The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! – Episode 01: “The Bird! The Bird! / Neatness Counts”

Near the end of 1989, Nintendo was king of the realm of video games, and Mario was Nintendo’s favorite son. It was only natural, then, that Nintendo would use their dominance in the video game market to make inroads into television. Thus, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was born.

In the first episode of TSMBSS, we meet two plumbers, Mario and Luigi, played by Lou Albano and Danny Wells, who perform a brief comedy segment (“Neatness Counts”) involving Nicole Eggert, a clogged drain, and making a mess. It’s pretty awful, but no one was watching this show for the live action segments, I’ll wager.

Was this how you imagined Mario and Luigi to look?

After the live action segment, the animated story (“The Bird! The Bird!”) begins. Mario and Luigi, having just rescued Princess Toadstool, are travelling in a frozen wasteland, along with Toad, who is suddenly kidnapped by a nearsighted Birdo who mistakes him for her child.

While the others are trying to save Toad, King Koopa receives a report on the situation (and, rather creepily, orders his minions to lick his feet). He sends his Koopa Troopas to attack while the Mario brothers are distracted, but they deflect the attack. Ultimately, Koopa leads the attack himself, but with the help of the Birdo, whose child they have restored to her, they succeed in repelling Koopa and his minions.

After the animated segment ends, another live action segment plays, continuing the story from the first segment. After a brief interruption for a preview of the next episode of The Legend of Zelda, the live action segment concludes–though the Mario Brothers have made a horrible mess of Nicole Eggert’s outfit, it’s fine, because she was going to a ‘sloppy party’ and they’ve saved her the trouble of buying an outfit. Yeah, right.

Well, that’s the plot. As the screenshots reveal, the video quality (on Netflix) is pretty poor–it looks like a bad VHS transfer, really. What the screenshots don’t show is that the audio is also problematic, though not because it’s unclear. Rather, the background music and sound effects are so loud that it can be quite difficult to understand the dialogue, sometimes. I assume that they figured that the big draw for the show was that it was based on the video games, so they wanted to emphasize that connection, by using music from the games, and inappropriate sound effects all over the place.

The live action segment is just bad comedy, and the animated segment is a fairly average cartoon. I’m not an eight year old, to squeal with joy over seeing video game characters on television, but it is still kind of fun. I’d say that if you’re a fan of the Mario games, and you’d like to see something a bit different, it’s worth checking this out, but it’s hardly the kind of thing you’ll want to watch over and over.

Do the Mario!

Aladdin – Episode 06: “Getting the Bugs Out”

Once more: nothing subtle here. Mechanicles wants to take over the world for no stated reason, and though he dislikes messes has no problem with creating quite a stupendous mess with his mechanical bugs.

More importantly, Aladdin here becomes an incompetent jerk for no reason but that the plot demands it. He’s entirely too egotistical to be believed.

Aladdin in this episode is rude, arrogant, and too stupid to see he's wearing a pot on his head.

Incidentally, Mechanicles quite reminds me of The Mechanist from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I guess maybe he’s fitting a more general ‘crazy inventor’ character design, but I can’t think of others off the top of my head.

Anyway, Aladdin eventually discovers he’s been acting like a jerk, and with this realization, becomes once more competent and saves the day.

Aladdin recovers well enough to disrupt Mechanicles's giant steampunk insect tank.

This is another episode that presents its story well enough, but that fails to be more than mediocre. Why does Aladdin act the way he does? Who cares. Once the episode is over, there’s no more need to think about it.

Aladdin – Episode 05: “Never say Nefir”

This episode once again confuses absurdity with comedy. Certainly absurdity can be a component of comedy, but it’s not enough to just throw a giant pink rhinoceros on screen.

A giant, dancing, pink rhinoceros is destroying the city. Of course.

The plot is once again straightforward: they want to stop Semir from destroying the city, the unlikable guy turns out to be the real bad guy, and they soundly defeat him. As usual, the characters end up doing some bizarre and anachronistic things in the name of comedy.

And why was this necessary? Genie's magic works on Rule of Funny, apparently. Pity the jokes aren't better.

I’m fairly sure that I have heard of some other story where someone wears a pair of cursed shoes that force them to dance until they burn up. Hans Christian Andersen has a story “The Red Shoes” that is similar, but not quite right. The closest thing I can find at the moment is the Buffy episode “Once More, With Feeling”.

Well, in short: this episode isn’t bad, but it’s still just the usual straightforward children’s show fare.

Update: It seems that this series isn’t yet available on DVD, but while looking I did stumble across a VHS collection which apparently includes this episode. Why don’t they make these shows available as season DVD sets? It’s a mystery.

Aladdin – Episode 04: “Do the Rat Thing”

In this episode, Jasmine is incensed by the implication that she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a street rat, and decides to disguise herself as a thief to prove that she does. As a result, in the typically magic-filled world of Aladdin, she is turned into a rat, and must try to get back to the palace so Genie can reverse it.

Jasmine get unreasonably angry when Genie points out that she is a princess, not a street rat.

Why does Jasmine want to be a thief? Yeah, she says she wants to better understand Aladdin, but this is a bit much. She knows, or should know, that she’s not really familiar with the plight of the common man in Agrabah, so her anger at people pointing this out is a bit mystifying.

Jasmine will end up getting a bit of karmic retribution for her arrogance, though the show paints in more like a learning experience than punishment, and in the end, Jasmine doesn’t seem to feel like she brought this on herself, either.

When a guy that looks like this gives you a warning, you should listen.

Indeed, just after stealing the mirror, Jasmine seems perfectly pleased by her cleverness and admires her smiling reflection.

The scene where the kids mistake Jasmine for the “magic holiday rat” is just odd. I guess the writers couldn’t come up with a better joke, and you certainly can’t let a minute pass on a children’s show without some lame attempt at humor.

When Jasmine is finally restored, at the end, she is inexplicably angry at Aladdin. Yeah, you could pass it off as anger at him for not recognizing her when she was a rat, but that’s just quite unreasonable. She treats the rat better than Aladdin.

Ultimately, the only thing Jasmine seems to have learned from this episode is that poor people exist. She doesn’t accept any responsibility for her actions that led to the events of the episode, and I imagine she’s quite forgotten her earlier claim that she’d come back and pay for the mirror.

Aladdin – Episode 03: “To Cure a Thief”

Here Aladdin is acting quite cruel to Abu. It’s not as though Aladdin didn’t once encourage Abu’s thieving. The plot is simple–Aladdin was mean to Abu, who left, then they make up and the episode ends.

Amin playing basketball with Genie is another example of the usual nonsensical 'humor' in children's shows.

The depressed Abu coincidentally avoiding all the traps was pretty good.

Another episode that’s bearable for a children’s show, but not worth watching more than once.

Aladdin – Episode 02: “Bad Mood Rising”

This time, a tale based on the Fisher King, roughly. Our heroes are off to open trade negotiations with the kingdom of Quirkistan, but when they arrive, it doesn’t seem to be a very pleasant place. The state of the land, it seems, is affected by the king’s mood, and he’s been in a bad mood for a while.

If you think this is bad, wait until you see what it's like when the king is angry.

They try to cheer up King Mamoud, but fail. Jasmine, though, succeeds by telling him a story. He enjoys it so much that he declares that Jasmine will stay there with him forever. Though they escape at first, once Jasmine sees the harm that his anger is doing the people, she decides she must stay, for their sake. Ultimately, Aladdin manages to guilt-trip Mamoud into letting Jasmine leave, and the king discovers that he likes making others happy. Roll credits.

Aladdin manages to pass of Iago and Abu as Jasmine's mother and father, in hopes of making Mamoud feel guilty.

I’ve seen this episode quite a few times, but the sequence with Aladdin introducing all the people who would miss Jasmine is still pretty funny. In particular, the (identical) orphans are good. I feel like the ‘pet Wallaby Edgar’ was taking it a bit too far, though.

The episode is also featuring a little retelling of the story of Scheherazade, though it’s Aladdin’s ‘story’ and not Jasmine’s that causes the change in the king.

Anyway, it’s always interesting (for me) to see a retelling of some old story, so this one is worth seeing. But, it’s not that great. Jasmine’s willingness to abandon her own kingdom for the sake of Quirkistan shows that she is kind, but she forgets that she does have her own people who might need her. Well, it all worked out in the end.

Aladdin – Episode 01: “Air Feather Friends” (Pilot)

Agrabah is attacked by thieving ‘wind demons’, though Aladdin doesn’t believe they’re demons at all. He makes a bet that he can prove it, and stands to lose Abu if he fails. Ultimately, it turns out to be a group of theives under the leadership of Abis Mal that is causing the trouble, using the power of roc’s feathers to protect them and cow their victims.

This episode is very simple. Supposedly, the viewer should worry about whether Abu will be lost in the bet, but of course there’s no chance that this will happen, so it provides little tension.

 

Having the roc's mother save the day is about the most sensible thing they'll ever do on this show, so enjoy it.

The animation is capable, but the story is lacking. Not an episode I’d avoid seeing, but it’s not worth watching more than once.