Editorial - My thoughts so far on Wabbit: A Looney Tunes production

So, The Looney Tunes show was an attempt to write the Looney Tunes in a suburban, almost sitcom-esque setting. The animated factor allowed them to incorporate more ludicrous scenarios you couldn't have in a regular sitcom. The humour was hit and miss to say the least, some jokes worked and some jokes just left you groaning.

The argument is clear that a lot of characters felt overly-domesticated. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck living in a house, Speedy running a Pizza place, Taz being a pet, Gossamer being a regular kid who just looks like a monster, Elmer being a weather reporter and so on and so forth. In short, the classic feel of the Looney Tunes felt lost. But if you look past those there are some classic dynamics, Tweety and Sylvester are largely unharmed and the Wile E Coyote and Road Runner shorts, whilst not brilliant, at all, at least tried to capture the old feel.

The show ended after 2 seasons and out came a TV movie called Rabbit's Run. I'm still considering a review of this sh*tpile. In my opinion it encompasses the worst of the Looney Tunes show.

Wabbit: A Looney Tunes production was intended to create something more akin to a classic Looney Tunes short. The run-time was cut, each short being 5 minutes and paired up to create an 11-minute episode. But did it work? Here are my thoughts.

Wabbit is the tale of Bugs Bunny. He's in every episode that's been released so far. And, his personality highlights his jerk aspect a little more than previous incarnations. He's still got a few jokes to make but some of the humour doesn't quite feel as sharp as it used to.

Example. I forget the exact episode but Bugs said "I don't think you comprehend the gravity of the situation" to his opponent before bad stuff happens. It would've been funnier if the bad stuff had happened and Bugs had delivered that with a wink and a nod to the audience.

There is definitely more a sense of feeling more like a classic Looney Tunes short. Trouble shows up, Bugs outsmarts trouble and delivers a few one-liners. That's the formula and it's fine, except here there are some issues.

Character motivation is a massive issue and it comes down to how they've handled certain villains. Wile E Coyote is the worst example of this. He's totally domesticated in this show! But the thing is, aside from being a bit arrogant and above it all, he does nothing egregious towards Bugs in any episode I've watched, making Bugs deliberately causing him harm far less funny. Taking away motivation is one of the worst things could do with Wile E Coyote. None of his episodes can hold a candle to classics like Operation: Rabbit.

Yosemite Sam is the only other classic adversary to Bugs that has made multiple appearances and he's much stupider than I remember. Don't get me wrong, Sam was never the smartest of Bugs' adversaries but the stuff he falls for in this beggars belief. I don't think Sam for example, as a thief would not remember his own entry code.

Taz has had an episode in this, he's now a businessman, and they said he was domesticated before. Yeah, that episode was terrible. Their attempts to create original villains have rarely been that memorable, but recurrence may change that

Porky Pig is said to debut soon with Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck later in the season (I saw a clip with Daffy and no lie, it looks really funny) It is odd seeing a show named Wabbit not feature Elmer Fudd until so late on in the season.

OK, let's talk about the show's supporting characters. There are two of them. Squeaks the squirrel and Bigfoot. Squeaks is boring, he collects nuts sometimes and Bugs is sometimes a jerk to him and sometimes helps him out. The problem is he has little personality. He's a squirrel, and that's not to say squirrels can't be funny, Animaniacs proved that was possible years ago but Slappy Squirrel had a very well defined character so even if she wasn't speaking, which Squeaks doesn't, she still gave off the comedy. Squeaks does sometimes produce some laughs but it's hard to work out what he really adds to the Looney Tunes line up.

Bigfoot is something else. I loathe this character. His personally is well defined. He's stupid but it's the source of the only jokes they ever do with him. He's stupid and he calls Bugs a woman. Maybe the biggest problem is this is where Bugs loses the most, and he does nothing but be at least somewhat kind. You can do a good double-act dynamic like this but again the motivation is way off.

There's one other problem with this show. The pop cultural jokes. Sure, Looney Tunes did have a few pop cultural jokes back in the day but the vast majority of episodes were either in classic historical periods or could be placed more or less anywhen. These helped give Looney Tunes it's timeless feel. Here the inclusion of things like GPS, sat-nav etc put it very squarely in modern times. I can't help feel like this will become dated

Speaking of dated, the character models. Bugs' design is very scrawny, in fact I'd argue that for a number of characters. Squeaks was noticeably slimmed down from the design in the original poster.

Voice acting: I like Wile E's voice, fits with the character from the Bugs Bunny and Wile E cartoons. Jeff Bergman returns to voicing Bugs from the Looney Tunes show and I wasn't a fan of his voice then, nor am I now. Joe Alaskey provided in my opinion the best Bugs voice but since he tragically passed away last year, Billy West would be my choice for a better voice actor. Sam is done fine by Maurice LaMarche. I don't like Matthew Mercer's Bigfoot voice, I think it adds to my distaste for the character. Dee Bradley Baker does great as the animal noises and apparently will be voicing Daffy, like he did in Space Jam. I'm looking forward to it.

It's not a great show, much like its predecessor, it's comedy is hit and miss. But there are enough good jokes that I don't mind watching it from time to time. However, in terms of it's attempts to capture the spirit of the original Looney Tunes. I don't think it's been that successful. It's early days, maybe I'm judging too early. Looney Tunes had over a thousand cartoons to judge. I'm curious to see how things go.