After a Scroogeless installment, we’re back with this story, which IMDb lists as Episode 11. Even though it’s not my favorite, maybe because I don’t find Launchpad hugely entertaining, it still has some fun stuff to recommend it, including a few delightful guest stars.
When the slick tech billionaire Mark Beaks announces his newest product – B.U.D.D.Y., a robot that can drive a car – Launchpad notes Scrooge’s interest and worries that he may soon lose his chauffeur’s job to B.U.D.D.Y. Scrooge’s resident inventor on the payroll, Gyro, also feels threatened by this shiny new bit of tech. With Dewey’s help, Launchpad challenges the robot to a race.
Not the most original storyline, and again, Launchpad isn’t one of my favorites—Beck Bennett’s performance is fine, but the character is a little too dumb to really be all that funny to me. So, watching his optimistic but gormless antics has limited entertainment value for me. Once we get to the actual race, things do pick up with some fun action sequences.
The main draws of this episode, though, are the guest stars. Jim Rash returns as Gyro, appreciably more mad-scientist than in his first appearance, and he’d already been flirting pretty hard with mad scientist before. His agitated energy as this character is fun, and I enjoy the setup of the rivalry between him and Mark Beaks. Mark is already on Scrooge’s bad side as an upstart young billionaire, but Gyro resents him as a tech entrepreneur whose inventions seem to come so easily, with apparently none of them turning evil and trying to kill their master. Plus, the episode also features Lin-Manuel Miranda as Fenton, Gyro’s eager-to-please intern. Miranda is doing a slightly more amped-up version of his usual enthusiastic-motormouth character type here, and he bounces well off of Rash. I especially like when Gyro snaps at him, “Intern, try to think!” and Fenton ardently replies, “That’s all I do all the time!”
Even
though Scrooge is the impetus for the main conflicts here, since his interest
in B.U.D.D.Y. sends both Launchpad and Gyro into a tailspin, he serves more as
a function of the plot than as a meaningful character. Like, of course he completely fails to
register Gyro’s impending breakdown and Launchpad’s transparent insecurity. As
such, David Tennant doesn’t get as much to do in this episode, but he still
demonstrates his talent for reading utterly silly lines 100% straight. My
favorite here was probably the supremely-casual, “Stop having mail delivered to
my office. That’s for incoming checks and death threats only.”
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