Skin of eeeeeeevil!

Skin of eeeeeeevil! (1-13)

Written by: Brandon Sawyer

Storyboard by: Fred Gonzales

Directed by: Timothy Björklund

Date of airdate: September 11th 2004

Synopsis: Whiskers pretend to Brandy to be Lola Boa after accidentally crushed by a pile of rocks the female snake skin.

P.S.: In the moment you tent to read this article, let me remind you a thing-- I haven't known anything about the "Brandy & Mr. Whiskers" 11-minutes segments before I tent to reviewing these. I haven't fully watched the show in years, but instead of the original english voice-cast, all I do remembered from the series was from the 2008s YouTube featuring the Spanish-dubbing cast version of the show. And albeit the series was finally remastered in HD and that did looked out better than before, the presentation was another victim of the rampant "Photoshopped" titles, those that are typical from most foreign newer prints of past shows like the way in 2020, a Post-production house has remastered the remaining of the Warner Bros. cartoons library with such dreaded results like this. For the need of this blog, we're fully compelling the show with the older, Standard version of the series, like the way it was originally created and made by what we have to do. Thank you!

And yeah! Another typical Björklund-directed cartoon with some of gross jokes about Whiskers having a bad hygiene habit, but it also makes a turning point about how the world described Alana Buach's Lola Boa. It's shame that the female snake character was never went getting a favor to fans for more "Rule 34 Brandy fanarts" instead. (A trend that become rarer now) The show seems to employed better representation of diversity and billinguality than they been deserved it. Buach give a very exotic and distinct voice for her character of Lola Boa. She is among the most comfortable character ever featuring in all the animated series.

The episode's opening is about Lola's problems with her itchy skin and Brandy teaching her of... moistures and manucures with tons of beauty bottles. The rabbit interrupted the conversation for shown the bad smells of his underarms. (See above)

In order to not be mean or mad with him, Brandy trying to explain to Whiskers that she wanted more quality time with Lola Boa but that the latter is not that interested at all, that she only wanna gets rid of her itchy skin. When the snake discover that all these bottles were empty, Brandy came startle to know that there was nothing in these.

Lola is more about to guess Brandy to the mud pool for some time of breathing their mind, while Whiskers ask himself why the girl canine like better to be with Lola than him. Though some of their expressions are pretty priceless, something was amiss. This is getting more a carbon copy of what made Spongebob Squarepants so beloved and popular to animations fans and critics, though they were enough genius to avoid to just copy directly the famous sponge's jokes.

"Brandy won the jackpot" gag made all the more typical of these inane remarks/jokes from any Disney Channel sitcoms. How they would find it at funny?

While the girls going to the mud pool, Lola finally unscratch herself by finally rid of her old skin, which seems that she is matured or something. Though this is not a documentary series, the show avoid in any cases to be a generic world of Furries that never quit the horrific DeviantArt world. If you wanna your characters to be animals first, you have to be able to point why they are animals at first place. It's even more diverse at a point than Zootopia could be about. (Seen animals characters others at mammals like in this show made the Amazon Rainforst area much colorful than be a mere background)

In the other spectrum, Mr. Whiskers still wondered about Brandy's friendship with the female boa. He started to act at crazy by things like says "Look, I'm an airplane" (A steal from Bugs Bunny's A-Lad-In His Lamp if you ask) or driving fictional chasing cars. The rabbit "accidentally" thrown a pile of rocks to the ground until he discovered that... he's perhaps killed the female snake... or her old skin! Like in the previous scene with Brandy, we getting some fine eye-take expressions from the rabbit, but sounds a little uncomfortable for a Disney Channel TV cartoon. (He's a murderer now?)

In order that Brandy don't be mean with him, the crazy rabbit disguised himself to Lola by even imitating Alana Buach's distinctive voice for the snake. That would be a gist for Charlie Adler's skills at voice-actor, but instead, that become more generic, as if he tried to plays a character that didn't fit to him.

Kaley Cuoko as Brandy is in fine form here. Here, she didn't yell or scream her lines like in others episodes, but been instead, made her character more gullible. But this is there the characters shown their limits: Is Brandy just stupid to not figured that Mr. Whiskers is in there instead of her "supposed" snake friend?

Finally arriving to the mud pool, the duo's lay comfortably to the pool (Much like a spa for Rainforest animals-- it figures) when Whiskers still gains to play his trickery to the blonde-skinned pooch girl. Then, they encounetered a green-skinned male snake who wanna court him... err... her! It's rather odd that such sequence made us thinking more at a animated show from Nickelodeon or a theatrical cartoon from the 1940s (Think of the Famous' Popeyes!) than a Disney animated series we have all on mind. But apparently, Disney wanted to cash-in on the Spongebob's craze with this show! Very far to be the worst rip-off ever made. (A show named Coconut's Fred from 2005 was ten times more worser with more Sponegbob's thievery than this.)

But that also laid to how uncomfortable the series started to be about. While Lola is nowhere to be found for now, it's between a naive Brandy and a Whiskers tried to grabbing himself on his disguise. The animation studio (Toon City?) still did their usual excellent jobs to the rough and cleaning-up process but sadly, the writing lacks finesse. Is Brandon Sawyer knows for which characters he have to worked?

Brandy explained that he gets some feelings to Whiskers by be a very special friend to her. It makes all the most pointless and more frustrating, it seems forced here. For the many times the rabbit zip back-and-forth to be sure Brandy don't discover the conspiracy, (Like in Bad Hare Day) the very existence of this cartoon stays a mystery, thought it have succeed in its prior years to makes a favorable number of fans until the permanent demise of the show's reruns in the early-2010s.

Now Lola is on the scene, the rabbit been shocked to seen her alive, at a point Whiskers says that she is a "ghost" until to assert that she have paranormal issues. In this, Whiskers is really describe like a real-life ten-years kid with his own traumas instead of a dumb and stupid thing like in several of these segments. He finally claims that the pile of rocks that was thrown on the ground has caused a seizure to him to think that he killed Lola Boa... but just her old itchy skin! And as usual, the nameless green snake did invited the "real" Lola on a date by even do the same for Whiskers, but seems that he's too busy to have some times with her best friend ever: Brandy!

That would stop here, but the Toucan sisters Cheryl and Meryl came appear and for once, there's no fight between them. Just Brandy proposed them a fun spa-time on the mood with her, err... them!

This is very admirable to see Björklund given some deserved and sometimes, out-of-time appearences of Cheryl and Meryl without that the sisters goes on another pointless fight. Special kudos to them to these special guest appearences without that turns too forced or a wasted gag.

Speaking of gag, Whiskers been psycho again after been neglected by the twins! Sadly, the episode's over after the nervous eyes' close-up.

(Man, 2004s techniques of animation have terribly aged! That makes the whole thing hard to watch on a PC screen like mine.)

And now, as you know, the whole episode's review:

Critique:

  Very weird episode to watch, but that had some genuine moments throughout. It's mostly a Lola Boa's cartoon, but even if her screentime is pretty limited, it given to Alana Buach a much bigger performance to the female snake character than she ever earning it in the series or in her voice-artist career. But in this, it's another desperate episode about "friendship" or a "character been rejected by another friend" subplot, that it lacks the flavor of what made the exotic environment of the series a joy for the eyes. Lola been itched and get free of her old snake skin is a marvel to look at, and it's very glaring what the overseas animators have complemented with a character that have none arms. But the second-third act of the episode is fully more generic than the first act, where Whiskers pretend to Brandy to become Lola (By also steal her voice!) after accidentally thinking he's kill her after a pile of rocks falling to the aged female snake-skin. (Is he a serial killer now?) It dragged the mere basic of the plot. Though Cheryl and Meryl's appearences in the end without making another fight is a charming surprise, the ending is definitely ruined by a psychotic close-up of Whiskers' eyes in shock to be betrayed again by the girls and claiming them vengeance. This part is certainly what make the motives of one fanfiction author to wrote about Whiskers sexually abuse her supposed pooch friend in the infamous fanfiction episode Whiskers' Revenge. It's perhaps a good thing that such innuendo X-Rated story was never be made in real-life, but it was also ruined when the whole one-chapter thing been prolonged with a much unnecessary, longer one.