Nothing says fun like seeing Pumara’s face get all puffy.
What They Say:
Recipe for Disaster – The Cats discover a magic elixir that can stop Mumm-Ra.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a fun episode that focused on the twins before as they avoided the main fight with Mumm-Ra and all that it entailed with the Sword of Plun-Darr, ThunderCats gets back on track with the main group here now as Mumm-Ra is feeling quite confident. Now that he has the sword and has dealt a psychological blow against Lion-O and the cats. He’s quite in control in his own way as he gets things together, which is quite the opposite from how Lion-O feels. He’s coping with things as best as he can, but he’s also making sure to put up a decent front overall when it comes to the others, including Pumara as he has a certain attraction to her. Considering the losses they’ve suffered overall, they’re all in surprisingly decent moods as they make their way back to Dog City to get the twins.
The focus for this episode is on that journey as there are more things for them to face along the way. Which is harder for Pumara to deal with since her face is rather larger due to a little msihap with Lion-O. What they run into along the way is a peddler named Ponzi who has all sorts of elixirs that are guaranteed to fix anything. Of coruse, we already know from the one instance in a nearby town that it’s all just a sham in the end, but he comes across as that nice guy who does a lot of wrong things in order to just survive. But sometimes those things can do a world of good too, such as when Lion-O buys an elixir for Pumara that ends up being used against one of Mumm-Ra’s creatures by accident, which leads to them being very interested in what Ponzi has.
The story is fairly straightforward as they need to get more elixir and it gets complicated in how it needs to be done due to some usual misunderstandings. It’s the subplot that made me laugh and enjoy an otherwise predictable storyline. Lion-O’s attempts to win over Pumara end in regular failure here in so many ways as he tries to find shortcuts, including one that turns Tygra into a loving-life happy guy who is beyond help or use. Lion-O is just smitten with her and there’s something very adorable in what he does here. Between that and watching a girly Tygra, these stories worked really well and was the kind of lightness needed.
In Summary:
ThunderCats has a decent little episode here that doesn’t really advance things much but has some fun with the cast of characters. The journey itself doesn’t reall ystray much once you see who all is involved here, and it’s one that feels like it has more kinship to the original series in terms of episode structure. But it also does some very fun stuff when it comes to Lion-O and Pumara as he continues to try and win her over and makes some inroads here. Tygra kind of steals the show though and made the Ponzi pieces easier to deal with. That alone was worthwhile just to see him so out of character for awhile.
Grade: B
