Freakazoid!, Season Two

 

A few months ago, I reviewed Season One of the 90s cartoon Freakazoid!, which defied all conventional logic but still managed to be one of the funniest superhero shows I’d ever seen.  Today, I’m going to review Season Two, which continues to defy all conventional logic but still manages to be one of the funniest superhero shows I’ve ever seen. Welp, that about covers it.  Can I go home now?  No?  Ah, well.  It’s not like writing about superhero stuff is hard.

The second season of Freakazoid! takes everything that was good about the first season and distills it until it is nothing but pure unadulterated awesome.  Whereas Season One featured a slew of new concepts as the creators experimented with their new show, by Season Two they have clearly settled down just enough to eliminate the overly-weird bits while maintaining the manic, in-your-face comedy that made the show so memorable in the first place.

That hardly means there is a lack of creativity going on here, however.  I suppose I should complain about the lack of variety toward the beginning of the season (the Lobe features in three of the first four episodes), but this doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the show at all, and the amount of imagination in other areas far outstrips the show’s budget.  In the very first episode, “Dexter’s Date,” the writers attempt a full-on parody of the title song from Hello, Dolly!  A good idea in theory, but the lack of funds is obvious from the fact that ninety percent of the shots look like this.

 

If you’ve seen the original, you know it consisted of a lot more than Barbara Streisand and two waiters.

In addition, the show’s entire format has changed.  While Season One mostly stuck to two or three short segments per episode, Season Two is formatted more like modern cartoons, with just one storyline per episode.  The exception is “Freak-a-Panel/Invisibo” which has two segments and, appropriately enough, features the last appearance of some of the side characters—Moron, Fanboy, Lord Bravery, and the Huntsman—who got dumped after Season One.  And they aren’t happy about it.

For my money, the structural change is a good thing.  There’s nothing wrong with the segmented format either, and I guess the argument could be made that the original structure is more representative of Freakazoid’s own scattered personality and therefore makes the show more effective, but this ain’t a media literacy class.  My personal preference has always been for “longer” episodes, and let’s face it—I watch Freakazoid! for Freakazoid, not a five-minute one-shot that may or may not be entertaining.

And it would appear that the powers that be agree with me, since they awarded the show a Daytime Emmy for the one-storyline episode “Hero Boy.”  It won in the “Outstanding Special Class Animated Program” category, which kind of sounds like something they made up off the top of their head, but hey, it’s not my award show.  And since this is the only episode of the entire series to win any kind of award, surely this must be the best, right?

Well, I don’t know about that.  Don’t get me wrong—it’s very very good, but the rest of Season Two is so good that picking out one that deserves the title of BEST is nigh impossible.  I prefer to think that this episode won on behalf of the entire season.

 

So awkward segue: Remember my review of Season Two of the 1960s Batman series, and how I complained that its biggest problem was an overload of new, mediocre villains?  Well, Freakazoid! is having none of that.  In Batman, Season Two was crammed with as many new villains as they could fit, and the weakness of many of these characters is what contributed to the series’ downfall.  Freakazoid! keeps the new faces to a minimum—most notably Dr. Moreau Mystico and Invisibo, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh with the power to turn invisible and do Vincent Price impressions—apparently having a greater appreciation for their existing cast of characters than Batman did. 

The longer episodes and lack of new villains also allow them to expand upon or introduce a couple of new good guys:  Steff, Dexter/Freakazoid’s girlfriend, gets her role increased from barely-there love interest to Only Sane Man.  Freakazoid even hires a butler, Professor Jones, played by Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space fame.  And it wouldn’t be Freakazoid! if they didn’t slap the biggest, gaudiest lampshade they could find on top of that sucker.

"Weren't you on a TV show with a robot?"
"Never mind."

More importantly, each of the newbies is actually fun to watch (or not watch, in Invisibo’s case).  Granted, Professor Jones basically just screams a lot, but if you had to deal with Freakazoid on a daily basis, you’d probably scream a lot too.

Sadly, the last episode of the series, “Normadeus,” which guest-stars celebrity carpenter Norm Abram in a manner reminiscent of the ridiculous celebrity cameos in comic books (Muhammad Ali! Jerry Lewis!), is among the best of the lot, which really makes me wonder to what heights the show would have soared if only given the chance.  But it was not to be—Freakazoid! was abruptly canned halfway through Season Two, apparently due to a combination of timeslot trickery and demographic cross wiring (i.e. older people were watching where the station wanted younger people).

For my favorite and least favorite episodes of the season, I don’t even know.  There’s only eleven, but each has so much to recommend it.  I’m trying to decide between “The Island of Doctor Mystico” and “Normadeus” for my favorite episode, but that’ll take a while, so you might want to pull up a chair and watch some Animaniacs or something while you wait.  And I guess “Dexter’s Date” would be my least favorite, if only because the Bonjour Lobey number slows things down so much.  It was a fun idea, but they didn’t have the resources to pull it off in the style it deserved.

Conclusions?  …I don’t know.  I think I’ve already said everything that warrants saying.  I’ve already stated multiple times that I love Freakazoid! for its fun characters, fun plots, fun everything.  And if I haven’t convinced you of that by now, I don’t think saying it more will help.  So instead I leave you with this: the final moments of the series are spent in song, with the entire cast singing We’ll Meet Again.  Some of you may recognize this as the same song that ends Dr. Strangelove, and really, can you think of a better ending than that?

Next Time: And that, boys and girls, is why you should never trust a sex ed teacher wearing ridiculously high platform shoes.

Images from Freakazoid!