Tag: Pop Culture

Season 2, Episode 5, Storyline D – “Shark”

Original Airdate: October 15, 1977

Safety Segment
Superman, flying overhead, notices two boys on a bike. One is sitting on the handlebars so the one pedaling can’t see what he’s doing. They almost fall into a deep crevice in the sidewalk, but Superman rescues them just in time.

Superman chides them for “riding double” and then they discuss general bicycle safety. Do you see that hole in the ground? How in the hell did that happen and why aren’t there any warning signs? There should have been more talk about the un-blocked-off big-ass crack in the earth.

Short Synopsis: “A warm, sunny day at State Beach, where two teenagers will soon take a boat ride they will never forget.” – Narrator

Our cast of Wonder Twin Cautionary Tale Teenagers (notice we have yet another pair of deserted island cutoffs):

I had to name two of them myself.

The one dressed like an idiot (Mike) brags that he, “just broke the beach record – dove down to 60ft!” I don’t know anything about scuba diving. Is this impressive? I like to know how accurate the cartoon brags I’m watching are.

Mike declares he can dive anywhere, and to “just name it!” So, it is named by Wallpaper: Rocky Point Cave.

There’s then some exposition about all the sharks that hang out around there and that nobody tries to dive there because of it.

It’s a Shark of a Tale
There’s a shark at Rocky Point Cave. I sure didn’t see that coming.

Mike panics and turns over the boat, bringing Wallpaper into the water with him.

Karen and Left Blinker, who watched this happen from the beach, say they’re going to get help, but they aren’t shown seeking out a payphone so I’m not sure I believe them.

Mike and Wallpaper decide to swim back down to the rocks for protection (they share Mike’s oxygen).

Yay. The Wonder Twins.
Now it’s time for The Wonder Twins to show up and ruin everything.

Zan, Jayna, and Gleek arrive on the scene just in time and in their usual eagle-carrying-a-monkey-carrying-a-bucket-of-water configuration. Zan turns into an “ice boat” because he’s completely lame and worthless and Jayna turns into an octopus, in mid-air, which was really weird looking.

Can’t you just imagine Mid-Air Octopus flying around dispensing wisdom and general tips? No? I’ve just finally lost it because of all the Super Friends viewing? Fair enough.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah, Jayna stops the shark:

Lesson Learned
Once they’re all out of harm’s way, Mike let’s everyone know: “No more braggin’ for me. From now on I’ll stick to diving where I know it’s safe.”

Or, in other words:

P.S. I’m posting Super Friends outtakes on the Cannibalistic Nerd Facebook page. So, if you need a mid-week Super Friends pick-me-up, that’s the place to get it.

If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.

Season 2, Episode 5, Storyline D – “The Enforcer”

Original Airdate: October 15, 1977

Pre-synopsis warning: this segment was only about 7 minutes long, so there wasn’t much to work with. That also probably means that the third storyline is going to be tortuously long. Next week is another teenager-related cautionary tale. It’s gonna be a rough few weeks, folks.

Short Synopsis: “On a desolate island in the South Pacific…” – Narrator

Narrator has fallen asleep again. We see an older man with half a head of hair dodging red laser beams from robotic-looking creatures. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it, Narrator?

He’s quite spry for a man his age, and in order to escape the robot-things, he dives off a cliff. He washes up on shore at a different island days later, having seemingly made himself a raft while floating in the ocean.

Some islanders help him and contact the Super Friends, telling them he has an “incredible story.” We’ll see about that.

Aquaman and Wonder Woman are on the case.

Here’s this incredible story we’ve heard so much about.
“I am Garth (my guess) One, Super Friends, I was the leader of a peaceful civilization that lives hidden beneath the island I came from. However, our people became corrupt, and law an order vanished. In an attempt to restore order, the council overruled me, and voted to put The Enforcer in temporary command of the state. A ruthless outlaw, with his own army of criminals, when the council realized its mistake it was too late.”

Eh, I’ve heard better.

“I think it’s time The Enforcer met the Super Friends.” – Wonder Woman

Yeah, that’ll show him! Nobody wants to have to meet The Super Friends.

The Enforcer and his army – when compromise goes wrong.
The Enforcer looks like someone took two different action figures, some kind of web-handed yellow creature and a purple something, and combined them into one:

The army soldiers, I can only imagine a writer telling the animators – “I want knight’s suit of armor meets cheerleader uniform meets Metropolis.”

Wonder Woman needs to take Disguises 101 again.
As soon as they arrive at the under-island civilization, Garth is apprehended by The Enforcer and taken into custody. Aquaman and Wonder Woman do the old “knock out some bad guys and take their uniforms” trick to rescue Garth.

Luckily, the villains are just as stupid and don’t notice.

Oh, my.

Aquaman and Wonder Woman find Garth One being strung up over a vat of some kind of boiling substance. Is this the kind of kinky stuff in Fifty Shades of Grey? Was it influenced by The Super Friends? Nevermind, I don’t care.

Then, Wonder Woman lassoes two measly soldiers and proclaims the Super Friends the victors. Huh? Basically The Enforcer and, like, four friends took control of an entire civilization? Oh, wait, it’s that they only have 7 minutes to tell a story? Ok, yeah, that makes more sense.

The Enforcer pulls your typical “NU UH, nanner nanner boo boo, I have an escape hatch!” move and then tries to swim away. But he’s no match for Aquaman the swordfish Aquaman suckers into helping him.

Peace is restored and everybody learned their lesson. Snooooze.

P.S. I’m posting Super Friends outtakes on the Cannibalistic Nerd Facebook page. So, if you need a mid-week Super Friends pick-me-up, that’s the place to get it.

If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.

Season 2, Episode 5, Storyline D – “Energy Mass”

Original Airdate: October 8, 1977

It’s Craft Time!

Superman comes across a treasure chest on the beach that doesn’t belong to him and starts rifling through it like that’s totally ok.

He finds a telescope, says “it would look good in anybody’s room,” but then brags that because of his x-ray vision, he doesn’t need it. That’s great; you know why? BECAUSE IT’S NOT YOURS, SUPERMAN.

There’s other stuff in there, too – glue, old spools (which Super Friends seems to think every household has piles and piles of), paint – all the things you’ll need to make a model telescope. What a crappy treasure to find. It’s almost as if there’s some lesson to be learned about not going through other people’s stuff.

Here’s how you make your model telescope that Superman doesn’t need because of his awesome x-ray vision and don’t you forget it:
1. From your giant pile of empty wooden thread spools, pick out four different sizes because obviously you would have four different sizes.
2. Put them on a soda straw, which I don’t know what that is, I think they may be using 1950s speak again, or, he just means “a straw” and is being a jerk about it. Then, you glue each spool together and remove the soda straw – why the hell did we need a soda straw in the first place? Forget the soda straw, I’m sorry I ever mentioned it.

3. Using your telekinetic powers or your ability to stop time (most people can do one or the other), hover your glued spools in mid-air and paint everything brown, like so:

4. Then, add yellow to the raised parts to look like brass. Now you have a model telescope made from stolen materials – congratulations!

Energy Mass – Short Synopsis: “The island of Japan, home of the Takado (my guess), the 125 mph super train.” – Narrator

These guys are standing around a bunch of orange and yellow stuff in a giant jar and then danger lights start flashing and they say the energy mass is growing too rapidly. “Our experimental perpetual energy could be disastrous if it got out of hand,” says the one in the lab coat. Guess what happens.

“Stand back! No one can survive it’s touch,” exclaims the one in the proper brown 1970’s suit. So, now there’s a high speed train with a giant orange and yellow thing that kills whatever it touches aboard. It’s heading downhill, so if someone can’t get past the energy blob, I mean, mass, and apply the brakes, all is lost.

The Super Friends are alerted, and it turns out that Batman and Robin just so happen to be “right near Japan,” and they have special guest star, Atom, with them.

Atom, the littlest Super Friend.
Who’s this Atom? I looked him up in Wikipedia, which had this to say about him:

“The Atom/Ray Palmer possesses the power to alter his size down to the subatomic level while retaining his natural strength level. This is accomplished by using the remnants of a white-dwarf star made into a belt buckle worn with his costume.”

Belt-buckle-based super powers? Ok by me. I wonder how much fawning from regular-sized ladies he gets when he’s li’l. He probably hears a lot of, “oh, I could just put him in my pocket and take him home,” or “isn’t he the sweetest li’l thing?” I bet when that happens, he makes an expression that looks like this:

They gloss over the ending, so I can, too!
Batman, Atom, and Robin show up. They all focus on stopping the train, which they succeed at with teamwork and the script. The scientists create some kind of counter-balance blob of yellow and orange, and everything turns out fine.

Then, Atom says he’s all tuckered out, and pretends to take a nap on Batman’s shoulder. It was awkward and I felt weird watching it.

Health Segment
There’s a fire in a neighborhood, and fire trucks roar down the street. Wonder Woman swoops in from out of nowhere, as she is wont to do, to talk to the kid who called 911 (and not help out with the fire). The kid says he had some trouble calling the fire department. Wonder Woman has the answer! She tells him he needs an emergency contact list. This is the example she shows him:

So, kids, when you get home, take a permanent marker and scrawl a bunch of contact information directly on the wall – Wonder Woman says to!

P.S. I’m posting Super Friends outtakes on the Cannibalistic Nerd Facebook page. So, if you need a mid-week Super Friends pick-me-up, that’s the place to get it.

If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.

Season 2, Episode 5, Storyline C – “Super Friends vs Super Friends”

Original Airdate: October 8, 1977

Short Synopsis: “Somewhere in the vast Pacific Ocean, a naval exploration ship lowers a diving bell with two Navy scientists. But, little do they realize, they too are being studied.” – Narrator

Basically, there’s a whole underwater civilization of aquatic creatures who have never been discovered (*cough* Aquaman *cough*) and they like to collect specimens they find to fight each other for their amusement in a giant underwater arena. Here’s what they look like.

The Super Friends staff must have had entire teams of animators whose sole purpose was to try and come up with new ways to draw under water humanoids. These things are from “the long-forgotten city of Oceana, sister city to Atlantis.” I guess I’ll call them Oceanians. No, scratch that, I’m calling them Glubbity Glubs.

And then, of course, the Super Friends are captured one by one like flies to a flytrap.
I was going to explain how every single one of the Super Friends end up trapped by the Glubbity Glubs, but does it really matter? You can pretty much sum it up with: they did something stupid and then were paralyzed by an “invisible muscle control ray.”

Aquaman gets captured first (ineptly trying to help that diving bell), then ALL THE REST of them are taken in one fell swoop.

And, it took the Glubbity Glubs to finally say what we’re all thinking: “These surface dwellers are even more powerful than the other.” They mean Aquaman, in case you weren’t sure.

The Glubbity Glubs are a hard race to please.
When we’re shown the arena for the first time, a Glubbity Glub is fighting aaaaaa…Parrot Lobster?

The crowd shouts things like, “More action! More excitement! The monsters always win!”

Tyranus, the supreme ruler of the Glubbity Glubs, is worried about his precarious position as tyrant, “If I’m to remain in supreme power, they must be constantly entertained.”

He then announces to the crowd: “People of Oceana, your boredom is at an end! BEHOLD!”

And then they BOO. Y’all, it was awesome.

Then, Tyranus unveils the monster Aquaman is to fight, which looks like a Vulture-Crab-Turtle:

He then assures everyone, “Tomorrow’s games will thrill even the most bored among you!” I love that the biggest problems the Glubbity Glubs face is boredom.

Get it on, bang a gong.
The plan is to have all the Super Friend fight each other until one remains, then that one will fight Vulture-Crab-Turtle.

I knew I probably wouldn’t get to see the Super Friends actually fight each other to the death. I’m not that dumb. But, I was hoping, at least, maybe there could be some bickering. Like, Superman starts arguing about Batman always sitting in his chair, or Wonder Woman snapping and telling everyone she’s “up here,” I mean, that’s not too much to ask for, is it?

Yes, it is. Their plan is to fake a fight and then have one fake-standing at the end. This is necessary because of the muscle control rays – they are all helpless to them. Guess who volunteers to be the winner?

Foolproof plan right there.

They start out by swinging at each other from afar, kind of like that fight move “The Windmill.” Look how convincing and vicious it is:

Then, Wonder Woman lassos Batman and Robin together as I’m sure they requested.

And, um, this happens.

The image of Wonder Woman winking at Aquaman is going to haunt me the rest of my life.

And, finally, this.

Now that the one person even the Glubbity Glubs thought didn’t stand a chance has won the giant fake fight, he has to fight Vulture-Crab-Turtle.

WTF Screenshots
This is my favorite – a barrel full of pretend-dead super heroes at the Ocean Disposal. Brilliant.

Batman needs to get back to the gym.

Will Aquaman Beat the Monster? Do any of us care?
Aquaman, who was all, “I wanna win the fake fight, my specialty is fighting Vulture-Crab-Turtles! I wanna win, waaaaaahhhh!” finds it a little harder than he anticipated.

First, he gets stuck in a claw.

Then, the tank they’re in breaks, and way more water than it could have possibly held floods the arena, and the monster starts attacking everyone.

The Super Friends save everyone’s ass and the Glubbity Glubs learn their lesson.

So here’s the age-old question: who do you think would win an actual fight? I’m pretty sure it would come down to Superman and Wonder Woman. He’d probably be the final victor unless she had some kryptonite or fear gas up her sleeve. Wait, she doesn’t have sleeves. Superman, then. What do you think?

P.S. I’m posting Super Friends outtakes on the Cannibalistic Nerd Facebook page. So, if you need a mid-week Super Friends pick-me-up, that’s the place to get it.

If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.