Another Scrooge-centric story, although this one’s a proper ensemble piece. It offers ample opportunity for David Tennant to go hog wild, which makes for a good time.
Despite Huey’s protests that he’s sick and should be in bed, Scrooge insists on going to work as usual. But when he becomes convinced that a handful of pocket change has been robbed from his money bin, he completely freaks out. As Scrooge grows increasingly unhinged trying to root out the culprit, his family worries about his judgement. Huey thinks he might even have gold fever, a dangerous condition whose symptoms start with paranoia.
The gang’s all here this time around. It’s great to see the kids play off each other as Huey tries to impress the seriousness of the situation on them—“Huey and his stupid nerd brain!” Dewey grumbles as his triplet’s attempt to reason with Scrooge winds up saddling them with a lot of tedious work. There’s a good recurring bit of people donning masks as each in turn realizes just how paranoid and illogical Scrooge is acting.
In addition to the triplets, Webby, Launchpad, and Mrs. Beakley, we get appearances from a number of recurring characters as well, such as Fenton/Gizmoduck and Glomgold, who’s naturally over the moon about Scrooge’s difficulties. (“Hear that, McDuck?” he bellows. “I’m more stable than you are!!!”) Line delivery of the episode, though, goes to Jim Rash. Gyro is such a fun scientist-teetering-on-the-brink-of-mad, and Rash dines out on this impeccable line: “If a thief had entered this building, he’d have been caught and placed in cold storage, awaiting genetic experimentation for Operation: Gyrobot Apocalypse. It’s all in the budget!”
With the plot of this episode, Scrooge is acting decidedly un-Scroogelike, except for the general miserly outlook. He’s sick and being super cranky and stubborn about it, and once he discovers the missing money, he just loses it. For a man who’s almost always in charge, it’s understandably alarming for the kids to see him spiraling, pitching more and more out-there theories as he gets desperate to recover his coins.
This means Tennant’s voice acting goes on quite the ride here, ranting and raving, snapping and muttering. At one point, Scrooge airs a video offering a ransom for the missing money, tenderly intoning, “Coins, if you’re watching, I miss you very much.” I bet Tennant had fun letting loose like this; it takes me back to his first season of Doctor Who, where he was running around licking doors and stuff.
Oh, and we learn that there’s a concealed battle axe in Scrooge’s cane, so, you know, awesome.
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