In which we meet an allegedly British person.
There’s new characters all round this week, though I’ll be honest, none of them are any more compelling than our usual crowd. On the goodies’ side, we’ve got Long Arm John, who has two defining characteristics: he can extend his arm, like a slightly less versatile Inspector Gadget, and he speaks with an appalling fake cockney accent. At a guess, I imagine someone on the voice-acting team enjoyed their London-based romp in that Sherlock Holmes business a few weeks back, so decided to revive their British efforts.
On the baddy side, we have a guy called Rider, who is half-naked with fantastically insane eyebrows. He is the leader of a team of idiots called the Doom Buggy Gang, which seems to consist of our old mate Dingo Dan and a green snakey dude called Slither Eye (or something very much like it, but he doesn’t speak very clearly). The Doom Buggy Gang have the same limited ambitions as everyone else on this planet: to rob the stagecoach and get away with some kerium.
The first six minutes of the episode is almost entirely given over to the none-too-thrilling introduction of these dweebs, in a protracted fight scene in which Long Arm John gets the better of the crooks, aided by the omnipresent BraveStarr and Thirty/Thirty. Once it’s all over, Dingo Dan has been arrested but Rider and Slither Eye escape, leading the Mayor of Fort Kerium to congratulate Long Arm John on his awesomeness and gives him a job as one of BraveStarr’s deputies.
Fuzz is of course a bit concerned about this, and he’s right to be: now that BraveStarr’s got a competent deputy, he’ll soon see he doesn’t need to keep Fuzz around anymore. Sure enough, BraveStarr instantly takes Long Arm John out on a soiree to try to track down Rider and Slither Eye, leaving Fuzz with the low-profile job of guarding Dingo Dan in prison. And naturally, Fuzz manages to screw this up, getting tricked into releasing Dingo Dan in less than 30 seconds. That’s not going to look good on your annual performance review, Fuzz. Better start applying for other jobs now.
It seems the Mayor agrees with me, since he witnesses Dingo Dan’s escape and instantly fires Fuzz. Good. It’s about time someone got rid of him. Unfortunately, even though he’s no longer a deputy, Fuzz decides to hang around and try to recapture the escapee, which he achieves with stunning ease, owing largely to the fact that ‘halfwit’ would be a generous description for Dingo Dan.
Meanwhile, Rider and Slither Eye have given BraveStarr and Long Arm John the slip, using one of the stupidest tricks I’ve ever seen, and the two villains arrive in Fort Kerium with the nonspecific aim of causing a bit of havoc. Flush from his success with Dingo Dan, Fuzz struts out onto the high street and irritatingly manages to get the better of Rider and Slither Eye too. After BraveStarr finally shows up to make the final arrest, there’s a happy ending as the Mayor reinstates Fuzz as deputy, while Long Arm John gets assigned to be a deputy in some other nowhere town.
In today’s adventure…
Long Arm John cautions us to be careful where we put our hands, which seems to be leading up to advising us against inappropriate touching, either of ourselves or other people. In actual fact, he’s referring to the importance of not putting our hands in the fire or in electrical sockets and the like, but that’s far less entertaining.
Character checklist
A wide range of goons present themselves for our approval today, namely BraveStarr, Thirty/Thirty, Fuzz, Long Arm John, Handlebar, the Mayor (who finally gets graced with the name of Derringer, one episode before the end of the series), Molly, Rider, Slither Eye, and Dingo Dan.
Unnecessarily Violent Horse
Thirty/Thirty doesn’t get a whole lot to do this week, but he does at least find the time at the very end of the episode to gratuitously blow up one of Rider’s vehicles, even though it poses virtually no threat whatsoever.
Insults
Long Arm John kicks off his unnecessary and annoying Britishisms by calling Rider a “ruddy scallywag”, which is of course exactly how we all speak in Laaaarrrrndaaaarrrrn, innit guv? Slightly more sensibly, Fuzz calls Rider and Slither Eye “crooks”, a word which the Mayor also uses to refer to Dingo Dan twice. Dingo Dan manages to begin a description of Fuzz with “no-good scheming little …” before he’s interrupted, and finally Slither Eye uses the tired old “meddling marshal” for BraveStarr, but sums up my feeling perfectly by referring to Long Arm John as “that weirdo with the long arm”.
Eyes of the Hawk
BraveStarr achieves being on screen for nearly 10 seconds before calling on a stupid animal power – specifically, the hawk eyes, which alerts him to the kerfuffle going on between Long Arm John and Rider, and is thus the catalyst for this whole sorry situation.
Strength of the Bear
Thanks in no small part to Thirty/Thirty being an idiot in a way that I can’t be bothered to discuss, BraveStarr is forced to call on the strength of the bear in order to catch a large vehicle that Thirty/Thirty has arranged to fly directly at his face.
Starr Rating
Well, Long Arm John may be annoying with his stupid cockney accent, but he’s got nothing on Fuzz, who once again goes above and beyond in his efforts to be actively infuriating. I’ve rarely wanted to put my fist through the screen so much as I did this week whenever Fuzz showed up, and he showed up a lot, exhibiting behaviours such as feeling sorry for himself, feeling smug with himself, and being a complete moron, often all at the same time. Without him, this episode would be perfectly tolerable, but thanks to his contribution, it’s pretty much unwatchable.
BraveStarr Episode Review Site 