The Mask: Animated Series (1995)
First episode title: The Mask Is Always Greener on the Other Side: Part 1
How familiar with the show am I?: I've never seen the film but I think I've seen this episode a long time ago. Some parts just seemed oddly familiar.
The Mask was one of three Jim Carrey movies released in 1994 to get their own animated series (the other two being Ace Ventura, and Dumb and Dumber). He didn't voice his character in any of them, though. The Mask is about a man called Stanley Ipkiss who has a magic mask that can turn him into a cartoonish, green-faced superhero with amazing superpowers but no self-control, known for his catchphrases "Smokin'!" and "Somebody stop me!". Stanley is voiced here by Rob Paulsen, best known as Yakko and Pinky in Animaniacs, and Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
So, since we're continuing on from the film, this episode doesn't offer us anything in the way of backstory. Stanley has the mask and it does what it does, and I won't know why unless I watch the film. The episode starts with Stanley in his apartment, talking to his dog Milo-
Huh, I just noticed this in his apartment, literally while typing the post up:
I know it's ten years too early for that to be a Doctor Who reference, but yeah, that's obviously going to be where my mind goes.
Ahem. Anyway. The episode starts with Stanley in his apartment, talking to his dog Milo about the lack of women in his life, and mentioning Matilda, a woman who works at the same bank he does. More on her later.
Stanley's landlady bursts into the room, complaining about how "loud" he's being. I hardly even needed to look her up to know that Tress MacNeille was doing the voice. She sounds a lot like MacNeille's character of Agnes Skinner on The Simpsons - coincidentally, this character is also named Agnes. When she goes away, Stanley is tempted to put on the mask and have his revenge on her, and has to physically stop himself from giving in to the temptation, scaring Milo.
Then an alarm rings in the background and Stanley recognises it as the alarm at the Edge City bank - it's that recognisable? - and, out of fear for what will happen to Matilda, he puts on the mask anyway. The mask is quite a plain wooden object, but it gives the wearer a completely different head with green skin and no hair, and the transformation appears quite painful. As soon as it completes, the Mask personality takes over completely, and is able to change outfits and pull objects out of hammerspace at will. And this time he starts by taking revenge on the landlady, stuffing her mouth full of cigars which then blow up in her face.
Mask: Smokin'! ...Is hazardous to your health!
As mentioned, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know how accurate it is to say that the Mask seems to be defined by his tendency to change outfits and put on all different voices, but that's what he constantly does here, and he pulls it off well. At the bank, a robber is waiting outside in a car, clearly the getaway driver, and the Mask hops in dressed as a little kid, asking "Are we there yet, daddy?" before pressing a cartoonishly big "eject button" that somehow launches the guy out of the car! Apparently he's not just cartoony but can impose cartoon physics on the world around him.
The Mask proceeds to mess with the guy as much as he can - holds him in his arms and flirts with him (he does an English accent for this but I'm not sure who he's imitating), dodging all of his attempts to attack back, and then becoming a personal trainer type guy and giving him a very painful-looking massage. It's a lot and it all comes very fast, and perfectly demonstrates how chaotic the character is.
Mask, pointing down: You dropped your toe!
That might be my new favourite line to distract someone. The robber gets back in the car and tries to run over the Mask, but Masky inflates his butt to a massive size in what feels like quite a surprising joke for a child-friendly cartoon, making the car rebound off it and crash.
So now we get into the bank. Matilda is a woman in a security guard uniform with Princess Leia hair buns and a vaguely Scandinavian accent. My immediate assumption was that she was already the love interest in the movie, not only because the show seems to assume we know her, but also because that's quite a distinctive look so it didn't seem like something the cartoon would just randomly throw in. So, it was a surprise to learn afterwards that she was created for the show!
Matilda has actually successfully gotten hold of a robber, but the Mask, as a knight in shining armour, rushes in and separates them to try and give Matilda a kiss. She runs away screaming from this mad green man, understandably.
He briefly becomes a cowboy to drag around the two robbers present in the bank, but gets distracted by the thought of Matilda and changes into a Shakespearean outfit to go outside and cry out about "wherefore" she is (the classic mistake - "wherefore" means "why", not "where"). While he's off doing this, the robbers make off with the loot, in the wrecked car! The driver seems to have disappeared by this point, which isn't a surprise given what he's been through!
The next day, Stanley is leaving his apartment when he's confronted by a woman called Peggy, who he clearly knows. She excitedly shows him the front cover of a newspaper with a big picture of Knight!Mask, and he's briefly horrified until he realises it's a paper called "Just the Facts Really".
Stanley: For a second there I thought it was a real newspaper.
The ensuing conversation makes it clear that that newspaper is where Peggy works, and that, even though Peggy keeps Stanley's dual identity secret, she sees the Mask as her chance to get in on a really big story. She mentions having sold him out to some mobsters once, which is definitely from the film, and doesn't really help her argument. To me, Stanley really doesn't seem to like the fact that Peggy knows, but now he's stuck with it. I mean, what's he going to do?
It's not hard to guess that this secret isn't going to remain just between Stanley and Peggy when the very next thing the episode cuts to is a shot of what is clearly the main villain from the moment we see and hear him, reading the same newspaper article. He has red eyes and a flaming orange Mohican haircut, and is voiced by a delightfully over-the-top Tim Curry. We'll learn later that his name is Pretorius. Does that mean he's meant to be South African? His accent is English in any case. The only significant thing he does in this scene is to order his generic minions to discover the identity of the Mask.
Outside the bank, there's a short scene with the city's mayor where he's supposed to be talking about the robbery but changes the subject to the statue of him that's being unveiled that night, and then thinks he's being shot at because of the alarming noises Stanley's car makes as he arrives. Another thing that feels surprising they could get away with.
Stanley walks into the bank carrying the door of the car, to set up a joke where Stanley's boss Charlie suggests it's a parting gift for Matilda, who's receiving her last paycheck. That's the only reason it seems the writers had him carry the door in, since it doesn't seem like he's planning to do anything with it in the bank.
Stanley immediately tries to get Charlie to reconsider firing her, and Charlie takes the opportunity to emphasise the fact that he is now the "he-hem, bank manager", which is how he says it every time, before clarifying that Matilda is quitting by choice and moving away, not being fired. Matilda rants about the crazy people in this town, especially the thing with the green face that knew her name. And that's the last we see of Matilda - apparently she's not even in any other episodes.
Charlie implies he suspects that was Stanley as the Mask in the bank the previous night, and Stanley tells him "you know I got rid of that thing" - again, I don't know how the movie went, but presumably Charlie knew about some of Stanley's exploits as the Mask and Stanley wants him to think that someone else must have the mask now. We also meet two police officers who were apparently also in the film, Lt Kellaway and Detective Doyle, who don't appreciate Charlie's whole "bank manager" bit.
The cops also suspect Stanley of being the Mask, and they also have the testimony from the landlady to back it up. Stanley ends up clumsily getting water from a nearby cooler all over Kellaway's trousers, and two security guards that look a lot like Pretorius's thugs witness the whole thing. Stanley does not get arrested at this stage but it's made pretty clear to him that he needs to be careful.
As Stanley heads back into his apartment, a neighbour called Francis presses her baby into Stanley's hands, asking him to babysit without even waiting for his agreement and rushing off somewhere. The baby is apparently just called Baby - she refers to him as such here and in a later scene, even in contexts where it would make more sense to use his name. Francis tells Stanley not to let Baby watch cartoons because "they're too violent", just as we cut back to Pretorius, which is a clever transition. Pretorius's minions tell him Stanley is suspected of being the Mask, and he summons a being called Walter who looks like a Frankenstein's monster to go out and get Stanley. Well, to get "Ipkiss", since Pretorius only ever refers to him just by his surname.
Back at Stanley's apartment, Baby is watching cartoons despite what his mother said - there are some generic Looney Tunes-looking animals on the screen. Stanley is ranting about how the mask just makes his life worse, so he doesn't notice the wardrobe door blowing open, and Baby going in and grabbing the mask! Stanley looks around just in time to see him put it on and become the Mask! This is one of those couple of bits I mentioned that make me think I must have seen at least some of this episode before - the baby Mask looks very familiar.
Baby!Mask starts throwing Stanley around the room just as Francis gets home, and there's a very cartoonish fight until Stanley manages to pull the mask off Baby's head. That makes up Stanley's mind about getting rid of the mask, and he goes to where some builders are pouring the concrete to put up the mayor's statue and chucks the mask in, burying it. Yes, we've lost the mask from The Mask show about halfway through the episode, and it's unfortunate that I only watch one episode for this blog because - spoilers - he doesn't have it back yet by the end! This is part one of a two-parter, after all, so there is plenty of time to resolve that plot, but unfortunately it means we're missing the main reason to watch the show for the rest of our time here.
We go back to the bank, Stanley mocks Charlie's "bank manager" bit a bit more, and then Charlie drags him off to see an old "house of tomorrow" the bank has just bought. One of those things that was supposed to look futuristic but has since become old-fashioned. I like the aesthetic of such things, but this is supposed to be a place you can actually live in, which is much more of a problem. Charlie enthuses about robot maids and stuff, and a robot dog shows up only to immediately break down. Stanley is unimpressed, and when Charlie informs him he's going to have to clean up this whole place himself, he fantasises about becoming the Mask again and punishing Charlie by launching him from a jack-in-the-box. I must admit, on first viewing I missed that a fantasy had started and was trying to work out how he had gotten the mask back again - there's no visual transition but there is the stereotypical tinkly harp sound. It was obvious once the fantasy ended, anyway.
As they leave, Charlie hands Stanley an envelope to mail - it's the insurance papers for the house. Charlie puts much emphasis on how important it is for a house like this to be insured, which is either the writers making sure that children understand the plot (since the rest of us know that houses need insurance), or it's them making sure to explicitly state something that's going to be more relevant in episode two. Then Stanley talks to himself about how doing his job properly is better than being the Mask (oh, I'm sure he'll change his mind on that...), and for some reason says that he could become "bank president" one day - what happened to "bank manager"?
And that's when Walter shows up.
Walter lifts up Stanley, who tries to give him his wallet - what, he thinks this is an ordinary mugging? But Walter, of course, carries Stanley back to Pretorius's lair, where he's placed in a scary-looking dentist-type chair, with things pinching and poking at him automatically. Pretorius walks in, very dramatically, shrouded in shadow, and tells him that his test results show that he's a normal healthy young man (I'd be insulted), except that his psychological profile indicates he's repressed and that there's a wild side to his personality that's trying to burst out. Wait, so it's not just the mask that causes that? I guess that just makes him more compatible than the average person - I doubt the baby had the same thing going on with his mind that Stanley does!
Pretorius turns the lights on by clapping his hands, which is honestly a funny way to do away with the whole shrouded-in-shadow thing, and declares that there is nothing supernatural about Stanley himself and that his power must come from the mask. Is the object itself public knowledge? Pretorius called him a masked man when reading the newspaper earlier, but the Mask never looked masked to me. Maybe they all think it's like a Hallowe'en mask or something.
Stanley plays dumb and pretends he doesn't know anything about a mask, so Pretorius scares him by ejecting his own head. It flies up in the air and comes back down on mechanical, spider-y legs! This is the other part that made me sure I've seen the episode before - I didn't recognise Pretorius until he was just a head on legs.
Pretorius explains that he had his head surgically removed from his body because he has too many things to do, and this way his head and body can work on different things. He says that he has projects scheduled until the "turn of the century", which isn't actually as impressive as it could be considering it's 1995. And don't most of us say "turn of the millennium"? Or "turnip the malevolent"?
Pretorius: Do you take me seriously now, Mr Ipkiss?
I swear, every single time Pretorius says Stanley's surname, the two syllables get further apart, so by now it's more like "Ip... kiss". This has to be intentional on the part of Tim Curry. Pretorius explains that he wants the mask in order to study it, replicate its properties, and make all his henchmen invincible, but Stanley continues to pretend he doesn't know anything about it... so Walter comes in, with Stanley's dog Milo in a cage, and starts crushing it!
Even Stanley admitting that he had the mask but buried it in concrete isn't enough to stop it - they clearly think he's lying again. But then one of the generic henchmen tells Pretorius that there's an intruder, and Walter drops the cage in order to accompany Pretorius, leaving Stanley and Milo alone. Phew! The dog does not die. I would have been very surprised if he had. There's a bit where Stanley tries to get Milo to pick the lock of the cage, but Milo interprets it as "lick" the lock. That's better comprehension than the average untrained dog!
And then the intruder walks in, and it's Peggy! She found the place because she saw Walter carrying Stanley - she calls Walter "son of Frankenstein", and I'm sure everyone knows the whole "Frankenstein is not the monster" thing by now, but Son of Frankenstein is quite specifically a movie about the son of the guy that created the monster, not the monster itself.
Peggy gets her camera ready expecting to see the Mask escape from this, but Stanley tells her he got rid of the mask - she's surprised! She frees him from the chair just as a bunch of henchmen run in, followed by Pretorius and Walter, and Stanley's strategy for getting away is actually pretty clever - he claps his hands, turning the lights back off! Pretorius turns them back on almost immediately, but Stanley has already slipped out of the room, although Peggy and Milo are now the ones who are trapped.
After sending Walter to chase Stanley, Pretorius starts talking to Peggy - she's called Peggy Brandt, we find out for the first time here, and given that she's a newspaper reporter I can't not take that as a reference to Betty Brant from Spider-Man. He's only talking about her newspaper work but it sounds like a threat coming from him, I suppose in an "I know who you are" kind of way.
The fleeing Stanley manages to find a lift that shoots him up and out into a park that's called Landfill Park for some reason. He reaches a postbox and realises - he can finally post that envelope! And then Walter shows up and crushes the postbox before he can. Wow, that's just spiteful. As always, I love when something randomly comes back like that.
So then Stanley reaches that statue and finds that the mask is, of course, buried under it - a nearby worker tells him the cement is quick-drying, as if we wouldn't believe that he couldn't get to the mask through the concrete otherwise! Walter throws a punch that smashes the statue, Stanley tries whacking him with a hammer that has no effect, and then Stanley manages to back into some not yet dry cement that immediately dries, trapping him. I'm not sure why that other cement was there, but that's where we end the episode!
I enjoyed this show a lot, especially the Mask's antics, which is why it was such a shame that we lost him halfway through. I will definitely make sure to watch episode two at some point (not as part of Debutniverse of course) just to find out where it goes from here!