Bucky O'Hare - 02

"A Fistful of Simoleans"
While Bucky O'Hare and company bring Willy DuWitt up to speed on their situation and how the formerly soft-living consumerist toads' creation of the (Skynet-esque) AI command & control system Komplex led to their being brainwashed and transformed into militant expansionists sallying forth from their (Apokolips-esque) thoroughly industrialized and urbanized home world to conquer and terraform other species' home worlds into swamp planets, the Air Marshal (on Komplex's orders) hires the mercenary sleazasaur Al Negator to infiltrate Bucky's crew and help the Toad Empire crack the codes to the defense system for the United Animals Coalition's administrative planet Genus. We are also introduced to the canine Dogstar and his newly commissioned S.S. Indefatigable; to Bruce's brother Bruiser, who shares his sibling's liking for terrorizing toad troopers, if not so much his mechanical engineering skills; and to Toadborg, Komplex's (Darth Vader-esque) heavily armored cyborg who rapidly takes charge of the situation on the Toad Empire's side of the war. Meanwhile, Willy DuWitt still has to go to school and (since his tree-hugging granola-munching hippie parents aren't particularly helpful) cut a deal with Doug and his fellow bullies to pacify them by bringing up their grades.

Points of interest:
0:33 This is a bit of a cheat on the cliffhanger from the previous episode; as you may recall, it ended with the toads actually hammering the ship's forward shields with maser fire from just about every available direction.
0:34 Again, I suspect the toad is saying something in his native language that everybody's universal translators either can't or won't translate for us.
1:16 Evidently, the toads' monitors are capable of three-dimensional holographic projection.
2:19 While the Air Marshal and Al Negator treat 5,000 Simoleans as an extortionate sum here, they'll gamble that much on a single bet just three episodes from now.
4:07 Considering that amphibians reproduce by laying lots of eggs in ponds, it's odd that anthropomorphic toads would be portrayed as having nuclear families here; evidently, the anthropomorphic toads' women don't produce anywhere near as many eggs as their non-anthropomorphic counterparts in our world.
4:31 While toads have four-fingered hands like the rest of the sentient anthropomorphic animals in the Aniverse, they have only three toes on their feet. (This may be due to their swamp-dwelling origins; while neither Dead-Eye nor any of his fellow waterfowl seen in this cartoon ever remove their footwear, their webbed feet also appear to have only three toe-like protrusions on them.)
4:48 Komplex turning the toads' home world into a planet-sized metropolis does explain why they're out to conquer and terraform other animals' worlds into swamp planets; also one of the curious oversights they made in one of their weapons designs we'll be seeing later.
5:38 The Beta Quadrant? So they map their galaxy the same way galactic governments in Star Trek do?
5:54 The artists aren't exactly being subtle about the target audience's periphery demographic here, are they?
9:43 So did Bruce have mask of his own face (for some reason) or is Bruiser's imagination just playing tricks on him here?
10:14 Something one has to be paying attention to notice: like all other sentient animals in the Aniverse, berserker baboons have only four digits on each of their hands and feet; yet when Willy is wearing Bruce's battle suit, its boots are sometimes shown to have five toes, and other times just four like Bruiser's.
12:37 Oddly, the door goes transparent as it vanishes, but the room not so much.
15:13 According to the script, Doug's redheaded pal who encourages Doug to take Willy up on his offer here is named Jeff, while his other decidedly less talkative crony with the black hair is named Mark.
15:27 Is anybody else getting the impression the show's writers weren't exactly huge fans of pro sports?