Bucky O'Hare - 07

"The Komplex Caper"
We get a good look at some of Komplex's inner workings when Bucky O'Hare and his companions work to foil one of its schemes to brainwash other worlds' inhabitants through their televisions just as it originally did to the toads. Like Sideshow Bob, the writers and producers are doubtless aware of the irony of airing a cartoon about the corrupting influence of television on its target audience's televisions... so don't bother pointing that out.

Points of interest:
0:19 The beginning of this episode begins... in the Department of Redundancy Department. (The pilot is evidently anudder viktom uv Komplexes publick ejuhkayshun sistom.)
2:38 One more proof that it was probably Jenny's people who invented universal translators; telepathy would enable them to understand what people from other species are saying even when they're not speaking clearly.
2:49 Evidently, the toads did have—or at least remember having—some kind of religion back before they built Komplex.
3:39 After this, the prisoner was never seen again. Here's hoping the United Animals Coalition is more merciful to its prisoners of war than the Toad Empire is.
4:29 While it was theoretically possible for a computer monitor to pick up a broadcast television signal in 1991 (both kinds of screens having analogue inputs), it's highly unlikely even a child prodigy like Willy DuWitt would have had one of the (expensive) adapters necessary to do so. Chalk up the signal's being readable by a human computer monitor to those universal translators being built into everything; also to Komplex either not knowing how—or not believing it necessary to find some way—to block those universal translators from capturing and re-transmitting its broadcast signals to its Toad Empire's enemies.
4:36 To make matters worse, the signal Willy's monitor is picking up is actually from one of the cameras in the room behind the Air Marshal when he's receiving his orders from Komplex. The Betelgeusian baboons may be the Toad Empire's most fearsome enemies, but Jenny's feline species is actually far more dangerous for secretly having the insidious capacity to spy on almost anyone almost anywhere at almost any time through those universal translators.
5:13 Of course, if Willy's assessment of the situation is accurate, Komplex has also made full use of the universal translators' more potentially insidious functions.
6:01 How can Blinky also be affected by the brain drain? Well, like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, he's got a positronic brain that functions very much like an organic one—and (probably) has a universal translator directly integrated into it.
6:21 Even Jenny isn't immune to having the device her own people invented (if I'm right in my speculations) used against her.
6:31 Almost right, Willy: your immunity probably has to do with not having any universal translators implanted in you. Everyone else having those implants enables you to understand them and them to understand you through telepathy, but it doesn't allow your brain to pick up the same broadcast signals they're receiving.
7:48 Of course, since her people have the technology sufficiently advanced to be functionally indistinguishable from magic, Jenny's also got something that can at least partially counter the effects of devices based on that same nigh-magical technology.
8:18 Evidently, even after all this time, Komplex still hasn't quite mastered anthropomorphic expression; note that it's actually supposed to be surprised here, and yet the tone of its voice doesn't change at all when interrupting the lecture it was giving the Air Marshal.
8:43 To the Air Marshal's credit, if he'd been in the commanding officer at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope, C-3PO and R2-D2 would have been destroyed, the evil Empire would have won, and pretty much the entire movie's plot would never have happened.
11:18 It's not wise to tempt the hand of fate, or—as established in the previous episode—of Komplex, Bucky.
12:27 Evidently, this was what Toadborg had in mind when he called Void Droids "primitive" while facing down Willy four episodes ago. While these prototypes (who were probably first produced almost a century ago and have been on patrol almost as long as their creator Komplex has existed) are obviously not incredibly swift in their thinking, they do know their job.
14:04 Yes, the writers are biting the hand that feeds them here. I guess the corporate executives from the television studios and advertising agencies are just going to have to cry about their hurt feelings all the way to the bank.
16:45 You don't have another five minutes until the end of this episode, Toadborg.
17:21 One takeaway lesson for today's episode: even if you're good at hand-to-hand combat and your armor makes you nigh-invulnerable, it's still a good idea to keep a gun (or some other ranged weapon) on hand.
17:47 Further lesson: if you have an itchy trigger finger and aren't very good at controlling your temper, however, it's probably better to stick with hand-to-hand combat.
17:56 Fortunately for the brain drain's victims, they're living in a cartoon world where destroying a draining device reverses the drainage rather than simply dispersing what's being drained; otherwise, Komplex would already be reigning victorious, albeit over mostly mindless subjects.
18:14 Cheap shot, writers! Of course, this being the Aniverse where there's no USA, this guy is probably actually referring to "Quail"—an anthropomorphic avian politician from the United Animals Coalition—rather than to Vice President Dan Quayle (who was every smug Democrat douchebag's favorite political whipping boy back in 1991).
19:13 Willy: "Everybody, gimme five! Um, I mean... gimme four!"
19:33 Bruiser sure doesn't learn very quickly, does he?
19:57 After grinding this episode's moral lesson into our faces, the writers just had to rub it in further, didn't they?