The All-New Super Friends Round Up S2 Ep3C – “City in a Bottle”

Season 2, Episode 3, Storyline C – “City in a Bottle”

Original Airdate: September 24, 1977

Short Synopsis: “Mid City, U.S.A, peaceful, with none of its millions of citizens unaware of the terrible fate being prepared for their grrrreat metropolis.” – Narrator

Ragor and Margor (whose name is later changed to Mangor) have found the “perfect city on the perfect planet” for their experiment. Their experiment?  To shrink a whole city and put it in a bottle, take it to their planet, and then do stuff to it. The transformation becomes permanent after 24 hours (Super Friends love arbitrary deadlines). The Wonder Twins and Gleek happened to be visiting the city that got shrunk.

“Jupiters! I hope it’s not the ‘no deposit no return’ kind!” – Zan, who I hate.

The NASA Space Tracking Station
When the Super Friends find out about the disappearance of the city, they rush to the NASA Space Tracking Station to figure out the trajectory of the UFO. As you can see, they have the most advanced space tracking technology available at the time – a swirly thing on a screen:

They track the UFO to planet X-3, which is made entirely of ice, and is 7 billion miles away, Aquaman and Wonder Woman somehow know off the top of their heads.

I don’t know how else to put this.
The Super Friends go to Cape Canaveral to get a rocket to go to X-3, and the following exchange takes place:

Person who knows about rockets: Well, we’d like to help, Superman, but a rocket powerful enough to get to planet X-3 would take years to build.
Superman: Then we’ll just have to make do with that one!
Rocketman: NO, SUPERMAN, WAIT!
Superman: We can’t wait! All aboard!

And then The Super Friends all climb aboard and hijack a rocket.

This is why I make fun of you on a weekly basis, Super Friends.
Superman is then frozen by Margor and Ragor while he was trying to “reverse the UFO’s gyro-rockets to halt descent.” Frozen into a solid block of ice, the ever astute Superman exclaims:

“It’s some alien form of ice! I….can’t….function!”

The Super Friends look really concerned, watching this happen in their groovy hijacked rocket:

Wonder Woman decides to free ice-chunk Superman by using her lasso to wrap around him and use “the ol’ fire by friction bit.”

Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna use the ol’ fire by friction bit.

It works, and Superman is lassoed in safely.

Now give it here, you never should have promised to me, give it here.

Meanwhile, in the bottle.
Zan and Jayna find their way down to the very bottom of the bottle. Zan turns into an “ice spear” and Jan turns into a Gorilla. Jan then starts stabbing away at the bottom of the bottle.

They must not have realized that there were probably things like jackhammers available to them since, you know, the whole city was taken.

They then continue to suck and not help from outside the bottle.

De-Coder Part II
SHOCKING NEWS: something went wrong with one of the free hot air balloon baloon rides.

The clue is “what was beside you in the tree, not the bird itself, but what it likes to do.” My guess is “shit white poop.”

Nope, it was “sing.” So the de-coder word was “freezing.”

Let’s Wrap This Up in Pictures
In the span of about four minutes the following happens:

Batman and Robin are menaced by a dragon lobster.

Then, are saved by Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and they all have to share a single homemade wind sled thing.

Zan sends a message to the Super Friends after he climbs up the giant radio (because I never tire of miniature Super Friends).

Zan, Gleek, and Jayna are caught and thrown back in the bottle like they deserve.

Then, it’s revealed that below the ice surface is corrosive acid.

Then, the Super Friends fall for Mangor’s trap and end up stuck inside a cavern.

Then, because Mangor didn’t check for any exits, they make it out of the cavern.

Then, the word “impregnable” is used A LOT.

Then, they get trapped again.

I can’t take it anymore. I didn’t include the Mid City population analysis experiment, the shrunken army Mangor brought back to Earth, the frozen robot soldiers the Super Friends had to fight, Zan and Jayna going into the frozen soldier machine to muck up the mechanism, Superman flying back to earth with Mid City, Superman stealing borrowing a reflector from Metropolis observatory, Superman deflecting the Margor warriors to a distant asteroid, and Superman getting Mid City back into place. I just feel the need to remind everyone that this was about four minutes of story.

What did we learn from all of this? X-3 is a place you neither want to live or visit. And that the third storyline in the All-New Super Friends Hour episodes are painful to summarize. So, so painful.
If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.

6 thoughts on “The All-New Super Friends Round Up S2 Ep3C – “City in a Bottle””

  1. Look, I’m not trying to be pollyannic but the two episodes before this one were so damn bad someone got fired. They told the writers errr, bullcrap artists, to really dig up something plot heavy and superheroish. This one fits that bill.

    I like that the bad guys were almost decent and Superman was made to look like doosh twice.

    Also, and maybe I’m been reading too many 50 Shades of Grey excerpts (awful) but Wonder Woman’s lasso trick was kinda hot.

    1. I can see someone making it rain in the writers room with index cards filled with ideas and forcing them to create a story using every one.

      You’re right, these villains were real – they were just mean, not misguided like usual.

  2. Wow, just wow. I can’t even put together a coherent comment. Do the people who made this crap have no shame? They ought to be crying themselves to sleep every night under a bridge.

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