Firstly it plays like a proper sequel, picking up right where the first film left off. It's just not totally Mike-and-Sulley-centric, which honestly is fine. And it actually looks darned good for being done by Disney TV animation. Thank Bob the look of the Pixar movies is retained, rather than employing some other style. And the voice actors! Unlike the series that used to be made as movie follow-ups and were mostly just for fun, this is being treated seriously, aiming for legit canon. The first pair of episodes genuinely made me laugh, like, a lot. Real whole lot. So the comedy's up to snuff.
Since Happy Days Winkler's probably had to fight "coolest dude around" typecasting, and Fritz is basically the antithesis of The Fonz, so. xD Like the colors on Val and some of the others. Her design is reminiscent of Art's, and she's one of those monsters who looks like she belongs at McDonald's. Cutter's great. MIFT team's neat, hilarious. Hooray for more Ms. Flint, finally! And getting to fully appreciate her cool sluggy-snakiness (with a touch of "mermaid" and "dress/maxi skirt" as well), as she sets about retraining everymonster as a comedian.
I've been wanting a sequel...and at some point I need to see my Randy-baby again! :'-x I just know he escaped those hillbillies and made it home.
Fungus is back. I mean, so far the continuity and inclusion of MI+MU characters whilst introducing new ones seems to off to a pretty auspicious start.
Easter egg: The poor traumatized kid has Pooh.
Tylor's mom looks nothing like him and also has my fuzzy dice. Monster genetics must be interesting. He's a lot more physically similar to Sulley. And Pixar gangs sure do like their initiation rituals.
Second episode>first.
Noticed on second viewing: Val is basically a Lisa Frank fanatic comme moi.
What's actually got me most intrigued at the moment is the almost immediate appearance of a (so far) minor character I'd been hoping to see *at some point*...okay, my main hopes for the series were to see lots and lots of MU+MI characters and as much as possible of the monster world. From the first several episodes I convinced myself to expect no more than a good setup. After all, I've lied when I've said that Pixar never disappoints. I mean, they have. And a lot of their more recent films have continued the trend of getting me less hyped/obsessed (or not at all obsessed), which really began during the latter half of the 2000s. Can't keep up the Finding Nemos and Incredibles and Cars levels forever. My other faves would include the toys and bugs and Brave--which I'll admit is among the weakest storywise. The awesome characters, setting, and everything else make that forgivable.
Pixar's worst crime to date has been scrapping the Tank Gang storyline in Finding Dory in favor of an incredibly ill-thought-out, nonsensical post-credit gag, which was just unbefitting. They deserved so much better. And no way did they travel across the Pacific in those algae-choked bags. For one thing they've got Bubbles' scalpel, Jacques' claws, Bloat's quills, Nigel's beak--come on, they did NOT really even need to wonder how they were gonna get out of the baggies. Like fo' real, guys. Gimme a break. Get with the program. Anyhoo. While a story about their traveling adventures WOULD be amazing, um, why wouldn't they just head for Nemo's part of the reef? I always envisioned a sequel set there, with them. And lately we've had the itty-bitty Dory short-short (in Pixar Popcorn) and the reef-cam which...aiight, cute for what they were and I guess better than nothing during the worst of the pandemic. However, the missed opportunities for #TankGangOntheReef, REAL SPECIES even for backgrounders, etc., re-taught me the "don't get your hopes too high" lesson.
So 'twas pleasantly surprising that I was able to start playing "I Spy With My Monstrous Eye" straight away. Right off the bat, boom, there's Carla "Killer Claws!" She was one I noted in MU and said, "Well she's obviously badass, wish there were a figure of her." At last we get to hear her speak and...um, oh my oh dear, I'm afraid there's no way that's her voice. *-* This obviously cool, confident, elegant she-monster speaks like...that? Oy. Well. Uh. We'll see what happens, but if necessary I can easily just headcanonize (which is my case simply means canonize) an identical twin for her without the vocal issue. xD; Also of note: One of my HSS gals, Rosie. Now had it been Susan, I'd know for sure they were stalking me and/or reading my mind. Which naturally they oughta do, but with proper credit and compensation. And hiring. Literally every company in the world needs me as CIP (Chief Idea Person) if it wants to truly thrive and earn not just customer satisfaction, but customer ecstasy.
Bring on all the sorority/fraternity members and whatnot!! Wanna reunite with Hardscrabble, PNK girls, Susan & Nadya & Sonia & Nancy & Rhonda [makes sense that Abby Hardscrabble would've been a HSS, as revealed in the Essential Guide], the Siamese Perry twins, the boys of JOX, Donna & the girls of EEK [interestingly there's another Carla and a Violet in there & plus Rhonda's one of Flo's Motorama girlfriends--along with Laverne and Sheila], and Javier & the rest of ROR (Worthington being the Bradley Uppercrust III of MU. They're the Gamma Moo-Moos.)
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...oh noes...I've been adding comments below but Mike's clown class just forced me to rewatch this...
As of ep 4 I can see who were chosen as the go-to cameo/background/appearance monsters. xD Hopefully more will turn up as we go. Haven't done much outside MI yet.
ReplyDeleteEp. 5 was good. Really feels as if they want Duncan to be the new Randall, and while Randy's obviously irreplaceable, it IS probably preferable to save his return for an actual film. ;) In a sense it's reversed...with Duncan your initial impression isn't too great, but maybe you'll wind up liking or even loving him. Randy started out incredibly sweet and friendly, and became understandably bitter through his relationship with Mike & Sulley. Carla keeps popping up and had a funny scene in Mike's comedy class this time, but OY, the voice...it's...it's just wrong. ._.
ReplyDeleteEp 7 was veddy funny, errybuddy was bein' lulzy... "Honey, your naked chicken needs a mint." The voice is wrong though. Duh. Guess we're just getting this "Mike's Comedy Class" group all the time rather than the tons of monsters I'd hoped could appear and cameo and pop in and out and whatnot, which figures...least it's got Carla...even with a screwy voice... Anyway. It had felt as if Abominable had been banished for a pretty long time, but Waternoose could've had scream-extractor plans for quite a while before being able to have it built. He couldn't have been in the Himalayas for as long as humans have had the "abominable snowman" concept anyway...he fit it, but maybe wasn't the first actual one... Wonder how long the season is.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Talia Flint is cool. She and her mum both feel like HSSy soul sisters of Abby... Tyler might not be that funny but again the week's episode surely was. 'Specially Cutter & Duncan. XD And the Fitzerelli move on Vendy, niiiice. #ayyyyy
ReplyDeleteM@W finale: Pretty obvious Val was gonna end up Ty's assistant. Guess Fritz has to hire another MIFTer. Well, that ended nicely for all...expected the series to be longer, but if there is no second season, it was a good fill-in for the screams-to-laughs transition period we didn't think too much about originally. Hopefully in time we'll move ahead into an actual sequel. Bring back Boo, bring back my Randy, and be much more wide-ranging/expansive. I realized pretty quickly that this was a contained storyline that probably wouldn't venture out of MI or bring in characters beyond the ones selected for it. So in the end, expectations were met. Good show. ('Cept for Carla's voice. Still can't get down with that.)
ReplyDeleteDUG DAYS: Hella cute and funny. I'll take the first house for sale in the intro. Second episode is too real, man. #MYtoys #notouchy #fuckthemkids #andsquirrels Now he needs a new Busy Bee! Least he's got a noice fish already. Assuming they didn't destroy the rest. They got a Jack Russell breeder in the neighborhood or somethin'? Well, there's Fluffy the Pood (who deserves a name like Marcella--who could be a relative of Dinah's...) Old Mill reference. Nice houseplant. Dug's reaction to fireworks, also way too real. Perhaps we should've tried soundproof headphones. xD Dog heaven with the dead squirrels (aka groundhogs) and all, haha. Dug is so very Cain-like. And of course, the last one had most of the witty, humorous dialog. Tcheehee. x-3
S2 (comment #412 here, #548 between here+miscellanyinsaney):
ReplyDeleteOH. Okay. Plenty of never-saw-that-coming. Johnny married CLAIRE? Um, would ANYONE have predicted that one, or shipped them? Wow. And Waternoose has a British son (IV) who looks absolutely nothing like him and must take after his mother or somebody.
We have Johnny to thank for rescuing precious Randy. ;_; I always knew he'd return to his own world, but dang, REALLY did not see THAT coming. Would've thought you'd reserve it for a film. Anyways, YOU GO RANDY BOY! Ugh, I just want him to be HAPPY, but it was inevitable that he wouldn't just come back and things'd be hunky-dory chill.
Duncan+Grandma Virginia 4eva.
I did like Joy...she looks like a Kung Fu Panda character though...and she's kinda basically the second Pixar Joy. Could've gone with Joyce maybe. I know the series isn't a genuine Pixar product, but it must all be approved?
Still waiting to see sooooooo many other characters though, even if only as cameos that try to essentially sum up exactly what they're up to now. ;.;
(So Rosie got fired from Fear Co. despite being damn scary? Guess that might be further elaborated upon in the inevitable S3.)
Fritz's acting allowing Winkler to become The Fonz once more, that was a nice touch.
So many tropes. We had the "doing something in a bathroom stall that totally sounds like something else and disturbs someone who overhears" thing, as exemplified by Austin Powers. I did think that having your booth next to the restroom would actually be a good thing, probably forcing most (if not all) attendees to pass you. xD We had the "keep excusing yourself so you can try to secretly eat at a restaurant with two different parties at once" episode (Mrs. Doubtfire!) The baseball-game episode--yeah, plenty o' those. The "gang's trapped in a dark scary possibly supernatural situation" horror episode--which was where the season gained noticeably in intrigue.
And so many other little things...
Jack & Jill were funny. Aren't they basically, like...married conjoined siblings, though? .__.
Interesting choice by the sadly floundering Pixar (whose last good film was Toy Story 4) to bring both Randall and Syndrome back via cartoons with virtually no fanfare or promotion. The Incredibles Bricktoon was the only one that really added anything new to its story. Syn returns with a plan to turn off everybody's electricity and then sell it back to them, but Violet and Dash trap him in a snow globe made with their sandbox and her force field...Helen comes home, blasts him off, and he lands in the studio of the cooking-show host Bob was attempting to follow to surprise Helen. A la Lucy, this turns out to be an unpleasant surprise as thanks to him and Jack-Jack the kitchen now resembles a war zone. Well...one can only hope that Syndrome gets hired as the lady's co-host or something, and Randy ends up happy-ending-ish as well. They'd better not simply continue in the unfair, predictably boring-as-hell "welp time to defeat the bad lizard guy again" direction. Certainly wouldn't mind him getting a love interest either. :-* I've got enough preferences... >.> The other shorts weren't much to write home about. The Nemo one even backtracked a bit on Marlin's character development and focused on Nemo's class, once again wasting an opportunity to give us fucking TANK GANG ON THE REEF, which I guess I'm still waiting on due to the difficulty of reassembling the voice cast for a mere Lego short. 8-\ (Also Dory, introversion=/=shyness. Grr.)
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