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Frankly, I Don’t Give a Dam (Part 6)
This week, we’ll attempt a wrap-up of the subject of beavers for this article series. As mentioned in the first installment of these articles, a previous dissertation on the subject had appeared in the pages of Cartoon Brew, which, with regard to many more recent productions, is probably as comprehensive as I would be without conducting considerable intensive research into unfamiliar territory for the remote chance of an unannounced beaver turning up here or there. I will therefore not attempt to cover post-2000 beavers in comprehensive fashion, and restrict my final discussion to generally-earlier appearances or a few that I feel are noteworthy of more detailed discussion, as a suitable closing of this subject. Of course, any of you wishing to address any favorites or surprise guest appearances which I or Cartoon Brew have overlooked, are as always welcome to add your comments and reviews below.
Boomer Beaver (Hanna Barbera, Spike and Tyke (from “Tom and Jerry Kids”), 9/27/92) – By this point in their careers, Spike and Tyke had become a mere knock-off of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy – the characters who were originally intended to be a knock-off of Spike and Tyke! Tyke has grown from a yapping puppy to a reasonably intelligent speaking son, delivering lines in Augie Doggie’s exact voice – even lifting standard Augie catch-phrases such as the over-acted “Oh, the shame of it!” Spike is still pretty much what he’s always been – an over-protective father with a Jimmy Durante-style voice – but then, so was Doggie Daddy. So, if you’re not watching the visuals, this might as well be a new installment of the Augie Doggie cartoons.
This episode develops a few laughs, but drives home an eco-friendly message too obviously, busting the humor bubble and giving us an ending that falls flat. Spike has decided to build the two of them a hideaway log cabin in the woods. Trouble is, he’s left nothing behind to hide away in. To obtain building materials for his cozy cottage, Spike has chopped down and denuded acres of the forest, with no replanting. Tyke, reading from a volume entitled “Save Our Earth”, warns that cutting without planned replanting will cause the soil to wash away, and leave the animals homeless.
Unusually callous Spike respond that the animals can simply pick up and move somewhere else. One who isn’t about to abide by such logic is a certain Boomer Beaver, who swims along the river, selecting just this spot as the perfect place to build his new dam. But what happened to his expected overflowing and ample lumber supply? Not a tree, nowhere. Only that confounded log cabin interloping on his building territory. Boomer knocks on the door, calling Spike selfish, and demanding the lumber back, or there’ll be trouble. When Spike tells him to go somewhere and build a home out of concrete blocks, he soon finds a circle being cut in the wooden floor under his feet, and disappears into a hole in the cellar, while Boomer makes off with a first log from the side of the house. Much of ther film becomes more or less a reworking of Andy Panda’s “Nutty Pine Cabin”, with the beaver taking away lumber and hardware piece by piece, including the theft of a door and a flattening of Spike against a tree within the doorway, very similar to Andy Panda’s gag. One piece of borrowing from classic comedy of old is at least inspired. The beaver gnaws away at the outline of one entire side wall of the two-story cabin, while Spike stands in front of it outside. The wall begins to topple – replicating the classic shot filmed by Buster Keaton for “Steamboat Bill Jr.”, as the wall smashes down flat upon the ground, Spike avoiding being crushed by luckily standing precisely within the confines of a small spot matching the parameters of the frame of an open window in the falling wall. “Whew, that was close”, exclaims Spike.
But here, there is a topper – as the beaver, from the exposed floor of the second story above, wheels forward a grand piano, and shoves it off the floor’s edge, slam upon Spike. The beaver then gathers up the remaining wall logs all at once for one trip to the river, then the logs providing the cabin’s interior framework and floors, and all the interior wooden furnishings, for a second trip. Spike stands in the middle of the empty foundation, and jeers at the beaver, “Ya forgot the roof.” Regrettably, he is standing right under it, as it hovers in defiance of the law of gravity in mid-air. Law must always be upheld – but not what is lacking in structural grounding, and the roof logs all smash down upon Spike. The bulldog knows when he’s licked, and permits the Beaver to take everything to the river, where his dam is finally completed, using several components that are still in the form of Spike’s furniture. The beaver announces no hard feelings, and reveals two youngsters of his own for which the dam will provide a home. Spike, being a family man himself, acknowledges the importance of providing a roof over one’s offspring’s head, and sentimentally (and preachily) vows not to be so selfish again. (One problem with this ending. Neither Spike nor Boomer give any indication of intending to spend further time planting new trees – so what do Boomer and the other forest animals do when new lumber is needed for next season? These cartoon conservationists need to lean to practice rather than just preach.)
• “Boomer Beaver” can be viewed on ok.ru.
Trail Mix-Up (Disney/Amblin, Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman, 3/12/93). Mother, Roger, and Herman are roughing it in the great outdoors of Yellowstain National Park. Mother goes hunting, and warns Roger that if he commits any more slip-ups in caring for Herman, rabbit season opens today. There are as usual nice little extras in the animation, with Roger briefly rolling one ear atop his head to resemble a Davy Crockett pioneer hat, and attempting to start a fire using a violin bow to rub against the sticks. Jessica makes her cameo as a seductive forest ranger, who, despite her reminder that “Only you can prevent forest fires”, generates enough internal heat in Roger to cause him to rub the sticks at super speed, burning his firewood and himself to a crisp. Herman is on the move again, first exploring a beehive in a tall tree, then closely following a deadpan beaver who bores through massive tree trunks in under one second. Herman follows so close, he is under tree trunks 90% eaten away as they start to collapse – but it is Roger as usual who gets clobbered with them. Roger lands in a lake, and to his surprise is pursued by a shark fin. The fin is merely propelled by a pole hooked to an underwater tricycle, ridden by Droopy, who comments to us, “Gets ‘em every time.” The beaver leads Herman into major peril in a mammoth sawmill, in a sequence with wonderful dimensionality as Roger faces chomping high-speed sawblades wide enough to fill the entire wide-ratio screen. Everyone winds up on a wild log flume ride into the river, where a fishing bear is picked up as an additional passenger in water-ski fashion. Everyone heads for the waterfall, then somehow are sprung out of one peril into another, with the cast plugged into Old Predictable Geyser. The geyser erupts on cue, but with more force than natural due to the plugging. The camera pulls back to show the Maroon Cartoon sound stage, as the eruption blasts the cast right through the studio roof. All fly non-stop through the air from Hollywood to South Dakota, where they crash “head-on” with the sculptures of Mount Rushmore (which all react in shock takes before being obliterated). Out of the dust and rubble march our cast, battered and bruised with some in bandages, and Roger (wearing only shorts) carrying a tattered American flag, resembling the marchers of the famous image of the Spirit of ‘76. Herman (who is entirely nude, having lost his diaper and covering his private places with his hands), resorts to his mature toon voice, and chews out Roger. “You star-spangled bonehead! You ruined a National monument.” “P-p-please!”, responds Roger, “Don’t get bent out of shape. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” Roger plants the flag in the ground and salutes it. Only he planted it a little too deeply. The camera zooms back into outer space, where we see the entire Earth puncture like a balloon, and zip around through the cosmos at near-lightspeed as it deflates, the scream of Roger heard as he passes the credits scroll.
Oregon Astray (Disney, Timon and Pumbaa, 9/9/96) – A peaceful morning finds Timon relaxing on his back in the middle of a forest glen, when he is abruptly crushed under the weight of a massive falling tree. Pumbaa enters the scene, looking for Timon, and shouting how happy he is, that he just learned how to cut down a tree just like a busy beaver. Timon squeezes his way out from under the weighty limber, and pumps one arm with the other to manipulate his spine back into full extension in the manner of an automotive jack. He asks why Pumbaa should be so happy at leaning how to cut a tree like a busy beaver. Because (GASP!) Pumbaa has changed his philosophy! – from Hakuna Mutata to Makuta Hamaka – meaning, “Work Hard”. This change has been brought about by his chance meeting with one Boss Beaver, who has not only brought about his change in thinking, but advised Pumbaa of job openings for dam construction – for which Pumbaa has not only signed himself up, but Timon too. Timon’s eyes bulge out and begin to spin. WORK??? No beatnik could be repulsed by the word more. Tmon is introduced to Boss Beaver, who wears a construction hard hat and shouts commands at him in a military manner, insisting on protocol of being properly addressed as Boss Beaver, because he’s a beaver, and also the boss. Timon futilely attempts to convince Pumbaa to see the error of his ways, but the warthog is still determined to give it a go – so Timon reluctantly agrees to tolerate this nonsense for just one day, to show Pumbaa just what a bummer work can be.
The two spend a grueling day with saws and axes, also having to wear fake beaver teeth tucked into their upper lips to adhere to company dress code. Pumbaa tugs at one end of a two-handled saw, while Timon gets whammed against the tree trunk repeatedly on the opposite handle. Multiple trees are felled on Timon’s head – even when he substitutes a dummy made from a flour sack in his place, the tree still manages to fall right upon him for a direct hit. At nearly the end of the day, Timon can only suggest they take an extended lunch break, and never come back. Surprisingly, Pumbaa finds himself having a change of heart, realizing that work feels like – work. The two are about to depart, when Boss Beaver shows up, gruffly informing them in the same tone as one of his usual orders that they can’t leave – without these. He hands them each a crisp dollar bill. This is something new to Timon – so that’s what people work all day for. Holding money gives him the feeling of power – and power means the ability to make more money. Dollar signs light up in Timon’s eyes, and the instinct of greed kicks in, as he imagines more money, more power, and the ability to become the meerkat mogul of the world. Timon falls under the spell of the “Work Hard” ethic, while Pumbaa can only cast a glance at the camera denoting his own inner thoughts of “This can’t be good.”
By the next morning, Timon has beaten everybody to the work site, single-handedly cutting down all the lumber they will need for the dam, and stacking and organizing the logs into neat piles according to size. Boss Beaver is so impressed with his industriousness, that he presents Timon with a golden hard hat, denoting his promotion to supervisor – over Pumbaa. Now Timon acquires a desk job, kicking back in a swivel chair and keeping numeric tally on logs transported to the stream with a chalkboard and adding machine, while Pumbaa strains with the task of manually carrying, pulling, and shoving all the lumber to the dam site. When the logging is through, Pumbaa (remembering to properly address his buddy as “Boss Timon”) asks if Timon will be home in time for dinner. Timon complains that time is money, and he has piles of construction permits to work through and duplicate in triplicate – but begrudgingly promises to be there. Night time finds Timon still working on paperwork in a supervisor’s office converted from a rest room, when Boss Beaver wheels in a wheelbarrow of further paperwork to go through to process invitations to influential people for the dam’s unveiling ceremony. Timon meekly brings up his promise to be home in time for dinner, but Boss Beaver screams his opinion that work always comes before promises. And besides that, Pumbaa isn’t important, as the dam is already completed, meaning that Pumbaa’s services are no longer needed – thus, he’s fired – something which is a supervisor’s duty to communicate to the laborer. Hours after dinnertime, Timon finally shows up at Pumbaa’s dinner table, to find the insect dish Pumbaa has prepared is so cold, the insects are skating across the surface of it in the bowl. Timon hastily jabbers that it was so nice of Timon to keep his meal so piping cold – and incidentally, you’re fired. Pumbaa’s eyes pop, then glower at Timon, who states that they can still be friends despite their separation in socio-economic status. “No we can’t”, declares Pumbaa, and puts Timon to the decision – he must choose which philosophy to follow.
The next morning, the unveiling ceremony takes place. Timon stands beside Boss Beaver at the podium, while Pumbaa stays away. The beaver boasts at the quality of the dam which “I built’” – taking all the credit for himself before the crowd. Timon meekly attempts to correct his boss’s slip of speech, reminding him off-mike that it was he and Pumbaa who built it. The beaver barks in Timon’s face that that’s the way things work in work – the Boss gets all the credit. And by the way, you’re fired, too! Timon is left open-mouthed, at a loss for what to do next, as the beaver pulls a rope to part a massive curtain, revealing the dam to view, hundreds of feet above the crowd. When the curtains have parted, the Boss feels a few drops of moisture fall upon his face, and looks up. The construction looks a bit rag-tag, logs seeming to criss-cross one another in unexpected ways, and small bursts of water are seeping through its seams. A large bulge rapidly develops in its middle, and in a flash, the logs fall apart and give way, revealing a towering wall of water, which stands there in briefly-delayed reaction, then envelops the camera and the crowd. As the scene is lost in the deluge, our view cuts to a side bank, where Timon and Boss Beaver are washed ashore. Pumbaa arrives to see what has transpired, happy to see the unexpected outcome. Boss Beaver seizes Timon, chewing him out in booming tones for producing such a poor job of construction. “Oh, no”, reminds Timon, recalling that the Beaver took all the credit for the work – meaning he will also get all the blame, and never be hired to construct a dam again. The beaver gasps at the thought, realizing that Timon is right, and begs him for help, declaring he can’t go on without work. Timon has the perfect solution. The final scenes find Timon and Pumbaa relaxing in lounge chairs back in their jungle home, resigned to their familiar “Hakuna Mutata” philosophy, but with someone new on the scene – the beaver, dressed in butler’s attire, playing the part of dignified manservant to serve them lemonades with little toothpick umbrellas. (One wonders, since dollar bills were something so new to Timon, what’s he using to pay the beaver’s salary?) Timon reminds the Beaver to follow the protocol of addressing him as Timon Hakuna Mutata – because his name’s Timon, and he believes in Hakuna Mutata.
• “Oregon Astray” is on Dailymotion
Leave It To Beavers (Warner, Pinky and the Brain (Primetime), 9/8/97) – In a relatively short installment, Pinky plays the Guinea pig for Brain’s experiments with evolution, attempting to speed up the process by taping Pinky to the screen of a cathode ray tube of a TV set, and bombarding the luminous dial of a wristwatch strapped around his waist with the tube’s rays to evolve Pinky quickly. The process has no outward visible effect upon Pinky’s anatomy, but blasts Punky backwards into a beaver cage in Acme Labs, where the mouse finds he has the power to communicate in beaver language every time Brain presses the on button of the TV remote. Using this inter-species communication to his advantage, Brain negotiates through Pinky with the beaver to see if he can gain the beaver’s assistance in a plan to take over the world, by systematically damming up rivers and demanding control of cities to release the water. The beaver has strange demands for himself and his clan of beavers back home before consenting to assist – they all want bubble gum. “Deal”, says Brain with a handshake. But things aren’t that simple. The labor needed for the dam requires beavers of more than one clan – and the other clans want shiny things, and are also envious of mankind’s big shoes, demanding multiple pairs of them. Cross-clan negotiation finally gets a dam constructed, into which the beavers have creatively interwoven the shiny things and gumballs. Brain sets sail in one of the big shoes as a boat, calling out his demands through a small megaphone for the little town downstream to acquiesce to him or be flooded. But the old-timers of the rural town inform him that after the big flood of decades ago, the town built a large storm drain system, such that flooding is a useless idle threat as far as they’re concerned. Brain returns to the dam site, intent on negotiating with the beavers again to jam the storm drains. But the remote seems to be nowhere to be found, until Brain spies it – integrated into the construction of the dam. Brain tugs hard at it to get it loose – and ruptures the dam in the process, flooding Pinky and Brain back to the steps of the doorway of Acme Labs. Brain decides evolution as it is works fast enough, and some species, such as the beavers, just weren’t cut out to join in a sophisticated world-controlling society. The remote is busted in the flooding, and Pinky remains talking is unintelligible beaver chatter, as he poses a question to Brain. The same question as usual, only spoken in beaver talk, with Brain responding as usual, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world.” The episode closes with the Animaniacs’ chorus singing the closing line of Pinky and the Brain’s theme song – but in beaver chatter.
• “Leave It To Beavers” is on Dailymotion.
Yukon Yutz (Cartoon Network, Johnny Bravo, 1/14/00) – While on a vacation in Canada (Mamma wants the free health care to have her earlobes reduced), Johnny is up to his usual womanizing, trying to pick up a female mountie. She (as all women in the Bravo universe) is as usual unimpressed with the self-centered hunk, not only telling him she is too busy seeking out a criminal mastermind named Dirty Pierre, but also suggesting that Johnny roam around aimlessly in the deep woods for about four hours, and she’ll catch up with him. Johnny takes the bait, and soon finds himself hopelessly lost in the backwoods. Wondering if he can live off the land, Johnny begins gnawing at the bark of a tree like a forest animal. His actions are not welcomed by a beaver, who gestures in pantomime sufficient for even Bravo to understand that he feels Bravo is muscling in on his territory. He signals for Bravo to beat it, but Johnny isn’t intimidated. “You and what army?” Johnny asks will make him leave. With a whistle to the underbrush, the beaver soon reveals his back-up squad – dozens of other beavers. At a signal, Johnny is mobbed by the flat-tailed rodents, and hustled off to meet their leader – none other than Slimy Pierre.
Pierre, a typical French-Canadian woodsman of the basic variety of Blacque Jacque Shellaque, has Bravo tied to a log by the beavers, who (without much backstory as to how it came to be) follow Pierre’s every command. He reveals briefly a master plan to bring Canada to its knees, by having his beaver army dam up every river in Canada, cutting off water supply. (Where’d he learn of Pinky and Brain’s master plan?) Bravo is left on a conveyor belt in a sawmill, his log headed for the traditional buzzsaw splitting. Unable to break his bonds in time to escape, Johnny manages to shift one hand into his pocket for his tube of iron-strength hair gel, and sprays a dab of it from the tube onto the top of his pompadour. The gel sets, and proves so strong, it mutilates the iron teeth of the buzzsaw, bringing it to a stop. Johnny struggles, rolling the whole log off the conveyor belt and on top of himself, flattening him, but setting him free. Meanwhile, Pierre has just completed the last dam, and stands atop it triumphantly, until Johnny shows up at the foot of the dam, accompanied by the beaver he first encountered. Then Johnny reveals more beavers, and more beavers, until the whole beaver army faces off against Pierre, taking Johnny’s side. Pierre asks how he was able to win the beavers’ loyalty. Johnny explains that he’s promised them all a relocation to America, where beavers can roam free, summer lasts for more than one week a year, and you can get real bacon – not that stuff they eat up here, which is ham, for crying out loud! Johnny really doesn’t end up needing the beavers’ help, as his curiosity notices a small leafy twig sticking out from the center of the dam, and he plucks it – causing the whole structure to burst, and Johnny and Pierre (flattened like a pancake against his belly) to ride the wave swell into town. After the flood water passes, Johnny turns over (in fact, peels off) Pierre to the female mountie. The mountie, however, is right on top of her police business, with a list of charges to also raise against Johnny, including attempting to illegally transport all of Canada’s beavers over the border, defacing protected trees by gnawing, and destroying half the town in the flood. Johnny winds up on a prison rock pile, calling for water (which is thrown from a pail into his face). He ends the film by addressing the camera: “Sacre bleu!”
• No print is available online for “Yukon Yutz”.
To Beaver Or Not to Beaver (Atomic Cartoons, Timberwolf, circa 2001) – One of 13 episodes produced in flash animation for the Warner Brothers’ website, starring Chuck Jones’s last creation, Thomas Timberwolf. Thomas might in some ways be considered a distant relation to fellow wolf Hokey, though lacking in the latter’s chronic instincts of larceny. Thomas shares in common with Hokey a broad vocabulary and an ability to con others with his fancy turns of speech. He does not follow the mold of being a Phil Silvers mimic, but has his own drawlier, homespun backwoods style and pacing that makes his speech-making even more convincing, even when he has a definite ulterior motive in mind. Most importantly of all, however, Thomas has an ever-present problem. When around tall trees (which seem to be everywhere in the woods), Thomas’s animal instincts compel him to let out with a shout of “Timber!” This is a habit Thomas tries desperately to restrain – for, as if a personal curse, the yell infallibly brings a tree crashing down – right on top of Thomas’s head.
The subject episode here discussed plays both upon Thomas’s habitual weakness, and his cunning efforts to be rid of the curse once and for all through chicanery. It opens in the same manner as Bugs Bunny’s “Wet Hare”, as a morning shower under a waterfall is abruptly cut short by a cessation of the flow of water. Surveying the dry river bed, Thomas quips to the audience. “Good thing the regatta was last week.” A shout of “Heads up. Comin’ through. Move it or lose it, buddy” interrupts the peaceful forest ambience, as a beaver carries a large log single-handed atop his back at a good clip, right behind Thomas, then tosses the lumber upon a partially-completed dam upstream. “‘Scuse me, sir, but under what authority do you have the right to…’ begins Thomas, only to be buried in a pile of sawdust as the beaver passes in the opposite direction and fells a new tree. As the beaver lugs the new log to the worksite, Thomas pauses in thought, then develops a crafty grin. “Hello, epiphany, goodbye, lumps”, he remarks under his breath to the camera.
We next see Thomas consulting with the beaver in the middle of a small glen surrounded by tall trees. The beaver asks if this discussion will take long, pointing out that he is, as we know, busy as a beaver. Thomas points out that the resources of the forest are free to all its residents, and that the trees around them are there for the taking. “And what do I need more trees for?”. asks the beaver. Thomas asks him to forgive his own observation, but suggests that the small dam the beaver has constructed is hardly worthy of someone of his fine skills and talents, and encourages him to broaden his horizons, express his creative abilities, and strive for the bigger picture – and the bigger dam. The beaver, at first satisfied with things as they are, is sweet-talked into new visions of his destiny, and stands stiffly at attention as if a military man about to embark on a mission. “Revel in your creation, rise to the occasion, and never forget, Rome was not built in one day!”, instructs Thomas. As the beaver dashes off to perform his task, Thomas again quips to the audience, ‘It wasn’t built out of logs, either – but he needn’t know everything.”
A new fade in, and the old dam has about doubled in size. Thomas remains unimpressed, questioning whether the beaver is really up to the task at hand. The beaver nervously insists he is, and Thomas points him toward a new hillside of trees, suggesting that a few more such logs may do the trick. The beaver again marches off to his work, as Thomas again remarks behind his back, “Eager, when mixed with gullible, makes stupid.” Another fade, and the dam has tripled in size, the beaver panting from his efforts, and the hillside cut to mere stumps. “Now don’t get me wrong – it’s a fine job – so far…” begins Thomas. “But you must realize. All that separates you from fame and immortality is, a few more trees.” The exhausted beaver shifts into gear as if to march off to duty once again, but falls into a stoop-shouldered, sluggish gait, as he leaves to seek out any last straggler logs he can get his teeth into.
A final fade in, and a monster stack of lumber blocks up the whole river bed up to the canyon walls. A sweep around the valley countryside reveals all signs of leafy greenery vanished, the entire terrain dotted with only cut stumps. A sight out of Thomas’s wildest dreams. The beaver is so pooped he can no longer stand, and lays on his belly panting on the ground. “In the annals of beaverdom, your name shall be forever emblazoned. Mister Hoover would be proud”, over-emotes Thomas. “I c-c-couldn’t (pant) have done it (pant) without (pant) you”, states the labored voice of the beaver. “The pleasure – or, more precisely, the lack of displeasure – is entirely mine”, cordially responds Thomas, then asks the beaver to observe, putting his master plan into action. Long and loud, Thomas lets out with a hearty yell of “TIMBER!!!” The beaver looks all around, then comments, “Nothing happened.” “Ex-ACTLY!!”, states Thomas, with the epitome of a self-satisfied grin. A pause – then a rumble from above, and a few drops of water. Thomas’s irises shrink in size, and he timidly looks upwards, in a pose that might befit Wile E. Coyote. The dam trembles, spurts water, then explodes, sweeping Thomas over the falls, refilling the river, then dropping a single log onto Thomas’s head like a pile driver, driving him well into the deep mud of the central river bed. As the log falls away, a frazzled Thomas rises waist-deep in the water, looks around him at what has happened, then responds in utter surprise, “Well, I’ll be da—”, never getting to finish the sentence, as the remainder of the dam’s logs smash down upon him, followed by the beaver sitting atop them, who shrugs his shoulders at the camera, for the iris out.
We’ll close this article with a few notes about the only animated series to place beavers in the starring roles: The Angry Beavers (Nickelodeon, 1997-2003). This successful series really had very little to do with the actual behavior and attributes of beavers. Although its stars were furry, and lived inside a wooden beaver den within a river, it seemed as though the connections to beaver life ended there. The series was really about modern life, and the complex relationship and rivalry between two brothers: one (Norbert) confident, suave, and somewhat the braggart, with an odd speech pattern of being able to regularly mispronounce words in a manner suggesting mock-French-Canadian or Cajun – the elder who almost always knew how to keep his cool – until riled to the limit by his brother. The younger bro (Daggett) was a combination of confusion, slowness to grasp situations combined with over-excitement, immature interests and impulses, and a healthy dose of neurosis, and often a sucker for manipulation. The dynamic was winning, and, irrespective of whether or not you remembered they were beavers, the character appeal stole the show.
One of the few episodes to allow the beavers to utilize their natural talents was A Dam Too Far (8/30/97), in which the pair, in satire of classic war films depicting military operations, are recruited by the government as experts to dam a pair of merging rivers whose waters are threatening to flood the land. They are air-dropped into rugged territory by parachute (Daggett opening his upside down, crashing through a tree trunk), and begin their respective campaigns. Norbert has drawn the assignment of damming the “Big Happy”, larger and calmer of the two rivers, and in no time has confidently completed a massive structure resembling the most modern of hydroelectric dams, complete with lights and generators, declaring his own job done and departing for a side excursion to get a package of cocktail wieners. Daggett is left alone to dam the smaller tributary – the “Little Meanie” – only to find that the river has a mind of its own, and in anthropomorphic fashion destroys and upsets Daggett’s work at every turn. Log piles dumped in the river are tossed back up on shore – sometimes on Daggett’s head. Daggett cuts down a monstrously-tall tree, lugging it upright single-handedly and attempting to drop it into the river. The river bed below his feet is dry! Then the waters all converge upon him by surprise, float him downstream, then manage to toss him and the tree like a rocket projectile into a cliff face, bringing down a boulder upon him with the sound effect of a bowling ball making a strike. Norbert returns, to find Daggett screaming that the river is crazy. Disbelieving Daggett’s stories of the river acting against him, Norbert, to show his brother how wrong he is, deliberately taunts the river’s waters, swishing his rear end at it, “spanking” the water with his paw, then stomping around in it. Daggett warns that the river isn’t going to like this, while Norbert continues to call the river just H20 – fish fluid. To even Norbert’s shock, the water of the river rises as a towering wall, charging right at them. Norbert stands his ground, calmly searching in his mind for a word he can’t quite put his finger on. Daggett contemplates whether the word could be “run”, and Norbert responds, “That’s it!”. Both beavers flee from the river’s oncoming torrent, until they find their path blocked by the edge of a cliff dropping off into a deep canyon. Norbert as usual is the one to get the situation in hand, remembering something he saw on a TV show about “almost interesting” phenomenon, about a river that seemed to turn its course because of being afraid of heights. He and Norbert position themselves looking down into the canyon, remarking at how nothing could survive a fall into such depths. The river water looms over them, then extends just beyond the cliff edge, getting a peek into the canyon below. The water rears back in a trembling cringe, turns an about-face, and rapidly slinks away. The beavers are hailed as heroes and make the evening TV news. However, a knock at the hatchway door of their den reveals the wave of the Little Meanie appearing again, coiling its water to grab Daggett and drag him away for spiteful revenge, while Norbert calmly remains on the sofa, eating his cocktail wienies.
• No print seems to be available of “A Dam Too Far”.
I can think of no better way to close this installment than to also call attention to the unfinished and unaired finale episode of the Angry Beavers, “Bye Bye Beavers”, in which the beavers try to cope with the trauma of learning that their series has been cancelled. While the script was okayed in production through both the storyboarding and sound-recording stage, the plug was finally pulled upon it by Nickelodeon management at the very last minute before animation got under way. The reasons appear to include that the network, though it should have been well aware of the episode’s messages at the initial storyboard stage, found the self-effacing and cartoon-conscious, fourth-wall breaking hijinks to be taking too many jabs at network policies, and the general industry practices of re-running old cartoons to death without passing-on never-ending revenues to the series’ creators. Also, the worry that such an episode could only air once in logical context, without itself making clear to the viewer that anything they subsequently would see was a repeat. (Actually, the blow might have been softened by the episode’s surprise ending, in which the beavers yell to the camera, “April Fool!”. Setting a similar scenario up as just a dream in the final episode of “The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries” allowed the episode “This Is The End” to reach final production and the airwaves without complaint.) Fortunately, the voice track for this lost milestone was saved, and a determined fandom, working like a busy beaver, has finally succeeded in producing an expertly-handled animatic set to the original track, embedded below, which is probably about as close to the creators’ original vision as we will ever get to see. With lines like “Wake up and smell the Korean ink and paint, man!”, open referral to the use of flashback clips as “a cheat”, and deliberate lapses where the characters mistakenly refer to each other by the first names of their respective voice actors, the project is definitely one that deserves to be seen – or in any event, at least heard.
NOTE: I will be on hiatus next week to attend screenings at the UCLA Festival of Preservation – and to regroup in selecting a next topic for discussion. See you again in two weeks.
