#jormangadr

Heloooo and welcome. IT’s your boy jacob mattingly here as always with... nobody. I just wanted to refrence OSW review. Anyway today’s crack is an episode that like the last two I looked forward to and did not disapoint. Admitley this is because i’m a casual wrestling fan; while I like things taking a shot at wrestling more than actually watching it (though if I had acess to AEW that’d change), I do highly respect the sport, and yes even if the winners are deterimined ahead of time and everything’s scripted it’s still a sport. Besides the obvious fact many have been injured and some killed or paralyzed doing it,  it takes a lot of effort to do it, injuries can happen even if your doing eveyrthing right just by freak accident, and you sometimes have to work AROUND said injuries to change the finish. And that’s not getting into not having any control about how sucessful you’ll be no matter how good you do if the bosses simply don’t like you or having to work though mounds of pain or other bullshit. The point is, these fine men, women and non-binary persons work their asses off so yes I felt it necessary to take a paragraph to honor that.  This episode itself does a good job too: it GETS why wrestling works and works it good. The premise is simple ish: Scrooge has decided to take his nephews and niece with him to his once a decade bout with Jormangadr, a nice call back to Last Christmas! and i’m glad we elaborated on that. And as you probably know, it turns out in the duckverse, vikings invented pro wrasslin. The why is really good and is why I don’t mind this episode despite the pacing this season being eh: While the plot’s moved pretty glacially the theme of legacy has been baked into every episode: From what it’s worth, to people creating a legacy for you, the theme has been far stronger this season than the past two , and it was strong there and it makes up for the main plot taking it’s sweet ass time to get anywhere. Here it’s at it’s strongest: Scrooge is aware that while he can still add a decade or two magically, he’s not immortal and won’t always be there. He knows he needs to pass the torch.. and thus he knows that by the next time this would roll around it’d be the kids turn. As for why not his actual children, I actually like the justifcation for not including donald and della as it works: “They can’t cooperate on a jigsaw puzzle much less the fate of the world”. Which.. is 100% true. The two love each other clearly.. but they couldn’t go thorugh a space battle for the fate of earth without squabbling, HOURS after reuniting after a decade. Their first interaction was screaming at each other. While their good siblings.. their still siblings. The triplets, while still prone to sibling fights are easier to work as a team, probably because there’s always a third to break up a fight, and now there’s a 4th in webby, it’s much easier to trouble shoot than with two grown ass adults who have fought their entire lives and aren’t going to stop now even if they do care about one another.  As it also turns out Scrooge is playing the heel, which he’s a natural at and does easily. And that’s part of the charm here: they do what MANY wrestling movies, tv episodes and what not have trouble with: what’s real and what’s kayfabe. Here the fight’s entirely a shoot, and suspension of disbleief on moves that would take coperation is easy because these ducks are badass and their fighting a pig, hella and son, and a world serpent that can shapeshift from actual serpent to sexy snake man. It dosen’t have to make perfect sense. But the ducks still play rolls because Scrooge knows his place here, and knows his crowd: To them, JOrmangadr winning means the end of humanity and a bigger world for them in vallhalla with quintillions joining them. While Team Earth knows it’ll be terrible, the only earthlings present are our family. So Scrooge is more than willing to be the million dollar mallard and put on a good show and play the bad guy. However things quickly go pear shaped as Scrooge, after winning the first matc against a pig guy with super strength granting hair, gets a chair shot and has to rely on the kids... and is down to half of them at that since Louie, the second he realizes theris a merch table, gets to work selling, even working the crowd with anti-scrooge and dewey shirts, while Huey settles into commentary with Launchpad. It’s now up to Webby, Dewey and Scrooge’s reinfrocments he called because he knew Dewey would probably maybe fail completely in beakly to save the earth.  But before we get back to that i’ll get to the commentary subplot real quick: It’s fucking hilarious and I like not only reuniting huey and launchpad, as their commentary in missing links was fucking great, but reversiing it: Golf is a very structured sport Huey likely had lots of time to study. Here, without checking his guidebook oddly but he probably simply didn’t have time and by the time he did felt discoruged, and without prep, i’ts launchpad, whose a huge fan of wrestling, whose the expert. Launchpad, being more instinctual and spur of the moment is able to combine his knowledge with his entusasim and be a hell of a commentator. It’s only when Louie advises Huey to do the oppsoitie of his usual instinct, structure and plan like hell, and just roll with it like launchpad that the boy excels. It’s also nice to get some Huey focus in what’s supposed tobe his season, but despite being a huge Huey fan that hasn’t bothred me much either: Louie’s focus also got staggred out over the whole season. Dewey... not so much, but clearly Louie having a good CHUNK of episodes, while still spreading the focus all around, was a direct reaction to that. I do question why the Dewey episode that could take place at any point is at this point in the season but I don’t knokw what else they have in the tank at this point so eh.  The main plot, as I made clear, though is Dewey. While Webby is actually DAMN GOOD at playing the heel, and it’s a nice bit of continuity as while she’s all sunshine and rainbows Webby both has a sarcastic streak as the series goes on and a good sense of battle quips, see the study the blade bit in timephoon. Dewey on the other hand thrives on approval and his attempt at getting the fans to pop with with looks like the bastard child of zack morris and 90′s superboy, mostly 90′s superboy, only makes them hate him.  But we do get a nice moment here. While Dewey does loose the team a match, Jormangarnder agrees to a battle royale for it, and Scrooge .. is entirely fine Dewey isn’t good at playing the heel. Besides preparing for it, which admitely makes the boy feel worse, he knows that not everyone can do the unpopular thing it takes to be a hero sometime. I’ts just not for everyone, and he gets that adulation and attention obessed Dewey just.. can’t take being hated and loathed. Scrooge is used to it, life and times more than proved that being rich means people will automatically look down on you for BEING rich and scrooge has had decades of that kind of shit at this point. Dewey is just an 11 year old boy. It’s okay he’s not there yet. But soon eveyrone takes a turn at jormanganr, even beakly who has a whole costume ready and likelky has been here before, and looses. Dewey is their last shot.  But Louie, as things look dire, turns from merch to inspiring his brothers, Huey as shown above and Dewey with the fact that, as he pointed out earlier when selling anti-dewey t-shirts, he always knew how this would turn out: and cheers or no, Dewey can dew this and can be there hero. And like Lex Luger he can turn from a heel to a face awfully face, finally letting himself be a heel.. and his determination not to give up, while Jormangander uncessarily toys with a child and pummels him, turns the crowd to his side. He pulls a stone cold, and witht hepigs help jackhammers the champ and wins the day. It’s a really great moment: Dewey still gets what he wants..by putting the world over his own desires and EARNING it. And with a final great shot, Scrooge steals the belt from dewey for a fun rematch between great uncle and grandson. Also Dewey piledriving a snakeman was fucking awesome. Great work.  Overall this was a great episode, while it dosen’t move the plot forward, which is a series wide problem and not just this season, it’s still great fun, great character stuff and really that’s why this season has been great: even double o duck, which was just okay, has been great and as we piledrive our way into hiatus, we can at least take comfort in getting a ton of great episodes and having more to come.. probably montsh and months from now but still, it’ll be worth the wait. Until then, i’ll be trying to do mroe reviews, so shoot me an ask or message if you have any suggestions. I take sugggestions as well as full on comissions, and there are no bad suggestions. Until next time, Later Days.