"Lonely Heart"/"A Friend in High Places" - Sky Dancers

 

…

…

…sigh.

So “Lonely Heart”, the fifth episode of the series (I reviewed the first four here and here), begins with Breeze admiring Angelica’s new dress.  Skyla, jealous that Angelica gets a new outfit and she doesn’t, scolds them for dilly-dallying instead of practicing, and the dancers immediately suspect something is bothering their beloved teacher.  So they spy on her in the middle of the night to find out what.

Camille: "She... she looks like she's in a trance."
Jade: "Like she's sleepwalking."

Well, they’re almost right.  Unbeknownst to the Sky Dancers, today is the anniversary of the death of Skyla’s husband, Skylar (yes, seriously, that’s his name) and apparently she spends these sad occasions sleep-dancing in her husband’s arm.  Something’s telling me they don’t have a therapy in the Wingdom.

The Sky Dancers, still feeling bad for Skyla, decide they should do something to cheer her up.  And what’s the brilliant plan?  Throw a party!  Yay!  Cake makes everything better!

Meanwhile, in the Netherworld, Sky Clone decides that the anniversary of Skylar’s death is the perfect time to try to kidnap Skyla, since she’ll be too distracted by grief to fight him off.  Though considering the dude’s been dead for several years, you’d think Sky Clone would have thought to try this before.  Or maybe he did and this is just the way he celebrates his brother’s death. 

Not that his plan is all that unique.  It’s the same as in every other episode so far—send the Horrorcanes after them.  BECAUSE THAT WORKED OUT SO WELL BEFORE, RIGHT?

Anyway.  Skyla and her barely-legal bodyguards arrive at the Wingdom.

Jade: "C'mon, Dame Skyla!"
Slam: "Yeah!  You gotta be seen to be queen!"

…Wait, what?  Why?  That doesn’t even—rrrrrgh.  Never mind.  I tried forbidding Slam from opening his yap once before and it didn’t work, so I guess we’re stuck with this loser.

While Skyla leaves to mourn her loss in solitude and privacy, the Sky Dancers plan her very public and noisy at-least-you’re-not-dead-too party.  And while Skyla is busy hallucinating her dead husband, the Imps show up (with a handy-dandy Horrorcane as back-up) to kidnap her and the all-important Sky Swirl Stone.  At least, I think she’s hallucinating.  One of the Imps seems to be able to see Skylar, so maybe his ghost really is floating around somewhere.  Don’t expect any explanations, though.

Back at the Netherworld, Skyla reads Sky Clone the exposition riot act, yelling at him for killing her husband and for being evil in general.  “What kind of creature are you?” she demands.

"A most creative creature, I'd say!"

After asserting his amazing creativeness, Sky Clone gives the same dang rant from every other episode about how Skylar took away his flight (asdfhljseasdfasdgaasdaf) and how he’ll take over the world, blah, blah, blah.  Fortunately, the Sky Dancers show up… only to get hit by beams from the Sky Swirl Stone, rendering them all unable to fly.

 
Isn’t that the loveliest sight you’ve ever seen?  In all seriousness, though, I think this is the most interesting thing that has ever happened on this program.

The now flightless Sky Dancers persevere, finding a way to break back into the Netherworld while not falling to their deaths.  But they still have to find Skyla, who is locked in Sky Clone’s Room of Nightmares.  (For a second, I was afraid that he’d call it his Room of Doom, but I guess Victor has the copyright on that.)

In a quick search scene that reuses footage from “On Wings of Song”, the Sky Dancers make it to the Room of Nightmares to fight Sky Clone, only to be upstaged by Skylar’s ghost and Skyla’s dogs, Whirl and Twirl, all three of whom make short work of our villain.  That just leaves the Horrorcane, which is defeated in about five seconds.  Please, stop, I can’t take all this excitement.

So what happened to that party the Sky Dancers planned?  Presumably, the poor musicians they hired are still waiting in an empty room to this day.

 

Our next episode is “A Friend in High Places,” and unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be available on the internet right now.  I do have a copy, but only on VHS, which means I can’t take screencaps for this review.  But that’s not going to be a problem.  Trust me.

We start right after the Sky Dancers apparently lose Whirl and Twirl.  But don’t worry, that’s not relevant at all as they find the dogs almost immediately, just in time for Skyla to show up and alert them to trouble in the Sky Realm.

They arrive in the Wingdom, where Skyla tells them that Sky Clone has taught the Horrorcanes a killer symphony, which actually just sounds like a competent male opera singer but is capable of great destruction.  It’s so powerful that the Sky Dancers are sent hurtling back through the portal connecting the academy and the Wingdom.

Hey, that looks just like the scene from “The Sky’s the Limit” where the Sky Dancers face off against the Horrorcanes for the first time.  But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence or, at worst, one tiny instance of reusing footage and this will never happen again.  Certainly not within the same episode.  Nope.  Not at all.

For some reason, Sky Clone returns to the Netherworld, even though he was tearing apart the Wingdom five minutes ago and had no reason to stop, especially since he got rid of Skyla and the Sky Dancers.

Meanwhile, disheartened, the Sky Dancers require a pep talk from Skyla, who pulls the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard: “There’s one advantage to being queen.  Since I rule the Wingdom, I can change the rules as I please.”  So she’s basically just making stuff up now.  Great.  And why hasn’t she ever used this power to her advantage before?  Because she’s the queen and nobody tells her what to do, that’s why!  And if she wanted to put a bunch of teenagers in mortal danger repeatedly, then dangit, that’s what she’s gonna do!

The Dancers return to the Wingdom, only to get… sung at… by the Horrorcanes.  Skyla, however, pulls some random mojo to make the villains sopranos.  Harmony, apparently, is the only weapon that is capable of cutting through the Sky Clone’s chaos... or something like that.  I stopped caring about ten minutes ago.  Sopranos = harmony?  Someone doesn’t get HBO, apparently.

So the Sky Dancers fight off the Horrorcanes, blah-de-da…

 

Well, gee, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was the same fight scene from “On Wings of Song.”  The only thing missing is the harp that they were fighting over.  Oh, wait.

 

And, just in case you missed it, they play that EXACT SAME FOOTAGE AGAIN.  FIVE SECONDS LATER.

 

 

Then there’s an unfunny coda where the Sky Dancers think they hear the Horrorcanes’ discordant singing but it turns out it’s just Skyla, the end.

Thus ends the six episodes I watched (over and over and over again) as a kid, and I think the nostalgia glasses are losing their touch.  I know I mentioned in an earlier review that I would keep watching Sky Dancers until I figured out why I liked it, and I think I have: I was an easy-to-please idiot.  Either that or I just liked the free jewelry that came with every tape.

So can I please, please, PLEASE stop watching this now?!

“A Friend in High Places”—and no, I don’t know why that title is relevant, either—is easily the worst out of all the ones I’ve seen.  Don’t get me wrong, “Lonely Heart” was as bland and poorly written as the first four, but “A Friend in High Places” takes cheap and lazy to whole new heights of shamelessness.  It is composed of nothing but animation from previous episodes—primarily the pilot, I think—cobbled together with new voiceovers.  I am not exaggerating, nor am I joking.  There is nary an inch of new animation in this entire episode.  This goes beyond embarrassing and straight into appallingly, hilariously cheap, even for this show. 

Heck, they didn’t even get the same voice actors for this one.  Sky Clone in particular is obviously being played by someone else.  Not that the original actors were all that great, but you get used to them, you know?  And don’t even get me started on their awful tendency to rhyme their dialogue (I’d give you examples, but that would take up about three pages).

In conclusion, I am done.  Keep your magical alternate dimensions and your sparkly flight feathers, because from now on, this is one blogger who’s staying on solid ground.  Unless Wonder Woman offers me a ride in her invisible plane, in which case, where’s the invisible seatbelt because I am outta here.

Next Time: Do they have restraining orders in the 31^st Century?  Because you may want to look into that, Supes.  Just sayin’.

Images from Sky Dancers