Tiny Toon Adventures (1990)

First episode title: The Looney Beginning

How familiar with the show am I?: I haven't seen it before, but I was generally aware of it.

So you've heard of Looney Tunes, right? I mean, you're reading a blog about cartoons. If you don't know what Looney Tunes is then I don't know how you got here. The idea behind Tiny Toon Adventures is that it's about the next generation of Looney Tunes, being trained up by the classic stars to become new icons of comedy.

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In fact, let's back up to that "How familiar with the show am I?" question. This show has one of those theme songs that explains the premise and lists a bunch of the characters, so let's go through them as the song mentions them and check whether I was aware of each of them before watching this episode:

• Babs Bunny - Yes

• Buster Bunny - Yes

• Montana Max - No

• Elmyra - Yes

• Hamton - Yes

• Plucky - Yes

• Dizzy Devil - No

• Furrball - No

• Gogo - No

Overall, slightly more characters known than unknown, but even in the opening sequence you can see plenty more characters I'm not familiar with. ...I'm not sure what this proves, but it's something.

Anyway, the episode begins in Hollywood, at the Warner Brothers studios. The first people we encounter are Daffy Duck (for a quick gag) and Bugs Bunny (to introduce and narrate the episode). It's an interesting choice to open with the Looney Tunes characters and not show us the actual Tiny Toons for a while - I wonder if they were worried about the success of the show and wanted to start with the characters they could rely on. Still, it left me eager to actually see the stars!

Bugs: It all began quite a while ago, but I remember it as clearly as if it were a flashback.

We're taken to the Warner Brothers studios, where Bugs himself hangs on the wall in picture form, and a cartoonist is being chewed out by his boss for coming up with a lousy show. Some foreshadowing here that I completely missed on my first couple of watches - the failed show is about a "rich little brat named Monty". We're going to meet him properly later on in the episode.

Side note, because I haven't got any better place to mention it: This episode seems to operate on the premise that "cartoonist" is a single job that encompasses conceiving of a show, designing the characters, and scriptwriting at least - obviously, the people making the show would themselves know better, but I can understand the need to simplify.

Anyway, the boss tells the cartoonist that he needs to come up with a hit show by 9am tomorrow. I wonder if the show's writers are speaking from experience here. The cartoonist can't think of any ideas, until the picture of Bugs on the wall tells him to give rabbits a try. His initial attempts are one overly-cute little bnuuy, and one ultra-violent mercenary type:

So, when are those two getting a show together?

The cartoonist decides to go somewhere in the middle. He starts to create a rabbit kid character, and there's a few Duck Amuck-style bits of the animator messing with his creation. The people working on this show must have been thrilled to be able to homage the classic cartoons like that. Eventually, we have our two stars, Buster Bunny and Babs Bunny:

Buster: A girl?!

Babs: Welcome to the nineties.

I feel old.

This is the part where the characters start getting out of the cartoonist's control. Babs starts showing off different designs and voices for herself. Of course, Babs showing off her voices is Tress MacNeille showing off her voices - you may also know her as Dot from Animaniacs, Mom from Futurama, and about half the recurring female cast of The Simpsons. The sequence ends with Buster literally melting after being kissed by a particularly shapely Babs design. I love the shot of the animator just looking at us, baffled by all this:

Definitely using that as a reaction gif.

This is the part where I realise I've gotten ahead of myself by calling these rabbits by name when they haven't yet been named. But now here they are, getting names! The cartoonist writes the names "Buster" and "Babs" on the paper:

Buster: I'm Buster Bunny!

Babs: And I'm Babs Bunny!

Both: No relation.

The pair respond by leaping off the page and kissing him - but he's finally had enough of their antics, and crumples them into a ball, throwing them into the rubbish with the rest of the rejected characters. He leaves the office, knowing he's out of a job.

But the bunnies climb back out of the bin (throwing in a little "Roger Rabbit" pun as they do so). They soon decide that, if no-one's going to make a show about them, they'll do it themselves.

Babs: But Buster, it takes dozens of highly-paid network executives years to come up with a TV show!

Buster: Which means it should take us about as long as this next commercial break.

Ahh, once again, the writers are definitely drawing from experience.

As we return from the ad break, Babs is pretending to be "Eraserhead" by wearing an eraser on her head. I haven't seen Eraserhead, but the target audience for this show wouldn't even know what it is, so this can only be an Easter egg for the adult audience.

The pair then start going through the elements they'll need for the show, like the location, the co-stars, the villains, and the plots. Buster immediately gets to work on drawing up the location. Remember, they are drawn characters, so if they draw a place, they can enter it too.

Babs: So what do you call it, Rembrandt?

Buster: Green Acres!

Babs: Get current.

Buster: OK... Acme Acres!

Even skipping over the fact that the design already says "Acme Acres" on it before they have this exchange, there's some humour that's lost on me here. I had to Google Green Acres to find out it's the name of a 60s sitcom, so that's presumably why it isn't "current", but Acme is a pretty ancient Looney Tunes gag itself.

The next item on their list is the "wacky but lovable neighbours", so they dive into Acme Acres to find that an audition is already set up for them. Well, Buster did draw the place after all! We meet a bunch of characters in this scene - obviously, I don't have enough context to know whether their roles in the show match how they are represented here, so I can only tell you what I think of their portrayals in this one episode.

Hamton J. Pig is explicitly introduced as the straight man. His other gimmick seems to be that he's obsessed with cleanliness, but lives in the mud like any other pig, although that aspect isn't referenced in the rest of this episode.

Next we meet Sweetie Bird and Furrball. The gag here is that Sweetie thinks of them as a typical bird-and-cat prey-and-predator cartoon duo... except Furrball is just minding his own business and Sweetie is "retaliating" for no reason at all. Since only Furrball of these two appears in the theme song, I assume he ends up being much more prominent than Sweetie, and therefore that getting beaten up by her isn't his entire gimmick. Still, I love that their entire dynamic here can be summed up in just that short gif above.

If this episode is anything to go by, Gogo Dodo would probably be my favourite character in this show. He is the surreal humour guy, showing off an ability to morph into different forms while reciting Hamlet's soliloquy. Basically, he seems to be the Homsar of this show - and considering Homestar Runner contains at least one Tiny Toon reference, he could even be the inspiration for Homsar in the first place. The bunnies send him off to live in his own separate dimension of Wackyland.

Gogo: Home surreal home!

Then they let everyone still waiting in the queue into the show too, presumably to give the writers an easy answer in case people ask where certain characters came from if we never saw them at the audition. Smart thinking.

Now we meet Plucky Duck for the first time. He's annoyed that he's not being included in the show, so presumably he's late for the audition or he would have been counted just then. A few of the characters in this show are quite obviously equivalents of Looney Tunes characters, but Plucky in particular is quite unashamedly Daffy Duck, in personality, design, and the way he speaks. He's just smaller and greener! He shows off his skills in an attempt to be made the star of the show, but the rabbits decide he should be a sidekick.

Plucky: Hamton's the sidekick type! He has all the earmarks of a sidekick!

[displays Hamton's ear, which is marked "SIDEKICK"]

The bunnies choose to ignore all this business and go off to look for villains, which the cartoonist keeps in a padlocked box with "STAY OUT" and "GO AWAY" stickers on it. Apparently, naughty toons get sent to the forever box. They open it anyway, unleashing a ton of terrifying monsters out into the open, but what they actually end up with are the dregs at the bottom of the box.

The first two are Dizzy Devil - a Tasmanian Devil equivalent - and Elmyra, a little girl obsessed with cuddly animals, who chases Dizzy into Acme Acres as he tries to escape from her terrifying love. But then we meet the actual villain of the episode - Montana Max.

This is the "Monty" that was mentioned earlier. I'd have assumed "Montana Max" was already a nickname for someone whose first name was Max, but the "Monty" shortening suggests Max might be his surname? Apparently Max does exist as a surname, and there is the occasional guy called Montana, so it's not impossible but does surprise me. Anyway, he immediately starts ranting about how he wants revenge on the animator for not giving him his own show, so Babs tells him he can find the cartoonist in Acme Acres (the little minx!), and so they have their villain!

I must say that I'm finding this character obnoxious already - but of course, that's exactly how we're supposed to feel about him.

All Buster and Babs need now are scripts for the show, which they get done off screen, because the writing isn't the focus here - as soon as they're done, Monty shows up and steals the scripts, and proclaims himself the star of the show, kicking the bunnies out of Acme Acres and evidently beating everyone else up too (we see Plucky's beak cartoonishly pop out of the drawing).

As we return from the second ad break, Bugs reminds us of the situation (we hadn't heard from him in a little while), just in time for him to get involved himself in the flashback. He jumps down out of his picture on the wall and the other two rabbits start to beg him for help, Babs throwing herself at Bugs in tears before turning to the audience and telling us "This always works". It's at this point that it occurred to me that, despite appearances, Babs so far seems to be more the "Bugs equivalent" of this show than Buster is - the latter is more of an everyman character.

Bugs, accepting their request, makes an edit of his own to the drawing of Acme Acres, adding a building labelled Acme Looniversity. The three of them enter, and are quickly joined by Plucky, who has been flattened into submission by Monty and proclaims that he's now fine with being a sidekick.

And now, the episode unexpectedly becomes a musical for a little while! The Looniversity is populated by all the classic Looney Tunes characters, ready to teach everything they know about comedy to the new generation of toons, as Bugs explains to us in song.

After a cavalcade of cameos, Plucky gets to meet his idol Daffy Duck in person! They're not afraid to make the comparison, although the main joke is that Plucky doesn't have anywhere near as much of a lisp as Daffy does.

Babs then tells us that they only have five minutes left to get the scripts back and save their show, Gogo popping up with a "PLOT EXPOSITION" sign as she does so. Oddly, we haven't been given a specific plot reason for this - it seems to be more to do with the fact that there are five minutes left in the episode, which fits with the fourth wall breaking nature of this whole story.

The last piece of advice Bugs gives the young bunnies is that villains always fall for cheesy disguises. Armed with this knowledge, the pair head for Montana Max's mansion, where Monty is putting the stolen scripts in a safe with all his cash. He's interrupted in this process by his doorbell, which seems to sound like a voice saying "Monty"? Anyway, he answers the door to find "Yosemite Sam" (Buster) and "Elmer Fudd" (Babs), his idols.

The rabbits take the opportunity to beat up Monty under the pretence of asking him how he dealt with the rabbits. Monty has been horrible enough that it's very satisfying to see this happen to him. Then they grab the scripts, and Monty still doesn't suspect anything until he finally sees the bunnies' tails and realises who they are.

Buster and Babs start running, shedding the disguises, as Monty activates his security system, which is as cartoony as it can possibly be - giant false teeth and a boxing glove pop out of the walls, narrowly missing the bunnies each time. Cannons start firing bags of money at them, and a giant coin with Monty's face on it rolls towards them.

Luckily, they successfully evade everything, and the giant coin ends up crushing Monty instead. We then cut to the next morning, where the animator comes in to find a pile of scripts on his desk. The network loves the ideas and the animator's boss gives him a huge raise - the writers wish this was based on their real lives, I should imagine. Buster and Babs then bully the animator into giving them a "Created by" credit on the show - which actually appears in the credits! I wonder if that's in every episode.

And speaking of credits, that's all, folks!