Looney until the last drop of an anvil
The Looney Tunes Show Season One, Volume One does a good job of maintaining that fun personality that the original series put out some years ago. You get a show that is wacky, like it should be, but also caters to adults as much as kids — which wasn’t always the case with the original series. For example, in the second episode of the DVD titled “Members Only“, you have Bugs Bunny bumping into another rabbit named Lola (love that name), and they go out on a date. The date starts out well, but soon Bugs finds himself in the midst of a soon-to-be obsessed love affair — namely, Lola won’t leave him alone. One things leads to another and Bugs gets into a deeper relationship with Lola, only to have it crash down later in the episode. The brilliance of this episode for kids is the obsessively wacky nature that Lola shows Bugs. She’s obnoxious, goofy and just downright entertaining. That same humor won’t be lost on adults, as the name ‘Lola’ really points to what seemingly is another definition of who this bunny is in the episode.
All the episodes in this release go like this. You get a bunch of humor for kids and the same amount for adults; it’s never over the top, though.
Here’s what you can expect on the DVD release:
“Best Friends” — Possibly one of the funniest episodes on the set, and a great way to start off the season. Daffy and Bugs go on a show called Besties (as in best friends) to strengthen their relationship. What ends up happening is that they get absolutely abused on the show for continually being wrong about each other. They compete against Mac and Tosh (the goofy gophers) and end up getting destroyed. Daffy tries to make it up to Bugs, and Bugs concedes their friendship is what it is.
“Members Only” — See the first paragraph for this one.
“Jailbird and Jailbunny” — Per usual, Daffy gets in trouble for littering, and is sent to court. While there, he annoys his friend Bugs enough that they both end up in contempt of court, and in jail. Through strange accidental means, Daffy and Bugs end up escaping the chain gang they’re attached to and soon find themselves on the run. The end result of the episode is hilarious, as is the actual ‘jail’ portion.
“Fish and Visitors” — Yosemite Sam goes green and decides to put up a solar power grid at his home. Regretfully, it starts raining and he forcefully moves in with Bugs and Daffy. Through various different ways, Bugs and Daffy get extremely annoyed by Sam’s habits and have to find a way to get him the heck out. Though they try different methods, including just telling him, they still have a hard time extracting Sam from the premises. Funny, but not as funny as the first two episodes.
The episodes, while short in amount, are darn good. The total running time on the DVD is 88 minutes, which isn’t bad. For me, I wanted more episodes and more features (which this has zero of), but for my kids they could literally watch this all day (and they tried to). This DVD is geared towards the younger audience, so it’s important to get their reaction, which was very positive. They found the episodes funny, entertaining and to have high replay value. They didn’t care much for the Merrie Melodies, though, which are included after ever episode.
Not a bad release in hindsight, but certainly not as good as the original material. Kudos for Cartoon Network and Warner Brothers for keeping this series going. I’m sure the second volume will be even better (as well as the next season).