Tooned In: The Raccoons “Night to Remember” (1985; sort-of Halloween episode)

I originally wanted a rest after weeks of Rock ‘n’ Wrestling reviews, but I suppose the temptation of doing something Halloween-ish was too strong. But what to do? I’m sure everyone talked about the big two: Charlie Brown and Garfield. I will say, Happy 40th to the latter, and because of Garfy, I spent decades fighting the temptation to knock on neighbors’ doors on All Hallows’ Eve and say, “GIMME.” If I did, I’d probably get a chunk of “goblin candy” like that kid did in the Tales from the Darkside episode (and has anyone tried to recreate THAT? With something edible instead of glue, of course). And just as we say “Season’s Greetings” and “Deck the Halls” for that other holiday, Mr. Gar Halloween Field made chants of “Candy candy candy candy” my Halloween catchphrase.

I did recently watch the Real Ghostbusters Halloween episode, and thank goodness they got one out before Q5 saved us from Lorenzo Music, a lack of Slimer, and Janine’s dreaded pointy glasses. Good stuff, and not afraid to have scary sights and moments. Knowing that TRG has its fans, probably covered elsewhere too.

No, I had the need to dip into the obscure, and as we all know, my icon for the underrated remains The Raccoons. But besides the Christmas special, it took a little stretching to pick episodes that fit other holidays. For Halloween, I could have done the one where Melissa’s old pilot boyfriend visits and makes Ralph jealous, because of one scene at a costume party. Then I remembered an early episode centered around the gang visiting an old haunted house. That does work for me, brother. So here now is:

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

(It was Season One, they didn’t start affixing an “!” at the end of the titles yet…)

I am getting this off the Roku Channel, which includes the remastered series. Including the specials, only I stop after The Raccoons on Ice because Lost Star and by proxy Let’s Dance! are hacked up because of John Schneider….A) refusing to renegotiate, B) being a general dipshit, or C) both. A shame, as all the shows look crisp and vivid after the remasters. Well, it can’t be bad as the WWE Wrestlefest cabinet re-release, can it?

The cold open promises ghosts and haunted houses. And Cyril lounging on a beach blanket?

Onto the episode proper, The Narrator promises that a warping of myth and reality is possible as we visit Dan the Forest Ranger’s cabin. Second sign that it’s Season One: the humans are still around. Tommy (played by Bentley Raccoon’s future VA) and Julie ask Dan to tell them a scary story, and teasing about girls being afraid of ghosts and such ensues. In case you didn’t know where this was produced, they certainly say “about,” “out,” and “house” a lot to remind you.

The Narrator then steps back from his earlier statements and now says something will happen that will separate myth from reality. We flash back earlier in the day in the Evergreen Forest, and the boys and Cedric are planning a wilderness outing to their childhood secret fort, where Bert says “the fish are ten feet long, and those are just the guppies!” And “childhood” reminds me to remind myself NOT to get into Raccoons continuity concerning that. To their credit, Cedric is unaware of the fort, which matches up with the Raccoons first encountering the Sneers in The Christmas Raccoons. Only that was all a dream, so if On Ice is canonically the true “first” special, then it’s possible they knew Cedric when they were younger too, as is shown in the episode about the old school house where they imply Ralph and Melissa knew each other in grade school, despite the later story about the coffee house they were alleged to first meet at. Then you’ve got Cedric here being an outsider to the Raccoons’ childhood memories, and…wait, what did I need to remind myself not to do again??

So anyway, Melissa arrives, and Season One Third Sign: it’s Linda Feige and not Susan Roman doing her voice. They were getting there with Melissa’s personality, but still had her be soft spoken like in the specials. She is followed by Season One Fourth Sign: Sophia Tutu. They want to join in, but Ralph protests because they’re going to do a bunch of manly stuff, including portaging. When Melissa says she could do all that, Bert is all “no girls allowed”, which even Ralph cringes at. This is why it’s so hard to track how old everyone’s supposed to be on this show, with Bert always acting like he’s still a teenage boy, tops. Speaking of not acting one’s age, Sophia tries to get Cedric out of this misogynist trip in her usual hammy way, but Bert tempts him with the promise of learning the Secret Handshake. Melissa is still asking why she can’t come. Well, I suppose if Ralph wasn’t so lousy in…look, we probably have enough PG-13+ fanfics (and *R* rated drawings by the animators that were alleged to be in the studio), so who am I to encourage more? To keep the yucky girls away, Bert next plays the haunted house card, which instead starts getting Cedric nervous. Melissa on the other hand remains unfazed. “But what about ghosts?” asks Bert. Well…it’s a great sitcom and I love Rose McIver, and…oh, not Ghosts, just “ghosts.” Melissa of course ain’t afraid of no ghost, and better yet, we start getting her famous Non-Plussed Snarky Faces as Bert goes on…

When there’s no winning this argument, Melissa and Sophia let the boys on their way, only Bert dropped his moose horn, “moose” because it’s Canada of course. Unaware of this, Bert reassures Cedric that they made up all the ghost talk to scare the girls away. Except for the bit about the haunted house, and this revelation somehow leads into a Patented Raccoons Music Montage, the highlight of which is an exhausted Bert carrying the weight of his bags, and finally collapsing because of a butterfly landing on his backpack. The soundtrack to this look at hiking is “All Life Long,” a tale about a guy out with his friends on Saturday night who’s eventually picked to dance with the popular lady. You can’t tell here, but amazingly, The Raccoons at least managed to make their songs fit the scene more often than anything Scooby-Doo ever did. I will also point out that at this point, Lisa Lougheed has yet to join the show, and the female vocalist here is Luba, whom Raccoons composer Jon Stroll apparently PREFERRED to Lougheed. Fun fact : don’t mention Dottie West to Stroll, as the race ended before it began with her. Fun fact #2 : Luba’s Wikipedia includes her (active-ish to this day) MySpace link. And oh yeah, Luba is Season One Sign #5.

But speaking of songs, it’s time to learn the secret handshake :

Rub your belly with linseed oil,

Wrap your head in aluminium foil,

Clap your hands, stamp your feet,

Our secret handshake can’t be beat!

That second line reminds me of Joel Robinson’s Jiffy Pop popcorn Halloween costume (aha, timely!) invention exchange. “I AM IRON MAN!” indeed. This is all sung as Purple Pieman-type drums play in the background.

They finally find the fort, and Cedric is understandably not impressed, because it honestly looks big enough to house Bert and Ralph when they were both Bentley’s age. He’s equally disappointed by the boys’ camping meal: cold cans of beans. Bert assures Cedric not to worry about the fort, because he won’t have to sleep there. No, no, as part of his initiation into the club, he’s sleeping….in the haunted house.

Now, did you notice halfway through the episode that someone was missing? Well never fear, because it’s time for Cyril Sneer! He too is in the woods taking a “forced” vacation away from raccoon-caused stress. Season One Sign #6…Cyril has yet to leave his antagonistic phase. He’s being played for more comedy than in the specials, but hasn’t stopped being the Raccoons’ archenemy. He hears the gang renovating the fort, and believes someone is building condos without his permission, so he sends the Pigs to look. After all, why do they have that fancy salary? “But we’ve never been paid!” they protest. Nonetheless, they overhear the haunted house talk and it gives them an idea. And this would be a soft Sign #7 from the first season, since they’re still developing the Pigs’ personalities. They’re breaking away from the speak/act-as-one routine from Lost Star, but Pig 2 and 3 are nowhere as distinct as they’d later be (both Len Carlson, both high-pitched, but 2 becomes the loud, bossy one and 3 is the cowardly, weasely one with one of the best vocal performances in the entire series). And Pig 1/Nick Nichols is starting to sound more like his series self, but lapses into his shouty performance from Lost Star from time to time.

Now it’s finally time for the spooky stuff, and Bert, Ralph, and Cedric are coming to the haunted house. The Raccoons agree that he doesn’t have to stay there if he doesn’t want to, but Cedric is now all “I need to prove myself” and everything. The trio is scared by a flying bat (BAT! Laszlo, you are not forgotten…) and Ralph does a 180 from his understanding ways to telling his friends not to be sissies. A gang of hooded ghosts soon give chase, and are you sure Hulk Hogan isn’t around since this would kind of be his thing. No really, he gets the white sheet in the Ghost Wrestlers episode of his show. And in case you didn’t know what this is derivative of, Cedric even drops his glasses and is on the floor to find them as “supernatural” chaos breaks loose. The “ghosts” use other tricks, including a model of a human skeleton. HOW DO THESE ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS KNOW WHAT HUMAN REMAINS LOOK LIKE??? No wonder we don’t see Ranger Dan and his kids after this season! Of course, the mischievous spirits are really the Pigs, but they in turn are scared off by a mysterious moan. Swerve, bro, it’s the girls and they have the moose horn! How did they know that Bert, Ralph, and Cedric were in trouble? Well, they are now as they all fell down a trap door. Melissa and Sophia enter in time to hear the boys wishing that they were there. Bert even says they would let the girls in the club. They get everyone out of the trap, everyone is reunited, and Melissa has a surprise. No, Bert, it’s not peanut butter. Nor is it chocolate pudding, a reminder of one of the most unintentionally funny parts between Cedric and Sophia in The Raccoons on Ice. It’s of course…more beans. Everyone….sings the handshake song, the end. Except we have a bookend segment with the humans where Tommy gets scared by Schaeffer running by with a Hogan sheet over himself. The lesson to be learned is boys get scared too, I guess.

And we end with the last Season One sign: Steven Lunt’s Run With Us. The hope for a clean version to surface some day continues…

So more a typical episode than anything especially festive or even spooky. When we got to the haunted house, it was pretty much any Hanna-Barbera ’70s show. Add that to the show still finding its footing from special to series.