Never let it be said that the folks who bring us this series limit themselves to one reference per joke...This one refers to two recent Disney movies: Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.Drawn by: Cosme Quartieri and Horacio Ottolini
Minerva and the Beast are in front of his castle. Minerva pushes him away, a look of disgust on her face, and says, "Ewww! I'd rather kiss a hunchback!" The Beast looks shocked and dismayed at her rejection.
Never let it be said that the folks who bring us this series limit themselves to one reference per joke...This one refers to two recent Disney movies: Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The Warners are judging the Miss Small Town America beauty pageant, by virtue of getting the invitation before Mr. Plotz finds it on his desk. After a greeting from the lovely but mentally and dentally challenged Miss Hackensack, they embarrass the host, and Yakko finally replaces him.
The first contest is the nightgown and curler event. After Dot appears in an outlandish style, the rest of the contestants want Wakko to do their hair too. He agrees, of course, and produces the winner, with Doppler radar curlers and a screen in the middle of her nightgown. Next is the ugly face competition; after Wakko is disqualified for his burping and spitting camel imitation, and Dot imitates a frog eating a fly, Miss Missoula wins by pulling her lower lip over her face. The final competition is the stupid questions event. Miss Poughkeepsie wins a mallet from Wakko for getting her question wrong, and Miss Texarkana dodges the mallet after missing hers - but wins a consolation prize: a 2-ton piece of the Rock of Gibraltar, right on her head. Dot, as Miss Burbank, wins the event for not missing a single question, despite not getting one right, either.
Before the judges make their final decision, Dot has a present for the other competitors: a table full of junk food. They dig in, and decide to abandon the pageant. The Warners are left with 30 minutes of national air time to fill, and are rescued by the sudden appearance of Plotz, demanding the return of his credentials. They take him and the other judges and hold the Mr. Chairman of the Board beauty contest instead.
Pinky and the Brain are standing at the front of the crowd in the opening panel, with press cards and cameras. The host's name, Mr. Parks, and the song he sings at the opening refer to Bert Parks, long-time host of the Miss America pageant who was replaced because the producers thought he was too old. Dot wears Buster Bunny slippers with her nightgown. The Yves Saint-Wakko dress refers to famous fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent.
Dot's underwear is colored white, instead of the standard light pink. (pages 2, 3, 10)As Minerva waters her flower bed, Newt has come back to try once again to capture her and return her to his master. A bit of thought leads him to try an appeal to the typical woman's love of melodrama.
Newt threatens to foreclose on Minerva's house and dynamite it unless she comes with him. She says that a big, strong hunting dog like him wouldn't want to evict her in her best sultry manner, leading Newt to blow himself up as he reacts. He decides to try reverse psychology on her, and ties himself up on a railroad track. Minerva isn't fooled, though she does give him points for originality - but doesn't rescue him as he hopes, and he's run over by a train. Newt then tries the straightforward approach, holding out a rope and telling her to come with him. She asks for a pair of handcuffs, but then goes with him anyway to a sawmill, where she's tied up and placed on the sawmill feed. Newt gloats that it's her turn to suffer, but Minerva describes how she suffers in keeping herself gorgeous. She gets him to untie her, then punches him and runs away.
Newt appears to give up. He tells Minerva that he will chase her no more, and she reacts by talking about personality meaning more to her than looks. Just as Newt smells victory, a big hunk of a hunting dog shows up looking for a mink. Minerva falls for him immediately, and she goes off with him instead.
Quartieri does an excellent job of drawing Minerva. He captures her sexpot looks perfectly, and gets her facial expressions right even for those which haven't been done before. Never let it be said that the folks who bring you this series limit themselves to double entendres when they can get three or four in. The line "What say we blow this popsicle stand, babe?" qualifies as a quadruple: in addition to the obvious sexual meaning, it also refers to blowing one's nose, blowing a whistle, and blowing up the dynamite nearby. Newt does a nice Tex Avery wild take as the train approaches. Minerva does another nice wild take, with her hair and tail spelling "WOW!!!!", as she sees the hunk. If Minerva's song at the beginning is meant to be the same one as at the beginning of the cartoon Meet Minerva, it's a misquote. The original, along with all of the other songs from the broadcast cartoons, can be found in the Animaniacs Mega Lyrics File, maintained by Ron O'Dell. Minerva's eyes are just a little too far apart in the middle panel on page 16. At the bottom left of page 18, it appears Davidson wrote "rought", then corrected it. The final period is also missing from Newt's first sentence on page 22, and from the hunk's sentence at the bottom left of the same page. Minerva's earrings disappear during her wild take. (page 22)Slappy is watching a cooking show and trying to follow along. She has trouble with the necessary acrobatics, and has to abandon the effort when everything falls apart. As she's getting down a bushel of walnuts for salad, she discovers Skippy hiding under a cabinet. She asks him why he isn't in school, and he explains that the substitute teacher hates him. Slappy tries to get him to not pay any attention to her attitude, until he points out that she thinks that Slappy's a bad influence on him. Slappy takes offense and drags Skippy off to the schoolhouse for a meeting.
As they arrive at the schoolhouse, Slappy explains that that was the same school she went to back in the days of silent movies. She goes on to tell how she had trouble with her teacher, just as they enter the classroom and discover it's the same one that's giving Skippy trouble. The teacher, Ms. Backbreaker, says that she's had her eye on Slappy and that she's the same squirrel she's always been, with no respect for anything. She goes on to explain that, as far as she's concerned, Slappy is contaminating an innocent young mind.
Slappy tells the teacher that laughter is the best stuff in the world, but she disagrees, saying that life is serious business. Slappy decides a demonstration is in order, and she and Skippy proceed to do a few comedy routines. Verbal humor doesn't do anything for Ms. Backbreaker, but the old pie in the face trick does, and soon the teacher is laughing and throwing pies like an old pro, and having fun doing it.
Julia Gibbon and the Gibbering Gourmet Show refers to famous TV chef Julia Child. There's a picture of Yakko, in Leonardo da Vinci's classic pose, on the wall of the schoolroom on page 26. Kimble's soup refers to Campbell's soup, which comes in cans with red and white labels. This story ends a little abruptly, as Ms. Backbreaker becomes a comedy fan almost instantly. It feels like it was originally intended to be a couple of pages longer.