Little Shop (1991)
First episode title: Bad Seed
How familiar with the show am I?: I was aware of the franchise, but I hadn't seen any of it, and I didn't know this specific cartoon.
Little Shop is a 1991 TV cartoon, based on the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, based on the 1982 stage musical Little Shop of Horrors, based on the 1960 film The Little Shop of Horrors. Phew. It's about a big talking plant.
Now, as mentioned, I haven't seen any of the other versions of Little Shop of Horrors. This version is a musical, like the 80s versions, but I have no context for whether any of the songs in the show are from the existing versions. (Of course, since it's a series, if you were going to use any songs from the musical, you'd probably want to spread them out across different episodes anyway.) In the opening sequence, Junior (the giant plant, you'll get more context later) raps to us about the little shop, backed by some singing flowers that we'll see a couple more times.
The actual episode starts with Seymour Krelborn waking up to his alarm and introducing himself to the viewer. This version of Seymour is a child - I'm just aware enough to know that he's an adult in the other versions - and complains to us that he would be considered a nerd if it wasn't for his lack of intelligence, while falling out of bed and managing to poke his eye with one of the arms of his glasses.
One cool thing about this show's art style is those loosely-coloured backgrounds. The whole show looks this way, sometimes taking it to extremes where a background object is only even visible because of its outline, but never making it unclear what the scene you're looking at is meant to be. One downside of the art style is that Seymour seems to have almost a completely different face depending on which way he's looking, but it never got to a level where it was confusing.
Seymour goes to the kitchen and takes his lunchbox from the fridge. This is the only scene where we see Seymour's mother, and we don't even see her head - she's only shown from the neck down, exercising in a leotard. There's no other indication of what relatives Seymour might have.
From the sound of it, his mother's a health nut, having packed him wheatgerm for lunch. Seymour tells us, as the scene transitions straight from his house to the school lunch room, that he always sneaks a baloney sandwich into the lunchbox too. It's one of those transitions where the character stays in exactly the same position and only the surroundings fade into the new scene. Neat!
Immediately after getting his sandwich out of the lunchbox, Seymour is lifted right up out of his seat by an imposing figure with the squarest dental braces you've ever seen - more like [] than {} - who steals the sandwich and eats it. We'll find out later that this boy's name is Paine Driller.
Paine: Hand it over, Krelborn!
Seymour: Maybe someday I'll get to eat it.
Paine throws Seymour into a rubbish bin, and some other kid unknowingly dumps his rubbish onto Seymour as he talks to us about the fact that he actually likes school. This might seem surprising, but he clarifies that it's because of the girl he likes, Audrey Mushnik.
Cut to them in a chemistry class, where he's staring at her with hearts in his eyes and a little Cupid-y version of himself flying around.
Audrey: Are you alright?
Seymour: Hm?
Audrey: It looked like you weren't breathing.
Seymour [to us]: She doesn't even know I'm alive.
See what they did there? Seymour wishes there was a way to get her to notice him, just as he absentmindedly mixes the wrong two chemicals together, causing a big explosion that sends him into the ceiling of the classroom, his head buried and his body dangling down. And then his trousers fall off. If this it's what he's always like, it's hard to imagine Audrey hasn't "noticed" him!
In a bit of a non sequitur, Seymour then starts telling us about a dream he sometimes has, where he's "the first caveman". We see him in a Flintstones-style spotted fur with a big club, but still with his modern-day baseball cap and glasses, for some reason walking through a desolate landscape with one of Salvador Dalí's melty watches hanging from a tree.
He whacks the watch, and it flings him into an obelisk like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then he sees a jack in the box - man, this is a random dream - makes some caveman noises as he turns the handle, and Junior pops out of it!
Junior: Feed me! Yo, I ain't staying in your dreams for long!
That was surreal even for how the rest of this show turns out to be!
As if to highlight how much of a non sequitur the dream was, Seymour starts his next narration "After I blew up the science lab", taking us back to where we were before. It's not even that connected to what he actually goes on to say, which is that he got a job working at the flower shop owned by Audrey's father, Mr Mushnik.
So we see inside the shop, where Audrey is looking at a magazine about firemen. In fact, what Seymour tells us is that:
Seymour: Ever since Audrey was twelve, she's going to be a fireman.
Which confuses me in terms of grammar (you'd say "she was", right?), and makes me wonder if the word "firefighter" was in common use yet. Of course, she can be a fireman if she wants!
Anyway, Seymour is so busy staring at Audrey that he's forgotten that he's watering a flower, and so much is coming out of the hose that the shop is starting to flood! Mushnik gets annoyed at him:
Mushnik: Stop overwatering the flower, Seymour!
Stop overflowering my water! As Mushnik walks off in exasperation, the flower sinks into the water, as does Seymour.
There's a very short scene establishing that it's also Seymour's job to deliver plants, which doesn't come up again in this episode but I'm guessing is in there so that they have a way to set up future plots.
Seymour: Then one morning my whole life changed. It got worse.
Seymour is walking along carrying his school stuff, with a little personal raincloud over his head. Paine comes along on his moped and uses it to splash Seymour with mud several times, then claims he hadn't seen him there. Seymour makes the mistake of saying that this didn't damage his homework at all because he carries a waterproofed notebook - so Paine throws the homework in a dumpster, and Seymour into a nearby bin, again!
As Seymour goes into the dumpster to search for his notebook, he comments that he sometimes wishes Paine would like him. I think this might be the first time we hear Paine's name. Also, remember that wish for later.
While Seymour is hunting around in the dumpster, a bin lorry shows up and empties it! Seymour gets carried off to the city landfill (this is the most noticeable instance of what I said about the extremely loosely-coloured backgrounds - the sign for the landfill is just an outline of the words against the same colour as the sky) and dumped into a massive, deep pit of junk. He passes a couple of amusing things on the way down that are obviously intended to show how long the rubbish has been piling up - a car that says "Flower Power" and has flower decals all over it, a "Kennedy for President" sign, and something that looks like it might be a dinosaur skeleton!
So Seymour lands at the bottom of the pit, hitting his head on a rock which he quickly realises is a fossilised seed. Yes, we're finally starting to get there. He decides to save it for his rock collection, giving us the old "when life gives you lemons" expression as a fresh shower of rubbish starts to rain down on him.
Now it's lunchtime at school again. Seymour opens his lunchbox to find that the seed has sprouted into a little plant! It has also somehow gained a tiny flowerpot. Seymour guesses that the wheatgerm made the plant grow. Well, I don't have a better explanation.
Paine shows up on cue, lifting up Seymour, and searching around in the lunchbox for the baloney sandwich with his other hand, without looking. He gets bitten! Paine gets so mad about the "booby trap" that he uses the back of his braces like a bow to fire Seymour across the room!
Paine finally looks in the lunchbox, seeing only a plant, and wonders where the sandwich is. He closes the lunchbox, but, as he walks away, a burp from inside the lunchbox opens it again...
So, remember I said this was a musical? We have now reached the first song, not counting the opening theme. We're back at the flower shop, and Mushnik starts singing about how he's not getting any customers and is running out of money. His backing singers are the same singing flowers from the opening sequence, who obviously aren't "really" present in-universe.
Then Seymour zooms into the shop, excited to show his new plant (which is already a bit bigger than before, and has more clearly visible eyes) to Audrey. He tells her to meet "Audrey Junior", so that's why we'll be calling the plant Junior pretty soon. Audrey mistakes it for a rubber... something, I can't really tell what she's singing... and dismisses it, upsetting Seymour.
Seymour and Mr Mushnik sing the "chorus" together:
If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Could be standing on the ground, I'd find a way to fall
In the middle of a forest, I couldn't find a tree
'Cause if I didn't have bad luck, I just wouldn't be me
Throughout all this, they're shown experiencing the appropriate scenarios, with Mr Mushnik flying in the air when he finds a way to fall, and a tree hiding behind the two of them, with the singing flowers present in a bird's nest in one of the branches. Seymour and Mushnik are then suddenly in the tree themselves, in time to accidentally pull the whole thing down!
Seymour talks about how lucky he is to have somebody to talk to now - not sure that he can count Junior as a "somebody" quite yet, to be honest - as he sprays Junior with water and the plant spits the water right back at him. Mushnik is annoyed that he's messing around with "weeds" and threatens to let him go! Junior has slowly been getting bigger through the entire sequence, although he's still shorter than Seymour by the end.
Cut to night time at the shop, and Seymour apparently hasn't gone home, as he's fallen asleep at a desk. A voice is saying "Feed me! Yo, feed me!" Then we hear a phone dialling, and we see the shadow on the wall of what is clearly a now-even-bigger Junior using the phone. Why all the secrecy? We all saw the opening sequence!
Junior: Hello, pizza place? I'll take a large pizza, triple pepperoni, maybe some anchovies, and uh... hold the veggies.
That last part is of course a joke about him being a plant, but keep it in mind for later.
Anyway, the pizza delivery guy shows up - and it's Paine! He knocks on the door, hoping it was Audrey that ordered it - oh, so he's not only Seymour's bully, he's his love rival too. It's the old Popeye situation.
He lets himself in, noticing no-one is around. As he approaches the till, rubbing his hands greedily, he puts down the pizza box, whose lid opens seemingly by itself. When he gets to the till, talking to himself about giving himself a big tip, he fiddles with his braces, which are apparently some kind of Swiss army knife, as all sorts of gadgets for breaking into the till flip out of it!
However, he's startled by a sudden burp, which also wakes up Seymour. As the camera pans back away from him, we see that the pizza box is now already empty, and Junior is growing bigger and bigger! Paine has gone back to fiddling with the till, so he doesn't notice the huge plant starting to loom over him from behind, opening its big toothy mouth...
And that's when Seymour walks in. Junior is startled and retreats, and Paine, thinking Seymour owes him for the pizza, starts shaking him down. Seymour says he doesn't have any money, and Paine throws him into a pile of compost bags and says he'll be back tomorrow to see Mushnik, who Seymour points out also doesn't have any money. It's true, you know. He told us in song.
Once Paine has gone - Junior speaks!
Junior: Personally, I wouldn't take that off a piece of mulch like him. Of course, I'm bigger than he is.
Seymour screams on seeing the huge face of the fully-grown Junior, but this quickly turns to happiness on realising that his little plant can speak to him! Yes, our dorky boy has a friend now!
Junior tells Seymour to keep his ability to talk a secret. Can he really have seen enough of the world yet to know what might happen if he was discovered? He does go on to say that he's been watching Seymour all day, as he waters Seymour with a nearby watering can and stretches him a little to dry him off, as if the guy was a towel!
Junior says he's going to try and get back home, and if Seymour agrees to help him, in return he'll help him get some attention from Audrey. "Audrey Mushface", as Junior decides to call her, but Seymour doesn't seem to notice.
The plant plops Seymour into a flowerpot and says they should both get some sleep. Junior, putting on a sleep mask, says that he's "bushed", then says directly to the camera that that's "plant humour". Nice one, plant boy. Seymour, as you would expect, still has some questions about Junior, but Junior insists he's trying to be "dormant". This just raises more questions about what sleep means for a sentient plant, and the whole idea of being "dormant" will come up again later.
Seymour: This is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me!
Junior: Shh!
Seymour: Come to think of it, it's the only exciting thing that's ever happened to me.
In the morning, Seymour wakes up back in his own bed, wearing pyjamas, but his legs are still jammed in the flowerpot? And then he gets all the way to the shop (and changes his clothes back) and only when he reaches the shop does he finally free himself! I really want to know how it's possible to get changed that way...
He's excited to see Audrey today, but the first person he encounters in the shop is actually Paine Driller! This is the first mention of Paine's surname in the episode.
Audrey is there too though, with a drill, excitedly showing Seymour that she's gone to a shop that was having a "fire sale in the hosiery department", and so she has obtained... a fire hose. Heh.
As Audrey installs the hose on the wall, Seymour excitedly tries to tell her about the amazing thing that happened last night (what happened to keeping it a secret?), but Audrey manages to misinterpret it as Seymour being just as excited as her about the fire hose! Then Paine puts some string of some kind into Seymour's hand - "hold this". The string is attached to Paine's braces, and apparently strong enough for him to physically swing Seymour around using it, sending him flying into a heart-shaped display of flowers!
Then Mushnik, who Paine has evidently been talking to, comes over to rant at Seymour's butt about "Seymour" ordering pizza and leaving Mushnik to pay for it. This is too much for him now, and he tells Seymour to be out of the shop by the next morning! Well, what could Seymour say, that it was his giant carnivorous plant that did it?
Speaking of which, here comes Junior now, once Mushnik has walked off. He's here to make good on his promise to get Seymour some attention from Audrey - saying that he'll plant "the seed of an idea" in her head, he literally makes a seed in his mouth, speaking the words of the idea into it.
Junior: Seymour's the coolest non-green dude in the world!
Then he spits the seed across the room - unfortunately, Audrey has crouched down to do something with her drill, and the seed hits Paine in the face instead! So Paine goes over to Seymour and, as you'd expect, tells him he's the coolest non-green dude in the world, in those exact words.
Paine takes Seymour and Junior for a ride on his moped - Paine thinks Seymour is very cool for bringing his plant along, but Seymour says that it wasn't his idea. Junior promptly tosses Paine off the bike and into the same dumpster from earlier - and Paine gets carried away by what may well be the same lorry! Wow, that friendship didn't last long.
Now it's just Junior and Seymour on the moped, with Junior at the handlebars, and Seymour is not having a fun time of this erratic ride. Junior reckons he'll be able to get home pretty fast on the moped, as long as it "knows the way".
Seymour: Aren't you driving?
Junior: What's driving?
Throughout, he's taking them through a building, along a washing line, onto a lorry coming the other way... Junior isn't liking the scenery, though, and that inspires him to start the next song of the episode.
The big plant raps about how he doesn't like roads and walls that are made of rocks, and he definitely doesn't like any of the houses that look like they're made of trees, for understandable reasons! He doesn't like the exhaust smoke from all the big vehicles either. Well, that's something to relate to.
The (incredibly catchy) chorus, which those singing flowers come from nowhere to join in on, is about how "home" is "where my roots are" - the latter might be the title of the song, perhaps? There's another short verse about how plants all live together in peace where he comes from, before we're straight back into the chorus. If you're wondering how he knows anything about what his home would be like, if he was only a seed just yesterday, read on.
The moped somehow eventually gets them back to that landfill where Seymour found the seed. By "gets them back", I mean Junior crashes it into a big pile of rubbish. Seymour has to carry Junior up the pile for some reason, Junior seeming to almost crush him. Junior starts to cry over his happy memories of his childhood - but when they get to the top, he looks out at where he expects his home to be and is shocked to see it isn't there! It's all grey instead of green, and full of little stubs.
When they get down there, they see a sign for "Petrified Forest Park", which explains that these stubs are all fossilised trees. Junior recognises one of them as his Uncle Herb, and runs to hug it. Again, it seems weird for now that he is able to have memories from back then. But then Seymour says that the sign says the forest is 200 million years old, and he guesses that Junior has been "dormant" all that time. Remember, Junior used "dormant" to refer to sleeping before. So if he sleeps long enough, can he revert to seed form somehow? But then why didn't that happen to his relatives?
Junior: 200 million years? No wonder my mouth tasted like root rot.
Seymour sweetly suggests that Junior could live at the Little Shop from now on, which Junior reluctantly accepts. Meanwhile, in another part of the dump, Paine (remember, we last saw him being taken away by a bin lorry) climbs out of some rubbish and happens to find his moped, which confuses him greatly. I guess he can't remember much about what happened. He must then drive off on it off-screen, though, because Seymour carries Junior back to the spot where the moped was to find that it's gone - Junior reckons it "must have known the way back"!
We next see those two on the back of a vegetable truck carrying onions:
Junior says some things here about how he might "put down roots" here and "cultivate" some friends - he does talk in plant terms a lot, so I haven't been mentioning every instance. He's talking about how humans aren't so bad, "especially with a little salt" - he doesn't seem to have had a chance to eat any, though.
Both Junior and Seymour are crying from the onions, as Junior starts to talk about how nice it is for the driver to be taking these onions out for a ride. He doesn't know the real purpose of the vehicle's journey, so Seymour shows him when they reach its destination - a factory called "Warhol's Soup". You know, because... anyway, Junior is very surprised to find out that humans eat vegetable soup, and screams, landing on Seymour:
This is what confuses me about the "hold the veggies" line, looking back, because it makes Junior seem like he's now forgotten that humans eat vegetables after knowing it earlier! He accusingly asks Seymour if he eats vegetables - Seymour, like any standard-issue cartoon child, says that he only eats them because his mum makes him.
We now return to the shop - Junior is so annoyed about the vegetable soup that he seems to want to start a plant revolution, which leads us into the final song, which pretty much has to be called "Wake Up" given how much he says it. He raps about how humans have been in charge for too long and that it's time for plants to rule the world, as all the drooping, sad flowers in the shop start to bloom in response to his words.
On one instance of "wake up", Seymour, who had been dozing at the desk again, actually does wake up, and is shocked at what he's seeing! Then Junior does a verse about all the artificial things that humans do to plants, like hybridisation, pruning, and using chemical fertilisers. He's just doing another round of "wake up"s when Seymour interrupts to ask him what's going on!
Junior is specific here about the fact that he's trying to back to the days when plants ate humans. 200 million years is a long time before humans, though - it's actually in the early Jurassic period, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth! He then calls his fellow plants into action... but, despite the positive effects of his song, there just isn't anything a bunch of houseplants can do.
Seymour still thinks Junior needs stopping, though, mainly because he'd get in trouble with Mushnik if anything happens with the plants - he unravels Audrey's fire hose (setting off an alarm) and threatens to overwater Junior! Yes, even that little bit from earlier was relevant.
Junior: I don't think you can do it, Seymour.
Seymour: Why? Because I'm just a nerd?
Junior: No - because I'm holding the hose.
We see that he has one of his vines around the hose, and the hose is quickly expanding - cut to outside the shop, where water floods out of every window! That's one powerful hose!
Then, Audrey rushes in, wearing a fire helmet and fireman's coat and holding an axe, excited to help put out the "fire". She's disappointed that Seymour did it without her, but says she hopes they can put out a fire together some time - Seymour seems to take this as practically a declaration of love!
Musnik appears next, though, and is angry about the state of the shop - that is, until he sees how well all the flowers are blooming now! He asks Seymour how he managed it, and Seymour turns to us one last time to ask if he should say anything about Junior. But of course he doesn't, and now he has his job back! As long as he keeps doing whatever he did for the plants, of course.
Junior: Looks like you got your J.O.B. back from Mr Mushbrain! Got the sparks flying with what's-her-name, too.
He at least got her first name right earlier! Junior points out Seymour's life is much better with him around, which Seymour does not seem to fully agree with.
The very last part of the episode is a little weird - it comes off as one of those "where are they now" bits you sometimes get at the end of a movie, but we're only on episode one! We see Mushnik happy that his shop is doing good business now, Audrey knowing that Seymour is alive ("You're breathing down my neck, Seymour!"), Junior still trying to get the plants to rise up, and Paine still bullying Seymour - before running off when he notices his moped is gone, as Junior pops up and belches! Wow, he eats metal too!
One little thing about the credits - each character has a separate credit for their singing voice, so evidently it wasn't the same actors who did their speaking lines. In fact, the actual speaking voice credits follow the pretty common standard of not saying which actor played which character, but the singing voices do specify who was who, so we have more information in the credits about the singing voices than the speaking voices!