On the Second Day of Christmas...

On the 2nd Day of Christmas, I saw on DVD… A Pinky and the Brain Christmas.

It’s sad that children today have no idea who Pinky and the Brain are, let alone Animaniacs, the show where they debuted. I don’t even see reruns aired anywhere! It’s just sad. Thankfully I picked up the Pinky and the Brain Vol. 1, which has their Christmas episode on it.

So the Brain’s ongoing attempts to take over the world have led him to create a doll (in his likeness) named Noodle Noggin. This doll has some sort of hypnotic mind control device inside that will not only place those around it in a trance, but allow Brain to directly give them commands to obey from his mousey lair in Acme Labs. So naturally, Brain needs a few billion of these made, so he decides to go to the North Pole to dupe Santa’s elves into making them for him and then having Santa unknowingly deliver humanity’s enslaving doom all over the world.

Pinky is delighted to hear they are going to see Santa as he has a letter he wants to give St. Nick. Brain, of course, could care less about this letter. And what follows is a humorous adventure where Pinky and the Brain disguise themselves as elves and run amok in Santa’s workshop.

This episode of Pinky and the Brain was pretty good, but not great. It wasn’t as classic as some of their other episodes to me, such as where they raised the Titanic or when Brain had the whole world glued to their televisions to find out what his ‘mystery thing’ was. Don’t get me wrong, it was really funny at times, like how they managed to get a charter flight to the North Pole using an obvious dummy with a sign pinned to the body saying “Hi, North Pole Please.” Pinky also had his usual wealth of hilariously idiotic things to say, such as when he and Brain start out toward the North Pole and Pinky pulls out a compass to assist them. He then looks at the compass in confusion and says “Uh, help me out here.” To which Brain angrily replies “North!”  

I guess the episode just sort of lacked in the middle for me when they were at Santa’s Workshop. It just wasn’t the usual driven comedy of the show except for an occasional Pinky joke. However, I really like the ending of this one. It comes off slightly sappy but given that it’s Christmas themed, that’s not only forgivable but kind of expected.

On the Merry Meter I give “A Pinky and the Brain Christmas” a 7 out of 10. 

Tune in tomorrow for a slight change of pace!