Bubsy: The Animated Series Pilot

I apologize deeply for this post. In fact, I feel bad about myself and my life choices for even mentioning this cartoon's existence.

He perfected the Dreamworks face before Dreamworks even started making CGI films.

It's been a while since I talked about an animated adaptation of a video game. There's just something charming about watching a company try to translate my experiences with my various game consoles (minus the swearing, controller-throwing, the unfair deaths, and the uncontrollable sobbing) into something I can watch after I'm done playing said game. One of the reasons I like to talk about Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog so much is because, at one point in my childhood, I was living a life where I was playing Sonic games and playing with Sonic toys and then watching Sonic cartoons and chewing Sonic bubble gum and later reading Sonic comics. Pity me, fair readers, for I was the little marionette gleefully pulled by the strings by SEGA's skilled puppetmaster hands. They had me by the ovaries and they would not rest until they squeezed every penny out of my parents' wallets in order to keep their little girl's hedgehog fix satiated. 

And ironically, now I'm on Team Mario as far as mascot platformer games are concerned and honestly don't give a crap whenever a Sonic game comes out now. Suck on that, 16-bit console wars!

But let's suppose, for a second, that instead of talking about a video game that everybody with a Genesis loved and cherished as a kid (Sonic the Hedgehog) or a video game that, while isn't very well-known, is at least extremely imaginative in its design and offers games that remain very solid examples of the platformer genre (Rayman), I'm going to talk about the only video game that both managed to both appear on the Wiki page innocently titled "List of video games notable for negative reception" and managed to get his own pilot. Bubsy the Bobcat.

Unpopular opinion time. I actually like this game.

Bubsy the Bobcat is not really a bobcat at all. Instead, he's a copycat; a shameless attempt by a company to drink some of the sweet milk leaking from the swollen teats of Sonic the Hedgehog's cash cow. The platformer genre of the 16-bit era, especially for the Sega Genesis, were just infested with creatures like Bubsy, eager to gain a piece of that scrumptious mascot pie. Games like Awesome Possum, Plok!, Ristar, Green Dog, Chuck Rock, Dynamite Headdy...the list is as long and as vast as the mighty oceans that coat our beloved planet. Some were good, some were bad, but many of them contained 'tude. Lots and lots of 'tude.

And yet out of all of those games, some much more deserving of a cartoon than Bubsy (I would personally watch the hell out of a Dynamite Headdy cartoon), Bubsy was the one that got the deal. The only reason people are even aware that this cartoon actually existed is, like me, they were bored one day, searched "Bubsy the Bobcat" on Wikipedia and YouTube, and this lonely pilot turned up. Yes, my mind was blown when I saw that Bubsy had at one point been animated by poor employees just looking for a paycheck. Therefore, I had to talk about it.

Now, even if you're a poor naive fool like me and honestly enjoyed Bubsy's games and start thinking that, hey, since the games were cartoony, this is going to lend itself to some good animation, there is one thing that assures me that this is going to be a pile of crap right off the bat. The cartoon is animated by none other than Calico Creations, the sick assholes responsible for Widget the World Watcher.

Pictured: Failure.

With that being said, I can't delay this any further. It's best to grab this turd with my bare hands and try to shape it into something more palpable than this metaphor. Bubsy the Bobcat!

Bubsy: The Animated Series Pilot

Airdate: Thanksgiving, 1993

Availability: Online Only

Even though this abomination of ink and paint only aired once and then was never seen again, Bubsy: The Animated Series managed to have its own intro. And let me tell you, it's hard to talk about what just happened before my eyes in a manner that's polite and full of just and fair criticism (although watch as I discard that in a moment) instead of switching to the alternate, which would be screaming in rage and agony while declaring this the worst possible thing in existence. Without hyperbole, this intro, this bloody stool sample of an intro, is probably the main reason this pilot didn't do too well, because people with brains turned this channel off lest it infect their entertainment systems with an STD. It's safe to say that I have yet to run into an intro sequence as obnoxious as this one. This is the kind of crap you would play if you wanted to give your aging television set euthanasia.

Think I'm exaggerating? This cartoon starts with Bubsy waking up in his bed and making out with an alarm clock that looks like him while electric guitars blare in the background. Normally, when someone writes something this glaringly "hip" and "extreme", it's usually done in a satiric manner.

Bubsy really needs a girlfriend.

To make matters worse, the intro also contains Bubsy's catchphrase. Since bobcats are not known for their deep, riveting backstories filled with life-changing events that makes us commiserate with Bubsy's daily struggles, our hero's main character trait is that he makes very crazy, often reckless decisions for menial tasks that happen in his everyday life and tries to justify it by shrugging and saying "What can possibly go wrong?". Obvious jokes on how you can snarkily answer that rhetorical question aside (a lot of things went wrong with the Bubsy franchise), this also shows just how little Bubsy gives a crap on what consequences his actions have to himself and everyone around him. Charming.

So, in other words, our hero's main character traits is that he's egotistical and radically impulsive. Am I supposed to be rooting for this guy? He's an asshole! At least with Sonic, he was also saving the planet while he was mocking people for being "slo-mos".

I hate to see how Bubsy wipes his ass if this is a viable method for brushing his teeth.

After he brushes his teeth with a sander (and somehow doesn't shred his face beyond recognition), the rest of the intro is just electric guitars and Bubsy doing exciting things like eating cereal, doing the dishes, and randomly bursting into dance in his weirdly designed, oddly Mexican-esque home. It isn't catchy, nothing the character does accurately explains what the hell the show's going to be about, and nothing is established other than the fact that Bubsy is an obnoxious loudmouth who keeps power tools in his bathroom. This, my friends, is an intro that fails at his job. This is the intro that showed up to the intro company meeting all hungover and still wearing his pajamas. 

But mostly I'm mad that this intro is NOT a remix of the main theme from the video game. The game actually had good music (and that's the one thing people critically praise about the first game) and the producers are not even going to include it in the cartoon adaptation? What the hell is wrong with them?

That cactus lamp looks incredibly impractical. What if it's dark and you're trying to switch that thing on?

Oh, and I might as well bring this up. Rob Paulsen is Bubsy. Because nothing makes a character more likeable than to have him vomit wasted talent with every line and for him to sound like cartoon characters much better than him. I'm guessing Rob Paulsen's excuse was "What could possibly go wrong?".

In fact, save for it being in the past tense, that's exactly what the pilot is called! Dear god, that was everybody's excuse when they were making this, wasn't it?

Totally digging the Curlz/Jokerman hybrid font there. It gives this cartoon a touch of class.

The first thing we see in the proper episode is the sylistic exterior of Bubsy's house, and boy, let me tell you, it raises too many questions. Most of them are some variation of "What the everflipping hell was Bubsy smoking when he decided he wanted to live in a house shaped like a deformed arrow?" but mostly, my beef with it is cost. How the hell Bubsy was able to afford all of that? Getting a house built in an unorthodox shape and painted in screaming, art deco-style colors is a lot of money and takes a lot of bureaucratic red tape and building zone ordinances just to get the structure's blueprints approved. From what we see, the bobcat isn't married and isn't living with any relatives. Did a Scrooge McBobcat die and leave him a huge inheritance that he's just blowing away frivolously just so that he can live in a place with a built in bowling alley? What's the story here?

Hell, while I'm at it, how old is Bubsy? Sonic in most incantations is a teenager, but that makes sense because he isn't living in an abstract structure that looks like a city's art museum! Does Bubsy have a job? Come on, cartoon, tell me! Flesh these characters out, for the love of god!

At least the house fits the owner in terms of taste and obnoxiousness.

Yeah, it's obvious that I have my work cut out for me today since I had that many questions for just the first couple of seconds of the episode, so I might as well move on. The episode decides that it's not through with being surreal yet, so the very first thing we see in the house is an armadillo named Arnold sleeping on one of the couches and having nightmares about a truck plastered with the corpses of his brethren about ready to run him over.

...well. That's a grim way to start the show. Armadillos turning into road kill is a very real occurrence, and it only gets even scarier when you realize that the armadillos in this universe (which is populated by funny talking animals like Bubsy) are perfectly sentient and yet semis are still mercilessly killing them. Imagine in our world if there was a particular demographic of people that semis were killing on a routine basis and this was turned into a gag. This isn't funny; this is terrifying!

I also always wondered if Arnold being blue was a subtle jab at Sonic's direction. I say "subtle" because there's an 80% chance that the animators just chose that color without making the connection and I'm reading way too much into it.

Autobots are the armadillos' natural predator.

Before you start wondering on why we're focusing on a completely unrelated character, it turns out that Arnold is supposedly Bubsy's unwilling sidekick/pet/prostitute/whatever. And I mean really unwilling, because Arnold is actually really afraid of Bubsy and considers him, in his words, to be worse than a truck. Totally using that to describe things I hate now. Bubsy is oblivious to his "friend's" uneasiness and insists that he's really Arnold's hero, which I suppose could've been funny if done by better writing, but oh man, Bubsy can be so abusive to this poor character that it just leaves me with an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Since I'm noting voice actors throughout this thing, Pat Fraley is Arnold. This is as heartbreaking than Rob Paulsen being Bubsy because Pat Fraley is another talented voiceactor that really shouldn't be in this. Because of his contribution, Arnold sounds a little like a young version of Burne Thompson from the 1987 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And let me tell you, it is extremely odd to hear April O'Neil's boss's voice come out of a blue armadillo.

That face.

Before you get too comfortable with these two characters, who can be pretty annoying on our own, the cartoon decides to insult our intelligence by spitting two horrible demons in our direction. Did you know that Bubsy has a niece and a nephew? And that they've driven their skateboards over to Bubsy's house to celebrate their birthday and partake in silly, kid-like shenanigans? If you feel like killing yourself, don't worry. The feeling is mutual.

Now I kind of feel bad for making a joke about a Scrooge McBobcat now, because if you've grown up on the Disney afternoon, you should be rolling your eyes right about now. Yes, this show had enough balls to include nephews, in a world where DuckTales has already been established as a quintessential Saturday morning cartoon series. Man, the creativity is just so overwhelming! 

Also they're the most godawful-looking things I've ever seen in a cartoon.

Besides sharing the same name as my favorite character from The Magic School Bus (next to Carlos and Ms. Frizzle, anyways), Arnold also serves to help illustrate this cartoon's bizarre sense of humor. The first couple of minutes, the cartoon's big punchline is "the universe hates Arnold". We have no plot to advance besides idiot bobcats being idiots, so instead we watch different felines take turns inflicting pain and misery on this poor armadillo.

This scene also leads me to question Arnold and Bubsy's relationship. Arnold's attitude shows that he doesn't like hanging out with Bubsy, so it's obvious that they're not friends in any way. Is Arnold his pet? He isn't wearing any clothes and seems to live in Bubsy's house, but he has the same amount of intelligence as his master. Is it legal for bobcats to own armadillos as slaves? Is there going to be an armadillo civil rights movement in this world soon?

And yes, I know griping about the inconsistency of the world building in Bubsy the Bobcat is like dropping an atomic bomb on fish in a barrel, but still...

And Bubsy owns a basketball hoop in his house, because he's X-TREME!

The random armadillo hatred gets so bad that, when Bubsy turns on the TV, even the news media hates Arnold. Instead of reporting something that's going to advance the plot like televisions in the cartoon world normally do (but don't worry, it's going to do just that in a moment), the news is talking about how over ten thousand armadillos were run over by trucks in Texas. Slow news day, I guess.

But then it becomes really unsettling when the truck from Arnold's dream appears on the television. Wait a second. That armadillo-murdering machine actually exists and no one's arrested the driver for being a horrible serial killer yet? Holy crap, dude. Thanks to this broadcast, I'd rather watch a cartoon about some insane truck driver that has to run over every armadillo he sees in order to satiate his incurable bloodlust than what I'm about to watch now.

Man, this world has a strangest hatred for insectivores.

While the little monsters are causing grievous harm to an animal that can contact leprosy, we finally get our plot point through the TV, because Bubsy the Bobcat loves lazy writing as much as he loves T-shirts with exclamation marks on them. Don't you just love that trope and how it appears every-goddamn-where? I know I do.

After the news report talks about dying armadillos for no real reason, it then talks about some nerd named Virgil Reality, who somehow invented a helmet that can turn your imagination into reality. Get it? Virgil Reality? With such high-grade writing, I'm honestly surprised that this didn't get picked up for a series.

Also, what kind of news station will report a story on armadillo genocide and then follow it up with wacky inventions? That seems like such a random structure to a broadcast. "And after you dwell on these helpless animals getting slaughtered, here's a nerd in bright green suspenders. Hilarity!"

He also has strange, misshapen ears, because nerds love plastic surgery.

Virgil Reality explains his magnificent reality-warping device that can destroy the world as we know it, and that's when we learn that he's also voiced by Pat Fraley. Unlike Arnold, who sounds kind of distinct, Virgil sounds almost exactly like Baxter Stockman before he turned into a fly from 1987 TMNT. In fact, all of the main characters on this show did voices in TMNT. This amuses me greatly, because if I watch this show with my eyes closed (the preferred way of watching Bubsy), I can pretend that it's really just a really weird episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where Raphael (who was also voiced by Rob Paulsen) sustained brain damage and now keeps saying "What can possibly go wrong?" as a verbal tic.

I also have no idea what the hell Virgil's supposed to be. His hairstyle combined with his body suggests hedgehog, but he also looks kind of like a rat, what with his buck teeth and the fact that he looks kind of like pre-accident Megavolt from Darkwing Duck.

...man, do I wish I was watching a TMNT/Darkwing Duck crossover right about now.

"This device is just like the device Spock used in the 55th episode of Star Trek: TNG, but only in the extended director's cut of that episode, because the scene he used it in had to be cut for syndication. Any REAL fan would know that!"

After Virgil is done stroking his own ego to the point of public masturbation and hyping up his own invention to be the Second Coming of Christ (although, considering the nature of the helmet, you could very well imagine that into being) that's when he says that he needs someone brave and expendable enough to test the invention. You know, because giving a world-changing helmet to some random stranger who was interested in the device through a news broadcast (one that doesn't even hide the fact that this thing will make your wildest dreams come true, might I add) is totally the safest thing to do. To add to the stupidity, their explanation as to why they need an assistant is because apparently the helmet keeps blowing up on Virgil's head. Watch as the cartoon completely forgets this half-assed explanation once we see how the thing actually works.

Oh, and don't get curious about the white, creepily-designed cat to Virgil's left. She has no personality whatsoever. Hell, I don't think she even has a name. She's just there to have breasts in an otherwise male-dominated cartoon.

"Notice how my assistant here has grotesque, hideously swollen eyeballs.
That is but one of the major side-effects caused by my helmet."

So, of course, our main character is all over that, because he loves a helmet that can turn his sick sexual fantasies into reality. And, since he can't keep his excitement to himself, Bubsy tells every single damn living thing in the house that he's going to go over to that science facility and test the very dangerous piece of machinery. Bubsy must know of a great place to get reconstructive burn surgery if this is his idea of how to spend his day. Get better hobbies, Bubsy.

Awesome Possum Bubsy concludes his purposeless rambling, which was only added into the pilot to burn through precious time, with "and I'm a hero for crying out loud" which is...pretty debatable. I know this is meant to be supplementary material for the video games, but if you just watch this cartoon by itself, Bubsy never actually does anything heroic. If you've never played any of the Bubsy games, up to this point, Bubsy's just a dick that lets his relatives torture an armadillo while he watches TV and makes pretentious speeches on how awesome he is. We're given no reason to like this furball other than he spews catchphrases and is hip and relatable to a target demographic.

And to think, this was supposed to kick off a franchise. If anything, this is making me hate a character that I was previously indifferent to.

"I'm not a wimp! I'm a jerk!"

In fact, he's so full of himself over how he's willingly able to give his body up to science regardless of the potential repercussions that he even gives a huge speech filled with stock footage about how awesome he is. Never in my life have I wanted a cartoon character to just shut the hell up and get to the point already more than I did here. He's the mascot equivalent of Clippy the Office Assistant.

I'm not kidding about the stock footage, by the way. In order to give the meaning behind the words "where no bobcat has gone before" (gotta love the originality of this writing) some extra punch, we honest to god cut to footage of the moon landing while random cat sound effects are inserted. I'm guessing this was supposed to be the show's main gimmick, Bubsy's main punchline, the thing that would set him apart from Sonic and Mario. Too bad it really isn't funny and, if anything, makes you just want to watch black and white footage from the 1960's over this.

Somehow these two are related. Or Bubsy's an egotistical asshole. Either or.

But it turns out the egotistical dickbag we're supposed to be rooting for wasn't the only one watching the television for plot points. Turns out the villain of this show was too. They try to make off the villain as being greedy for wanting the helmet too, when really, I'm surprised the whole tri-county area isn't bursting down Virgil Reality's door for that thing. The helmet is said to turn anything you imagine into reality. Anything. And events in this episode prove that it can just make money appear out of thin air. What person wouldn't want to try something like that?

I should probably talk about our main adversary for a second here. The villain, which is a rich, spoiled cat woman named Ally Cassandra, is actually not in any of the games. It's a really strange decision to make TV exclusive antagonists since I clearly remember the games having villains that would've been a lot more interesting than what we got here. The first game had the Woolies, race of bird-like aliens that steal fabric and yarn balls, and the second game had some giant pig scientist named Oinker P. Hamm. Neither of those are amazing concepts either, but you'll be wishing you were watching some pig named Oinker over her because Ally Cassandra is an absolute snoozefest. All you have to do is take a look at her character design once and you'll know everything there is to know about her deep, enriching backstory. As in, she has none.

"As my mom always said, why use just one villain cliche when you can use them all?"

Ally, since she can't function without resorting to every dried up platitude in the book, has to call for her two inexplicable henchmen in order for her to narrate her devious and original plans to them. Luckily, her two henchmen, which are a vulture cook and a hungry purple shrew, are marginally more creative and entertaining than her. For starters, Buzz the vulture (okay, he's really a buzzard, but apparently the character designers thought that buzzards and vultures are the same goddamn thing) is actually pretty amazing. He's sort of like the actor in a bad film that knows he's working with a terrible script but tries to do the best acting job he can manage anyways. Buzz actually cares, even if he knows he'll never have a career after this is over.

Also, there's a weird thing about this scene. While Buzz is talking about his spoiled dish, which probably consisted of roadkill and dessicated corpses he found lying outside the desert, the shrew is clearly moving his lips and going through the same gestures too. Problem is, you only hear Buzz talking. Animation glitch, deleted dialogue at the last moment, or is this supposed to be a subtle quirk that the shrew had? Or is the shrew mocking Buzz?

Not that you really need to do much to mock this guy, mind.

Sid the shrew, in all of his disgusting purple glory, is voiced by Jim Cummings, because it's an unwritten law of 90's cartoons that at least one character per show, no matter how obscure, needs to be voiced by this man. No exceptions. I mean, for crying out loud, Jim Cummings provided voices for Widget the World Watcher AND Creepy Crawlers. I think all the animation companies just have his number on speed dial.

What's Sid's personality? Why, he's hungry and he talks really fast. Because he's a shrew. Ha ha, animal stereotypes! And what is the deal with lines at the DMV?

Okay, Buzz and Ally have natural colorations. Why the hell is Sid purple...?

So basically what happens next is this really boring scene where the fatass woman tells her two henchmen (and neither of them are paying attention, showing just how necessary this scene is) to go get the helmet because it will make her rich and powerful. Only it takes like five hours for her to cough up all of the exposition. Cartoon, we're all intelligent people here. When a news broadcast says that the helmet can make your dreams into reality and Bubsy had a scene where he's all "that helmet can make my dreams into reality!", you really don't need the villain to turn to her toadies and go "this can make my dreams into reality!". Were you just that starved for some extra padding?

The only thing that made this scene worthwhile was the part where Ally approaches a mirror and pictures herself as frighteningly anorexic. I guess giving our feline antagonist Body Dysmorphic Disorder makes her a lot more interesting, cartoon. I can buy it.

Bubsy is clearly trying to appeal to the Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats fanbase.

But back to more important manners. Ripoff McMascot shows up at Virgil's lab (which looks like a modern art museum from the outside) to try the helmet. Somehow, even though this eldritch abomination of a gadget can make you the most powerful person in the universe, Bubsy is the only person that showed up to try the invention. I guess all the other viewers, jaded from years of watching infomercials, just said "meh" and switched on to HBO.

And there's a running gag where both Virgil Reality and that weird, big-eyed cat assistant he has calls Bubsy a different name. Besides the parts where someone calls him "Booby" without getting the censors on Calico Creations's ass, it's really not that funny, considering "Bubsy" is only a two syllable name. I really don't see why it would be so hard to remember. This is an era where kids were able to tell which ninja turtle was named Michelangelo and which one was named Donatello. Bubsy is nothing!

But in all seriousness, that girl cat's pupils are freaking me the hell out.

"Please tell me you're not the designated love interest in this cartoon. Even I can do better!"

After that terrible attempt of a joke ends, we then see how the helmet works. You think of anything and then blink two times, and that causes you to warp reality to your very whims and essentially make the entire cosmos dance at your very fingertips. They don't even give any limitations to this thing. You gotta love how this plot calls for a scientist to invent something so goddamn incredible that it could shape the very existence of the planet as we know it just for the sake of visual gags. Seriously, why was this only on a local news broadcast? Virgil should, at the very least, have a Nobel Peace prize. At the very worst, he should be the Absolute Lord and Master of All Existence and have his own harem of women at his beck and call.

But instead, Virgil, too much of a dumbass to realize just what exactly he invented, just hands over his precious scientific marvel over to a complete stranger and gives only one warning. You have to be very specific about your thoughts. Personally, if I were Virgil, I would also add things like "Don't wish that you're God", "Don't wish that the Earth would explode", or "Don't wish for some terrible monster to arise from the cold murky depths of the Antarctic Sea and enslave all of mankind". I mean, that's some serious power they just handed over to this mere mortal. What if Bubsy decided he wanted Hitler to come back from the dead?

Oh, and he said "What can possibly go wrong?" before activating the helmet. Because Bubsy hates you.

"Finally, I have the power to smite my enemies! Their blood shall stain my fingertips!
I will bask in the beauty that is their last, gasping breaths! Hail Bubsy!"

With him saying his ever-annoying catchphrase, he says that he wants to fly. Somehow that teleports everyone into a deadly free fall.

...um. Irritating Sonic Ripoff said "I want to fly". I. How does this translate to "I want everyone in the room including myself to be plummeting through the air to our certain death", helmet? I understand that Bubsy was not specific, but there's no reason for everyone else to be involved. This is the worst invention ever!

"Yes! My wish to commit a unique form of murder-suicide is working!"

Instead of gruesomely hitting the ground at such a high velocity that their bodies are reduced to gooey mush from the impact, they somehow manage to teleport back after a few rather unfunny gags. Since, you know, reality-warping helmet.

...or at least the people that Loudmouth VonAnnoyingCatchphrase likes are saved. Arnold gets to crash through the roof. Wait a second, all of that freaking out and screaming and it turns out the fall wasn't even lethal? What the hell?

But I guess it's better that this cartoon relies on cartoon physics, considering Bubsy decided he was going to be so mean that he wasn't even going to teleport his own sidekick to safety. Again, this is the hero of our story, the person who keeps insisting that he's a heroic adventurer. He likes inflicting pain on his best friend for kicks and he won't even save them when they're falling to their deaths. Heroism!

Did an armadillo kill the writer's mother or something?
This cartoon seems pretty hateful towards this one species...

Luckily, there's an honestly funny moment with our loveable rat scientist in order to help lull us back into relative sanity. After narrowly escaping death thanks to his radically unsafe doomsday device of an invention, he complains that Bubsy made his rash come back. And, while that delightful mental image pops in our heads (he doesn't even hide where his rash is), Virgil then itches all over his body including his crotch while the obnoxious bobcat starts playing with his suspenders. Okay, why the hell didn't this cartoon star Virgil? He has a lot more personality and likeability than our main character, and he clearly exists only to be a dispenser of nerd jokes! Maybe it's the Baxter Stockman voice that does it. Hell, he's even got the bowtie.

And I hate to bring up the rash again, but I can't help but wonder if there's a correlation between that and the personality-less bimbo that's constantly hanging around Virgil. Come on, you can't seriously be telling me she's there as a lab assistant. Even if his name is one letter away from "virgin", he's totally taping that.

Which of these men has more dignity? The answer may surprise you.

But it turns out the little demons are bored and they want to play with the helmet too. Virgil insists that the helmet is not a toy, Bubsy says that the reality-warping helmet is only meant for grown-ups, they go through great lengths to make sure the helmet isn't given to the twins, and you know where the hell this is going to lead. Kids steal helmet; shenanigans ensue, brats consume the screen with their high-pitched voices and their incessant screaming. I've seen coloring books more complex than this plot.

And why did Virgil design his helmet so that one eyepiece was shaped like a square? Nothing makes sense anymore...

Their eyes are larger than their bodies.

Back to way more tolerable characters. It turns out Buzz can actually fly, and he's carrying Sid in his talons while saying, for the bazillionth time, that they need to steal the helmet for the evil villain they work for. While it is nice of this show to appeal to the crowd suffering from severe short term memory loss, it really makes the dialogue sound choppy and repetitive. They could be, oh I don't know, using that dialogue to be telling jokes or, at the very least, fleshing out these characters. Clearly Buzz has a dark and edgy past just waiting to be told!

But I will give one compliment to this cartoon. The animals they use for their cast are nothing short of unique. Name one other show that has a buzzard, a shrew, an armadillo, a bobcat, a whatever the hell Virgil is, and a soul-sucking demon with bone white fur and dilated pupils.

"I'm telling you Sid, you haven't lived until you eaten the eyeballs of a rabbit that's been dead for at least three days."

While they're flying, the buzzard complains to the shrew, neither of them noting the sheer irony of their situation, that he does nothing but talk about how hungry he is. A reasonable complaint, considering it's the truth. However, somehow that insults the smelly little rodent, so he gripes to Buzz about how he is what evolution made him. Sid then has to explain, possibly to the younger kids who don't know what a shrew is, that if he doesn't eat every ten minutes, he goes mad.

Uh, that's not how metabolism works. Although it is kind of clever that one of the villains is perpetually starving to death (although The Mask: The Animated Series did that concept a lot better), forever driven insane by his constant hunger and having to constantly stuff things like stale corn dogs and bees into his gaping maw in order to keep his stomachbeast satisfied. Sid's will is not his own. That's pretty dark.

You know what else is dark? The fact that, in close-ups, you can see that there's a bite mark in Sid's shirt and his tail is broken. At one point in his life, Sid was so desperately hungry that he tried eating himself. Holy crap.

"Attack of the Killer Shrews was a gross misrepresentation of my people!"

But then, their boring little conversation about eating habits is interrupted when they both spot the helmet in the hands of the two most annoying child protagonists that have ever grazed my presence. I really wish I could describe in full detail just how much the bobcat twins annoy me, but the last time I tried, it ended up looking like a suicide note and my parents called the authorities.

At that instant, something wonderful and beautiful happens. Buzz, noticing that Bubsy really isn't doing his job, decides that he's going to be the real hero of the show when he imagines the two kids as dinner. Yes, my friends. In a world of sentient animals, it's still perfectly okay to cannibalize animals lower than you on the food chain. This universe is amazing.

Oddly, this is pretty accurate to real life. Bobcat kittens do get preyed on by predatory birds. Course, in real life, none of these animals can make bad jokes involving magical helmets and the bobcats don't have eyeballs bigger than their torso, but now you're just being picky.

Mmm, can I get this with a Gex sandwich and a sideorder of Duke Nukem luncheon meat?

They dive-bomb, hoping to both grab that goddamned helmet and eviscerate the annoying children at the same time, and somehow that's when Sid becomes the villainous counterpart of Arnold, because while this is happening, he gets hit with an airplane, struck by lightning, stabbed by cacti, infected with a life-threatening STD, sexually assaulted by Cuban pirates, and blown up by dynamite within a short span of time. See, when the cartoon feels like its cast of colorful talking animals aren't being charming enough to hold our attention, it hastily cobbles together slapstick in hopes that it'll squeeze some laughs out of its now half-asleep audience. Needless to say, it doesn't work. If anything, it just makes me feel really sorry for a character that I was previously indifferent to. Poor Sid needs a hug. And possibly some skin grafts.

God hates shrews, apparently.

Buzz and Sid then introduce themselves to the horrible little monsters. This is where Buzz loses some kudos from me, because instead of majestically walking up to the children and stabbing them to death with his razor sharp talons and beak and letting their blood flow like a grisly river of triumph, he has to flap his mighty jaw and go on about how he's a fantastic bird of prey because the bobcats called him a turkey. Come on, why should you care if your prey knows your exact species? Finish them already!

This far into the cartoon, you can probably guess my main beef with this cartoon. The characters talk way too damn much. Now, I'm a fan of good dialogue, and I love a cartoon that has soulbreaking soliloquies about the deep torment nestled within the hearts of man, but not when the cartoon presents itself as something more lighthearted and slapstick-y and could just let the animation do the explaining! It's like if, in the Looney Tunes cartoons, Bugs Bunny had to stop every five seconds and talk about his traps. "See, by saying Rabbit Season instead of Duck Season, I confused my rival! I'm a rabbit!" Imagine sitting through that. That's exactly what I'm sitting through. I've lost the ability to hope.

...oh, fine. The cartoon. Moving on...

"Don't ask why I'm able to wear this fetching vest and yet I can't find a decent pair of pants.
The ways of the majestic buzzard are an enigma."

The kids somehow don't mind that some vicious predators just told them that they're going to eat them. In fact, if anything, they're delighted that they have some new friends, so they use the helmet to create a giant roller coaster. This is where the Virgil Reality Helmet goes from a whimsical plot device to subtly terrifying. Having two children, two otherwise stable if bratty little kids, turning a mere city into a giant theme park for a spur of the moment impulse is frightening. What about the people that live here? Were they crushed to death when the helmet spontaneously generated matter, or does the helmet actually take matter from the atmosphere and convert it into roller coaster? That roller coaster is made out of people, isn't it? Virgil, you madman! What have you doooone?

Who cares about the implications? Roller coasters!

Meanwhile, the others FINALLY figure out that the kids took the helmet. Think back to the previous scenes and how much talking and action there was in them and you'll instantly see why this scene is more than a little awkward. Was Bubsy and his cohorts just standing there, staring off into space for the last five minutes before their brain synapses finally put two and two together? Pacing sure is an issue here.

And, since I'm sure you give such a crap about this character, it is here that we learn that the big-eyed cat's name is Oblivia, which sounds like a way better villain name than "Ally Cassandra". I'm guessing some name tags got misplaced while the designers were drawing up the character models. You know, assuming that they actually used character models instead of telling the sweatshops in Korea to somehow draw a white persian cat suffering from Keratitis.

I'm also kind of curious as to what that machine in the back with the arc of electricity is meant to do. Since Virgil can invent a helmet that can essentially play God, I'm guessing that thing's a perpetual motion machine or the only calculator that can divide by zero.

"And so then I told my doctor that my rectal bleeding only occurs when I eat a certain type of cereal,
which seems like the weirdest thing in the world but is apparently perfectly natural..."

After they discover the helmet is missing, the ground shakes from the roller coaster outside, even though that's totally not how roller coasters work. This causes Bubsy, that loveable little scamp, to make a fart joke involving burritos. Hah hah, potty humor, am I right?

Or, at least, it should've been a fart joke, but judging by the position of Bubsy's hands and how he's swaying back and forth, this line was redubbed so that it'd be more fit for all age audiences.

They say that you'll go blind
And your ruining your health
But how can anybody love anyone in this crazy world
If you can't love yourself?

So they exit the lab and it turns out the twins made the entire goddamn city into a giant amusement park. There is no sign of life for miles. Carousels spin without any occupants, and soulless tracks of dangerous rides stretch off as far as the eye can see. The psychic screams of the tormented souls of the dead float through the air in a swirling cloud of pain and agony.

Truly Virgil's invention has brought good to the world!

So...has the artist ever seen an actual roller coaster before?

Like any sane person, when faced with the crushing guilt that they may be responsible for the deaths of many innocent people, Virgil understandably freaks out. He also says that now the entire world is in danger, because their very existence, no, the entire planet's existence can be destroyed in an instant! Hey, good going inventing something that dangerous and then handing it off to complete strangers there, genius! It's funny how scientists in these cartoons can invent these gizmos that are essentially magical in function and yet can't use common sense. I mean, geez, the least he could've done was invent some sort of remote control so that he could turn it off in case something like this happens.

Also, I know the twins are idiots and not at all likeable, but he's not seriously implying that soon one of them's going to grow bored and wish that the world would blow up, right? I understand that the helmet is essentially the most powerful thing ever created by mankind, but the only way the world would be threatened is if the person wearing the helmet wished it to be so. Sure, the twins made a roller coaster out of a city, but that's entirely different from complete annihilation.

"Sorry I couldn't stop this roller coaster sooner, but there was trouble at the lab with the running
and the exploding and the crying when the monkeys stole the glasses off my head. Glayven!"

But then, something that's both disturbing and sexual in nature occurs. After he hears the poor weasel/rat/hedgehog thing nearly burst a blood vessel with how worried he is about the fate of their very existence, Bubsy grabs Virgil and...starts stroking his bowtie and telling him to loosen up while Virgil looks turned on.

...well, now. Somehow this makes Bubsy more appealing. He completely ignores the wide-eyed hobgoblin clearly designed to be a love interest in favor of Virgil. This is breaking new ground! Our first wacky, hip, video game platformer mascot with attitude that has a different sexual orientation other than heterosexual.

And thanks to this scene, I now ship it and want fanfics. Hope you're happy, cartoon.

"You don't need a helmet to make my dreams come true, sailor."

After flirting with the Baxter Stockman rat, Hip Talking Animal with 'Tude then has another stock footage-filled speech. I'll just sum it up so you won't have to suffer the inanity with me; Bubsy needs to get the magical plot device doohickey back, we somehow need to see a black-and-white video of two men boxing underwater in order to illustrate his point, he's the hero of the show, and "What can possibly go wrong?". Why do I get the feeling that if you trimmed 75% of this show, you'd still be left with the same plot? We don't need any of this!

You gotta love how, after Bubsy says his mind-numbing catchphrase, he demonstrates just how much the animators get foreshortening. I'm enjoying how Bubsy somehow managed to turn into a living bobblehead in this scene. Art is hard!

Holy wonky perspective there, Batman.

But that's when Sucky McFailFace (aka Bubsy) is hit by a roller coaster car being driven by the twins. Before you get excited and start breaking out the champagne bottles, this does not kill the flea-infested annoyance. Instead, he ends up being dragged along the back of the car (and somehow doesn't get all of the flesh on his legs torn off by the friction) and that's when the animation takes a serious nose dive in favor of showing the kids traveling through wormholes. Don't ask me; I've ceased trying to figure out the motivation of this cartoon over ten minutes ago.

Oh my God, it's full of stars!

Want to see how inventive this show is? They actually show the same piece of animation three times. Bubsy talks to the buzzard about "humbling" him (because the cartoon needs to remind us that Bubsy is an egotistical dickhole), then talks to the twins, and then talks to the twins some more, all while using the same footage that's spliced inbetween shots of them riding various roller coaster loops. Oh sure, sometimes they'll flip it the other way in order to disguise the fact that they're reusing animation, but they can't hide it. Man, Loonatics Unleashed has nothing on this.

I also want to know how Bubsy's genitalia fared during that trip. I know mascots with attitude don't typically wear pants but they probably would've done Bubsy some good here.

"I don't know how I'm still alive!"

The roller coaster stops, and, after a weird unexplained scene where the kids are temporarily fifty feet tall (which isn't funny, doesn't add anything to the plot, and is gone after less than a minute, making it entirely pointless), Bubsy finally is fed up with their crap and gives them a severe talking down to while the kids say that they're just having fun. This was the one point in the entire cartoon that I was actually rooting for our main protagonist, for not only was he yelling at them, but he actually looks like he's going to strangle them on top of that. Yeah, go Bubsy! Rid the world of these little demons!

I know it's kind of pathetic for me, the simple writer of this blog, to be absolutely disgusted with what are essentially kittens, but at this point, I actually agreed with Arnold when he told them that they should go to jail, even though he was using hyperbole. If you stare that the bobcat twins for too long, you'll actually receive a prophetic vision of you killing the person in your life that you love the most. True story.

I love that there are characters in this universe that are so annoying that even Bubsy can't put up with them.

But wait, we still have actual villains in this cartoon! Shortly after the diseased vermin in a T-shirt grabs the helmet from the annoying little brats (hopefully while planning to kill them and then blame their deaths on the purple shrew and the snobby buzzard) and says his catchphrase for the fifty thousandth time, Buzz flies overhead, drops Sid on Bubsy, and the shrew manages to grab the helmet. But somehow this is only a minor inconvenience, for Bubsy is able to get the helmet back, because he trades Sid the helmet in exchange for a corn dog with dynamite inside, all while saying "What can possibly go wrong?".

...wow. I guess it is possible to write a paragraph that doesn't make any goddamn sense despite using actual words in the English language.

Also, my question is, where in god's name did Bubsy get a corn dog packed with explosives? We didn't see him use the universe-altering helmet in order to make it pop into existence, so that can only mean that our hero honest to god carries stale corn dogs around in his pockets with fuses hanging out of them in hopes that he'll run into villains that can be easily bribed with food. What the hell am I watching? I think it's giving my electronic devices a severe mental illness.

eBay in a nutshell.

Wouldn't you know it. Turns out giving the main villains a dynamite-filled corn dog wasn't such a great idea, (and I'm tickled pink that I'm able to say something like that out loud) because the explosion actually sends the villains sailing through the air and they manage to grab the helmet and get away. I applaud the writer of this cartoon for finally getting surreal humor. Or at least I would, if both my hands weren't frozen in the middle finger position as a side-effect of watching this.

But it's all worth it, because my favorite scene in this entire pilot happens next. While the heroes are lying on the ground in a daze, with both the twins and the helmet missing, Arnold then snaps and starts yelling "What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong!?" at Bubsy. That's when I gave this cartoon a standing ovation. I love that Arnold has had it with Bubsy's crap and started calling him out like this. Here's another character that probably would've been a better main lead than our actual main lead.

Also notice that Arnold is now somehow bigger than Bubsy even though previous scenes and later scenes will show Bubsy being able to pick Arnold up. Size consistency is for squares!

"And while I'm at it, I never liked your video games either! They're frustrating and
filled with cheap deaths and poorly designed obstacles!"

I love how Buzz flies when he's carrying the MacGuffin, by the way. The fact that he's able to stay airborne despite carrying two bobcats, a shrew, and a helmet is an incredible feat on its own, but he compounds this by doing this all while not having his wings free. He's honestly flying around while shaking his arms up and down despite the biological impossibilities. Buzzards are impressive creatures.

I would love to see him drop and break that thing, if only for the reactions on everyone's faces.

So now Ally (yeah, remember her?) has the magical plot device, and the first thing she does when she has the helmet is say that at last she finally has the helmet and she use it to make her rich and powerful. Man, the characters of this cartoon just love stating the obvious, don't they?

Now, you'd think our main villain having something that can change all of reality would make them just a little bit threatening, but luckily for Bubsy, Ally's the kind of villain who wishes for useless, menial crap like diamond rings and nice leather sofas instead of, oh I don't know, using it to take over the world, maybe? After over two minutes of a speech where she talks about how Virgil Reality's invention will make her the most powerful creature in the universe and she'll finally be the richest kitty in this catatonic town (and yes, they actually use that pun), the worst she does is spontaneously create some diamonds and a television show starring her. That's it. This is the animation equivalent of crushed expectations. Hate to say it, but this makes the Captain Planet villains look downright effective. When Verminous Skumm said he was going to poison all of Brazil with his rat rot, he really meant it.

And it's a little late to be asking this question, but what was the thing that made Ally Cassandra the way she is? Sure, she's not an effective villain, but she's still pretty nasty, if she hires people willing to resort to cannibalism. Did she lose most of her family's fortune and then succumbed to a terrible eating disorder in a hopeless attempt to fill the black void in her heart? What's her story? What's anyone's story, really? For crying out loud, somebody exposition something that actually explains a character's motivations!

"And then, after I'm done narrating my plan, I'm going to make sure that your death trap
will be slow and easy to escape from."

But I'm able to forgive that in a moment, because that's when Buzz cheerfully asks for permission from his boss to go eat the small children he brought home. Best part is, Boring Main Villain allows them, even though she's a cat herself and there should be some law against kidnapping someone, murdering them, and eating their remains. Either way, I'm now baking a cake in Buzz's honor. Anyone willing to end the existence of the bobcat twins is a hero of the highest caliber.

Also, this scene makes me question how other carnivores in this show eat. According to this show, all the animals are sentient. We never see Bubsy eat anything, when bobcats are predator animals like buzzards. Does Bubsy ever have to go to some rabbit's house and brutally snap their necks in order to make dinner?

...oh god. What was that corn dog from earlier made out of?

Buzz really needs to wax his eyebrows.

Meanwhile, back at asshole headquarters, Jar Jar Binks Bubsy is distraught that he got outsmarted by a turkey and a rat, and he turns from a mascot with attitude into the bobcat version of Eeyore and starts constantly belittling himself and calling himself a failure. Hey, it turns out this character has emotions besides assholish glee. Who would've thunk?

I'm sorry, Bubsy, but it's hard to take your little emo session seriously. I just saw a scene where you handed a giant talking shrew an explosive corn dog. I had to sit through not one but two smug and self-satisfied speeches about how great you are while at the same time comparing yourself to the moon landing. You can't seriously be trying to have a moment here where I'm supposed to connect with you and sympathetically feel your pain. It's a bit late for that!

"I'm going to grab my iPod and listen to Linkin Park now."

Virgil, not wanting to heap anymore pressure on Bubsy, corrects his biological mistake and then says that the world is doomed thanks to him. Oh, that Virgil. You can always count on him to cheer someone up.

Meanwhile, Oblivia, looking like an odd Garfield mutant, just kind of stands there with half-lidded eyes. Is that supposed to be an expression? Is she reacting to Bubsy's pain or is she just bored? If the bobcat twins didn't exist, I would say she was the worst designed character on this show.

"Neither of us are in the games!? Then why are we even starring in this pilot for?"

Bubsy, making sure that no scene ends without it overlasting his welcome, is so sad that he starts randomly making cat puns (even though he never made any in the rest of the episode) while hitting himself in the head with an armadillo. This cartoon can suck the joy out of anything, even crippling depression and wanton abuse to someone with a grievous head injury.

...why does only Arnold have a bandage over his head? Bubsy was caught in that explosion too!

Comedy?

Somehow, by hurting Arnold, this snaps him out of it (yeah, I'm just as confused as you are), and he tells everyone that he's going to go get the helmet and the twins back. Hooray for bipolar mood swings! This causes Virgil to support the dumbass's cause by pulling out his patented Virgil Reality Helmet Tracking Device. Oh geez. Can this character at least try to act slightly different from Baxter Stockman? I'm pretty sure there were episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where Baxter Stockman invented tracking devices that looked exactly like that.

And why the hell didn't he use that earlier? That should've been his first thought when he saw the helmet went missing!

"I'm now going to check for polyps in your colon. You might want to bend over."

However, Bubsy doesn't want to actually use logic. Instead, he's going to look up the villains in the phone book and then ask for their address over the phone. Thrilling!

...and yes, this actually works. Because everyone in this universe is a massive idiot and to expect more out of the villains is to ask for too much from this production.

Yeah, why use the impressive scientific tracking device when you can animate
your main character looking things up in the phone book?

Meanwhile, our main villain starts whining about the helmet to her minions because it's ruining her haircut. Oh, for crap's sakes, lady! First you wanted the helmet in order to make you the most powerful person in the universe, and now you're complaining about it? This is the stupidest thing I've heard come from a villain's mouth since that time Dr. Paradigm from Street Sharks starting talking about how piranhas are soulless eating machines that care not for love and family. Sure, it's a reality-warping helmet that can make all of your dreams come true, but god forbid it mess up your hair.

Ally's about one decade too late for that hairdo.

Oh, and remember my problem with how the characters talk too much? Well, it comes up here. You know how Bubsy called the villains to get their address? That entire scene where he pulls out a phone book and then writes the address down is not enough. In addition to that, we have to have this "joke" hammered into our skulls, because Buzz has to go "Did you give the hero our address?" to Sid and then say "The hero got our address" to Ally. For the love of all that is holy, you could be using this time you're flapping your gums and pointing out plot points that already happened by eating Bubsy's niece and nephew. Ever think of that, Buzz?

I'm also kind of curious as to what the green liquid covering Buzz is made out of, although I'm pretty sure I don't really want to know.

"And while I'm talking, I might as well point out that the main character of this cartoon is named Bubsy, and his catchphrase is 'What can possibly go wrong?'. Also, Arnold happens to be his sidekick, and he's afraid of trucks!"

Ally has a solution though. All they have to do is refuse to answer the door.

...

...can't argue with that logic.

"Or, you know, I could use this helmet to turn Bubsy into a pile of ash or something, but where's the fun in that?"

Despite the sheer cunning in Ally's plan, Scrappy Doo Bubsy and his friends walk into the mansion and that's when we get our climactic struggle of good verus evil, a terrible battle in which there will be few survivors. Future poets will sing praises of Bubsy's heroism and of Arnold's noble sacrifice, for this will be a fight that will inspire all of mankind.

...or Bubsy will just say that he's going to "humble" an overweight women with a bad taste in haircuts while the rest of his friends just kind of stand off to the side and take up space. Whichever works for the animators.

And I hate to point this out, since I've tried to keep my mouth shut about the whole "this franchise is basically a carbon copy of Sonic's franchise in an attempt to steal some of his audience" but in some scenes, Bubsy's eyes really look remarkably similar to Sonic's. All you have to do is erase a line.

"Funniest thing is, this won't even be the lowest point in my career! I still have Bubsy 3D to star in!"

The overweight an uninteresting villain responds to the home intruders by using her chalkboard. You know, that prop from the very beginning of this pilot that introduced this character? In Bubsy's world, no gag is used only once. Everything is recycled. It's good for the environment.

...but I can't hate on the chalkboard too much, because it gives Oblivia her one good moment, because she, after making a statement on her attractiveness and intelligence, actually takes the chalkboard and uses it to attack the main villain. Okay, gotta give credit where credit is due. This was actually pretty funny. See? This is how you set up cartoon violence, Calico Creations! I'm glad you actually remembered!

Ladies and gentlemen, the reason why Oblivia exists.

The chalkboard to the forehead caused Miss Fatty VonExpositionpants to drop the helmet, and that's when the cartoon devolves into a series of short gags where each of the characters fight with each other to get the helmet and start wishing for their heart's desires. I assure you, it's a lot less interesting than it sounds. It's almost depressing seeing a cartoon run out of steam when it really doesn't have any steam to begin with.

Possibly because the cartoon's running low on its allocated budget, none of the characters create any drastic changes to the environment around them either. We're not going to see anymore nightmarish landscapes coated with twisted roller coasters that would not exist in a sane world. Instead, we're confined to Ally's mansion (and we never actually saw the design of her house, come to think of it) and we get things like corn dogs and birthday cake. I hate everything.

And man, I know I shouldn't complain about the imaginations of these characters, but did Sid seriously only wish for one corn dog? He's been established as a big eater! It'd make way more sense if everyone suddenly drowned in a literal ocean of corn dogs.

Here's another character that would make a much better main lead than Bubsy.

But then, suddenly, this cartoon takes a turn for the disturbing, for when Oblivia gets the helmet, she imagines herself marrying Bubsy.

...okay then. Way for that pairing to come out of nowhere, animators. Oblivia and Bubsy barely shared any conversations with each other (and none of them contained any flirtation or, hell, any positive emotions beyond mild pleasantness) and yet we're supposed to believe that Oblivia's biggest wish is that she wants to become Mrs. Bobcat. Yeah, not buying it. She had way more chemistry with Virgil.

To this show's credit, Bubsy is pretty pissed by this whole thing and doesn't succumb to random love interest syndrome. I guess it's because it's been pretty established that Bubsy likes men. Come on, we all saw what he was doing to Virgil earlier, and that's not even getting into his strange sadomasochistic relationship with his armadillo sidekick.

"I want a divorce!"

Finally, Bubsy gets the helmet, but, thanks the wonders of comedic timing, that's when the helmet's about the explode from the extended use. It must be built out of X-Box 360 parts, that helmet. I have to wonder how that thing's supposed to stop all wars and solve world hunger if it can't even handle creating a corn dog and a wedding in the same day.

Random, but now I'm kind of pissed that all of the characters got to use the helmet except for Virgil, who is by far the most bearable character in this entire pilot. What does he want more than anything in the world? I demand closure!

"How do you even put up with this man on a daily basis? He's only said
'What can possibly go wrong?' twice and already I want to kill myself."

Despite receiving warnings from characters much less annoying than him, Bubsy's going to use it anyways, even though he really only has one wish left before the thing becomes too dangerous for proper use. What's his mindblowing idea, the incredible thing that's going to save the world?

I see Bubsy got a mind evaporator from Art Carney as a Life Day present.

Why, he's going to imagine the bad guys tied up, of course! And Bubsy, like the smug asswipe that he is, acts like this somehow saved the entire planet. No offense, Bubsy, but Ally was complaining that the helmet was ruining her hair and was only using it to make furniture in her house. That's not exactly World War III material there.

Also, I want my money back. I don't care if this broadcast is technically free. I want someone to pay for the irreversible trauma this special has caused.

You also gotta love how, even though Bubsy is a video game star and has things like a proton gun and the ability to shoot atoms at enemies, he never actually uses any of those powers in a way that makes for a thrilling conclusion. Instead, the magic helmet takes care of the job. Helmets! They solve your weakly written plot's conflicts without any exciting action! Guaranteed!

And, just in case you were wondering if Bubsy had any redeemable qualities, he has to go through great lengths to say that the day was saved because he's a hero for crying out loud (and after sitting through this, his hero status is really goddamn debatable), and that the very people of the universe should be thanking him for outsmarting a hungry shrew, a snobby buzzard, and a worthless piece of blubber who can't stop talking for two seconds in order to actually do anything. I see somebody has a superiority complex they need to sort out.

As you can probably tell, this ending is really disappointing, even when it's attached to a pilot as weak as this. If anything, I feel like apologizing for DiC Entertainment for making fun of Street Sharks. Goofy as they may be, they at least managed to at least have action in their episodes' climaxes.

"You can’t process me with a normal brain."

After another stock footage filled speech that I'm choosing to ignore, Bubsy decides that he's going to take the doomsday device responsible for all of the problems that happened today for another spin. That's when Virgil tells Bubsy that he shouldn't use the helmet now or else he'll just get electrocuted.

Guess what Bubsy's response to that was. If you guess anything other than "What can possibly go wrong?", you're obviously not paying attention, or expect way too much from this cartoon.

"Hmmm...listen to the scientist who created this helmet, or do something radically dangerous and stupid? Choices!"

And so, the cartoon ends with our hero deliciously getting electrocuted, thus making me cackle in glee. And, considering this was the only episode in the entire show, it's reasonable to say that, in this cartoon's universe, this ended up killing Bubsy and this is the real reason why this show never got turned into an actual series, since the animators couldn't think of a way to make Bubsy's funeral fit into a 22 minute timeslot. You know, besides the whole "critical bomb and low ratings" thing this pilot had.

...and tell me why Arnold deserved to get electrocuted alongside Bubsy again, cartoon. You really gotta stop on the random armadillo hate. It's making your production look terribly bigoted.

So that was Bubsy, the delightful hidden gem that I kind of wish stayed hidden. I can't apologize enough to people who made it this far for this post. I just felt that if I could share some of my misery, it would cure me of the bobcat-infested nightmares I've been having for the last couple of days.

But before I conclude this post, I'll just leave you with the cast of voice actors.

JIMMY Cummings? JIMMY!?

That is the most apt screenshot ever. It sums up everything about this cartoon.

---

The Moral of this Cartoon
What can possibly go wrong? Everything.


Final Verdict

The Good
*Virgil is hilarious, even if he is a stereotypical nerd type character meant to make Bubsy look cool.
*The voice-acting is top notch.
*Buzz the buzzard was also funny, even if he did a lot of joke-explaining.
*Arnold was sort of likeable I guess.
*...uh, the backgrounds sometimes were kind of nice?
*Really reaching here, but the music was not annoying and decently faded into the background where it belonged.

The Bad
*Man, can this cartoon drag. One of the biggest rules of comedy is "Don't explain the joke" and Bubsy shattered this rule into a million pieces while explaining that he, in fact, shattered this rule into a million pieces. Not only that, but there was exposition everywhere, to the point where it really wasn't needed. There's insulting my intelligence and then assuming I'm so stupid I can't even count to three. The cartoon does the latter.
*Half the jokes fell flat. Mispronouncing someone's name as a running gag isn't exactly the most side-splitting thing in existence, and neither is the fact that a shrew is hungry. This only got worse once the characters started explaining the jokes.
*The animation is incredibly lackluster at best and can be pretty strange. Slightly better than Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog at times, but that's not really a high bar to conquer.
*The twins. Good god. I hate everything about these characters.
*The villains aren't that interesting. I say that including Buzz, because it feels that he largely didn't need to be there. But come on, are you seriously going to open up a metaphorical show with someone like Ally Cassandra, a character so bland that I kept forgetting she was even in the cartoon half the time?
*"What can possibly go wrong!?" is said over twelve times in this pilot. Twelve times. My soul has scars that will never heal. 
*Bubsy is an obnoxious asshole and I wish he was suffering from terminal cancer.
*Wanton physical abuse to armadillos isn't really that funny so much as it cruel.
*This show managed to waste the talents of Jim Cummings.
*The helmet was a pretty stupid plot device and kind of consumed the entire plot.
*The plot was really boring.
*It's a cartoon about a early 90's mascot that has been long since forgotten and therefore it really says it all.


The Final Decision
This was worse than a truck.

If I could describe this pilot in one word, it would be this: annoying.

As you can probably tell from how I wrote this post, this was personally very painful to sit through. This wasn't as bad as the episode of Widget the World Watcher that I saw, but it's pretty up there. The jokes are bad, most of the cast is bad, the main character wears on your nerves, the plot is annoying, the conflict is nonexistent, and all around you leave this experience with odd, hollow feeling inside. This is an utter failure at appealing to a hip, attitude-filled demographic on a global scale, and future cartoons should study this pilot as an example of what not to do.

Not much more to say, other than this was a terrible cartoon and the people responsible for making this should feel bad for being a part of this abomination's creation. Save for some minor good things (Virgil) and some honestly good jokes (the chalkboard), I pretty much was irritated the entire way through.

But hey, what can you expect? They made a cartoon about goddamn Bubsy the freaking Bobcat. Of course that's going to go wrong!