Freakazoid
“Normadeus,” Season 2, Episode 11 (series finale), 1997
How does getting sucked into cyberspace turn someone into a
blue-skinned, red-longjohned Jerry Lewis analog? Who cares! It was the ’90s, no
one understood computers yet, and Warner Bros. animation had built an entire
cottage industry around new cartoons with old-Hollywood gags (Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, etc.).
For its come-too-soon finale after only 24 episodes, Kids
WB’s Freakazoid pulled out all the
stops with a huge celebrity guest: America’s No. 2 TV carpenter Norm Abram!
(Kids, ask your parents, then wait patiently while they try to recall who that
is because it’s been so long since This
Old House was a going concern.)
Jealous of Abram’s craftsmanship and unable to duplicate it,
big-brained villain the Lobe is driven mad and committed to a sanitarium in an
opening sequence intended to parody the movie Amadeus. He then has his goons kidnap the master carpenter so he
can build a giant wooden horn the frequency of which will destroy our hero.
To celebrate his pending victory, the Lobe invites over all
the other villains from the show and holds a raffle to determine who will get
to deliver the killing blow, literally, to a strung-up Freakazoid. That honor
falls to Gutierrez, the Ricardo Montalban-esque villain from the very first
episode. Before he can do that, however, Abram frees himself and lets
Freakazoid loose with a box cutter (You won’t see that in a post-9/11
cartoon!). The two then team up to punch, kick and hurl the baddies away.
Because Norm Abram apparently can do that in addition to installing a spiral
staircase in your foyer.
The series ends with some safety tips from Norm and an
all-cast singalong of “We’ll Meet Again,” the same song Stephen Colbert used to
close out The Colbert Report.
Satisfying. And ridiculous.
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