Nab him, jab him

[austin_dern]

There are many things in life better worth worrying about than any particular episode of Wacky Races is. Nevertheless, it comes to me now and then that I see something and I'm stuck with trying to make it out. Here's the setup:

Once again Dick Dastardly and Muttley have managed such a lead on the racers that they're able to stop and start building some complicated scheme to try to win the Wacky Race. They're racing through a bunch of the backgrounds left over from those awful 1960s Road Runner cartoons made by the guy who didn't understand this `humor' concept and with nearly eight bars of background music. Dastardly's plan at this point is to set off a barrel of gunpowder even though you'd think he'd have learned by now.

However, he's not got the dynamite on the ground; in order that it not be noticed, I guess, he's tied it to a set of balloons which hover high above the roadway. He's lucky it wasn't a blustery day, since his plan was at the right moment to leap off of a cliff, so that he would land on one end of a see-saw. Muttley was on the other end of the see-saw, and on Dastardly's landing he was thrown up into the air. At the peak of his arc, he blew a dart to pop the balloons holding the barrel of gunpowder. The gunpowder drops right down, landing in Dastardly's hands, where it explodes.

I'm sure that when I was young this was just a source of comic merriment that I appreciated the appropriate amount. Possibly more; I had an unaccountable fondness for Catch That Pigeon I'm surprised my parents put up with for so long. But now I'm stuck trying to figure out exactly what it was Dick Dastardly thought would happen. I mean, what actually happened can't have been far off of any realistic estimate of the most likely consequence of his setup. Maybe he's just an overly complicated masochist.

Trivia: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's first collaboration was Puss Gets The Boot, which created the characters of Tom and Jerry, and would win an Academy Award nomination. Source: Of Mice And Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Leonard Maltin.

Currently Reading: Commitment Hour, James Alan Gardner. Ah, yes, there's the grisly stuff.

Comments

[kevinjdog.livejournal.com]

those awful 1960s Road Runner cartoons made by the guy who didn't understand this `humor' concept

Rudy Larriva. Am I a geek or what? :D

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I couldn't remember his name; I just knew there were all these letters R hovering around them.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

But now I'm stuck trying to figure out exactly what it was Dick Dastardly thought would happen. I mean, what actually happened can't have been far off of any realistic estimate of the most likely consequence of his setup.

I'm always bemused when this sort of person appears in RL: http://xolo.livejournal.com/46201.html

I always liked 'Stop the Pigeon', with Dastardly's dysfunctional schemes, and bizarre flying devices.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that's another case where it's hard to know what he figured might happen.

The elaborate plane-like machine forms were definitely what appealed to me in Stop That Pigeon, past even my attempts to figure out what the babble-talker was saying. It was a bit crushing to my young mind when finally accepted that all these gibberish-speaking characters weren't saying anything that could be decoded by anyone but the scriptwriter.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

A golf ball display cabinet would be a perfect setup out of which to build an awesome Rube Goldberg device they could use on any future planned episodes. Especially if the golf balls were included, which unfortunately, are not.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You're right: it would be a very good prop for that sort of thing. You just need the right way for them to interact.