Darkwing Duck (1991)

I couldn't resist. I joined the Disney Movie Club earlier this year and picked up a bunch of exclusives. This single episode Darkwing Duck DVD was one of them. I technically got it for a buck when I joined. That's actually a bit overpriced considering how cheap the sets actually are. But the Christmas special isn't on the first two volumes, and those were the only volumes Disney released, so I got it.

And I have a word of advice for people rewatching Disney Afternoon toons decades later. Don't watch a single episode out of the blue and nothing else. I seem to recall the first two volumes were filled with episodes this crappy, but when you see them one right after another, you get some context of which episodes are better than others. Just as a single episode this is terrible. And yet I recall back in the 1990's that this was passable at the time, if not great, compared to everything else. And I might have still thought that if it wasn't the only episode I watched.

There are two explanations for its crappiness. The first is that the quality of the 1990's animation Renaissance was greatly overstated. Or it's simply possible Darkwing Duck was never really a part of it. Fans of this show won't like my conclusion, but I'm pretty sure it's the second thing. Batman: The Animated Series has gotten plenty dated. But it's also still perfectly watchable. Tank, an oversized kid, falling into a Christmas stocking shows this show doesn't even bother with the bare minimum of cartoon logic.

I also dislike the subtext of the story. Bushroot has always been an interesting character to me, because even though he's technically a villain, he's not bad, and his motivations aren't evil. And the episode doesn't really thread that needle effectively at all. They can't decide if he's misguided or the second incarnation of crass Christmas greed. I think the real problem is how badly Bushroot is mistreated by the mall-goers at the beginning. Darkwing "defeating" Bushroot so those literal monsters can have their shallow, selfish Christmas back works against the moral Darkwing is attempting to impart to Gosalyn. A more solid show than this one would have involved Bushroot in the Christmas spirit, but I seem to recall that as far as Christmas tie-ins go, this was particularly superficial, especially compared to the wonderful and wonderfully sappy Christmas episode TaleSpin delivered the previous year. TaleSpin was one of those Disney Afternoon shows like Gummi Bears and Gargoyles that made everything else look bad next to it.

How is the animation? Sun Woo was always the worst Disney Afternoon animation studio in my mind, but they get the job done for THIS specific episode. A lot of the visuals are unimaginative and silly. But I think that is more down to the writing than the animation itself. Tank getting caught in the stocking looks better onscreen than it has any right to. So I don't want to here any badmouthing of Sun Woo for this specific episode.

And yes, I am aware most people think Kennedy Cartoons is worse than Sun Woo. I don't. The animation in every Kennedy Cartoons episode is both awful and awfully fun to look at. Sun Woo's drabness was its main problem. The animation was neither drab nor stilted for this. It was quite colorful actually.

Free advice. Don't watch any of the lesser Disney Afternoon shows singly and out of context. They won't take you back. They might embarrass you. This definitely would have if my opinion of the show when I was a teenager wasn't already mixed. *.