The Little Lulu Show (1995)
First episode title: Green Girl / Rainy Day / Beautiful Lulu
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of it before.
Little Lulu is a mischievous little girl from an old newspaper comic strip, who was given her own cartoon series in the 90s, starring British comedian Tracey Ullman (best known these days for the fact that her sketch show was the first appearance of The Simpsons).
On the main page (linked back at the top there), I talked about how I much prefer to enthuse about things I like than whine about things I dislike. This is, unfortunately, the first cartoon I've encountered where that won't be the case. I found it hard to find anything funny about most of this episode, and on a second viewing it made even less sense than the first time around. So, a lot of this is going to be rants. I apologise.
The title sequence shows us a few of the show's characters and gives some idea of their personalities. The part I'd specifically like to direct everyone's attention to is shown in the gif on the right, above. For those who can't see it, Lulu dances around next to a boy with love hearts above her head, until another girl catches the boy's eye and he goes off with her - Lulu looks annoyed for a second, until a larger boy approaches her shyly with a flower, at which she shrugs and goes off with him. This second boy, we will soon learn, is named Tubby (yeah...), and I'm highlighting this section not only because he seems to be the second main character of the show, but because this apparent relationship between the characters is going to be very relevant to one of my complaints later in the episode.
At the start of the episode, and at intervals throughout, we are treated to Lulu performing a stand-up routine of "observational comedy". This consists mainly of random inane observations without any attempt to make a joke out of them. For example, this first set is about signs that you might be a grown-up:
Lulu: Do you write your whole life down on a calendar?
Audience laughter accompanies these segments, so we're presumably meant to find them funny, unless this show is so many levels of irony ahead of me that I can't even detect it. Another thing that apparently only adults do, according to Lulu, is to lie about their age - but don't kids lie about it in the opposite direction?
Anyway, now it's time for the first full sketch of the episode, "Green Girl". Lulu comes home covered in mud after playing American football with her friends, and, like any typical kid, she's reluctant to have a bath when her mum orders her to.
Lulu: When I grow up I'm going to live in a house with no rules! And no bathtub!
I guess it's a sign that I'm a grown-up that I don't understand this mindset any more. Anyway, Lulu brings her toy boat to the bath, and decides that the bath doesn't look enough like the sea for her to imagine sailing in it, and goes to retrieve... her mother's green ink from her desk. If you think it's a bit strange that her mother keeps a bottle of specifically green ink lying around, then be warned, that part's going to make even less sense later.
So anyway, Lulu ends up putting all of the ink into the bath. The next thing we know, Lulu's mother is calling her down for breakfast. I don't know about everyone else's childhood routines, but would Lulu really go from bathtime to bedtime without encountering her mother in between? Does she not get any dinner after being out playing with her friends?
She walks into the dining room, and predictably, she's green. Her mother immediately starts fussing over her being ill - Lulu almost gets a word in edgeways to tell her what's happened, but as soon as her mother says she'll have to call an ambulance, Lulu is too excited by the prospect to say anything else. Yes, excited by getting to go in an ambulance.
A couple of hospital guys take her away on a stretcher, and literally dump her on the doctor's desk. Here we reach one joke which actually made me laugh:
Doctor: Now, what seems to be the problem?
Lulu's mother: She's green, doctor!
[Doctor puts on glasses]
Doctor: Why, so she is!
When Lulu is asked how she is, she just says that she's hungry, given that she never got to eat her breakfast. There's a little bit more humorous messing around with the doctor's incompetence, where he needs to take a bunch of measurements to conclude that Lulu is definitely green, and then he announces he'll have to get in contact with a couple of other doctors - presumably at a later date, since Lulu and her mother then leave.
As soon as they do, they run into "that busybody, Mrs Angle", who is apparently unable to notice them from what looks like four yards away, so Lulu's mother has time to hide Lulu behind her back.
Angle: I noticed you leaving the doctor's office - I hope it's nothing serious?
There is a brief moment of awkward conversation before Angle sees the green Lulu and runs away in fear, telling everyone else in town. We skip forward to Lulu and her mother at home, Lulu finally getting to eat, and her mother opening the curtains to see a crowd of people looking in, including a reporter with an old-timey camera. I haven't mentioned any jokes in this part because I didn't notice any.
Next, there's a knock at the door - it's Tubby, with some flowers for Lulu. I knew Tubby's voice sounded somewhat familiar, but I had to look up his voice actor (Bruce Dinsmore) to discover that he's literally Binky Barnes from Arthur, using almost the same voice. He comes in and gives the flowers to Lulu, then has to step outside for a second:
Lulu's mother: Tubby is so understanding!
Tubby: Right this way, kids! Only fifty cents to see Lulu, the green girl! Feel her green skin!
If this stunt makes you dislike Tubby already, it's nothing compared to later on in the episode.
Lulu's mother kicks out the other kids, and Tubby smooths things over with Lulu by claiming he had been planning to share the money with her. Then the photographer sneaks in, Tubby apparently having left the door open, and after kicking him out, Lulu's mother goes upstairs to write a letter of complaint to the newspaper. But she can't, because... there's no ink.
Let's just go through this. Lulu's mother, in a show made in the 1990s, writes letters using an external pot of ink rather than any kind of modern pen that stores the ink itself. Not only that, but she apparently writes formal letters in green ink, and doesn't have any other colour. In other words, her set-up is contrived exactly to make the plot work and without any further thought for the logic of the situation. I can accept plenty of contrivance from a cartoon but this proves it's possible to take it too far.
Anyway, Lulu's mother now knows why Lulu is green, and Lulu insists that no-one actually asked her, which is in no way an excuse. Her mother goes outside to tell everyone and they are immediately uninterested (no-one there interested in the story of the mother who's so negligent she lets her child get covered from head to foot in ink?), until the photographer rushes over to announce that there's a blue boy on Main Street, and they all rush over.
Who knows what the explanation for that would have been - perhaps his father keeps blue food dye in the kitchen and will go on to discover that it's missing the next time he makes tea.
Lulu's mother orders her to have a bath, and Lulu promises to never create a green ocean for her boat again:
Lulu: Maybe I'll sail it in the Red Sea instead!
God. We've only finished one full short. There is so much more of this.
The next sketch is one of two "Lulu Bite" sketches in the episode, which are very short sketches with no dialogue. This one is called "Childcare 101". Lulu is in the park with a little boy in a cap and dungarees - we'll learn later that his name is Alvin - and from the looks of it, she's babysitting him. He picks flowers near a sign that says "Do Not Pick Flowers", and plays in a fountain, all while Lulu is chasing him, so she puts a nearby rubbish bin on top of him and sits on it. Yes, that's all that happens. Not even an attempt at a punchline.
Next is another quick stand-up set, still about why kids are better than adults. I don't know whether that's something specific to this episode or a recurring theme through the series. This one is specifically about things that kids can do better, like remembering things or fixing electronics.
Lulu: Come to think of it, growing up should be called growing down.
No, Lulu, adults are taller than children. That's why it's "up". Nothing to do with intelligence.
OK, next sketch, "Rainy Day". Lulu is all prepared to go out and play baseball with Tubby, but it's raining, so Lulu phones Tubby to tell him to come to her house to play indoor tag instead. Tubby, unfortunately, has the sniffles and doesn't want to walk in the rain, so he suggests Lulu come over to his house instead (a great example to the kids of how to behave when you're sick). Lulu pretends to also have a cold and tells Tubby he'll have to come to her house instead, Tubby refuses, and they both slam the phones down.
Strap yourselves in for a wild ride. Lulu decides Tubby was probably telling the truth about being sick, and decides to go over to his house anyway, with an umbrella up. Simultaneously, Tubby figures Lulu might not have been lying either, and heads over to her house. As the two of them reach the midpoint between their houses, neither of them notices the other because of their umbrellas, so they walk right past each other. At this stage, I am perfectly willing to believe this plot conceit, but let's see how I feel as this continues. I'll also note that they pass each other in front of a seafood store, where a fish in a tank at the front notices the two of them walk by - I'm only noting this because the episode clearly wants me to.
So they each get to each other's house and find out from each other's mother that the other is at their own house. They phone each other, they yell again, and each tells the other to come to where they are now, but each refuses to go anywhere. You can see where this is going. Also of note in this scene is that Tubby's mother refers to him as "Tubby", so it's apparently his actual name?
They both decide they want to go and talk to the other in person, this time to berate them some more. They again pass each other in front of the same fish store. Now that this has already happened once, you might think that the two of them would be looking around for each other in case it happens again, but this is not the case and they fail to notice each other. So they each end up back at their own houses and you might think that this resolves everything but oh no there's more.
Lulu suddenly decides that Tubby's cold might be getting really bad and he might need someone to be there for him, and heads out. Tubby reckons that if Lulu's cold is real and is getting pretty bad, then that might mean she's... lost in the rain somewhere? No seriously, he pictures her being swept up by rain and into a sewer which is obviously not meant to be taken literally, but even without the exaggeration it still doesn't have any logical connection to the start of what he's saying. If he had started by talking about how the rain is pretty bad by now then it would make sense. What is going on with this dialogue?
Tubby leaves again, and this time, after both children have left, both their mothers are concerned by all this, and each of them leaves their house too. All of them have umbrellas up, and... yes, all of them manage to miss each other, over and over as they all start ping-ponging between the two houses, getting annoyed because there's no-one to let them in at either house. It's getting especially unbelievable this time - not only are all of them specifically looking for a particular person this time, but the adults are both tall enough that their own umbrella shouldn't be a reason they can't see either of the children. And yet, all of them miss each other, and the fish looks increasingly more baffled.
Speaking of the fish, a man walks into the store to buy it at this point, and it goes from confused to scared. The shopkeeper puts it into a net and is preparing to hand it over, when Lulu, Tubby, and their mothers all suddenly collide with each other outside the store, and he walks out to see what's going on, as you do.
Lulu's mother: What kind of a game have you two been playing?
Tubby: I guess we played tag after all!
Lulu: Rainy day tag!
Yeah OK whatever. The fish sees its chance and jumps into a small river that the rain has made in the road. It's as desperate to get away from the sketch as I am.
It all ends with a scene revealing that, after all that, both Lulu's mother and Tubby's mother have caught colds from being out in the rain... whereas the kids are fine, and both of them are planning to surprise the other by turning up to their house unannounced. Wah-waah. I will at least give them credit for the fact that both of those things are jokes, but that's a low bar.
Another one of the short sketches now, "TV Trouble". A man is trying to watch a wrestling match on TV, but Lulu is using a pogo stick to bounce up to his window, distracting him and causing him to miss the climactic moment. My main question is whether Lulu was actually trying to watch the wrestling or whether she was just intentionally causing trouble. That and what I was supposed to find funny about the sketch.
Another stand-up bit, this time about boys. It is perfectly possible to write a stand-up bit about boys and have it be funny - you could make humour out of actual societal imbalances, or if you don't feel like making it quite so real, you could at least just poke specifically at boys who think they are better than girls and so forth, and bring them down a peg. This sketch does none of that, and instead reads like someone took a misogynist stand-up bit about women and just flipped the genders, which didn't make it any funnier. Stuff about how boys will eat all your food, not say what they mean, and how their brains are empty whereas girls' brains are full of science and things. I mean, I'm not saying it's not accurate to how a girl of Lulu's age might talk about boys, but we're not being asked to laugh at her - it's being presented to us as a comedy act as if the audience is also supposed to find it funny.
And by the way, if your response to that last part is that the show is for children - if I thought shows for children should be expected to be unbearable for adults then I wouldn't be making this blog.
Anyway, the last of the big sketches (phew): "Beautiful Lulu". Lulu goes to see Tubby but he's not at home or at the sweet shop (you know, where you'd find a tubby boy like Tubby...) so she reckons he must be at what appears to be the boys' hideout that all boys have. It's a shed of some kind. They're talking about how silly girls are inside, and there is a homemade sign outside saying "Dumb girls beware! Boys only beyond this point!" albeit with some backwards letters and such. Each word is attached to the sign individually, purely to enable a "gag" where Lulu moves the word "dumb" to be before "boys". No wait, not even just before "boys" - she turns "boys only" into "only dumb boys" for whatever reason. It doesn't change the meaning and it's just another unnecessary detail about this unnecessary cartoon.
Lulu decides to eavesdrop, and the boys have started talking about which girls they like - apparently Margie is pretty cute. And then, through a mouthful of chocolate:
Tubby: Lulu is the [muffled]-looking girl in the whole neighbourhood!
Lulu initially thinks he said "best", but Alvin asks Tubby to repeat without the chocolate, and he says... "homeliest". (For anyone not familiar with the slightly old-fashioned American slang here, that means "ugliest".)
This is absolutely horrible coming from Tubby, and it's the reason I highlighted that bit from the opening sequence. Is the show going to go back to the status quo next episode and pretend he never said that? Are we meant to hate him in this particular short? I was honestly convinced that, before the end of the episode, we'd hear some silly excuse from Tubby about why he said that - like maybe he was only trying to turn the other guys against Lulu because he wanted her. Which would be mean, but would at least take us back to the "Tubby likes Lulu" situation. But no, this statement is never excused or explained - Tubby just needs to be that much of a prick to drive the episode's plot forward, and so he is. Then the other boys similarly start making jokes about Lulu's appearance and she runs home in tears.
Lulu tries to tell her mother what happened, and thanks to her tears, the same word is muffled, causing her mother to think she said "prettiest". Great, that's the same joke again. She clarifies and tries to hide under her bed, but her mother convinces her to come out.
Lulu's mother: I'm gonna show you just how silly boys can be.
Her big idea is to give Lulu a makeover - different clothes, different hairstyle and colour, earrings, and perfume.
Lulu goes outside and walks along, and Alvin (now named as such) is walking in the opposite direction. Alvin doesn't recognise her - it's impossible to tell from the art style but presumably she doesn't have a very distinctive face - and he is immediately enchanted, seemingly more by the perfume than anything. He says "allow me, miss" and puts his hat in a puddle she's about to step in. So he ends up walking around like a zombie surrounded by love hearts, following her, with a dripping wet hat.
Lulu was babysitting Alvin earlier, wasn't she? What ages are they anyway?
We then witness a kids' baseball game in progress - Tubby is batting and the other boys are playing with him, while two girls, including a girl called Gloria with a pink bow in her hair, are watching. An ice cream van pulls up, and all of the boys are eager to buy Gloria an ice cream - until Lulu walks by, and the boys, none of whom recognise her, all scramble to buy her one instead. Tubby trips and lands in a rubbish bin and flirts with her from in there.
Alvin interrupts all the flirting by pointing out that he saw the mystery girl first, and Gloria is annoyed that Tubby's not buying her an ice cream. So Alvin walks off with Lulu and asks the ice cream man for two chocolate cones, but the other boys all rush over to pay, the cones fly off, and they end up splattering Gloria and her friend.
Now, if I was the ice cream man, I'd want someone to pay for those two cones. Instead, he's happy to provide another two, but the girls throw their ones back at the boys and the new ones just get used as more ammunition as the fight escalates. It's unclear where all the new cones start coming from after a while, as the ice cream man doesn't seem to have provided enough, and some strawberry flavoured ones seem to have somehow entered the mix judging by the colours.
Lulu looks upset by all the fighting and rushes home to change, but Alvin sees her enter her house and realises who she really is, and starts mischievously... gathering flowers? Lulu somehow changes her appearance back completely, unaided, despite the fact that it included a hair colour/style change.
Lulu's mother questions why Lulu has changed back:
Lulu: I think I'm allergic to this "being pretty" business. [sneezes] I know I'm allergic to perfume...
Lulu goes outside and sees Alvin, and asks if he has something for her. His response is to chuck the flowers in a puddle and kick water at Lulu. I really, really don't know what the flower part of that set-up was supposed to achieve. Lulu is relieved that everything is back to normal even though nothing about her original problem was resolved, and the short ends there.
Why??
One last stand-up before the end. Lulu does her impression of a grown-up inviting over a friend, which seems to involve giving a lot of directions, and her impression of a child inviting over a friend, which is just "Wanna come over? Five? See ya!" Apparently adults live further away from each other than children, I don't know. Luckily this one is over a lot quicker than the other ones, and then it's the end of the episode.
The best part about the credits is that the show is over, but the worst part is the writing credits. First of all, there is a separate writing credit to tell us that one specific person wrote the stand-up sections. Thanks, now I know who to hate the most for this episode. Then, fourteen other people are simply credited as writers. It took fourteen people to come up with the rest of this? Really?
So that's that. Apologies again for making this post a lot less positive than I hoped this blog would be, but I was forced to resort to it. Here's hoping this is just an exception and not the start of a trend.