Title- A Little Learning (11/30/1991)
Worlds- Dinosaur Land
This is my least favourite episode of the series. Lets get the good points out the way. Well I liked the part about Koopa not allowing any of his Kids to go to school ‘in case they become… urgh… responsible’ Also the way Koopa proudly states he’s illiterate. Yeah… even Koopa himself can’t save this episode.
We get the princess setting up a school and Hip and Hop wanting to go. Not to cause trouble, not to help Koopa, but because they want to do it. I thought we had an episode about racism in store, but instead this is much… much… worse.
The kids get to school, and because they’re Koopas, the cave people start turning up and complaining about their kids being at school with Koopas. Wow, this is actually pretty good, I mean for a kids show, these things have happened in real life, particularly with gypsies who join a school.
It’s while the princess is out to talk to the parents, Oogtar gives the Koopa’s gum and tells them that the Princess likes it when they eat bubblegum. Thus the Koopa’s get in trouble, and they try to get Oogtar back. Then at the very end the Koopalings make an experiment, which goes wrong and almost levels the school, and they get expelled.
Oh wow. Apart from the fact they’re bullied from the start by Oogtar, and they face racial discrimination, and they get expelled at the end. I mean if the whole episode is based around some moral, at least make it make sense.
One really quite funny thing is that this is technically the final appearance of Koopa. To my knowledge none of the episodes before ever had Koopa facing certain death, (I'll edit this if I remember an episode) he usually escaped, whereas this time the room's filling with lava, and we never see Koopa in another episode (the next one's a flashback.) so feel free to guess that he's dead here, just as Mother Brain's still even now stuck in Baseball land running from giant bats and balls. Amazing how after 3 seasons as the main villains each, both these villains get such a strangely mute send off that it's pretty funny.
Overall a horrible episode, nothing fun (other than Koopa) and I still don’t get the message… I mean what’s it mean? Don’t be bullied? Don’t be bullied and fight back? Don’t actually try to make a good science project.
(Funny how I always spend the most time writing about my least favourite episodes...)
