Duck Tales! Woo-woo!

Mar 09, 2016 22:01



It's official: Disney is bringing back Duck Tales in 2017. Could Disney be coming to its senses? Is the age of shoddy, cheap sitcoms about secret identity rock stars and raucous boys living in hotels (you know, what we all can relate to so well) dwindling away to its true home in obscurity? Perhaps it's too soon to call that one. But the announcement has been made, and so I feel like it must mean something. It's a shift in the wind, or just someone at Disney exec realizing that Generation X has disposable income and a severe case of the nostalgics, and goddamn it we want our DISNEY AFTERNOON BACK NOW NOW NOW.

DT might not have been my first pick. We all know that Gargoyles is always going to be the one that had the most depth and maturity to it, crossing some lines (transpsecies romance, anyone?) that might still raise eyebrows today. For the lolz parody humor, I think most everyone would agree that Darkwing Duck is it. And DT isn't even my favorite on a personal level - I always felt Talespin had more heart.

But that's why it wouldn't have been my first pick - I know why Duck Tales was theirs. DT is beginning to end a joyful, exuberant story of adventure, with the kind of mainstream appeal that was just right for attracting audiences to this new-fangled Disney Afternoon to begin with. The heroes were plucky, brave, clever; the villains delightful in their dastardliness. Who didn't love the Beagle Boys? Who didn't love Launchpad? And damn it, who couldn't love Scrooge McDuck to the depths of his cash register of a heart?

As a flawed hero, Scrooge comes about as close to perfection as you can get. He wasn't 'wise' in the emotional sense. He didn't have moral lessons for the triplets at the end of every episode. He wasn't kind in the terms that most people would ever understand, though his nearest and dearest might argue that it's there under the surface. Yet he was hardworking, furiously determined to be the best he could be at everything he did, intelligent, savvy with his investments, and successful at building a multinational web of corporations that keep thousands of people employed and contributing goods and services to huge swathes of the population - and all this from a penniless immigrant. Talk about the American Dream. I admired Scrooge in that, for all the millions he was worth, he never felt the need to retire and 'take it easy'. And for all the money he had, he never lost his poverty-bred habits of thriftiness and negotiation - every penny he earned, he earned, and he didn't just throw it away because he happened to have a lot more where that came from. They took it to extremes in the show for hilarity's sake, but these were worthy traits that his nephews could stand to benefit from. The triplets, of course, evolved to become Scrooge's conscience and were always there to play humanity's advocate (duckinity's advocate?). They reminded him that sometimes it was worth giving up on the extra dollar if it was to save a friend, or a town, or otherwise whatever right thing needed doing. It was good balance. Scrooge chose to sometimes forego extra fortune for the sake of friends and family, but at the end of the day, he loved his financial empire like an artist loves his own masterpiece. He built it, he nurtured it, and would fight to the death to protect it. A government bureaucrat or socialist presidential candidate can just try to pry it out of his cold dead - feathered - hands. How many other childhood cartoons give us a millionaire capitalist for a protagonist?

What of this will be changed, if any? Disney is sparse in its details (as usual). All we have is the announcement that it's coming, and the one snapshot above. It's a dynamic photo, telling much while revealing little. All the main characters are displayed, including Donald Duck himself, confirming at least who will be in the show. Donald looks hapless, Scrooge looks determined. All the kids look like they've grown at least a little, but maybe still shy of the teen years - god help us, hopefully still shy of their Quack Pack years. The triplets still bear their signature colors, but they're no longer dressed in otherwise identical outfits, hinting that the variances in personality begun to display in QP have been allowed to flourish. As always, they're the ones with the actual survival training, common sense, and old fashioned duck-pluckiness to help see the adults through whatever mishap has arisen. As a girl watching the show, I naturally related to Webbie a lot, though I concede she didn't often add much beyond damsel in distress and occasional helpless hostage. Since the bar for female assertiveness has steadily risen over the past twenty years - including Disney's own Black Widow - I confidently expect she'll have matured and will be contributing more to the plot. The cast is almost uniformly male across the board - she and her grandmother Mrs. Beakley just may be the sole regular female voices brought into the mix.

I guess we'll be finding out in a year, but in the meantime I'll hunt up old reruns and dose up on a healthy pile of early nineties DT trivia - lest I miss any inside jokes when the reboot comes. Here's hoping it's a success, and an Avengers-style crossover with also-revived Darkwing Duck is not far behind.
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