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Talkin’ Nerdy: What’s the Deal with Dopey?

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When Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs debuted in 1937, there was no question or doubt as to which character stole the show: Dopey the Dwarf. The silly, adorable, mute character was so popular with fans that many people requested that Walt Disney use Dopey as a series star in the shorts, in fact, some of Disney’s staff even wanted to use Dopey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia.

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That’s right. This guy almost wore the big blue wizard’s hat.

So when the Seven Dwarfs were revived and re-imagined for Disney X-D’s The 7D, I figured it would be a no-brainer that Dopey would emerge as one of the show’s breakout stars. Alas, this was not the case. On The 7D, it’s been Doc, Happy and especially Grumpy who have become the top players on the show, while Dopey has never graduated from lesser character status. I expected this to be the case for characters like Sleepy and Sneezy, since they were always pretty one-dimensional, but not Dopey. In this regard, Dopey is the exact opposite of Happy, who was a pretty minor character in the movie but emerged as one of the biggest characters on the show. What happened? Why has Dopey gotten the shaft?

I’ve been thinking about this (which should be a clear indicator that I have lots of free time) and have theorized why Dopey hasn’t attained top tier character status on The 7D. I chalk it up to 2 factors:

  1. NOT ENOUGH ELBOW ROOM

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One reason why Walt never turned the Seven Dwarfs into shorts stars was because in the average animated short the focus is typically on 1, 2, 3 or at the most 4 central characters, but had Disney placed the Dwarfs in this format they would’ve had to contend with 7 main characters to start with, not to mention any other supports or guest stars that might have appeared. Indeed, with 6 guys also doing comedy and vying for the spotlight, it’s hard to squeeze decent bits for Dopey in there as well. There’s also the added burden of Dopey not being able to speak, so right away any verbal humor like puns of clever wordplay can’t be done with him. This is not to say that Dopey hasn’t gotten any opportunities to stand out, he’s gotten some golden gags, such as imitating The Scream:

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But moments like this have been few and far between. Yeah, that look. This brings me to the other reason why I feel Dopey hasn’t broken out on the show:

2. HE LOST HIS BASIC ADORABILITY

A lot Dopey’s appeal in the original film was how he was essentially the “baby” of the Seven Dwarfs: he was youthful while the other Dwarfs were elderly, he had no hair, big blue eyes, only one tooth, large jug-handle ears and wore over-sized clothes, viz:

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On The 7D however, Dopey’s look was changed to this:

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Who does this guy remind you of? Take a wild guess. For those who don’t know, The 7D‘s Dopey was patterned largely after Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers.

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Those eyes are staring into my soul, and honking bike horns in my ears.

Nothing wrong with that, Harpo was hilarious, but he’s not usually the first character who comes to mind when you hear the word “cute”. Without the cute, innocent, childlike features and aspects to his character, 7D Dopey amounts to little more than a weirdo. Dopey is like Tweety Bird or the Muppet character Bean Bunny: he relies heavily on being adorable. The writers tried to carve a niche for Dopey as ‘the animal lover’ of the group, and that kind of works, but again, without Dopey’s babyish demeanor it ultimately doesn’t amount to much.

I don’t know how many more episodes of The 7D there will be; the cast and crew have already had their wrap party, so it’s likely that show will be like many Disney animated series and only run for 2 seasons. If it’s truly over, then it’s a shame that Dopey was never really given that much to do on the show, especially since The 7D was produced by Tom Ruegger, who also gave us Animaniacs, and managed to strike comedy gold with another Harpo-inspired character, Wakko Warner. However, it’s worth mentioning that Wakko is a child character and he has the ability to speak.

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“Don’t forget the tongue. Chicks dig the tongue.”

 

Pop Dream #2: Skipper

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Here we go again! Time for another Pop Dream.

-Before we commence with the silliness, I’d just like to apologize to you all for letting so much time lapse between entries. No new posts for 13 days isn’t something I wish to get into the habit of doing. Generally speaking, we try to post a minimum of 2 entries per month, which roughly equates to at least 1 new entry from each of us every 2 weeks, if not once a week; there hasn’t been anything serious going on, just more dumb commitments, incidents and shenanigans occurring recently in real life that we needed to address. Among the things I personally needed to take care of during this time was compiling research and material for the remaining Pop Dreams (there are going to be 5 of these in total–suffer!). I’m committed to completing all 5, but again, I won’t be doing them all in a row; I’ll still be producing new entries for the other segments as well, in order to space the Pop Dream entries out since they’re a finite number of them and so you (and I) won’t get bored reading nothing but Pop Dreams. We have more stuff in store, and, although with the holidays just around the corner I can’t make any promises, I’m going to try to get the rest of these (and the other stuff I have planned) out in a more timely fashion from now on.

-That said, on with Pop Dream entry #2.

The Barbie Sister we’re spotlighting today enjoys blogging, texting, making movies, DJ-ing, music and trying out the latest gadgets and techie toys, she’s made 287 blog posts (to date), and 26 short movies, owns 18 techie gadgets and has 57, 283 followers online. Her chief dislikes are low-tech, low wi-fi signals and low game scores. Today’s Pop Dream is all about…Skipper Roberts.

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Go-Go Gadget Teenybopper

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“Skipper. Hmm. Skipper….Hey, Everyone. It’s Skipper!”

OVERVIEW

Skipper Roberts (yes, that’s really her name, and it’s freaking adorable)…

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“Hey, little buddy!”

…is the second oldest of the Fab Sisters, right after the sparkly teen dream Barbie herself. Having been bounced from numerous other jobs, she currently works alongside her big sis at the Barbie Boutique, as the general tech chick. The oldest of the three younger sisters of Barbie, Skipper is a tech guru/budding filmmaker. When she’s not directing her fam in her next movie masterpiece, she’s texting, gaming and talking… sometimes at the same time. Of all the sisters, she’s the one who wonders, “Should I do what Barbie does or do the last thing Barbie would do?”

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Skipper texting. Get used to the sight of this, she does it  A LOT.

APPEARANCE

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Skipper is the only Barbie Sister who’s not a blond. Presumably this is because after Skipper was aged from a little girl to a teenager like Barbie in the doll line, they wanted a way to distinguish her from Barbie. I don’t know whether in-universe Skipper’s hair just naturally changed from blond to brown/brunette or if she dyed it dark in order to stand out from her sorority, but either way it helps her to stick out among her sibs. The purple streak is a nice touch.

Skipper also boasts a very unique and distinctive manner of dress. She seems to have a thing for stars, as evidenced by her daily outfit in the early seasons of the web series…

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…To this snazzy little number that she adopted later on.

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“It’s a little thing called style!”

PERSONALITY

As previously stated, Skipper is the Dreamhouse’s resident tech-head and gadget guru.

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“I think I’m in love! Zork! What a piece of work! And the girl’s pretty fine too!”

She’s rarely seen without some form of tech, like a laptop, tablet or smartphone on her person. It comes in handy for texting, blogging and getting down her latest artistic masterpiece…

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…Not to mention utilizing that convenient little flashlight app when Little Sis needs to take a trip down the hall.

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Too…dang…adorable. Must…look…away!

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Skipper typically has her nose buried in some handheld device and her eyes are instinctively set to roll. She typically groans at the prospect of having to do family stuff; her instinctive response when asked to do something is: “Can’t someone else do it?”.

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This isn’t because she’s lazy (she is lazy, but that’s not the only reason), but because she’s usually wrapped up in her latest pursuit or trying out her newest piece of tech. She lives half her life in the real world (well, the real doll world) while part of her remains footed in the electronics store.

Despite basically living in her own world of tech, Skipper seems to be the most grounded and pragmatic of the Roberts Sisters. She’s the one who makes the pithy comments and astute observations, such as pointing out how weird it is how Barbie has only just now gotten her driver’s license when she’s had a past career as a race car driver, and like most teens she’s quick with the quips and gentle (sometimes not-so-gentle) jabs at her siblings.

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“SarcasTech, the Cutting Remark Database? Bookmarking that!”

FUNNIER MOMENTS

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“Now that’s a big needle!”

“Doctor Barbie”: Skipper and Stacie jostle with each other throughout this short, each of them vying to be Dr. Barbie’s Little Helper. Poor Stacie is worked down to her last nerve. We see her on the confession couch venting.

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“Helping is MY thing! Skipper never wants to do ANYTHING!”

Then we immediately cut to Skipper on the confession couch, who says:

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“The wi-fi’s down. So while I’m waiting, I’m gonna spend the afternoon busting Stacie’s chops, that’s my thing!”

“Ooh, How Campy Too”: Skipper again goads Stacie by telling her (as she’s attempting to spend an entire day alone roughing it in the woods) that she and the others are about to get ‘mani-pedies’ in the camper, which is parked right next to Stacie’s tent.

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“Suuuuure ya don’t wanna join us?” Her delivery of that line is priceless.

When Stacie adamantly replies that she “needs to do real camping!”, Skipper shoots back with “Hey, we’re doing real camping! Tonight we’re gonna watch a movie about the great outdoors on the big screen!” You can imagine Stacie’s reaction. We then cut to Skipper on the confession couch (which is now housed outside) where she says:

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“My idea of roughing it? A hotel without high speed wi-fi!” Line of the episode, right there.

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“Day at the Beach”:  Skipper spends the bulk of this short texting away on her handheld and staying apart from the beach festivities that Barbie, Ken, Chelsea and Raquelle (who failing hard at trying to outdo Barbie) are involved in. Barbie tries to convince Skipper to “ditch those gadgets and get in the game”, which goes over as well as you’d expect it to.

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“You surf the way you wanna surf, I’ll surf the way I wanna surf!”

I could just cut to myself grinning and giving a thumbs-up whenever Skipper talks. Almost everything that comes out of her mouth is gold!

Later in this same short, we get a rare glimpse of Skipper coming unglued; after the dump truck driver Chelsea has hired to bury Ken in the sand has also dumped a ton o’ sand on top of Barbie’s car (we’ll get to Chelsea in due time), Skipper panics and starts digging for her HG-3D-4G Mini-Cam, which is in the backseat. Ken attempts to be the voice of reason, advising Skipper to just “leave it be”, only for Skipper to emerge with her precious device a second later. Now completely composed again, she matter-of-factly states “Got it. Let’s go”, then buries her nose in her device one again.

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“Eeh? EEEHHH?”

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“Sisters Ahoy”: Skipper’s head acts as a magnet for coconuts in this episode. The poor girl gets conked on the cranium exactly THRICE in this short.

CONCLUSION

Anyone who’s read my Top 9 Favorite Characters list knows that I was looking forward to this particular Pop Dream, since as I expunged there, Skipper is my favorite character on Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse and my favorite Barbie Sister. Skipper is totally what I’d be like if I were a fashion doll. As an identical twin I can relate to wanting to stand out just a little, I’m a techno-geek and an artist who’s constantly distracted by the nuttiness surrounding me, and I can definitely relate to the desire to sometimes rag on your fellows, though you’re still devoted to them and have their backs. I wonder what Skipper would say about such glowing praise.

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“…What??”

Next up is Stacie. Hopefully the wait for the next one won’t be as long. See ya there.

What The Funny #2: Carnival Knowledge

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It’s that time again!

First, I’d like to apologize for the delay. I didn’t intend to take this long to post here again. I’ve just been busy with work and so forth. Sometimes the wheels of creativity run in low gear. But I’m here now, so it’s time for another breakdown of one of my favorite Rocko’s Modern Life shorts:

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“G’day, mate!”

Carnival Knowledge

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So right off the bat, we get a title that’s a double entendre; “Carnival Knowledge” is a play on the term “carnal knowledge”, as in intercourse.

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“OH!”

Highlights:

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I love this one ride that’s called simply Broken Mirrors. Sounds like loads of fun!

Rocko and Heffer come across a carnival, which is owned and primarily operated by Slippy the Slug (who’s voiced by comedian Dom Irrera).

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“Ooh! Aah!”

Yeah, that guy.

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Slippy offers them food, rides, and games for thirty dollars. They think of which ride they should get on and choose The Mug-O-Whirl, only to find that it has already started.

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Here’s a fun ride; the Elevator to Hell. Note that the word “hell” is uncensored here. I’m surprised that Nickelodeon’s censors didn’t notice this, although they apparently wised up by the time of a later episode “To Heck and Back” where the word “Heck” is used as a substitute for hell.

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Next, Rocko tries Slippy’s Games-O-Chance, a crane game machine in which the crane claw takes Rocko’s watch, as well as Heffer’s underpants. The two then get on the Ferris wheel, where they are stopped at the top. Subsequently, the ride operator (Slippy the Slug again) brings them down and stops them halfway, leaving them dangling, which causes their money to fall out of their pockets.

Rocko plays the Frog Flip, in which the player has to use a mallet to slam onto the plank with the frog on the other end and make sure it lands onto their lily pad in the pool behind. Heffer goes first and accidentally smashes his frog into a puddle of green goo. During Rocko’s turn, a frog wearing a derby hat and smoking a cigar taunts him (Ooh, such a strong man! Mr. Tough-Guy-With-A-Mallet!” “Easy on the bladder, meat!”) and the wallaby slams on the end of the plank (with a wrecking ball), sending the frog flying high in the sky (all the while shouting”LOSER!!”). This scene is punctuated perfectly as two of them are watching the frog fly off into the stratosphere, Heffer says plainly and dryly “That…was one rude frog!”

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Incidentally, I wanted to show this scene in it’s entirety, but I couldn’t find any clips of it online.

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Thanks loads, YouTube!

The two then get on the Bumper Cars, where Rocko unwillingly gets on a gimp bumper car and is crashed by the other bumper car riders. Rocko has finally had it and decides that he and Heffer should leave. But not before Heffer convinces him to stay so that they could ride the Nose Bleed, a precarious roller coaster. Unfortunately, for Rocko, he isn’t tall enough, but Heffer augments his height and the two ride on the roller coaster, which sends them to outer space, and they later crash down the ground. Rocko decides to leave, but not before the crane machine takes his money. Suddenly, the frog that taunted Rocko earlier in the Frog Flip game lands perfectly on the lily pad in the pool, winning Rocko a Chinese finger puzzle.

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“Lucky shot!”

As they leave, Heffer says that he thought the rides were rigged and Rocko adds that not everyone is around to rip you off. After the episode ends (with Rocko breaking his Chinese finger puzzle off-screen), the frog attempts to open up the iris end, which closes on his head.

Thoughts:

Carnival Knowledge doesn’t offer much in the way of plot. It’s just a string of gags with a continuing theme, but the gags are hilarious. Slippy was an amusing one-off character and it’s too bad that he never appeared again (Well, techincally, Slippy was seen one more time in the season 3 short “Zanzibar”, but he only has one line and he’s not voiced by Dom Irrera here, so it’s debatable whether that’s actually Slippy or just a random character with Slippy’s recycled design).

My rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Next Time: Skid Marks (Here’s hoping that there won’t be as long a wait for the this one). Stay funny.

TV Special Tonight!: Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family

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Today’s TV Special Tonight is about Bewitched.

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Well, kinda sorta.

Today TV Special Showdown looks at a Hanna-Barbera and Screen Gems collaborative produced installment of the ABC Superstar Movie from December of 1972, which aired after Bewitched had ended its’ 8-season run on ABC, entitled Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family.

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M’kay. Already we’ve got a redundancy. It should be Tabitha, Adam and the Clown Family. We’re off to a rollicking start: right at the title, we get served by the Grammar Police.

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Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family featured animated versions of Tabitha and Adam Stevens from Bewitched (because as we learned from Jason’s Retro Bin on Fonzie & Friends, TV stars are more fun when they’re turned into cartoons) now teenagers. Our friend Hobbyfan from Saturday Morning Archives takes a stab at explaining their growth spurt:

“My theory is built around Marvel Comics’ concept of time for some, if not all, of their characters. Bear in mind that Tabitha & Adam were not yet 10 years old when Bewitched ended a few months prior to Clown Family. Let’s assume that from the point where Tabitha debuted, the series covered about one day in her life per episode, and the same would apply to Adam a couple of years later.”

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“Magic. Got it.”

Like their live-action counterparts, Tabitha and Adam are witches, able to perform magic by twitching their noses.

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“Oh, yeah! We gots the skills that pay the bills! If witches actually paid bills, and couldn’t just conjure money out of thin air or turn bill collectors into newts, that is.”

Like its’ title suggests, this special not only had cartoon versions of Tabitha and Adam Stevens, but it also features a clan of clowns.

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No, not that clan of clowns, though that would’ve been a heck of a crossover.

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“Thanks. I just smurfed in my pants!”

As our special unfolds, T&A are on their way to spend a three week vacation with some relatives.

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Specifically their aunt Georgia, Darren’s mortal sister (voiced by Janet “Judy Jetson” Waldo; if you were gonna make an H-B production in the 1970’s you were gonna give Janet Waldo a spot in it), her husband Glenn (who bears a noticeable resemblance to John Butler, the dad from H-B’s Valley of the Dinosaurs, which would come later, white hair and all) and their 4 kids Mike (who could easily be the doppelganger of Freddy Jones from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, he even had the same voice provided by SatAM legend Frank Welker), Sue, Ernie and Julie who are all performers at the Magurk and McGuffin Circus…

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“I get it!”

…collectively known as the Clown Family. That’s not just a stage name, BTW, the family’s surname is actually Clown. Middle school must’ve been a blast.

-Funny, I’ve watched all 8 seasons of Bewitched growing up, and I don’t recall them ever mentioning that Darren had family who were circus performers. If I had relatives who lived in a striped tent, it would come up once in a while.

Speaking of, at the start of the special it’s vaguely implied that T&A’s aunt Georgia knows that the kids are witches, but just keeps it on the down-low. The Clown kids, however, have no clue that their cousins are magic; they have no idea where that ice cream cone which just poofed on Adam’s face came from.

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Really? They’ve honestly never told their favorite cousins that they’re witches? Come on. These guys live among 500-pound fat ladies, fire-breathers and sword-swallowers, the presence of witches shouldn’t really be a thing for them. Keeping your special powers secret from your enemies makes sense, keeping them secret from your family and loved ones just makes you a jerk.

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As if a family actually named Clown wherein the 2 older siblings are Flying Wallenda style acrobats and the younger siblings are bona fide clowns wasn’t premise enough, the Clown kids are also a rock band. (They also had a pet baby elephant who was totally NOT Dumbo named Trumpet who, not surprsingly, played the trumpet.) Keep in mind this was the era of The Archies and Josie and the Pussycats. Even Charlie Chan’s kids had a rock band in cartoon form. If you were a cartoon franchise in the 70’s, you had to also be a rock band.

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I think that 70’s toons were issued bubblegum rock instruments, like those little sample packs of detergent that we suburbanites get through the mail.

So we were treated to frothy musical numbers whenever someone, usually Tabitha or Adam, would announce…

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“HERE COME THE CLOWNS!”

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“And here comes my lunch!”

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Very Mod.

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Incidentally, the character of Ernie Clown was obviously based on Danny Partridge; he was constantly wanking on the business side of fame and on the lookout for extra money making opportunities, which reminds me of my favorite Danny Bonaduce quote:

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“Being a child star is great. Being a former child star, that sucks.”

Since this special is 51 minutes without commercials, there’s also a plot. It seems that a rival circus owner has hired a Bela Lugosi lookalike named Count Crumley (aka Obvious Bad Guy) and his thick-witted gnome of a lackey Ronk to sabotage the circus so it’ll go out of business. As it happens, Ronk is a warlock, just not a very good one obviously, or he wouldn’t be a sawed-off sidekick. Crumley makes Ronk cast various spells on the circus performers, such as turning the usually docile circus lion into a vicious, foul-tempered brute and putting the whammy on Ernie to make him a lousy drummer so the Clowns will blow their big audition. On noes!

Tabitha and Adam of course detect witchy activity and catch wind of what’s going on and inform their clowny cousins that there’s black magic afoot. Each time one of the Clown kids ask T&A how they know about all this witchery stuff, Tabitha issues some lame excuse like “We watch a lot of scary movies” or “I read it in a book at the library”.

Why don’t you just [bleep]ing tell them you’re witches?! Ronk has already been outed as a warlock by this point, so they know that witches and witchcraft exist, would it really send the Earth spinning off of its’ axis if your cousins know you’re craft users?? Geez, if you can’t trust circus folk, who can you trust?

Anyways, T&A and the Clown Kids track down Crumley and Ronk Scooby-Doo style, T&A perform some nose-twitching tricks and force Ronk to undo all of his spells. T&A then take Ronk aside and have a little private coven pow-wow, informing him that just because he’s a warlock it doesn’t mean that he has to serve evil jerks. This leads to Ronk pulling a face turn and telling his former boss Crumley to Take This Job and Shove It (TM), saying that he’ll be sticking around with the good guys and hopes to get a job working at the circus as a stage magician, after a little makeover…

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“ABRACADABRA, BEEYOTCHES!”

So the good guys win, the Magurk and McGuffin Circus gets to stay open, the Clowns score a big-time record contract, Tabitha and Adam get to continue their vacation and the day is saved. Yippe-Ki-Yi-Yay.

Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family was billed as a special, but I personally think that it was a pilot for a new series which didn’t get greenlit. Perhaps folks felt that the mixture of teenage witches and circus performers who were simultaneously rock stars was two great tastes that tasted weird together. Hard to believe, but Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family might have been too original.

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“Let’s wrap things up with another song from the Clowns!”

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“Let’s NOT and say we did!”