Most excellent greetings fellow tubular
'toon enthusiasts! - widdly air guitar- Are you ready to join me on a
truly non-bogus journey- er, well, I mean a most Excellent Adventure
through time? Those two most triumphantly radical dudes, Bill S.
Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan (and of course Rufus) are
back in CBS/Fox Kids' gnarly 1990-1991 animated series Bill and Ted's
Excellent Adventures. I'm way stoked to introduce you to this most
non-heinous edition of Best Cartoon Ever (of the Month).
For the bodacious first season, we're
blessed by the film's crew for the main cast! That's right, we have
Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq., Keanu Reeves as Ted “Theodore”
Logan and George Carlin as Rufus. If I hadn't been age 2 and 3
respectively when this movie and first season ran, I would have
appreciated this attention to detail on behalf of the show's creators
(because I do now). The second season switches the voices of Winter,
Reeves, and Carlin for their counterparts in the live-action show
that followed the animated series.
The first season is definitely the best
of the series' two-season lifespan. The first follows more closely
the “rules” of the film whereas the second is an attempt to gear
up the live-action series that followed after this show went
belly-up. The second season deviates from the “no imaginary people”
notion held by the movie and first season, thanks to a newly
developed “Slint” phone booth which allows them to encounter
literary figures as well as take a relatively non-heinous Magic
School Bus-esque adventure into their gym teacher's body. While I'm
sure this Slint phone booth was a great idea at the time,
well, actually that was just as lame then as it is now and for the
same reasons - I realize you have to chase the all-mighty greenback,
but please, not at the expense of the original creative work. There
aren't many cartoons that I love the way I love this one where I
would say “stop” after the first season, but this is definitely
the case with Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures.
My favorite episode of the whole entire
series is “This Babe Ruth 'Babe' is a Dude, Dude”. It begins
with Rufus taking bowling shoes to Yankee Civil War troops to fix a
warp in time – Bill and Ted donate their new kicks to the worthy
cause despite it being Wednesday – the dreaded gym class day. Their
time-traveling is brought about when the dudes are tasked with
shining trophies after causing the gym teacher some grief for running
through the hurdles instead of over. The gym teacher had a
Babe Ruth autographed baseball that fell into some water while they
were polishing and the signature magically disappeared. Luckily, he
mentioned his prized baseball was for the greatest Yankee of
all time, and as memory would serve Rufus was taking shoes to some
Yankees! They get back to Rufus doling out soles to Civil War
soldiers and he directs them to Abner Doubleday.
Doubleday makes two appearances in this
show, and is completely different from one episode to another. In
this one, he's inventing the GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME (Phantom,
spare me your groans of sportsball agony, we're talking BASEBALL and
I won't have it!). Phantom
Note: This information is incorrect. As everybody knows, the Greatest
Game of All Time is Parcheesi. Also, I can’t believe this whole
post is about fucking baseball.
The two dudes encounter Harriet Tubman
on the baseball diamond “battlefield” and she delivers some
egregiously heinous information to young viewers about building the
Underground Railroad – like, an actual railroad located
underground, complete with mine car. After leaving this time, Bill
and Ted have worked up quite an appetite so they make a pit stop in
Transylvania. This episode is a little weird and I believe the only
time the first season brings in a literary figure instead of a
historical figure – Ted mentions visiting Jack and the Beanstalk in
one episode and Bill shuns the idea as the giant of the story being
“imaginary”. They encounter, of course, a downright ornery Count
Dracula (whose voice cadence reminds me of Christian Slater for some
reason) that is mistakenly using their phone booth as a coffin.
They then arrive at Yankee Stadium in
1927 where they finally score some $0.05 hot dogs to satiate that
time-traveling snack attack, but alas there are no “babes” on the
field! As luck would have it Ted still had a stake that he picked up
at Dracula's place and lo and behold the Babe makes his appearance!
Babe Ruth mistakes Ted for the bat boy and the stake for his new
lucky bat. However, as Ruth steps to the plate, the dynamic duo are
bounced from the game for not having tickets – and more
heinously, with only a Babe Ruth baseball card and no autographed
baseball!
While trading that card to a street
vendor who was having trouble pushing his bubble gum wares (hence is
born the greatest marketing strategy of all time – chewing gum and
baseball cards), Bill and Ted are the supreme masters of “right
time, right place” and snag the 60th home run of the
Babe and luckily it was hit out of the park and it's strangely
already signed. A most excellent adventure indeed!
Bill and
Ted with the Babe
My second favorite episode is the
second one of the series “The Birth of Rock and Roll or Too Hip for
the Womb”. In this one, the two dudes are failing their music
appreciation class most egregiously. They define classical music as
anything written in the 1970s or by Eddie Van Halen. Obviously
outraged by that and the fact that they called the “William Tell
Overture” the theme song to the Lone Ranger, their teacher orders
them to research the topic and write a report due the following day.
Being that they have a most triumphant time-traveling phone booth,
they hop in and are off on their adventure for this episode.
They pick up a runt known as Wolfgang
“Wolfie” Amadeus Mozart and are responsible for babysitting while
his parents attend Oktoberfest. While en route to find more
appropriate answers about their classical music report, they have to
make a pit stop because that squirt of a composer didn't go to the
bathroom before leaving. They stop in Macon, GA, and have a most
excellent run-in with Little Richard. That's right, I said Little
Richard. The rest of the episode is ripe with references to Richard's
hits and it makes me chuckle.
Now, being that I am a supremely
bodacious babe (or maybe because I'm single and have nothing else to
do) I took the time to do a little extra work this month. It was most
heinously tortuous to this brain of mine, but I did it for YOU!
Half-way through my second full-series viewing - and thanks to some
heavy consumption of, ahem, inebriating consumables - I found myself
counting how many times I heard “excellent” in an episode. After
I got to about 10 instances of that word in one episode, I thought
“well, how many times did they say 'excellent' in the whole
series?!?” I picked out a few choice words/phrases and here you are
(you're welcome):
Excellent: 107
Triumphant: 48
Egregious: 20
Babes: 38
Bogus: 65
Heinous: 55
Frosted Slushies: 16
Party On: 17
Bodacious: 16
So there you have it my most
triumphantly gnarly toon viewing dudes and dudettes! Grab a huge
plate of nachos and an extra-large frosted slushie and settle in for
a solid way to spend the day sitting in front of your television. I
suggest making it through the second season, just to say you've seen
it, but definitely enjoy the first season, I can leave it on repeat
all day and not get tired of hearing the air guitar when something
awesome happens. Take some time and check it out! Be excellent to
each other and PARTY ON, DUDES!
No comments:
Post a Comment