instructions to blow themselves up). But the story isn’t over! Rocky and the Moon Men are now trying to catch up to Bullwinkle! You’ve got to tune in next time to see what happens next!
And, of course, the UHF station back in the 70’s played the episodes haphazardly. Maybe we’d see what happened next, maybe we wouldn’t.
As such, I’m not only seeing many of these episodes for the first time, I’m seeing the story told *IN ORDER* for the first time. (Seriously, it feels like this is the first time since 1959-1960 that that’s happened.)
Between the short little features, there are recurring/running gags.
Now that I am old, I watch that and say “they reused 90% of that animation. 95%. They only thing they changed was the animal. They even recycled the roars!”
But I also laugh. Because, as running gags go, it’s a pretty good running gag.
Watching an episode right before falling asleep helps us, you know, have a connection that is pleasant and fun and not particuarly all-covid all-the-time. And the show is surprisingly good. If, you know, cheap.
Anyway, you can watch the first episode here:
And, seriously, consider picking up the box set because the show is really, really strong.
Anyway, this weekend will have a mini-date involving Rocky and Bullwinkle in it. And, yeah, not a whole lot else. Some cooking, some laundry, and waiting for our number to get called so we can get stuck in the arm. Because, seriously, we’ve been on lockdown for almost a year and we’ve run out of stuff to do.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Closeup”, taken by Maribou.)
I *LOVE* Rocky and Bullwinkle, and I agree with what you say here. I actually like the short things (Sherman and Peabody, Fractured Fairy Tales, etc.) better than the serial stories. I, too, watched it in syndication as a child and have, in my adult like, occasionally netflixed the dvd’s. The humor is very adult (in a good way).Report
There was a throwaway joke where Bullwinkle was calling the government and complained about “adding new states all the time”.
“Wait, when did Alaska/Hawaii become states?”, I asked. Both were made states in 1959. The episode in question aired in 1960.
This joke was funny in 2021. I can only imagine how funny it would have been in 1960.Report
I remember seeing it for the first time as an adult, with Bullwinkle carrying around a little boat made of jewels, called the Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam.Report
That arc kicks off with one of the jokes that sailed over my head when I was a kid and, as an adult, strikes me as laugh out loud funny.
It takes place between 1:38 and 1:44:
Holy cow, I’m realizing that the cartoon benefits from the very recent radio dominance. Rocky and Bullwinkle is a radio show with funny pictures.Report
“Omar -”
“Goodness?”Report
Quickly followed by a shushing librarian.
The jokes are okay. Maybe a B+. The comedic timing is off the charts.Report
The jokes are vaudeville.Report
It made money because the “limited animation” could be dome very cheaply. Jay Ward’s show before Bullwinkle, Crusader Rabbit, was barely animated at all.
Report
I’d never seen that! Thank you!
It’s almost awful. It’s like they said “heck, we don’t need to spend any money, kids don’t know any better.”Report
It was 1950. It being in your house instead of a theater was enough.Report
The wife and I have been working our way through the British Baking Show, now that it is on Netflix.Report
I remember *not* liking Rocky & Bullwinkle when it was ‘age appropriate’ and wondering whether the age at which it might be appropriate was wrong.
For this weekend I’m trying to get our young contractor to multi-thread instead of single thread… the project is nearly complete, but he’s being overly cautious about certain things being 100% complete before working on some other thing… which leads to total inaction without commensurate gain.
What’s this new Scrum technique all’y’all are talking about?Report
I remember watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on the TV in my parent’s bedroom, lying on their bed before having to rush off to catch the bus for school. This’d be in the first house I can remember us living in.
Nothing in particular on my docket this weekend (wash/rinse/repeat).Report
I am, on the advice of my doctor, making An Excursion! this weekend. I am masking up (probably breaking out the KN95s I bought for lab this semester) and going to the JoAnn Fabrics and the Kroger (and maybe, if I go early enough and it’s not busy, the Ulta right next door to the JoAnn’s.
I had my regular checkup (I am on a six month schedule because of high blood pressure and allergies and some difficulty initially getting both under control) and it was a televisit, and she asked me – as she said she was asking all her patients – how I was doing emotionally and I kind of laughed and said “good days and bad days” and that I was feeling isolation hard, because I was only doing grocery shopping at the small local grocery and that only once every 10 days, and she was of the opinion that an early-in-the-day, well-masked and distanced trip was safe, and probably necessary for my mental health.
Also there are some things the Kroger sells that my local grocery does not. I laid in a supply back in October when I last got out there, saying to myself, “Well, maybe by the time I run out of these things I’ll be vaccinated” but I’ve learned since NOT to say that (sigh). So it’s a stock up and then hunker down trip.
But yeah, I am really feeling what they call “third quarter phenomenon” right now – tired of being alone, tired of only short conversations from 6 or 10 feet away and then with a mask on, tired of the inside of my house and of my office, tired of my hands being chapped from constant washing, just TIRED. And the hell of it is? I don’t know if it’s really the third quarter or only the first still.
I have already said I refuse to acknowledge getting a year older (52! how did I get here) the end of February if it’s not safe for me to go DO anything. And it almost certainly won’t. So I am choosing to remain 51 for another year, or, hell, maybe start going backwards….Report
So I am choosing to remain 51 for another year, or, hell, maybe start going backwards….
Inside every old person is a young person who looks in the mirror and says, “What the f*ck happened?” I am officially 67 now; by a variety of statistical sources, that gives me less than 20 expected years. It’s not enough. There are too many things that I still don’t know. And I can’t learn them as fast as I used to.Report
Apologies in advance showed the boy Blazing Saddles for the first time this week
Lets hope I posted the video correctlyReport
Watch Steven Universe, also watch Adventure Time, also watch Harley Quinn on HBO Max.Report
Bullwinkle is brilliant.
By the way, if the narrator sounds familiar, it’s William Conrad, who was Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon on the radio and detective Frank Cannon on TV.Report