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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Halloween Special Villains

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Ah, Halloween, that magical, spooky time of year where ghosts and goblins come out to play and children dress up in the hopes of getting some delicious Halloween candy. But what about all of us who are trapped at home on the night of this pagan costume and candy festival? What do we have to keep us entertained?

Why, Halloween specials of course!

If there’s one thing Halloween delivers on almost as well as Christmas does, it’s spooky Halloween-themed episodes of cartoons, where the show is allowed to get darker and more disturbing than it usually does in some cases. And what is any special without a special one-shot villain? Gotta have someone stirring up some Halloween trouble on this spooky night. And since these characters are usually one and done with little in the way to go super in-depth about, I’d figure we’d look at five of them at once! They are:

Jack O’Lantern from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Pumpkinator from The Fairly OddParents

Bun-Bun from Underfist

Fright Night from Danny Phantom

Ron Tompkins from Toy Story of Terror!

I’m sure some of you feel there are some glaring omissions. Where’s the Flying Dutchman? Where’s Stickybeard? Well, I decided that this time around I’d go with characters whose major appearances and debuts are Halloween episodes; both those guys had major roles in non-Halloween episodes as well, so I’ll be saving them for full reviews at a later date. Also of note: I am aware the story of Toy Story of Terror! does not take place on Halloween, but it is aired as a Halloween special, so I’m counting it.

Actor: So if there’s one thing these guys aren’t lacking in, it’s the actor department, and this isn’t a huge shock since when you’ve got a holiday special you want to splurge a bit, you know?

Jack has one of my favorite actors ever, the always-awesome Wayne Knight. Knight just has that sort of voice that’s perfect for smug jerk characters like Mr. Blik or Dennis Nedry, so really it’s pretty fitting for a pranking trickster like Jack, though I will say that it’s hard to match Knight’s voice to the human version of Jack when you see him in a flashback.

Ron Tompkins isn’t too far behind in the impressive VA department, being voiced by none other than Stephen Tobolowsky, who you may remember as the overbearing Ned Ryerson from GroundHog Day (and how can you forget him? You see him repeating the same scene about thirty times). He does a great job at making Tompkins cartoonishly evil and mostly enjoyable, a tall order for a character who steals toys from children to sell online.

And if you thought the list of awesome actors was done, boy were you wrong! Star Trek’s very own Michael Dorn voices the Fright Knight, and Dorn’s voice is absolutely perfect for a cool, evil, undead knight.

Bun-Bun is voiced by Dave Wittenberg who is an insanely prolific VA, playing characters such as Henry Wong from Digimon Tamers (AKA the beast season of Digimon) to none other than Kakashi from Naruto. I think it goes without saying a VA this versatile manages to make the role work.

And finally, we have the Pumpkinator, who is played by Dee Bradley Baker, and if I sat here listing all the notable roles this man has played we’d be here all night. But here’s a small sample: Appa, Momo, Squilliam Fancyson and Bubble Bass, Klaus the goldfish, Cow and Chicken’s dad, Cinderblock and Plasmus, the Alien and Predator in Mortal Kombat, Lion and Frybo, Numbah 4 and the Toilenator, Remy Buxaplenty, most of the animals in The Legend of Korra… you get the picture. This guy’s a legend. He’ll do any sort of role, big or small, so even if he’s not playing the most complex character here, he’s at least giving it a unique spin with his voice because man, this guy has RANGE.

Motivation/Goals: Jack has a rather simple motivation: revenge. You see, ages ago he managed to steal Grim’s scythe when he was about to be reaped, and bartered for the scythe’s return, asking to be made immortal. Grim reluctantly gave him this, but, as Grim is not someone who likes being tricked, also cut his head off. As anything cut off with Grim’s scythe is permanently cut off, Jack had to replace his head with a pumpkin (of course). This lead to him being shunned as a freak, which just made jis desire for vengeance even stronger; I mean, wouldn’t you want revenge if you could only go to the ding-dong grocery store to get pudding once a year?

If you want to get even simpler, the Pumpkinator is your guy! He exists simply to blow up planets. Tat’s it. He’s very much just an obstacle Timmy needs to overcome so that he can undo his wish for every Halloween costume to be “real and scary” before the consequences end up destroying the world.

Bun-Bun is rather simple as well: he just seems to be a jerk. But they don’t just make him a simple jerk, no, this is a Billly & Mandy spinoff so things have to be taken to their ridiculous extreme. Bun-Bun turns out to be behind numerous extremely petty actions that affected the lives of the main heroes, having haunted Hoss as a child and made him afraid of monsters, made Billy afraid of spiders which estranged him from his son Jeff, and, uh, sawed off Fred Fredburger’s tusks. The fiend! As you might guess, there’s no real rhyme or reason to this, it’s just goofy absurdist over-the-top sort of thing you’d expect from Maxwell Atoms.

Ron has a relatively simple motivation, but frankly it might be the most evil out of all of these: the man steals toys from the children who stay at his motel to sell them for monetary gain. Yes, this is more evil than attempting to blow up the planet, you heard me. I have no idea how sick and twisted you have to be to think that stealing toys from children is acceptable. Funnily enough, this is the same sort of motivation Al (who was played by Wayne Knight, funnily enough) from Toy Story 2 had, though Ron takes it above and beyond.

And finally that brings us to Fright Knight, Much like most of the ghosts on the show, Fright Knight seems to just want to cause a ruckus after he’s released, attempting to take over Amity Park when Danny foolishly releases him. Later in the show he is freed to serve Pariah Dark, and after Dark is beaten he joins up with Vlad. In his final appearance of any consequence he is seen serving the Ultimate Enemy in the bad future. Basically the guy is just a really cool overhyped henchman.

Personality: So let’s get the easy one out of the way first: The Pumpkinator doesn’t exactly have a personality, because it is a big generic doomsday villain meant to act as an obstacle for Timmy to overcome. However, when it returned later in the episode where Timmy goes to Unwish Island, it did have one notable personality trait: an undying hatred for Timmy Turner, It’s a pretty relatable trait the more into the series you watch.

Bun-Bun is also rather evil and simple. He’s just a petty jerk, as can be seen by his crimes listed up under motivation. There’s not much else to him, same with Fright Knight who, again, is mostly just an overhyped henchman who acts as the hardcore badass serving whatever big bad of the week is out to get Danny (or he would have, but more on that later).

Out of all of these, Ron and Jack have the most personality. Jack is an unrepentant prankster who, at least when alive, was heavily implied to just not get he was taking it too far with his pranks (“too far” in this case being tricking people off of cliffs, at the least), and simply morphed into a bitter, jaded, vengeance-seeking supernatural entity after hundreds of years of rejection by society and isolation. Jack’s honestly pretty tragic in that regard, though it obviously doesn’t excuse his actions.

Ron is just a straight-up jerk, putting up a facade of being a charming, friendly motel owner while stealing toys from under his guest’s noses. As the truth comes out about him, he becomes more cartoonish and hammy, which really doesn’t help his case at all, and in his final scene he actually does something so cartoonish he almost feels like he doesn’t belong in the Toy Story universe.

Final Fate: Funnily enough, Pumpkinator actually gets the happiest ending out of anyone here: after being unwished by Timmy, he goes to Unwish Island and, after Timmy eventually journeys there, gets to have fun tormenting Timmy clones for the rest of time.

Ron probably has the second happiest ending, for a given definition of “happy.” Bonnie’s mother calls the cops on him for his theft, and when they show up, he somehow manages to trick them, run away, steal their car, crash it into a telephone pole when backing up, and then run off before they even move a muscle. It’s ridiculously cartoonish, and there’s no way this guy is gonna be getting off easy after that little display.

Onto Bun-Bun. Bun-Bun made one simple mistake: he put any trust at all int Skarr. For those not in the know, Skarr was the “Starscream” to Hector Con Carne, always hoping to overthrow him and take over his world domination schemes for himself before he ended up retiring from that life and becoming a reoccurring character on Billy & Mandy. So, when he joins up with the villain by betraying Underfist, what do you think he does? He betrays the villain, pushing Bun-Bun into hot cocoa and melting him, using his power of treachery and backstabbing to help his team save the world. It’s pretty amusing in that classic Billy & Mandy way.

Good ol’ Jack ends up getting sent to the underworld this time since Grim wasn’t putting up with his crap anymore, and it seems Jack still hasn’t learned his lesson about pranking. When last we see him, he’s now tormenting demons, who all start moving in on him while he laughs at his dumb pranks. The screen cuts to black and we hear a squishing noise. It’s safe to say he won’t have to worry about that pumpkin head causing him problems anymore.

Fright Night is easily the most tricky one to talk about because his entire intended purpose in the show got aborted. After he was brought back to serve Pariah, he ended up under Vlad’s control by episode’s end, but for some reason, nothing ever came of this and it was never mentioned again – well, except in the “Ultimate Enemy” special, in which the Fright Knight cameos at the beginning, acting as something of the hype man for Dan Phantom, softening up Amity Park for Dan’s attack. After that, though, he’s basically out of the series, save for a couple of brief cameos here and there.

Best Scene: Jack has the flashback to his origins, because not only is it perfectly dark for a show’s Halloween episode, you have to give props to anyone who managed to outwit Grim, even if he did end up paying a steep price for it.

Ron has his aforementioned escape from the police. I do think it’s a bit too cartoonish and silly for Toy Story, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t pretty hilarious either way.

The Fright Knight has the aforementioned scene where he mentions he’s serving The evil future Danny. Considering that’s his last real role in the series, at least he got to go out on a high note, though it still sucks nothing ever came of the plotlines set up for him.

Bun-Bun’s best scene is when he revealed that he was the architect of most of the protagonist’s woes. Again, it’s just classic over-the-top Billy & Mandy silliness, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Pumpkinator… just doesn’t have one. Sorry.

Best Quote: While most of these guys aren’t exactly a goldmine of quotes, Jack has one of my favorite quotes from anything, ever, and I even already referenced it above: “Three hundred and sixty-four days a year, I can't even go the the ding-dong grocery store to buy pudding! And do you know why?" The why, obviously, is the fact he has a pumpkin for a head.

Final Thoughts & Score: Frankly, this batch of Halloween hooligans is a very mixed bag. We didn’t fare quite as bad as Charlie Brown did on Halloween, but we only got one King Size candy bar out of this lot.

I guess let’s just start with the black licorice of the bunch: Fright Knight. God, I wish I could love Fright Knight, I really do, but considering the overwhelming quality of most of Danny’s rogues gallery and just the fact this guy was totally shafted and everything set up for him was ignored there’s just no excusing how lame this guy looks, Michael Dorn or no. He has a great design and a cool concept, and the ideas for interesting stories with him were there, but he ends up being a 3/10, saved only by his cool first outing, great voice work, and awesome design.

Worse still is the pile of weirdly flavored candy corn that is the Pumpkinator. He has a cool design, but he’s not much of an antagonist to be honest. He’s just a cool-looking robot who wants to blow up the planet. That’s about it. There’s really not much to say about this guy, and his only other appearance doesn’t really add much. I suppose he serves his purpose, but I have to wonder, why even bring him back if he wasn’t going to do anything remotely interesting? I don’t like generic doomsday villains at the best of times, but if you’re gonna bring one back, at least try and do something interesting with them to justify their existence, otherwise they’re just gonna end up getting a 2/10.

Finally, we get into the good candy! Let’s start off with the tasty marshmallow bunny we got, Bun-Bun (isn’t that more of an Easter candy? Weird). Bun—Bun is a funy, goofy, cartoonish villain, perfect for the first (and sadly, only) outing for Underfist. The fact they went above and beyond to cement him as this ludicrous mastermind who just screwed with everyone’s lives for no apparent reason other than the fact he’s a jerk is pretty funny. I don’t think he’s gonna win any Villain of the Year awards, but I think a 6/10 is good enough for this above average nuisance.

Oho, what’s this? A… candycane? Well, it’s a bit out of season, but it’s still tasty! And that’s kind of where Ron is. I do like just how unabashedly scummy he is, and there is precedent for people like him in the Toy Story universe, but I feel he takes things to a cartoonish extreme. For crying out loud, the guy has a trained iguana that acts like a dog! He feels like he belongs in a different series than this one, but again, I don’t really think that’s a bad thing, because at the very least he is funny. He gets a 7/10, a bit higher than usual just because I love how ridiculously nasty his whole scheme is. Stealing from kids, what the actual hell.

YES! A King Size candy bar! Just what I was looking for! It’s just a generic Hershey bar, but hey, that’s a lot of chocolate, so who’s complaining? And that’s Jack, he is simply put a perfect Halloween special antagonist. Most of this comes from his voice work, since Wayne Knight is a national treasure, but his backstory and concept are worth praising too. His origin story is something of a twist on the old legend of “Stingy Jack,” the origin story of the Jack-O’-Lantern appropriately enough. While obviously there are liberties, such as substituting Grim for the devil, it’s a mostly accurate retelling, something that would go over most people’s heads unless they’re really into classical folklore. Jack’s a lot of fun as a character, earning himself a nice big 8/10, only being held back from a higher score because despite being rightfully beloved by audiences, he never really had a major role again, getting a minor shout out in Big Boogey Adventure and… that’s it. I think Jack could have been a really entertaining reoccurring antagonist in the same vein as fwllow ensemble darkhorse Eris, but alas, it was not to be. Maybe if Underfist had been picked up he could have been brought back for that, but the fact is it just didn’t happen. Oh well, might as well appreciate what we got.

And that’s it for this batch of Halloween goodies. Halloween specials seem a lot less prevalent than Christmas specials, but they’re no less important or fun, and as you can see, they do produce at least mildly interesting villains, sometimes. If only they could produce a villain so devilishly Halloweenie that he could perfectly embody the spirit of the holiday…

Hey, what’s that at the bottom of the bag…

Wait… is that…

OH NO.

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fountainpenguin · 7 years

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Which episodes of "The Fairly OddParents" have you liked less than the others? Do you have a Bottom 3 or Bottom 5 or even a Bottom 10? What made you dislike certain episodes?

Let me think. In general, my requirements for great episodes tend to be:

- Good worldbuilding (Ex: Popular hang-out spots, food joints, parks, shops, in-universe brand items, celebrations, or music are introduced- All those details that fanwriters can reference. You should be able to get a feel for the life of the main characters, and what they do when they aren’t out on adventures)

—> FOP has Chip Skylark and Britney Britney. I didn’t like how in “Jimmy Neutron”, the main singing group there was the real-life band Graystar. Tip: If you can make something specific to your take on the universe, like the Pitt Soda from “Gravity Falls”, take the chance rather than using a real-life brand.

- Doesn’t feel too rushed (You have to be lenient with ten-minute episodes, but still, you should be able to guess what the episode might have been like if it had been a little longer)

- Someone gets fleshed- A new trait, like, dislike, habit, hobby, et cetera is revealed for at least one character.

- Hints at home life for non-main characters. Where my single parents at?

- Episode references past episodes or gets referenced later (i.e., episode is important to the overall story, and bonus points if it looked like “filler” at first)

- A recognizable background character appears, even if they play only a small role, or are merely a cameo in the distance. We want to know who goes where behind the scenes. Stuff that sharp-eyed watchers can catch and say, “Okay, but can we please talk about how X was at Y???”

- Characters seem to stay in character- Obviously.

- The episode’s plot follows the universe’s laws and seems logical. As many plot holes are answered or avoided as absolutely possible.

- A good show needs to have episodes that show the good sides of characters, and some that let the flaws slip out. This doesn’t have to be confined to a single episode, but there needs to be a sense of balance.

More or less, the only episodes I don’t treat as canon in my work are “The Fairy Beginning”, “Wishology”, and “Let Sleeper Dogs Lie” (You may have noticed in the “Blame” prompt, Flappy Bob makes reference to this last episode by saying that Denzel has a golden retriever that apparently steals people’s souls. Owning Sparky wasn’t the problem, but Denzel losing his fairies in this episode in a different way than in “Secret Origins” really bothered me. So I let him keep Sparky, but mostly that entire episode isn’t canon to me).

I dislike “The Fairy Beginning” for obvious reasons- it contradicts a ridiculous amount of pre-established canon, and I’m not the kind of devoted fan who can handle that. Rather than treating it as a retcon, I removed it from the equation altogether, because Wanda liking Juandissimo is kind of important. Why do Cosmo and Wanda act like they’ve never met before? Why is Cupid in training to be a godparent? Why is Jorgen Cosmo and Wanda’s age when he was full grown when Cosmo was born in “Fairly Odd Baby”? Why does that one fairy disguise himself exactly like Timmy when Timmy won’t be born for millennia? Why did we go cringingly overboard on Harry Potter references? And then on top of that Begorrah Steve of all people is in it, so, you know.

I can’t stand “Wishology”, but that’s mainly personal preference. The thing I love about this show is, Timmy is an average kid. Sure it’s what tends to be popular, but in my opinion, “chosen one” plots are bad writing (You may remember that I said I liked “Sing” better than “Moana” for this reason even though they were both very good movies. I cry a lot when I remember how unlikely it is that there will ever be a movie as good as “Sing” again within my lifetime). For the same reason, I like “ChalkZone”, “Star vs. The Forces of Evil”, and “Danny Phantom”. The main characters are, relatively speaking, pretty average people- at least in the sense that they don’t have prophecies hanging over their heads. That’s my kind of genre. See, this is why I typically like cartoons more than movies. Hard to have a “chosen one” cartoon.

So “Wishology” kind of ruined that. Additionally, so many characters in it seemed OOC to me (Mark, anyone?) And this episode was, again, cringe-heavy on the references to popular media, in this case “Star Wars”. I can accept having Dark Laser in the show because “Star Wars” is so huge and Timmy is supposed to live in relatively modern times, so it would make sense that he likes it. But when you start making multiple direct references that last for (what was it, twenty minutes to half an hour with the costumes?), then I can hardly watch and will probably be sitting on the couch covering my face and peering only through my fingers. I tried to watch it again during the marathon, but it sickened me too much that I could only view it in bursts before I shook my head and turned my full attention to my homework.

Not everyone does that, but I do. I just get secondhand embarrassment because I’m like, “This would have been the perfect time to worldbuild and show us in-universe stuff like Crash Nebula, and you wasted it”. Another always risky and nearly-always bad writing tool is the mindwipe. Yeah, there’s just not much in “Wishology” to redeem it for me. It felt like it didn’t even belong in the FOP series.

Those are my big three disliked episodes. “Perfect Nightmare” was pretty bad too, though I’ve only watched it once and that was a year ago, so I’m probably due for another look. I’m trying to have a good attitude about Season 10, and there have been some fun episodes in it, but “Married to the Mom” sent up every red flag - maybe because I felt my roommate was judging super hard - and “Marked Man” was a major disappointment.

“Big Fairy Scare Share” definitely could have been pulled off better. Its problem is a simple one: it works when you’re the writer and you know Chloe’s personality and situation. But when you give it to people who know nothing except that Chloe is pretty, spunky, and “will almost certainly be a Mary Sue!!!”, you’re treading into dangerous territory.

From the start, “A Sash and a Rash” had me on the defensive because the description for that episode is “Chloe slacks off and Dimmsdale falls apart without her”, which screams Mary Sue, but it actually wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t very good, but since it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I’ll let it slide.

I didn’t like “Space Ca-Dad” or “Fish Out of Water” very much either. YES, it’s a cartoon, and Butch said once that he views FOP as “his silly four-fingered world” compared to his “more realistic five-fingered world of ‘Danny Phantom’”, but I require a bit less randomness to be impressed by an episode. I love Chloe and some episodes this season are great, but Season 10 is prone to trying even my patience now and again.

Uh……. Probably one of my other all-time least favorite episodes is “Crime Wave”. I felt like they could have done a lot more with it. “Vicky Gets Fired” is basically the opposite spectrum of “Sash and a Rash”, because it screams Sue in the other direction, so I’m not totally thrilled about it either.

So yeah, as big an FOP fan as I am, there’s quite a handful of episodes that don’t sit well with me. But there are so many more that are great.

In any show with ten seasons, there will be lows and highs. You really have to go into things with a positive attitude. There’s this thing in the writing world called “suspension of disbelief”, which basically involves the author saying, “You have to work with me here”. If you immerse yourself in a world that someone worked hard on, notice the little details, and find joy in the journey, you’ll wake up one day and realize you’re up to your thighs in lovely episodes.

If you approach with the attitude of “Ugh, I’m just watching this so my friend will stop hounding me about it, or because it’s popular and I want to understand the jokes even though people who like this show are dumb and this show is dumb too” almost like the way I approach “Doctor Who”, you’ll find it much more difficult to like things. You aren’t suspending your disbelief. You’ll FIND the lows. And while you’re looking down for them, you’ll miss the highs above.

#Anon #asks #99% true as far as we remember #FAIRIES!

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