Sunday, October 2, 2011

Blink and You Miss It! Great Music Gags!


The DVD set “The Cleveland Show: The Complete Season Two” (Released September 27, 2011) leads off with a great episode in which Cleveland Brown becomes the manager of a character voiced by music star Kanye West.

As West’s character’s hit climbs the charts, we get these great glimpses of those very charts. Thanks to DVD Freeze Frame, we can see what we missed on TV.


Note to Mark Arnold, check out the guys from “Total Television” associated with Hanna-Barbera's “Hong Kong Phooey”!

Not to mention multiple references to The Simpsons!


And, in this second one, note references to The Jetsons, the Chuck Jones/Michael Maltese Warner Bros. cartoon “One Froggy Evening”,  The Flintstones, South Park, Futurama, and more Simpsons! 
Blink and you miss it! I’m glad I didn’t!

5 comments:

ramapith said...

Where's "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo"? I'm gonna go sulk now. Sniff.

Joe Torcivia said...

Um, Two words... Disney Lawyers!

Anyway, that's MY guess!

Chris Barat said...

Joe,

You've ALREADY answered my queries re:

You're the Best Bee for Me
Boogie Beagle Blues
The Fat Cat Stomp
Darkwing's Elvis... thing

Chris

Joe Torcivia said...

Indeed, I have. Was thinking about “Boogie Beagle Blues” when I wrote this, too!

Two more quick observations:

ONE: The “Cleveland Brown, Jr.” reference on the second illo also references “The Cleveland Show” itself! That’s mega-meta!

TWO: I love it when writers wring the FULLEST POTENTIAL out of a gag. Mere joke song titles would have been enough for some – but to add animation references form “all over the map” (except Disney, of course – Seth MacFarlane has done that elsewhere – like the superb Family Guy “Road to the Multiverse”), really puts it over the top for me!

That’s what I try to do in my comics scripts – and it’s small wonder that the “MacFarlane Empire” of shows is one of my influences.

Joe Torcivia said...

One more thing for Chris: In its season opener (September 25, 2011), Family Guy did a “cut-away” gag that recreated the opening of DuckTales, using Peter Griffin to take the Money Bin dive and swim of the opening credits sequence.

The “Money Bin vault doorway and gold coins in the bin” background seemed to be faithfully rendered -- and Peter, of course, finds out the hard way that coins are not liquid!

…Just like the Beagle Boys in “Only a Poor Old Man” (the first issue of UNCLE SCROOGE)! So whether or not he knew it, Seth MacFarlane borrowed a gag from Carl Barks!