Coming on stronger than ever before

 The long history of everyone's favourite squeaky-voiced singing trio (not the Bee Gees, I mean the Chipmunks) quite possibly reaches its greatest ever heights of perfection with season five (the final season) of "ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks" in 2021/22.

The previous four seasons were all extremely good too, in fact probably getting better each year, but by this last season there are so many absolute gems among the episodes, and a consistent feel of the series having really got to grips with the characters and the kind of stories that work best. You could do a lot worse than watching through the whole season (26 double-episodes, making 52 in total, each with a unique song!), and I'm going to summarise the whole lot of them here, highlighting the best bits, and attempting to give them all marks out of ten. Although I'm not really good at that and usually can't bring myself to give any episode fewer than seven. And I freely admit I'm biased in favour of episodes starring Simon (I love him and want to cherish and protect him forever, as I've mentioned disturbingly many times before) and against those involving the girls, particularly Brittany. But I try to be fair and even-handed to the best of my abilities!

There is a very small group of writers contributing to the series by this point - earlier seasons had more one-off writers, but almost all of the fifth season is written by Janice Karman, the team of Peter Saisselin and Amy Serafin, Michael Bagdasarian and Vanessa Bagdasarian. And they really understand how the Chipmunks' minds work, and give us no end of brilliant character moments and fascinating psychological studies among all the fun, music and chaos! I really can't praise this show highly enough, but let's go episode by episode!

1a           Deserted

Overhearing part of a conversation and letting his imagination run away with him as usual, Alvin becomes convinced that Dave is going to drive him out into the desert and leave him there.

It's a great one for showcasing Alvin's deep-seated insecurity as well as his flights of fancy - he really doesn't like constantly getting into trouble at school, but it inevitably happens anyway, and at heart he really is scared Dave will one day want to get rid of him!

Great moments include Miss Smith, the permanently frustrated teacher, voluntarily giving up her weekend to help Alvin with maths, which he really does struggle with - it's a good example of characterisation in this show gradually shifting from broad character depictions into more realistic and rounded behaviour. And there are nice imagination sequences and a madcap chase, but it's only an average episode to start the season. 8/10.

1b           The Great Snack Off

Alvin has found a great way to get more snacks and show off to his friends - catching food people throw to him in his mouth. But when Theodore (attracted solely by the snacks, of course - he's entirely innocent of caring what people think about him!) gets involved too, it all turns very competitive. And then Theodore gets a sweet stuck up his nose, and they have to avoid letting Dave know what they've been doing...

Another nice story that shows how by this point we know all these characters and don't need to be told why they're acting like they do; it just all makes sense automatically, and it's always good to watch what our heroes are up to now! 7/10.

2a           Unboxing Day

Theodore is getting millions of views and free food from his web videos of himself eating his favourite things. So when Alvin finds out about it, he has to try to create his own thing! He goes with toy unboxing videos, and his disregard for truth and accuracy (including making Theodore pretend to be a new hi-tech baby doll) and obsession with trying to achieve viral status leads to breaking into the toy store at night. And still making things work out okay in the end entirely by luck rather than judgement!

Alvin's way of taking a simple situation and escalating it into chaos (with the blowback all ending up hitting Simon as usual) is at the core of his character, and always good for a fun episode! 7/10.

 

2b           Dave's Pavilion

Dave is delighted with his new pavilion, and bores the boys to tears with his constant talks about the exciting grouting work on the footpath. When Dave's finally out of the way and the chipmunks can play outside without getting another interminable guided tour, they accidentally upset a tin of paint all over it, and unintentionally end up leaving Dave with the impression that their neighbour Miss Miller is to blame, causing a rift between the grown-ups that the boys eventually have to own up to.

It's a great story in the down-to-earth style that really works well in this series, and a lot of great laughs along the way! 9/10.

3a           U-Fly

Alvin wants to go on a new skydiving ride, but is too small. This is quite interesting, actually - the series is set in a world where talking chipmunks are uncommon but an accepted part of society, but things like this ride are exclusively designed for and available to humans. You can see why it's upsetting for Alvin! Indeed, this is one of the few episodes where the unfairness of the world genuinely makes our hero shed tears - the series is wonderfully consistent about things like that!

So he finds a way to sneak into it after the park closes, gets stuck in the giant fan machine and needs to be rescued. A great Alvin story all round, with nice moments for Theodore and Simon too, this is great fun to watch. 9/10.

3b           Yeti or Not

On a skiing holiday, Alvin tricks Theodore out of the best bedroom by telling him horror stories about yeti. And then when he has to try to backtrack out of it he makes things worse by telling Theo he can keep the monster at bay with mustard...

There are some more great visuals and funny moments in this episode, and it's a very nice one for Theodore. Everyone looks really great in their colour-coordinated ski outfits, too! 9/10.

4a           Taken

The only fifth-season episode by Bart Coughlin, who wrote many of the very best episodes from previous seasons - which makes me wonder how it is that season five is my favourite, actually! But this is another all-time classic - Dave is mysteriously missing, and Alvin's imagination starts to run wild. When the boys find him, Dave seems to have turned into a zombie, and they have to get rid of him!

A brilliant madcap adventure, with lovely character moments for all three chipmunks - Simon's whispered "Told you!" at the end, as if he hadn't been completely caught up in Alvin's fantasies as always, never fails to make me laugh out loud. The whole episode is a definite 10/10!

4b           The Flying Beast

Alvin is haunted by a giant pterodactyl with a terrifying screech, and nobody else believes him - Dave assumes he's just trying to get out of doing his chores!

The beast is actually Simon's science project ("the gears are a little noisy, but otherwise it's working great!"), but Alvin, Dave and Officer Dangus never do find that out, as they're dragged into the terrifying experience in turn!

This is another one that's very funny from start to finish, and full of the kind of character moments that make this series so special! 9/10.

5a           The Curse of Macbeth

The wide range of supporting characters is one of the best things about this series, and this episode has the greatest moment for the school's drama teacher Mr Dotson, a very dramatic man. When the kids understandably don't want to perform his self-composed terrible musical play, he gives them Macbeth instead, and tells them it's cursed!

He's also the kind of person who can burst into a classroom and scream "I hate you!" to the pupils, and impersonates a ghost to try to terrify them. Luckily, Simon remains rational and intelligent and solves the case, Scooby-Doo style! This one is a lot of fun! 9/10.

5b           Zeela the Great

I have to admit that, big Simon fan though I am, I'm not really into the Geizmo episodes - there are two in season four and two in season five, involving Simon's emotionally-equipped robot child. Honestly, Simon comes across as a not very good parent figure, and it just makes you wonder where Geizmo is in all the other episodes of the series! Did Simon turn him off and leave him in a cupboard?

But in this one, Jeanette has created her own robot, Zeela, and Geizmo is jealous. Jeanette actually does a better job with the emotional robot creation, although Simon is usually consistently a bit better than her at inventions, which perhaps says something about their personalities! That kind of psychological consideration gives this one an edge over the other Geizmo stories, perhaps, but I still have to say it's a 7/10.

6a           Dr. Sleep

Not just another "Simon's invention goes wrong" episode, but the climax to the series-long theme of Simon's complicated relationship with sleep. He always stays up all night working if he can, he falls asleep at his desk all the time, he talks in his sleep and even sleepwalks on occasion. But now he's working on a device to eliminate the need for sleep altogether, and it all gets very out of control.

Simon is just adorable here, and his hallucinations are just wonderful, as is his concern for the safety of Dave and his brothers even when he's drifted firmly into sleep-deprived insanity. And the hug from Dave, who'll always be there to support him, that brings him to his senses at the end as well! This is an absolute all-time favourite, full of great moments, and a big 10/10!

6b           Davey Boy

Simon's rejuvenation-ray ends up turning Dave into a kid of around the chipmunks' age, not only proving to Alvin that Dave most definitely did have an 'attitude' when he was young, but leading to a farcical series of exploits including Alvin trying to help matters by explaining to Officer Dangus that the young Dave is Dave senior's son from his secret other family.

It's something of a stock cartoon plot, but as is usually the case with this series, it's done in unique ways that make it stand out from all the other iterations! 8/10.

7a           The Road Warrior

Theodore is behaving suspiciously (as in, he won't tell Alvin exactly what he's doing, and Alvin is insanely curious), and when Alvin investigates, it seems that Theodore has joined a scary biker gang, and also possibly become a vampire!

This is a really brilliant episode, showcasing Alvin's out-of-control imagination and also his genuine concern for his family. There's a beautiful bonding moment between him and Theo at the end of the episode, and his "Just remember I love you," in a phone message to Dave before he braves the vampire lair is very sweet. And the nightmare sequence and song are really awesome, too!

Simon's barely in this one (although he does have a wonderful I-told-you-so when he finally appears), but I still count it as one of the greatest episodes ever, and a clear 10/10!

7b           My Fair Chipette

 

Alvin's meddling ends up pitting Brittany against Jeanette in a talent show and sparks outright war between the sisters! Along the way, there are a lot of fun moments with Alvin training Jeanette in dance, a brilliant scene of Eleanor and Jeanette bumping into each other on the zipline between their treehouse and the boys' bedroom, and a whole lot of great interactions among the three girls.

Even someone as prejudiced against the Chipettes as I seem to be can't help but give this one an 8/10.

8a           Gone Gal

Miss Croner and Miss Miller have a fight, which leads to Miss Croner faking her own disappearance and hiding out in the boys' treehouse. Which, apart from getting to see the chipmunks' wonderful pirate costumes again, gives us a fun runaround with the adult supporting characters, including Officer Dangus, which make this whole series so much fun.

The Chipettes get their moment in the spotlight too, and the whole thing is a very entertaining adventure, as usual! 8/10.

8b           Time Traveler's Party

Simon and Alvin are forever arguing - this time it's about the existence of time travel. Simon says it's impossible, Alvin insists it's real. So they put on a time travellers' party, not sending the invitations out until the following day, and of course Alvin hires an actor to play a time traveller and win the bet.

But it turns out the party guest is a real visitor from the future, pursued by time cops! He's after Simon's latest invention, which makes him world-famous in the future, and it's a real sci-fi adventure for our chipmunk brothers! This is a unique episode, going beyond the usual Simon's-invention-of-the-week stories, and it's really quite brilliant! Simon gets a real action-hero scene to himself! It's a really great one - 9/10!

9a           The House on Cedar Lane

This double-bill of episodes are each in their way a great example of how the show developed over the five seasons. This is a Halloween story, and while the first season's "Switch Witch" told a tale of the grown-ups giving the kids a fun Halloween, this one is about Alvin arranging to scare all their friends, who have been lamenting that as they grow up, it's harder to really be frightened by things!

I'm fascinated by the way everyone is just that significant little bit more mature now, such that you can easily believe a year has passed between the two stories. And it's also a great adventure all round, another must-see of the fifth season! 9/10.

9b           Bathroom Bully

This one, meanwhile, tells the same basic story as the first-season episode "Bully For You", but does it infinitely better! Back in the first season, a lot of episodes were the archetypal cartoon plot - in that one, Simon has to wear his unattractive spare glasses, and as a natural consequence of this gets bullied in a very cartoonish way by Derek, who has no personality beyond 'school bully'. Derek gets much better as the series goes on, and in this one he has a more logical motivation (Miss Smith has made him look a fool in front of the class and praised Simon to the skies), and his bullying is spur-of-the-moment and realistic.

And this leads to an adventure arising from the by now firmly established personality nuances of Simon, Alvin and Theodore and gives us funny scenes, great character interaction and an all-round fantastic episode! This one is most definitely a 10/10.

10a        The Return of Thornbergaupht

A sequel to the previous season's "The Chosen Chipmunk", this time it's Jeanette's turn to get into Simon's total immersion game - and she ends up entirely ruining it by counselling the evil Thornbergaupht and turning him into a big softy!

Which causes a problem when Simon's trying to sell this game - but somehow the whole episode doesn't work quite as well as the original story, nice as it always is to see Jeanette's unique perspective on life. Just 7/10.

10b        Squashed

Alvin tries to impress his friend Bruce's dad, who's very sporty, by claiming that Dave is a great squash player. He assumes he's on safe ground, since there aren't any squash courts around, but then it turns out there's one at the local exclusive club that Alvin would really like to hang out at...

Stories about Alvin spinning an ever-increasing web of lies around Dave are another fun recurring theme, and this one takes it in interesting directions - Dave finds that he really likes playing squash, and Alvin's out-of-control imagination just takes him off into a world of his own while the grown-ups get along perfectly sensibly. All good fun to watch! 7/10.

11a        Writer's Block 

Dave is trying to write a stage musical, but is hopelessly stuck on it. The chipmunks try to help him out but just make things a lot worse, as usual. The plan is to inspire Dave by performing a  full musical that Alvin has stolen from the internet and claims to have composed himself, but it just makes Dave want to give up writing altogether.

And thanks to some classic mix-ups and idiocy from batty neighbour Miss Miller and inept local policeman Officer Dangus, the chipmunks end up fearing that Dave has run away from home forever and they're never going to see him again!

This episode has it all - hilarious comedy, wonderful music, emotional depth, and... that beautiful little moment at the end when Dave pats Simon's head. An all-time favourite and a definite 10/10 all the way!

11b        Jinxed!

In order to stop Theodore telling Dave that Alvin broke his computer, Alvin jinxes Theo and tells him he's not allowed to talk.

And, honestly, this is a rare episode I don't like to watch. Alvin taking advantage of Theodore's gullible nature is a regular theme of the series, and it's usually funny, but this time I feel like Alvin's going too far and just being mean to his younger brother. I lose the sense of fun and just feel sorry for the poor mistreated little chipmunk.

So I'm going to be unforgivably harsh with the rating for this one and give it just... 6/10.

12a        Fire Safety

A gorgeous fireman comes to the school to teach everyone about fire safety, and all the girls (as well as Miss Smith) are swooning over him. Alvin's clearly not going to stand for this, and tries to make everyone think he's a fire safety hero in his usual misguided way.

There's an unusually educational tone to this one, actually - it would work as an episode of Arthur with minimal changes. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just a surprise to see Alvin and the Chipmunks playing it so straight! But there are still plenty of fun moments to enjoy! 7/10.

12b        Castle Catastrophe

On a school trip to a fake castle, Alvin gets in trouble (although it really wasn't totally his fault for once) and has to help out with repairs and playing the part of a servant. It doesn't exactly teach him humility, but he still seems to learn something from the whole experience.

Much like the previous one, there's more of a learning and improving tone to this episode than most, and it's funny that they're paired together in a double-bill. A somewhat bland 7/10.

13a        The Party Animals

Alvin feels that Dave should be booking the band for more private parties, and begs to be allowed to organise a gig himself to show how easy it is. He does, but it turns out he's booked them not as a band at an extremely wealthy and exclusive party but as the animals in the petting zoo. And when a rich party guest wants to keep the six chipmunks for herself, and Miss Miller misunderstands dramatically and says it's all right by her, things just look worse...

This is another one suggesting fascinating things about the talking chipmunk's status in society in this cartoon. They're clearly seen (at least by a very rich and entitled woman) as a thing that can be bought and sold, rather than being of the status of humans - it raises intriguing questions. Also, there's a great role for Alvin's perpetual rival Bocarter, and a lot of fun adventure all round! 8/10.

13b        Warren Seville

Alvin tries once more to get rid of Theodore's annoyingly ever-present Talking Teddy, and Theo retaliates by creating an even more annoying imaginary friend.

One of many episodes of the series showing a war between Alvin and Theodore, in which Theo fights back in elaborate ways avoiding direct confrontation. It's a great example of how the show really thinks about the personalities of the characters and the way they interact! This one perhaps doesn't work as well as some of the others, but it's always great to see! 7/10.

14a        Excavation Vacation

When Simon is going to go on a special outing with Dave, Alvin is of course insanely jealous. Alvin's constant desperation to spend quality time with Dave is one of his most endearing qualities, and it's mirrored in a more quiet way in Simon and Theo too - this is a family that love each other, and it's really quite beautiful.

And then when Simon's ill and can't go, Alvin gets to take his place, only to find it's a monumentally boring archaeological dig. It would be a more fun episode if I didn't feel sorry for poor Simon - this trip, as he points out, is something he said could be his birthday and Christmas present and he didn't want anything else! After that, I can't really sympathise with Alvin, I'm afraid, and this episode only gets a 6/10.

14b        Trophy Dad

Dave has been eagerly awaiting the music award nominations, and when Alvin finds he hasn't been nominated, the chipmunks resolve to try to make Dave feel better about it. But when Dave announces that he has been nominated, the boys think he's making it up - it's a hilarious misunderstanding, in the classic style, with the chipmunks trying to help Dave but making everything much worse. That's something that never gets old!

This one really is a laugh a minute, more than most episodes of the series. And has a nod to history too - Dave is actually excited to be nominated for Best Engineered Recording, a Grammy that the Chipmunks really did win three times in the sixties! But for sheer entertainment value, this is a 10/10.

15a        Skater Girl

Brittany gets into an argument with a boy at the skate park, and ends up challenging him to a skateboarding contest, even though she can't skate at all.

I do love the way this episode undermines the traditional approach - as Eleanor points out, being good at skateboarding indeed doesn't make the mean boy better than Brittany. But it does make him better at a skateboarding contest, which is what Brittany has agreed to! So it falls to Alvin and Eleanor to help Brit find a way to show her own unique skills, and it's a nice girl-focused story. 7/10.

15b        All Washed Up

The final Geizmo episode, and this time he's become obsessed with washing machines. When he escapes and starts breaking into people's houses to disassemble their washers, it looks like Simon's going to be forced to shut the little robot down. It's all very sad, but turns out to have a happy ending, of course!

Again, having the robot be a central and constant part of the family's life in just these four episodes sort of disturbs the sense of reality in the other ones, and maybe that's the key reason I don't rate these as highly as the other Simon stories. It shows how this series builds a totally believable world, I suppose! 7/10.

16a        Summer School

Alvin thinks he has to go to summer school, and can't let Dave know, because it would cancel their summer holiday. So they have to find a way to impersonate Dave in a conference call with the principal, and Simon creates a perfect 3D avatar - which, unfortunately, Theodore ends up having to control when the real Dave calls Alvin and Simon away.

This is the great thing about the modern Chipmunks series - it takes all the traditional cartoon storylines and seamlessly updates them into the 21st-century world, while still retaining the great character interrelationships we all love! 8/10.

16b        Puzzled

Dave and the chipmunks have an annual tradition of doing a really big jigsaw puzzle together - which is really adorably sweet! But Theodore breaks the 'no eating at the table' rule, spills his milk and washes a puzzle piece down the drain, forcing him to try to retrieve it while keeping it secret from Dave.

It's a simple story, but done in a very funny way, with a lot of adventure and lovely family moments too. A great episode for showing how well all the characters work together. 8/10.

17a        Car Wars

What should have been a twenty-minute drive to a concert turns into a frustrating traffic jam experience for the chipmunks and chipettes, trying to find ways to pass the time and avoid fighting with each other or the other annoyed drivers!

There are a lot of great character moments here, and as Jeanette puts it, in many ways it's still a lot of fun for them all (although the others might not entirely agree). But it's an above-average episode with a great musical number to boot! 9/10.

17b        Mr. Fix-It

Simon fixes everything for everyone, and never even gets a thank-you! So he finally decides to feign ignorance and refuse to help with things, and when Theodore, Alvin and Dave find out why, they all have to work together to make Simon feel appreciated again!

Another classic Simon story that I really love, with a really great song and a whole lot of great character moments! Simon thanking Dave at the end for everything he does ("It's gotta be a lot of work, raising three chipmunks") is the kind of line that sums up the whole series. Definitely 10/10!

18a        Little Drummer Boy

Alvin spontaneously decides he's going to play the drums at the Chipmunks' latest recording session, and brushes aside Theodore's meek attempts to protest.

Theo has to get revenge in his own way, and it develops into a wonderful battle of Theodore and Alvin impersonating each other - the greatest moment has to be Theo perceptively characterising Alvin's reckless behaviour as being "the only way I can get attention from my Daddy!"

And Simon sorts everything out in the end, and there's a great song too - this one's a big 10/10.

18b        Special Ingredient

When Theodore overloads his family with pancakes, trying to perfect a healthy recipe, Alvin takes drastic measures to try to stop him, with the help of burping powder acquired from the toy shop. Which becomes a problem when Theo takes his adulterated pancakes to share with the whole school.

Things of note in an otherwise unexceptional episode - as seen in the picture, one of the few occasions when English text is visible in this series; most episodes use illegible characters, presumably for ease of international sales. And also, the toy shop owner (a recurring character in multiple episodes) really really looks like Rolf Harris, although I'm sure that couldn't have been the intention.

But it's a rather bland one, this. 7/10.

19a        Alvin Gets Schooled

Alvin's latest excuse for doing badly at school is that Dave is too uncaring to help him with his homework. So when Dave finds out about this, he cracks down on Alvin, forcing him to work harder! Simon helps with a brilliant invention to keep Alvin on his toes - since Dave yells "ALVINNN!!!" every 23 minutes on average ("Oh. That's troubling..." Dave responds), Simon just sets up speakers and a recording to do the job for him!

It's always nice, and consistently depicted, to see Alvin's difficulties with schoolwork - he really has to work at it, unlike "Simon, who's a robot," and it's just not in his nature. We can sympathise with him as he gets into trouble and makes things up, and that's where this series really succeeds with its characterisation! 7/10.

19b        My Life as A Dog

Miss Miller is looking after a puppy, and lets the chipmunks take care of it while she's at the eye doctor. And when they end up pouring paint over the puppy and having to shave off all its hair, it's just a simple matter of having Theodore pretend to be a dog while Miss Miller is temporarily blind and they're waiting for the fur to grow back!

Another great thing about this series is the running jokes - the puppy, just like Miss Croner's cats in many other episodes, instinctively loves to chase and attack poor Theodore. And there's no shortage of ways to get new laughs out of the basic storylines that have kept cartoons going all these years! 7/10.

20a        Mr. Lou 

Theodore makes a clay model of a funny little man who spreads love and happiness and teaches us all to be nice to each other and eat healthy food. Theo makes Mr. Lou a series of internet videos, which turn out to be hugely popular, but when they're hacked and someone starts posting horrible images of Mr. Lou being nasty, poor Theodore is heartbroken and decides Mr. Lou is just too good for this world.

It takes Alvin and Simon rallying around to convince him not to do anything drastic, and urge the perpetrator (it's Derek) to stop being horrid. Which he does, of course! This is a wonderful episode for Theodore, showing how sweet he is, and comes with probably the catchiest song in the whole series to boot. A definite 10/10.

20b        Love Song 

And this is the episode that really made me fall in love with Simon. He SO needs a hug, all the way through it! Poor Simon is always the one who really gets put through the wringer in this series...

In a sequel to the fourth-season episode "The Crush", Simon has written a love poem to try to get over his crush on Mandi (the apparently very intelligent but actually not very nice teaching assistant), and thrown it in the bin. Where Dave finds it, likes it so much that he wants to make it into a song, and does so because Simon can't admit that he wrote it.

And of course it quickly becomes universally known that Simon wrote the song, and he has to try to avoid Mandi, only to finally have to talk to her, and admit that he doesn't like her any more now that he's seen how mean she can be. When she furiously tells Simon that she happens to be of below average meanness, and his song sucks anyway, and storms out, the beautiful little smile on Simon's face now everything's finally over is such a delight to see!

The whole episode is wonderful, hilarious and brilliant, with a nice moment for Brittany in there too and Alvin, as always, there to help Simon when he needs it. Unquestionably a 10/10!

21a        Bubble Wrap

Alvin is obsessed with popping bubble-wrap, Brittany is obsessed with popping acorn tops under her feet, and both of them are obsessed with fighting the other in ever-escalating warfare when a misunderstanding sets them off.

Although it's one of the rare episodes where the limitations of the CGI artwork are really noticeable (they just have single models for 'acorn' and 'squashed acorn', which don't look quite right), it's always fun to see the Alvin versus Brittany stories, and this one has a lot of laughs to it! 8/10.

21b        Chess Mate

Simon is very enthusiastic about forming a new chess club, which surprises Jeanette a little, since he always loses to her and has a screaming tantrum (in private, after politely congratulating the winner and walking quickly away). But the real annoyance comes from Alvin, who wants to join the club because he fancies a girl who likes chess, and begs Simon to let him in!

Both Simon and Jeanette can't help being manipulated by Alvin, and there are a lot of laughs along the way. 8/10.

22a        A Knight's Tail

At a mediaeval faire, Eleanor is incensed to be told by a sexist knight in armour that girls can't be knights, and resolves to show him a thing or two, with the aid of Simon-designed armour and eventually proving the point with her own skills and talents.

Eleanor doesn't get the spotlight very often, which is a shame, as she's a fantastic character in this series, and this is one of her best showcases. "Why is this news?" she asks Simon, after telling him she's a national champion at fencing and archery. It's true, Eleanor is sadly overlooked a lot of the time! 8/10.

22b        Dreambomber

When Theodore wakes Alvin up from a really great dream, from that point on Alvin can't stop dreaming about Theodore ruining everything he's doing. So Simon has to go into Alvin's dreams to try to get rid of the dream-Theodore...

It's a very surreal and imaginative episode, with a particularly great ending that reinforces how much the three brothers really care for each other, despite the occasional fights and differences of opinion! 9/10.

23a        The Lifeguard

Alvin and Eleanor are training to be junior lifeguards, and Theodore wants to be involved too. Thinking that he wouldn't be able to be an actual lifeguard, he appoints himself unofficial lifeguard helper, distributing snacks and sun-cream, and generally being adorable. And of course, he ends up saving the day in the end!

It's a really great one for Theo, in fact, with nice moments for the others too, and a traditional but subtly-stated moral about doing your best. Exactly why this show is so good! 8/10.

23b        Scare-Crowner

Miss Croner, the cantankerous old lady who lives across the road from our heroes, is another of the great supporting characters, and this episode is one of her greatest moments as well as a wonderful one for Theodore. He can't stop stealing the cherries from Miss Croner's tree, which leads to her getting a scarecrow that Theodore finds terrifying and has nightmares about!

It's a great story for Theo and Alvin, with another brilliant song and some great visuals! 10/10!

24a        Run, Aimee, Run

Celebrity athlete and actress Aimee Mullins appears as herself - the only celebrity cameo in the series - in a story in which the chipmunks try to find her lost-in-transit prosthetic running legs. Alvin, of course, is in love with Aimee (swooning over celebrity women has been his defining character trait ever since the Chipmunks were created) and takes the lead in the adventure.

It's good fun, in a more traditional cartoon-episode way than most of the fifth season. It makes you think they could have done a few more more guest stars without it getting in the way of the other stories. 8/10.

24b        Theo vs. Simon

Theodore finds out that Simon won a trophy for baking brownies, long ago, and becomes obsessed with trying to find something he can do better than his genius brother. And he insists that being loved and trusted by everybody doesn't count, because that's easy!

It's a truly wonderful character study of the two of them - you feel sorry for Theo and also for Simon as he awkwardly tries to negotiate his way around Theodore's feelings. And the ending is absolutely brilliant, too! A real personal favourite, 10/10!

25a        The Underground

The chipmunks' friend Cheesy (who rather dominates the last clutch of episodes, actually - he's clearly Michael Bagdasarian's favourite character and the tail-end of the season is rather heavily loaded with his stories) ropes Theodore and then Alvin into a plot to raid snacks from the school canteen.

It's a fun romp, but there's nothing particularly special or memorable about this one, as we get towards the very end of the season's brilliant run. 7/10.

25b        Game House 

Simon's final invention of the series, a holographic game covering the entire Seville house, goes wildly out of control (of course) when all six chipmunks want to program it with their own favourite environments on a rainy day.

The usual chaos and confusion ensue, and the show keeps on delivering those character moments and funny scenes all the way to the end! And you've got to admit, even in a familiar plotline like this one, it always manages to do it in a way that's uniquely the chipmunks' own! 7/10.

26a        The Dinner

Dave meets an old friend who's become a big success, and Alvin goes to extreme lengths to make it look like Dave is fabulously rich and successful too when he comes round for dinner. This includes painting everything in the house gold, hiding the sleeping Miss Miller in a trunk, and all the usual farcical things that happen in a situation like this, mostly involving Cheesy pretending to be the butler.

Not a very good one, this - in fact, just right at the very very end of the season, you'd be justified in saying the show has rather run out of steam. But considering how many great episodes have gone before, I think we can forgive them. 6/10.

26b        The Tour

The final episode of the series really does give us an ending! Alvin's keen for the band to go on tour again, and it turns out the record company agree, so it's all arranged. But Theodore doesn't want to go, and when he realises he's leaving all his friends, neither does Alvin!

They come around eventually, and drive off into the sunset in their tour bus, but I can't help thinking this might be the Chipmunks' final tour, and they'll come back home again to settle down and grow up - there's a real sense of closure, even if it isn't a particularly gripping episode, and it's a nice way to finish the series in style! 8/10.

So there you have it! A choice selection that I really recommend you sample, if you haven't already! If you're not quite as Simon-fixated as me, you might differ with some of the scoring, but I stand by my selection of the greatest episodes of the season, and I don't think you'll be disappointed if you check them out! Doo doo doo-doo-doo-doo!

Happy birthday, Bob!

 Bob Haney, the great writer of comics, cartoons and many other things, was born 100 years ago today, March 15th 1926! I first encountered him in 1987 as a writer of several really great episodes of Thundercats, with a very distinctive style of dialogue completely different from the stories written by anyone else, an avoidance of the usual comedy everyone-laughs endings and a whole lot of suspense and excitement almost unmatched in the generally thrilling and excellent cartoon!

When I subsequently found he'd written a lot of superhero comics in the olden days, I was similarly delighted by the likes of Metamorpho and his wide-ranging other works - he really was a creative genius, and everybody should be celebrating his centenary today!

(Yes, I know it's mothers' day, but did your mother ever write anything as good as "Dimension Doom"? I didn't think so.)

Here's a nice little pen-portrait of Bob Haney, from the Brave and the Bold issue number 50, in 1963 - DC comics still weren't generally crediting the creators in those days, but you'd still occasionally get these nice little glimpses behind the scenes of the people who made them!

559555955

 Happy pi day! Which shouldn't really be a thing, because you have to put the month and day the wrong way around to make it 3/14. But waiting for the 31st of April takes longer than you'd expect it to, so we're just stuck with March the 14th, I'm afraid.

When you're memorising pi to fifty thousand places, as I saw fit to do twenty years ago, you come to appreciate the little interesting bits. Like the way, 18,351 digits in, it goes 559555955. I always thought that was very pretty.

One of these days, I'll go back and re-learn all those digits. It's more fun than you might think, I promise!

Observation

 If I had pet lice, I would name them Marvel and Fabu. But I wouldn't be able to own more than two, because those are the only good names, and all the other lice would be jea.

I've changed my mind

 And given the context, I think there's a good chance I've been telepathically "pushed" into changing my mind, possibly from beyond the grave. But never mind, eh? Let's talk about Psi-Force!

A couple of years ago, I lamented that I'd never read a comic I liked that was written by Stephen Perry, even though he'd written some excellent episodes of Thundercats and he did have a handful of comic-writing credits to his name. Before writing that rather sweeping dismissal of his entire literary oeuvre, I did go back and re-read the first issue of Psi-Force, to see if it was as bad as I remembered from my previous encounter with the series, and concluded that it really was dull and uninteresting. Possibly I was just in the wrong frame of mind.

Because as I mentioned recently (and this really is turning into a blog where I just read other, better, blogs and comment on them, so I do apologise for that), Tom Brevoort is working through the New Universe comics of 1986 with analysis, commentary and interesting anecdotes about their creation. And since he's already covered Star Brand and Spitfire, the two I read at least some of, forty years ago, I thought this would be a good time to go back and remind myself what happened in the others. My experience of the New Universe has been very piecemeal over the years, picking up odd comics here and there and generally thinking "What was that supposed to be all about, then?" - which might not have given me the best impression of the line, although it does seem to tally with what most fans say about them...

Psi-Force was created by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson, but for some reason they didn't write or draw the comics themselves. Instead, it was drawn by the talented but inexperienced Mark Texeira (he'd drawn He-Man mini-comics and an issue of Transformers before this, so you can tell he was good!) and written by Steve Perry, best known for those few great episodes of the Thundercats cartoon.

So, we've got a team of pre-created characters, handed to people who've done a good job with toy tie-in fiction before now. It should work. And I think my problem with Psi-Force before now is that it's just not that kind of comic at all, and it's harder to get a handle on what kind of comic it is meant to be. But now, reading the first two issues (after which Perry was replaced by Danny Fingeroth), I find they do have a real appeal to them!

The story starts in medias res, with Emmett Proudhawk, known as "Hawk", trying to rescue teenage Anastasia "Stasi" Inyushin from the sinister Russians who say she belongs to them. It's all very dark and gritty. Hawk has telepathic powers, and can make people do what he wants, within limits. Stasi has the power to heal people, although again her powers are limited and difficult for her to use.Hawk has also brought along telekinetic teen Kathy Ling, although she's not at all an action hero, and is horrified to see there are people with actual guns, trying to kill people!

Our heroes get away in the end, though Hawk's been shot repeatedly, and regroup in "Sanctuary", a home for teenage runaways in San Francisco, where we meet the rest of the team.

The art in these comics is actually really good. A lot of small panels on each page, sometimes more than ten, and a lot of text to go with them, you really get your money's worth. Modern American comics have moved a long way away from this kind of thing, which is a great shame. There's more content in this one than in twelve monthly issues of the comics you'll see on the shelves today...

Nobody except Hawk has any kind of superhero name, or costume, and they're all teenagers from around America who Hawk has brought here. All of them had previously tested as having high-level ESP, but all have recently developed much more dramatic psychic powers after the "white event" that enveloped the planet and was the central plotline of the New Universe comics.

Wayne Tucker has telepathic powers like Hawk, and spends the entire first two issues announcing that he doesn't want to be part of the group and is leaving, right now. He never does, and we can't help but wonder if Hawk has been keeping him there. Hawk is very reluctant to use his powers on the kids, but he does do it later in this same issue, sending them out against their will when Stasi runs back to the Russians to try to save the others from danger. Later issues of the series get more explicit about this, but in these first two it's more subtly done.

The others are Tyrone Jessup, token black guy with astral projection powers, and Michael Crawley, little nerd who can make things blow up. All five of the teens are new to their powers and haven't entirely learnt to focus them into anything useful. Which is a good way to start a series - the superhero norm is that people immediately gain full control over their amazing powers, whip up a colourful costume and go out to fight crime, but this one really hits the "more realistic" tone that the New Universe was striving for.

Hawk has had a dream or vision of a hawk protecting five rabbits who combine to form some sort of super-hawk. It's presented as stereotypical "Indian mysticism", but it actually feels a bit more Old Testament than anything from Native American traditions. And like all good dreams, it comes true by the end of the first issue. Hawk is killed by Mindwolf, the Russian head bad guy, and the teens find that they can use his amulet, Captain Planet style, to summon Psi-Hawk, a manifestation of Hawk as a more standard superhero!

(This comic predates Captain Planet, by the way.)

And the second issue is more of the same, and actually a very compelling read - it details at length the kids trying to get back to Sanctuary, carrying Hawk's body, and being chased not by the Russians this time, but by Hawk's old colleagues in the CIA. Who don't yet know that Hawk is dead, and are working on the assumption that he's out there somewhere, so the feds are just after the teenagers to find out where.

It's all very grim and down-to-earth, but the individual personalities of the kids come across pretty well (they're still basically stereotypes, but you feel like we're getting to know them better) and there's a great sense of them being entirely out of their league...

And Psi-Hawk just comes to the rescue in the end, and I'm feeling like this comic would actually work better without that deus ex machina hanging around - especially since both he and Wayne are able to blank out people's memories after every encounter.

So it's certainly not perfect, but reading these two comics again now has really made me like them! I feel like the later issues of the series drift off into more conventional territories, but taking the Perry issues on their own, there's a definite feeling of new, exciting and different, by the standards of 1986 comics.

So, in summary, it turns out there IS a comic by Stephen Perry that I like! Yay! I'm just sorry it took me so long to warm up to it...

What's wrong with this picture?

 Here's a panel from Marvel Two-in-One #33, dated November 1977. The Thing and his girlfriend Alicia are in England, on their way to visit Stonehenge, and somehow confident it won't lead into yet another fight with wizards and demons and things.

They're eight miles away from Stonehenge, according to what seems to be a wooden sign on a stake hammered into the roadside. Travelling from London, you'd think they'd be on the A303 and enjoying the views of Salisbury Plain, but in fact they seem to be taking some kind of dirt track through the Rocky Mountains. And driving on the wrong side of the road. But hey, at least the comic's creators haven't done the usual American thing and believed British road signs are in kilometres!

Will any readers write in to point out the inaccuracies? A thousand of them did, apparently...

Yes, good old Mason M. Aldrich wrote from Florida to say "I always thought the British used kilometers to measure distance!" - and the editor apologises and notes that a whole lot of other readers wrote in to say the exact same thing.

But hey, 1977 was a primitive time. I won't demand Mason be stripped of his no-prize, since he was writing at a time when I was less than a year old and hadn't yet got a blog where I tell the world what's what. But if you're American and reading this, please note that the British use miles to measure distance. Always have done.

(To be fair, I always used to think Americans used kilometres. I mean, America is a hi-tech, modern kind of place, naturally they'd be all up-to-date and metric, right? It's only old-fashioned places like Britain that would use old-fashioned imperial measurements. America wouldn't use anything "imperial", now would they? But now the internet exists and I've been over there a time or two, I understand that they do measure things in miles. We're two nations separated by a common system of measuring the distance to Stonehenge.)

Cambridge International

 Looking it up, I've been going to this othello tournament in Cambridge since 2002 - not every year, but probably more often than not. And I've never looked quite as cool as I do in this picture, taken (unless I'm misattributing the credit, as I often do) by James Brooks:

 That's so awesome, words can't describe it. See, this is why you should wear a big hat!

Also, I did really rather well, finishing fifth and winning seven games out of eleven. And I could have (undeservedly) beaten Mark Plowman if I'd noticed that he played a dramatically losing move right at the very end of our game. But neither of us noticed until analysing the game afterwards, and it wouldn't have been a fair result for me to win, anyway. And I did beat the other three representatives of the Plowman family who came to this one, including a win against patriarch Guy that also probably deserves the "undeservedly" tag. It was a great weekend!

A strange way to end a story

 I thought I'd written about this in my blog before now, but it looks like I didn't. So, with at least 90% certainty I'm not repeating myself, I present this for a wider audience than anyone who's read an email I sent to my brother in 2013.

It begins today, as we could see on page 17 of the 86th issue of the Transformers comic released by Marvel UK, dated 8th Nov.86. I've written before about how this era was a high point of comics history for ten-year-old me, and this is another part of the epic Target: 2006 story that thrilled us all in the autumn of 1986! The backup strip wasn't of any great interest to Transformers fans, but they tried to whip up some enthusiasm on the first page - probably a futile attempt, since the Transformers story before it was eleven glorious pages of Ultra Magnus and Galvatron beating seven bells out of each other, and who could care about some backup strip after that?

Backup strips in Transformers had a simple rule - they could use any filler material they could find in Marvel USA's output, as long as it featured a robot or something that looked like a robot. Spitfire (a suit of armour) fitted the bill perfectly as a replacement for Hercules (the limited series in which he had a robot sidekick). As described here, it was part of the "New Universe" range of comics launched by the American Marvel in 1986, and Tom Brevoort is going to be writing about the spectacularly unsuccessful titles on his always-entertaining blog - so be sure to check it out if you want to see some real writing about comics. Here, though, I'll limit myself to just one page.

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters ran from number 86 to number 98 (31st Jan.87) of the Transformers comic - chopped into five or six pages per issue, that covered the first three issues of the American Spitfire comic. And it came to an end like this...

"Well, I've got the laser disk that might contain evidence against the bad guy Krotze. [strange indecipherable black blots]." THE END.

Okay, that's an unusual way to conclude a story. Reading it at the time, I don't recall even noticing it - I didn't ever pay much attention to Spitfire. Or perhaps I've just blanked out the whole incomprehensible thought bubble - my brother says he was enormously intrigued and confused by it and gave it a lot of deep thought!

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters was, I'm sorry to say, not a good comic. But it probably wasn't abruptly axed from Transformers on quality grounds - at the start of 1987, Hasbro had decided to push Action Force toys in a big way - the American "G.I. Joe" action figures had been available in Britain under the more comprehensible name "Action Force" before, but released by a different company and generally flying under the radar of British kids. But now, Hasbro had taken it back under the wing of their main toy lines, and there was going to be a comic and video releases of the American cartoon (all fascinatingly edited to change "G.I. Joe" to "Action Force" and "A Real American Hero" to "International Heroes" in order to make it make sense to us limeys). And so part of that was giving the Transformers backup slot for four weeks over to an unusually robot-free story from the American G.I. Joe comic, introducing the new characters who appeared in Hasbro's debut range.

And there's a Lew Stringer Robo-Capers about the free sticker that came free with this issue too!

But what happened in that ending to Spitfire? Well, the original American comic actually ended like this...

"That's the plus side..." And then there was one more panel completing the thought, and three-quarters of a page setting up the next storyline, which Transformers readers never got to see:

So what's with the black blots in the Transformers comic? Were they intending to remove the thought bubble entirely? Or rewrite it to make it a bit less open-ended? I suppose we'll never know. I mean, I didn't care about it at the time, but I did at least investigate and buy the American comic in 2013 when I finally noticed it again, so in a sense, this backup strip did generate one more (second-hand) sale for Marvel! The New Universe is a success!

Appreciate the squirrels

 January 21st is Squirrel Appreciation Day, an important event in the calendar founded by some weird American on the internet a few years ago. I think squirrels are great, as I've mentioned many times on this blog.

So I'm rather disappointed to find something called the UK Squirrel Accord, a big bunch of sciurine racists, have claimed the day as "RED Squirrel Appreciation Day", and have a whole website full of articles about how to get rid of horrid invasive species like grey squirrels. Sciurine racists, I tell you. Grey squirrels are great, and I'm going to form them into an army to take down this horrid bunch of horrid people.

T'other Toth

 I see on the BBC news that AFC Bournemouth have signed Alex Toth, who turns out to be a promising young Hungarian midfielder who might fill the gap in the Cherries' ranks left by star player Antoine Semenyo upping and leaving for the higher wages of Manchester City. I just hope it leads to a lot of people searching for details of Alex Toth on the internet and learning all about the great American comic book artist of the same name.

Actually, Alex Toth the artist died in 2006, and Alex Toth the footballer is apparently twenty years old... no, disappointingly, their lives did overlap a little, so it's probably not a case of reincarnation, but it comes pretty close. It's still a good excuse to write a blog about some little-known comics, so let's explore the world of Sierra Smith, Western Detective!

Sierra made his debut in the first issue of Dale Evans Comics, published in June 1948:

If you're wondering who Dale Evans is, you're probably not reading this in the year 1948 - Roy Rogers was a really big name, a mega-celebrity and very much the kind of superstar whose merchandise kids would eagerly spend their post-war pocket money on. A licensed Roy Rogers comic had been published by Dell since 1947, and was selling like hot cakes. DC Comics felt they'd missed the boat quite badly there, in their quest to find something new to replace the increasingly unpopular superheroes that had made them into the leading comics publisher of the early 1940s. So because they couldn't get Roy Rogers (and Trigger the horse presumably demanded too high a fee), they signed the next-best thing - Roy's celebrity wife, Dale Evans, Queen of the Westerns!

This comic was a bi-monthly, and every issue contained three comic adventures of Dale (in which her life as a celebrity movie star was continually interrupted by real-life cowboy adventures involving bank robberies and the like for her to thwart), friendly updates on her life (which, unlike the comic stories, were allowed to mention her husband and family), other filler stuff of the type that filled all anthology comics back then, and one backup strip - our hero, Sierra Smith.

Sierra is a noir detective, who lives in the modern-day wild west. It's written by Joe Millard, and drawn by Alex Toth (the artist, who will at that time have been about the same age that the Bournemouth-bound Hungarian footballer is now). It's a strange mix, but he's very much the character archetype. He's a hard-boiled detective, good with his fists, perpetually cynical, perpetually short of money, perpetually aggravating his secretary and girlfriend Nan, and always getting the job done in the end.

His investigations involve a lot of abandoned gold mines, interspersed with an occasional bank robbery. They follow the standard comic formula of the time - Sierra always uncovers the villain's evil scheme, investigates, gets knocked out and captured, escapes, thwarts the evil-doers and sometimes even gets paid (though he tends to squander the money on solving the crime and Nan complains about how he expects them to eat tonight). They're actually great fun, if you're in the mood!

The first story involves a bit of good old-fashioned cross-dressing, too...

And a year later, in Dale Evans Comics #7, Dale herself encounters the same kind of thing. One can only speculate whether she personally approved of this kind of fun, and whether she and Roy (and Trigger) indulged in the same kind of merriment behind closed doors:

The beauty contest for cowboys, if you were wondering, was organised by a man who wanted to rob the bank, and knew if the cowboys were all wearing long skirts and no guns, they wouldn't be able to stop him. But Dale sorts him out in the end, don't worry.

Millard and Toth only remained on Sierra Smith for the first eleven adventures, but I heartily recommend checking them out! It's one of those lost classics of late-forties American comic history, and I just hope Bournemouth's new midfielder can produce the same kind of entertainment!

Father's day

It's not Father's Day; that happens in June. But I saw someone on Facebook today saying it's Peppermint Patty's birthday and sharing the Peanuts comic first published in an October that says it's her birthday, which got me thinking paternally anyway. Because I've noted before that it does quite often seem that fictional characters I really love have a strong loving relationship with a single father. I don't think that's a requirement for becoming a favourite of mine, but it certainly doesn't hurt. So on this no-particular-occasion, as we're only a couple of months away from the twentieth anniversary of my own father's death, let's take a look at a few great single dads of cartoon history.

Single fathers were surprisingly commonplace in the American cartoons of the 1980s that I grew up with. It was very common to see a kid who just had a dad, and nobody even gave the slightest clue as to whether there had ever been a mother involved in the child's creation at some point. But the likes of Spike Witwicky (Transformers) and Scott Trakker (MASK) never thrilled me all that much, and Defenders of the Earth (four single men, each with a child, and that's not counting Ming the Merciless being a single father too) has never been a particular favourite, although it's got some really great moments. We have to move into more modern times before we get a real favourite of mine who falls into that category, so let's start with the latest and greatest...

I have still got an enormous crush on Simon Seville. The whole series ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks is so wonderfully written, directed and produced and that one character is so completely and totally me in every way, I'm just infatuated (I'm a rather self-absorbed person, if you look at it that way). Let me share with you one amazing moment that I point out to everyone...

If you're not familiar with Alvin and the Chipmunks (even though I've gone on about it at such length in the past), David Seville is the adoptive father of the three chipmunk boys. They often combine to drive him mad, but underneath that is such a mutual love, it pervades everything they do. Simon is the quiet one, but all three really need  and thrive on Dave's care and attention in their own way. In the episode "Writer's Block", they think they've made Dave run away from home, and at the end he has to reassure them. And while he talks to Theodore and Alvin, calming their fears, and Simon just sits silently to the side, keeping his worries to himself, Dave reaches out and pats Simon's head, just giving him that silent reassurance. It's a moment that melts my heart, and I so admire the way it's worked into that scene. Perhaps nobody else even notices it, but it's my all-time most-loved moment in the show.

Now let's move on to The Owl House, and my most-loved character there, Gus. He also just has a dad, and in this case there's never any mention of a mother being involved, in the classic style. And since he's a witch from the Boiling Isles, which have different laws of nature altogether, perhaps he really never had a mother in the first place. But at the end of the final episode, "Watching and Dreaming", they're finally reunited after the horrors of the Collector's reign and the final conflict with Belos...

If you're not familiar with The Owl House, you might not even notice that Gus seems to me to be unusually small in this scene, and I wonder whether it's deliberate, or just a result of inconsistent art and regular confusion over his character design. Gus is (almost uniquely in cartoons) a young teenage boy whose voice actor was a young teenage boy, and Issac Ryan Brown's voice was breaking during production of the first season. As an in-joke, Gus has a big overnight growth spurt as well as a deeper voice when season two begins, which he cheerfully ascribes to 'witch puberty', and his relative size compared to other characters does seem to fluctuate rather from that point on. But it's possible his smallness here is deliberate - he's a very powerful witch specialising in illusion magic, so I can see him unconsciously making himself look little when reunited with Perry. In any case, I love this scene and the attachment the two of them have to each other.

And let's go back to the nineties and hear it for Chuckie in Rugrats, and the love between him and his father Chas. Because that's one of the most wonderful pieces of characterisation in animation history, and always worthy of a mention.

If you're not familiar with Rugrats, the premise is that the babies wander off and have adventures by themselves, unnoticed by their parents who generally look on their offspring as objects to be kept around the place and largely ignored. The exception is Chas, who always has a warm and caring relationship with his son Chuckie, though it's mainly offscreen - Chuckie is perpetually around at Tommy's house while his single father Chas is working. And the episode "Mother's Day" goes into detail about how the situation arose - Chuckie's mother died when he was very young. That clearly wasn't the original intention of the series (a character model for Chuckie's mother exists, and was used in the background of one episode but not identified), but really made the characters make a lot more sense once this episode came along. It's absolutely beautiful, in fact, and you all need to go and watch it.

But let's move back even further in time and look at Peanuts, which started this whole train of thought. If you're not familiar with Peanuts, what's wrong with you? It's perhaps the most famous American newspaper comic of all time, and it's spawned no end of cartoons and films! But if you're still unfamiliar, the thing about parents (and all adults) in Peanuts is that they're never seen and rarely even mentioned. My favourite character there has to be Schroeder, and he follows the trend in never showing any sign of having a father or mother. We assume his parents took him on his vacation to Europe in 1958 (this strip from 16 November), but that's the closest he ever comes. Quite impressive for someone who was a small baby when he first appeared!

But the two characters who come a close second in my personal estimation are also the two who actually do have that father-son bond I appreciate so much. Charlie Brown's father isn't single (the rarely-mentioned Mrs Brown is a housewife, and that's about all we know about her), but he really does love his son, best shown in this strip from June 21, 1964. Violet is fond of boasting about her dad, but Charlie Brown is the one who definitely comes out on top for once.

And the very best father-child relationship in Peanuts comes from my other most-loved character, and the one who started this whole train of thought, Peppermint Patty. She doesn't have a mother (for reasons never explained) and lives with her single father, to whom she's very attached. Their relationship, although of course we never see him, is quite beautiful, and perhaps never more so than in this one, October 4th, 1970.

Yes, let's all celebrate all the fictional fathers out there - they're doing a great job!

Chipmunk Chronological Confusion Corner

 "Theo vs Simon" is a particularly wonderful episode of ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks. But there's something about the sequence of events in it that I find a little strange. Just follow through these scenes from the episode, and see what you think.

Poor little Theodore has come to believe that Simon is better than him at everything, when he discovers that Simon once won a trophy for baking brownies - he makes Simon whip up another batch to see what they're like, and when they turn out to be delicious, Theo runs up to their bedroom, crying.

Just as an aside, reason number 5616581651 why I love this cartoon - the way it depicts crying. Most modern cartoons go with anime-style exaggerated floods of tears, but Chipmunks draws it very realistically, which works much better.

And when they cry is done brilliantly, too, with a consistent and well-thought-out grasp of character. Theo is in tears a lot, because he's the emotional type. Alvin cries much less frequently, and only when the world is genuinely being unfair to him (on those rare occasions when he tells the truth, and finds that people don't believe him!) And Simon only ever cries when both his brothers are already sobbing - which only happens in the subset of episodes when they believe they've lost Dave forever.

But back in "Theo vs Simon", Simon comes up to the room to try to talk to Theodore.

I just want you to know, Theodore, I am so impressed with all that you do!

Oh, shove it! You're just the best! You're the best at everything, okay!

Theodore, look - everybody loves you! You listen to people! And people trust you with their feelings! That's huge!

That doesn't count! That's easy!

I'm sure there's a lot of things that you're better at than me!

Oh yeah? Like what?

Well, you pick! Pick anything!

Okay. Okay, I will!

Theodore stomps out. And the next scene starts with Theo standing by the pool, and Alvin coming out to join him.

How you doing, Theodore?

He's just so good, at so many things!

Why do you keep challenging him, Theodore? Simon's good at a lot of things, but that doesn't mean you're not!

Yeah, but I wanna be better than him at one thing! One important thing! Not just being nice and cuddly!

Oh Theodore, I got it! The drums! It takes years to master!

Did we miss something here? We haven't seen Theodore challenging Simon to things repeatedly yet! Anyway, Alvin arranges a drum-off, and Simon... gets a bit carried away.

At first Simon just tries to concede defeat, but when Theo insists he show what he can do, Simon plays a wonderful drum solo, Theodore screams, kicks his drum kit to pieces and runs back to the bedroom. "Nice going, champ," Brittany tells Simon, who protests "Theodore, that was a fluke! That never happened! Honestly!" and follows him back to the bedroom...

And the dialogue in this scene is another of my all-time favourites.

Theodore, look, let's just do it again. You know, that was a once-in-a lifetime...

Stop! Stop! I... I hate this. And I don't want you to make yourself worse, just so I feel better!

Oh, there, Theodore, you see? You are so emotionally mature! You're the best at that!

Oh, be quiet! They don't give out trophies for that!

Well, yes, but I... (Theodore puts his hand over Simon's mouth) mmpphh mmf...

I, I know it's not emotionally mature, but I need to beat you at something! I'm sorry, it's just really gonna bother me until I do...

And THEN, we cut to the musical number for the episode (a great song, as always) with a montage of Theodore challenging and losing to Simon at running, basketball, Rubik's cube, sandcastle building and finally blowing bubbles by the pool.

It ends with Theo standing by the pool, just where Alvin found him at the start of the earlier scene. The next scene picks up at the start of the next day, as they're going to school, and Simon tells Alvin "It's getting really bad. Last night he challenged me to shove myself into a to-go bag!"

And I just feel like the song montage should have come after the first bedroom scene, not the second! I mean, it does still work in the sequence of events we get here, but it just seems like it makes more sense to put the music before the drum-off. Maybe it's just me. Or maybe the song needed to be placed at a particular time-point in the episode. Or maybe someone just put it after the wrong one of the two very similar Simon/Theo bedroom scenes?

It's probably just that I think too much about these things. But don't worry, there is a happy ending to this episode, and I really recommend that you check it out!

Mar-Might will save the day

 This advert appears in Transformers No.102, dated 28th Feb.87:

Send for your Marmiteers Fun Pack! It seems to be a very short-lived attempt to make children urge their parents to buy lots of Marmite - you had to send away "only 16oz worth of Marmite labels", which is quite a lot. The little jars of Marmite in those days were 4 ounces (the labels said 113g, but they hadn't yet moved to selling them in round numbers of grammes). If the household only bought a little jar at a time, people eager to read the adventures of Jo-Jo, Bruno and Mar-Might must have been really spreading the stuff heavily on their toast!

I don't know of anyone who got the Fun Pack. I must try to find one some day. I don't dislike Marmite, but it just doesn't seem like something you'd try to promote to children in this way, even in the days when the Transformers comic was chock-full of adverts for the Weetabix gang on their latest adventure. I'd still like to know exactly what Marmite-themed fun our heroes had...