"DuckTales" Reboot, Year One

I was a Disney Afternoon kid growing up, as opposed to a Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network kid. I was exactly the right age to watch and fall in love with all the Disney-produced cartoons for television that came out in the late '80s and early '90s. The most important of these was "DuckTales" following the adventures of Scrooge McDuck and the triplets, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, based on the beloved Carl Barks and Don Rosa comics. The 2017 reboot, to my great surprise, is probably aimed more at me than the new generation of kids being introduced to these characters.

For one thing, the new series is much more sophisticated than the original series. The humor and dialogue are aimed at kids a few years older, and there are serialized elements including two big mysteries that get solved little by little over the course of the season. Scrooge McDuck (David Tennant) and his man-child pilot Launchpad McQuack (Beck Bennett) are more or less as we remember them, but Huey (Danny Pudi), Dewey (Ben Schwartz), and Louie (Bobby Moynihan) are now tech-savvy Gen Zers, each with a much more distinct personality. Webbigail (Kate Micucci) has been completely overhauled. Now she has scads of impressive adventuring skills and an obsession with McDuck family research, but having grown up in the McDuck mansion with only her housekeeper grandma, Mrs. Beakley (Toks Olagundoye), she's lonely and undersocialized. Also, I'm happy to see Donald Duck (Tony Anselmo) is finally allowed to be a main character, after only appearing in cameos in the old show. He's an amalgam of bits and pieces of all the versions of the character we've seen since 1934.

The new "DuckTales" was clearly made by fans of the original show and the comics it was based on. From the very first episode, there are geeky references everywhere, not just to beloved "Duck" canon, but to other Disney Afternoon shows, creating something of an interconnected universe. The Sky Pirates from "TaleSpin" show up in one episode. Another hinges on "Gummi Bears" lore. I'm not going to spoil how they get "Darkwing Duck" involved, because it's too funny to give away. However, the show is at its most impressive in the way that it juggles all the ins and outs of the sprawling "Duck" universe. It brings back many old favorites like Flintheart Glomgold (Keith Ferguson), Gladstone Gander (Paul F. Tompkins), and Glittering Goldie (Alison Janney) largely unchanged. Others, however, have been tweaked considerably. Fenton Crackshell, the alter ego of the superhero Gizmoduck, is now Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera and beige-colored to match his new voice actor, Lin-Manuel Miranda. The one revamp I'm still iffy about is inventor Gyro Gearloose (Jim Rash), who went from kindly eccentric to prickly jerk, so he could be used as an antagonist in various episodes. Doofus (John Gemberling) being repurposed as a nightmarishly spoiled child billionaire is brilliant though.

There are a handful of new characters that should be pointed out. Prominent among Scrooge's Rogue's Gallery is Mark Beaks (Josh Brener), a caricature of an unethical Silicon Valley tech guru. Then there's Lena (Kimiko Glenn), a standoffish teenage delinquent who becomes Webby's first gal-pal. They both reflect the new direction the 2017 series is taking - more mature, more talky, and often much more emotional. The big theme of the show's first season is the importance of family, and I was very happy to see how seriously the creators take this. In the first episode, we learn that Donald and Scrooge haven't talked in ten years, and this is related to the disappearance of the triplets' mother, Della Duck. The emotional stakes are unapologetically big, and I was not expecting this from one of my oldest, and most foundational cartoon franchises. And I absolutely adore it.

The 1987 "DuckTales" famously set a new benchmark for the quality of its production, back when children's television cartoons were all done fast and cheap. The 2017 "DuckTales" also looks fabulous from top to bottom. Everything's been designed to reflect the show's comic-book origins, but the characters are more dynamic and the animation is nicely fluid. The big season finale is a retelling of "Magica's Shadow War" featuring a theatrical new Magica DeSpell (Catherine Tate), and it's a treat. The cast list is absolutely stuffed with celebrity voice actors, but it's nice that there were a few voices that absolutely could not be replaced - Tony Anselmo's Donald and Jim Cummings as Darkwing Duck.

I'm well and properly hooked, and currently debating whether I should be rationing the rest of the episodes to make 'em last.

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