The Why Why Family (1996)
First episode title: Photo Opportunity / Sick Leave / O Solar Mio / All You Need Is Lava / A Horse Of A Different Color
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of it before.
Victor is the baby of the Why Why family, and he has a lot of questions about how the world works - luckily, all his relatives are very knowledgeable about all sorts of things!
Let's start by going through the family members, from what I could tell in this episode:
Victor, the baby
Max, Victor's father, the expert on inventions
Vanilla, Victor's mother, the expert on animals and plants
- Kwik and Kwak, her pet birds
Micro and Scopo, Victor's uncles, the experts on human biology, who can shrink themselves down
Matic, Victor's grandfather, the expert on outer space
- Zygo, his pet dog
Eartha, Victor's grandmother, the expert on the Earth
- Basalt, her pet dragon
A lot of the above is established at breakneck speed in the opening sequence. I've referred to the animals as pets but they can all talk. This episode, at least, does not make it clear whether the uncles and grandparents are paternal or maternal - I'm assuming paternal so that the whole family would be the "Why Why" family, if that's their surname.
Each of set of characters gets their own short each episode (hence the five titles listed above for this episode), where the relevant characters explain something relevant to Victor. The opening sequence implies that this is typically caused by Victor crying "Why" about something and everyone in the family running to see what's the matter, but luckily he's not as irritating as that in the actual episode, with the aforementioned gimmick only occurring once in the five shorts. The different shorts each have their own opening sequence and "The End" card featuring the relevant characters, making them feel like very short episodes of their own TV shows with overlapping casts, although there's a preview before the opening where Victor tells us what he'll be learning in this episode, and a sequence before the credits at the end where he reminds us of all he learned.
Onto the first short, "Photo Opportunity", starring Max, Victor's dad. As it starts, Max is showing the family some photos from his photo album, which they all seem pretty bored by (I wouldn't be!). Then he shows off the fancy camera he took all the photos with, and Victor asks how cameras work - which everyone is much more interested in!
Max takes Victor into some kind of studio room, with a stage set up with lights around it. The first thing he explains is that even the fanciest, most hi-tech cameras work in the same way as simple cameras, so they can use a simple one for the lesson. Given that what we're about to see is the explanation for a film camera, the writers don't seem to have known about digital cameras at all - commercial digital cameras had existed for at least a decade at this point, but perhaps weren't well-known enough yet.
Max hands Victor a simple camera to demonstrate, and Victor immediately starts playing with it, setting off the flash, which messes with Max's eyes:
The two of them shrink down together to look inside the camera. That seems like it's supposed to be Micro and Scopo's gimmick, but I suppose anyone can do it if it helps to demonstrate something. First Max demonstrates the lens, and how it concentrates the light and produces an upside-down image on the other side. When Victor assumes that that's all there is to it, Max starts to explain that there are still a lot of other parts to the camera, but then the lens itself comes to life and insists that it's the most important part! It's all the little entertaining things like this that make this more than just a dry educational show.
The two of them travel past the lens but crash into the iris, which is closed because of the amount of light. Max pops back out and turns a couple of the many lights off, and the iris opens enough for them to get through - but someone outside turns the lights back on as they're going through, and Max almost loses his hat! After Victor has a little sarcastic comment on the next part of the camera being called the "dark chamber" (cheeky baby!), Max explains about the shutter, and the fact that it opens just long enough for the film to get the right amount of light to record the image. There's a lovely little gag here, where Max has taken out a roll of film from his pocket and partially unravelled it to explain about it:
Max: If the film gets too much light - er, like this one just did - then it's ruined!
As they wrap up the lesson, the camera is taking a picture, and Max is annoyed that someone outside is playing around with the camera - the two of them get out of there to find Basalt, the diddy-winged dragon, who is so startled that he sends the camera flying, and all three of them run around trying to catch it, causing even more of a mess:
The flying camera ends up taking a picture of the chaos, and we cut to Max, covered in bandages, showing the family his album again, this time with a new addition!
The next short, "Sick Leave", stars Victor's uncles Micro and Scopo. Grandpa Matic is sick, complaining about "darned microbes", which I suppose is a normal thing to say in a family like this! In any case, it's the perfect set-up for Victor to ask Micro and Scopo what microbes are.
They start by showing him a bacterium and a virus using a microscope. I have to say, I doubt the animators were given any reference for what either of those things look like, but their interpretations are cute - little round things with big faces, the bacterium being green and the virus being blue. The uncles explain how bacteria go about their lives just like any other animal, as we see one getting out of bed and hanging up its washing on a line, whereas viruses are only active when another living cell wakes them up, as we see one just sleeping in bed. Victor wants to see what it looks like awake, but Micro really doesn't want to wake it up!
Micro and Scopo prepare to shrink themselves down to enter Matic. It's too dangerous for Victor to go too, but they set him up in front of a monitor where he can watch everything.
Interestingly, Micro and Scopo have a gizmo (yes, actually named as a "gizmo") that they use to shrink themselves down - Max didn't seem to need anything to put himself and Victor inside the camera. As another aside, Micro refers to Matic as "Matic" here, seeming to suggest he's not from the same side of the family (because if he was, Matic would be his father). Perhaps I'm just overthinking that though. Micro and Scopo do have the same Goofy-like long black ears as Matic.
So they arrive in Matic's body, and a bacterium shows up almost immediately. It's wearing a cap and work clothes and gets in by drilling a hole through the skin! It quickly starts reproducing by separating itself into more bacteria:
The bacteria start beating up the cells in Matic's body, but Matic takes an antibiotic capsule, which arrives in the body equipped with boxing gloves and beats up the bacteria! The antibiotic attacks the bacteria just as they separate because that's when they're at their weakest - wow, I really am learning things from this.
Micro wants to check whether Matic also has a virus - not really a logical thing to suspect at this point, but we wouldn't get the demonstration otherwise! We see how a virus takes over a human cell, uses it to make more of itself, then kills the cell. The white corpuscles (I was taught "white blood cells" but apparently this is a valid alternative term) fight off the viruses (with laser guns!) and then create antibodies - described as mines and drawn as cartoon bombs - to fight off the virus if the same one ever shows up again.
Just then, Matic sneezes and Micro and Scopo fly out of the mouth - they activate the gizmo as they leave, so they turn big again, but Scopo comically lands on top of the much shorter Micro, bringing the short to an end.
Next: "O Solar Mio", starring Grandpa Matic and his dog Zygo. It's Victor's birthday, and Grandpa Matic has bought Victor a model of the solar system. Victor doesn't know what that is, so Zygo takes it upon himself to explain. Since this was made in the 90s, he tells us that it's the Sun and the nine planets that orbit it - specifically calling out Pluto as his personal favourite. Sorry to break this to you, Zygo...
Then the three of them set off to explore the solar system. On the way, as Matic flies the rocket, Zygo explains to Victor how the planets close to the Sun are the small, "hard" planets, and then the next four are the "giant" planets. He doesn't use the term "gas giants", which kind of obscures why the other ones are called "hard", but he's very enthusiastic so I'll forgive him. Matic offers to take them to Mercury, but Zygo points out that it's too hot to visit:
So, they go to Mars instead. They leave the rocket in their spacesuits, and Victor soon discovers how much lighter he is on Mars, especially when he sneezes and blows himself across the surface. (Do the mechanics of that work if you're in a spacesuit?) We also get a brief view of Phobos and Deimos, Mars's moons, looking a bit too round.
When they go through the asteroid belt, Victor thinks someone is shooting at the ship:
They blast past Jupiter and Saturn, giving us the trivia about their sizes relative to Earth, but Victor is more interested in Saturn's rings. Matic is happy to take everyone to them:
But Zygo, the spoilsport, points out that all the ice and rocks would damage the ship. Victor complains that the solar system doesn't seem very friendly, and ask if there's another they could go too, but Matic points out that we do know one "nice planet" - the Earth, which as we all know is Mostly Harmless.
The fourth short is "All You Need Is Lava", with Grandma Eartha and her dragon Basalt. When it starts, Scopo is playing with Victor in a sandbox - Victor has just been making some very impressive-looking sand sculptures, and now Scopo is going to show him how to make a volcano. Micro points out that a sand volcano isn't going to erupt, and so Victor wants to know why volcanoes erupt, but Micro and Scopo didn't know - this is the one time Victor ends up crying out "Whyyyyy?", and Eartha and Basalt rush to his side.
Eartha says that it will be easy to explain, and so she takes him down to under the Earth's crust, presumably by flying on Basalt judging by what we see later.
They're now in a lava-filled cave, and I have to say it - Eartha and Victor's protective suits make them look like Among Us. There, we can move on. Eartha specifically mentions the temperature here, and I have to take notice of the fact that it's more than the temperature that was mentioned as being the reason it was too hot to go to Mercury - but here it's fine, and they even take off the helmets of their protective suits pretty soon! Basalt, of course, being a dragon, doesn't need a suit, and even acts as if he's cold. He lives with the family, though, so he's not fooling me.
Eartha explains about the different layers of the Earth - they're standing where the crust meets the mantle, the mantle being the bit with all the magma. Basalt happens to have a peach on him, so Eartha can use it to demonstrate that the skin of a peach is proportionally as thick as the crust is on the Earth. (Wow!)
Eartha starts to talk about how the magma is under a lot of pressure, and here we get another moment like with the lens earlier - a pile of magma pops up to complain about the pressure!
Magma: Oh, you bet there's pressure! All day long, sitting around melting rocks - what, you think that's easy?
Eartha explains about how, when magma gets up to the surface, it forms a volcano. When Victor asks how magma reaches the surface, the magma tries to eavesdrop! So she explains, quietly, that it gets through the fissures between the Earth's tectonic plates:
There are more tectonic plates than shown in the animation, I believe.
But the magma nearby has a better idea - it shouts "Boo!" behind Basalt, scaring him and causing him to crash into the roof of the cave, creating a crack, and all the magma prepares to start rising up. I think we've slightly left the realm of scientific plausibility now, but as Victor and Eartha escape on Basalt, Eartha does take the opportunity to explain that most volcanoes form in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Unfortunately, since this is a new volcano, it ends up right outside their house, destroying Micro's car!
The lava flows out as Eartha explains that the eruption also produces ash and mud, and that the lava cools into rock, but Micro and Scopo are busy arguing over whose fault all this is, since Scopo was the one who brought up volcanoes in the first place! Wouldn't we all like to be part of a family that might end up arguing about whose fault a volcanic eruption is?
The final short, "A Horse Of A Different Color", is presented by Victor's mum Vanilla, and her birds Kwik and Kwak. One of the birds is purple and male, and the other is green and female, but unfortunately this episode never states which one is Kwik and which one is Kwak.
It starts with Vanilla feeding Victor some kind of chocolate dessert, getting him to eat it by going "a spoonful for daddy, a spoonful for mommy", but she includes too many family members on the last spoonful:
Where did all that dessert come from?! Anyway, Victor mischievously makes a mess of the dessert and ends up with "zebra stripes", causing Victor to ask why zebras have stripes if they're not covered in pudding. The purple bird claims he knows, but Victor covers him in pudding, making him understandably reluctant to share. The only alternative is for them all to go to Africa!
They pass a giraffe and a very skittish elephant before reaching the zebras. There's a little gag where Victor can't actually see the zebras from his low-down view in the back seat, and his mother needs to hold him up. Purple bird wants to get a closer look, but green bird warns him about going near wild animals, so he shows her how wild he can be by pushing her in a puddle.
Purple bird (either Kwik or Kwak): Hey you, zebra! Why do you have stripes?
Zebra: Because the store was all out of polka dots.
And then the zebra hits that bird into the puddle too, and both birds have one of those fights that's just a cloud of body parts. Vanilla breaks up the fight and asks the purple bird if he really does know why zebras have stripes, and he says that it's camouflage that helps them hide behind trees. As Victor points out, though, they're not in a place that has any trees at all! Take that, bird.
Vanilla explains that it's not really known for certain why zebras have stripes, but goes through two major theories: either the stripes of a herd all together cause an optical illusion that confuses predators (we see a lion run into... uh... a tree), or it helps zebras recognise each other. There is a cute moment between a mother zebra and a baby, and then Victor compares the concept to the idea of an American football team all wearing the same uniform - his imagination produces a team of zebras facing off against what I think are meant to be bulls, in different colours for each team. His idea suddenly seems to become real as the purple bird catches the ball and gets trampled!
They quickly escape from the football pitch, however it got there, and that's how the short ends! As mentioned earlier, there's a recap of everything we learned this time, but that's over pretty quickly, and the credits come what seems like way too soon - I was really enjoying this!
