The Looney Beginning is the debut episode of the series Tiny Toon Adventures. It first aired 14 September 1990 and was written by Paul Dini and Sherri Stoner. Despite being the series premiere episode, it was the 48th episode produced.
Plot[]
Bugs Bunny has been hired by Warner Brothers to introduce the audience to the new series Tiny Toon Adventures, which he explains by way of a flashback. The story begins with an animator, after a failed pitch to the network about a Television-series starring a snotty boy named Montana Max, is ordered by his boss to come up with something better by tomorrow morning, or else he will be fired. Bugs Bunny (who is watching this from his picture frame on the wall), advises the animator to start with bunnies, resulting in the creation of Babs and Buster Bunny. When the bunnies surprise him by leaping out of the drawing and hugging him, the cartoonist throws the bunnies in the trash can and leaves. Buster and Babs decide to make the series themselves. After Buster creates the series location, Acme Acres, they audition for "wacky but lovable neighbors." Following the introductions of Hamton J. Pig and Gogo Dodo, Buster and Babs meet Plucky Duck, who has a large resume of talent, but he becomes exasperated when the bunnies decide to cast him as their sidekick. Afterwards, the bunnies look for villains by opening a box where these enemies have been kept, all of whom show up in later episodes; Dizzy Devil and Elmyra Duff are introduced at this point. The last one out of the box is the infamous Montana Max, whom the animator had pitched his very own show to, but was turned turned down because of his brattiness. After unleashing their archenemies, the bunnies have Hamton write the scripts. Just then, Max kicks the bunnies out of the cartoon and takes over the show, retitling it "The Montana Max Show."
Buster and Babs get their end screen credit
Buster and Babs are unable to fight off against Max's takeover, so Bugs comes in to help. He draws up the schoolhouse Acme Looniversity and, after a theme-song, gives his new students a few tips about being cartoon characters, one of which is "villains always fall for cheesy disguises." With that in mind, Buster and Babs pay a visit to Montana's mansion, disguised as his personal heroes, Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd, and retrieve their scripts. Upon realizing he's been tricked, Max executes a set of booby traps. However, the bunnies manage to dodge them, and Montana is squished by his own rolling coin. The next morning, the animator returns to find the new show, Tiny Toon Adventures, all planned out for him. He pitches the series to the network, and they love it. Getting a raise for making this new series, the animator offers to give Buster and Babs anything they want. They request a creation-credit, as is indicated by the episode's humorous title-card.
Cast[]
| Voice Actors: | Character(s): |
| Charlie Adler | Buster Bunny, The Rejected Muscular Rabbit |
| Tress MacNeille | Babs Bunny |
| Joe Alaskey | Plucky Duck |
| Don Messick | Hamton J. Pig |
| Cree Summer | Elmyra Duff |
| Danny Cooksey | Montana Max |
| Maurice LaMarche | Dizzy Devil |
| Frank Welker | Gogo Dodo, Furrball, The Animator |
| Candi Milo | Sweetie Bird |
| Jeff Bergman | Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety, WB Boss |
| Kath Soucie | The Rejected Baby Rabbit (Uncredited) |
Memorable Quotes[]
- (The first line in the series) Daffy: "I tell you, T.S., it'll be a smash; Honey, I Shrunk the Laundry, starring Daffy Duck! What do you say, hm?" (gets kicked out of the studio) "Philistines."
- WB Boss: (tears a cartoonist's idea in half) "This is garbage!" (puts idea in the trash bin) "GARBAGE!" (balances the bin on his hand, then dumps the trash on the cartoonist's head) "No one wants to see a show about some rich little brat named Monty! You'd better come up with a hit show by 9:00 AM tomorrow, kiddo... (pulls out an ax) ...or it's the ax for us! Now, GET TO WORK!"
- Cartoonist: (stammering) "Yes, sir." (glumly comes out of boss's office and back to his desk) "Oh, it's hopeless! I don't even know to start!"
- Baby Rabbit: (giggles) "Golly, gee whiz. Aren't I just the cutest thing you ever saw? Uh-huh, uh-huh. I sure am. I'll go to your house and I'll live forever and ever and ever... ...and you'll never, ever, ever get tired of me. And I'll go hippety-hop, hippety-hop right straight into your heart."
- Cartoonist: "Ewww. That thing will give people cavities."
- Baby Rabbit: "I love everybody in all the world. (muffled) And I even love..." (voice gets muffled as the cartoonist crumples his sketch up) "... being rumpled and thrown away."
- Cartoonist: "Maybe something a bit more manly." (draws in a Rambo-like rabbit)
- Buster "Say, how about drawing me a best friend? A buddy, a compadre, someone I can talk to rabbit-to-rabbit."
- (the Animator paints in Babs)
- "A girl?"
- Babs: "Welcome to the '90s."
- Animator: "Huh?"
- Babs: "So, what's your name?"
- Buster: "Good question." (to the animator) Hey, what are our names?! (The animator writes "Buster" over the blue rabbit) "I'm Buster Bunny."
- (The animator then writes "Babs" over the pink rabbit)
- Babs: "And I'm Babs Bunny."
- Buster and Babs: "No relation."
- Babs: "Darn. I'm 14 and I already have wrinkles."
- Buster: "We'll create the show ourselves for everyone who loves toons. For the little guys, for the big guys... ...for the strange medium guys with bad haircuts!"
- Babs: (after Buster creates the show's setting of Acme Acres) "So, what do you call it, Rembrandt?"
- Buster: "Green Acres."
- Babs: "Get current."
- Buster: "Okay. Acme Acres."
- Gogo: "I'm Gogo Dodo. And I shall perform Hamlet's Seliloquy. (clears throat) Two bees..." (splits into two bee versions of himself) "...or not 2B..." (Transforms into a door marked 2B and crosses the 2B out, then transforms into himself dressed as the Riddler) "...that is the question."
- Plucky: "Sidekick? No way. I am no sidekick. Hamton's a sidekick type! He has all the earmarks of a sidekick."
- Elmyra: "Come back, you spinny, purpley puppy thing.
- Dizzy: (gasps) "Dizzy out of here!"
- Elmyra: "Elmyra just wants to hug you and squeeze you into itty-bitty pieces! And then I'm gonna change your diaper all by myself."
- Babs: "Oh peanuts. That brat stole our show."
- Buster: "Without those scripts, We're doomed."
- Buster: "Oh, pater. Oh, mentor. Oh, great unaffordable one."
- Bugs: "Eh, you can call me Bugs."
- Babs: "Oh, I love the plush green carpet."
- (The carpet reveals itself as a flattened Plucky Duck)
- Plucky: "I've decided the sidekick role is workable."
- Buster: "What happened to you?"
- Plucky: "A steamroller with Monty's name on it!"
Allusions[]
- Daffy Duck offers to sell an executive at Warner Bros. a movie titled "Honey, I Shrunk the Laundry", a reference to the 1989 Disney film, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
- The rejected muscular rabbit is a parody of John Rambo of the Rambo film franchise.
- Many moments in the creation of Babs and Buster Bunny reference the classic Looney Tunes short, "Duck Amuck".
- Buster's response to the animator's first attempt at his color scheme is a reference to the often-disastrous colorizations that Ted Turner was responsible for giving to the black-and-white films his company owned.
- One of Babs' first impressions is Glinda the Good Witch, specifically, Billie Burke Zeigfeld's interpretation of the character from the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, as she asks Buster, "Is it a good voice or a bad voice?" Babs also imitates Dolly Parton, Jessica Rabbit, Pee Wee Herman ("La la la! I'm Eraser Head!"), and Elmer Fudd.
- The 1988 Disney/Spielberg film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, is referenced twice in this episode. One of Babs' first impressions is Jessica Rabbit (Roger's wife), and when Buster and Babs escape from the garbage bin, Buster says, "Roger, Rabbit!," and Babs responds with, "You've got the wrong bunny."
- Buster's original name for Acme Acres was Green Acres, a show on TV Land.
- When Montana Max takes over Acme Acres, Gogo says, "Redrum, redrum!," which is "Murder" backwards, made famous in Stephen King's novel, The Shining, and its subsequent film adaptations.
- When Gogo says, "That is the question," he wears an outfit that resembles Frank Gorshin's version of The Riddler, on the 1960s Batman show.
- In one of the deleted scenes, Gogo says, "You got parsley and sage but you're running out of time!" A reference to a repeating line in "Scarborough Fair", an English folk song popularized by Simon & Garfunkel.
- The scene where Babs and Buster quickly escape from Monty's mansion with the episode scripts is similar to the famous opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was directed by the same person (Steven Spielberg) who executive-produced Tiny Toons.
Cut Scenes[]
- When shown in reruns and syndication, several scenes were cut. These scenes can be seen on the Tiny Toon Adventures Season 1, Volume 1 DVD. These scenes include:
- The animator painting Mexican clothes on Buster, and Buster sarcastically replying, "Ha ha. Tutu funny," before being put in his red shirt.
- Sweetie and Furrball introducing themselves to Buster and Babs during the auditions (Sweetie's name is still listed in the end credits).
- After Bugs' song about Acme Looniversity, Gogo Dodo appears out the clock tower and says, "You got Parsley and sage, but you're running out of 'thyme'!"
- Buster quoting Bugs' lesson about how "villains always fall for cheesy disguises" outside Monty's Mansion.
The above scenes were left intact when aired outside the United States.
Notes[]
- An unused scene from this episode features Elmyra Duff introducing herself to Buster and Babs during the audition sequence, then capturing them, dressing them in baby clothes, and feeding them mud pies, only for them to outwit her and get back to the auditions. This scene would later be used (with a rough fade-in and altered dialogue) as the opening to Strange Tales of Weird Science.
- The voice of the WB animator is none other than Frank Welker, although Welker was only credited as the voice of Gogo in this episode.
- Although Sneezer is credited as the one Kath Soucie voiced in this episode, Sneezer only briefly appears as an extra. Instead, it is the Rejected Baby Rabbit that Soucie voiced. However, she used the same voice for both characters, similar to her voice for Lil DeVille in the Nickelodeon cartoon, Rugrats.
- After Babs says, "You're all in!," Montana Max and Dizzy Devil can be seen in the crowd, contradicting their actual appearances minutes later when they escape from the villains box.
- Hamton isn't the first person in line for the audition, but is the first to go up to Buster and Babs.
- Some of the villains who escape from the villains box include Dr. Gene Splicer (the main antagonist of the episode, "Hare-Raising Night"), a Red Devil who appears in the ending to the episode, "Sawdust And Toonsil", the Metropolis Marvels who appear in the beginning of the episode, "The Acme Bowl", one of Monty's cronies from the episode, "Gang Busters", and The Candy Bar Monster from the "Best o' Plucky Duck Day" episode segment, "Sticky Feathers Duck".
- During Bugs' song about Acme Looniversity, Wile E. Coyote is seen in Calamity's gray color scheme.
- In the second deleted scene, as Babs tells Sweetie and Furrball that they're in, Furrball's eyes are yellow, not white.
- Buster says he calls the town "Green Acres", however, "Acme Acres" is already written on the map before he even says it.
- The Tiny Toons staff was not satisfied with the way Kennedy Cartoons animated the chase scene in Monty's mansion. So that scene was handled by Wang Animation.
- This episode earned Tiny Toons its first and only Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less) as it originally aired in primetime before it moved to daytime. It lost to The Simpsons episode, "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment".
- The music for the "Welcome to Acme Loo" song would later be used for certain episode title cards.
- During a scene where Monty (sat on the back of Arnold the Pitbull) when he confronts Babs and Buster, Buster is seen floating in mid-air.
Transcript[]
To read the transcript of the episode, click here.