Episode 21, according to IMDb. Important progress this week on the season arc, as well as some fun backstory stuff for Scrooge and some choice comedy bits.
Scrooge has taken the boys and Webby to his ancestral home, Castle McDuck, which he had rebuilt after he amassed his fortune. While Scrooge is there in search of a legendary Knights Templar treasure hidden by one of his ancestors, the trip means dealing with his parents, particularly his disapproving, never-satisfied father. Meanwhile, Dewey hopes that the visit to Castle McDuck will give him a lead in his investigation into his mom, but he doesn’t want his brothers to find out about it until he learns more.
First off, yes, the show does address the question of how Scrooge’s parents are running around when the only indication the show has ever given us of Scrooge’s age is “improbably old.” There’s a bit of a magical handwavy explanation, but I’m mostly here for this shocked tag-team from Huey and Louie: “Your parents are alive?!?” “I can’t believe you’re still alive!”
The Dewey plot is really good. Whenever an episode dips into the Della Duck arc, I’m struck by how well they’re handling Dewey’s conflicting feelings on this front. He desperately wants to find out what happened to his mom, but the more scraps of information he learns, the more he fears the answer isn’t something he’ll want to hear. This episode takes things a step further and looks at how Dewey’s been doing all of this without telling his brothers about it. Naturally, he can’t shake them as he searches for clues around the castle. At one point, he exclaims to himself, “How am I supposed to protect them from the truth if they keep helping me find it?”, a great summation of his state of mind right now.
Speaking of states of mind, Webby is an absolute stitch in this episode. Lover of all things McDuck that she is, she completely loses it at the prospect of being at Castle McDuck. While the other plots are going on, there are some great cutaways to her stammering in amazement or crying with sheer excitement. In other moments, she basically does the Webby version of “Troy Barnes meets LeVar Burton,” and I’m here for it.
As for Scrooge, the “father and adult son can’t connect emotionally” storyline is well-trod ground, but the show does a pretty good job with it. It features some exceedingly-Scottish grumbling and this fantastic exchange: “You avoid us like the plague!” “Oh come now, that’s unfair to the plague!” Given how self-assured and at-times overconfident Scrooge is, it’s kind of fun to watch him flailing for a game plan. Ostensibly, he’s just trying to get his dad to tell him where the Knights Templar treasure is, but he obviously does want his dad’s approval as well. He tries an assortment of tactics to get it, and David Tennant’s vocal performance runs the gamut from nauseatingly agreeable to barely keeping a lid on the seething irritation to full-blown exasperation.
The story also features Ashley Jensen (Maggie from Extras) as Scrooge’s mom, which is fun. Plus, one of Scrooge’s stratagems involves the woefully-misguided idea of trying to pass off Launchpad as Donald, and Launchpad’s imitation of Donald’s fits of rage is hilarious. It might be the most I’ve laughed at Launchpad all season!
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