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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Smoke Monster Beta

Now I can’t remember what directed me to this particular YouTube clip, but I found myself here regardless, watching the first third of a Ducktales episode titled “Nothing to Fear.” (Click over to the YouTube site if you actually watch this through. The remaining two thirds are there — minus commercial breaks!) In it, a strange black cloud hovers over Scrooge McDuck’s estate and somehow manages to bring to life the fears of anybody unlucky enough to be standing under it.




(Please note: If you do actually want to watch this video, be forewarned that it may play rather loudly. Blasting the Ducktales theme from your office may not be the best way to earn the admiration of your boss and coworkers.)

The whole point of drawing online readers attention to the clip is the relative similarity between this as-sinister-as-Disney-gets raincloud and the smoke monster from Lost. It works, I suppose, even if the similarities probably don’t offer any insight into how Lost writers might try to explain this roaring, chattering, magpie-imitating, tree-felling entity that may or may not have taken the forms of a black horse, the undead Mr. Eko and resident therapist Harper Stanhope. In fact, I honestly doesn’t have any real bearing on Lost, because if the last episode’s big reveal is that the whole show — the plane crash, the island weirdness, the time travel — was merely port of a ploy on the part of Magica De Spell to get Scrooge’s Number One Dime, then I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours of my life I’ve wasted.

However, I can at least offer this: I have the vaguest memories of this episode, but for all I know the Dharma spooks put them in my brain during those years I don’t remember.

EDIT: Immediately after posting this, I found that the Number One Dime has its own Wikipedia page. Should I be surprised? Saddened? Spiraling into a Ducktales-spawned wiki-hole?

ADDITIONAL EDIT: I feel this blog of all places should make a note of the greatness of the name of Scrooge’s arch-nemesis — the equally Scottish but ultimately evil megabuck duck Flintheart Glomgold. Of course, few members of Ducktales’s target audience would have ever realized.

THIRD EDIT: Yes, by the way, I did fall into that aforementioned wiki-hole.

5 comments:

  1. Upon hearing the show's theme tune and seeing the opening, I knew that clicking play was the best decision i'd made all day.

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  2. I expected Ducktales to look like crap now, but it doesn't. It's held up surprisingly well. The animation is a lot better that I thought it would be.

    Usually, when I watch old cartoons from my childhood I am disappointed by how shit they look now.

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  3. The only episode I remember is the one with the Odessy. Anyone? Anyone?

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  4. Richard: Yes, nothing puts a good spin on an ordinary day like the Ducktales song.

    Dex: I thought so too.

    Jenn: Oh, I remember, particularly the sirens, which turned out to be just appendages of one freaky, underground monster. "Pennies, nickles quarters dimes / Come to us while there's still time."

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  5. Yes!I tried youtubing it, but they only had part three. It's called "Home Sweet Homer" For the record.

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