Before we begin with this episode, I have to mention that the entire first half of this episode is missing from my VHS tape. When the show was first airing my mom forgot to tape this particular episode until it was halfway through, as a result I grew up watching half an episode.
Do the Koopa
We begin at the “Mushroomland Central Library.” Never heard it called Mushroomland before. Well, unless you count the opening lyrics to the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. Toadstool and Luigi are inside, and Luigi hands Toadstool a map. She states that she\'s been looking for this map for years, and that it leads to the Doom Dancer Music Box. Is it really that hard to find something in this library? Has no one heard of the Dewey Decimal System? Toadstool takes the map to Mario and Toad and explains how the music box works. Crank it fast and anyone who hears the music is forced to dance fast. Crank it slow and you put people to sleep. Toadstool plans to find said music box and use it to keep Koopa and family from causing trouble. The group plans to visit Dark Land\'s Temple of Gloom to find the box, though Luigi doesn\'t particularly like the whole idea. Hm, Temple of Gloom huh? I\'m sensing an Indiana Jones parody coming on. Let\'s hope it turns out better than the Indiana Jones parody they did back on the Super Show where the Indy stand-in, Indiana Joe, was drawn without a face. Apparently the animators drew him with a face, but due to a mistake the face layer was put underneath his head, leaving the poor guy with no face.
Mario, Luigi, Toad and Toadstool hop down a warp pipe, conveniently labeled with a skull and crossbones, and arrive in the caverns under Dark Land. However, they are so loud they literally wake the dead, in the form of a dry bones. We cut to Koopa sitting on his throne with an ice pack on his head and holding, um, a dry ice machine? That he\'s inhaling the smoke out of? Anyway, the dry bones shows up via warp pipe and mutters in Koopa\'s ear. Koopa tells him to mumble louder because he has a cold and can\'t hear. Yes that is a real thing, though I\'m not sure if it\'s a problem ever encountered by reptiles. Koopa sends Bully, Cheatsy and Bigmouth to stop the Marios and company.
Back with the good guys, they\'ve hit a snag. Specifically, a chasm filled with fire. Luigi\'s defeatist attitude springs up again as he proclaims they\'ll never get across. At Toad\'s suggestion, Mario breaks some blocks and releases a bunch of leaves so they can all transform and fly over. They then run past a bunch of ceiling spikes that look like giant pencils stomping into the ground, and then past that, a pair of Koopa statues that shoot lasers out of their mouths which, astonishingly, every one of the crew manages to get hit by. They finally arrive at the Temple of Gloom, which looks like an old Mayan or Aztec ziggurat with a gold skull on top. They run into a smattering of dry bones, and have a hard time dispatching them with the old jump-on-the-head routine, so they jump on their heads and THEN smash some blocks overhead, burying the dry bones under rubble.
Inside the temple, our heroes run past a whole hallway of Koopa statues, and this time actually bother to dodge the lasers they spit out. Outside, the Koopa Kids have arrived at the temple and enter in time to hear that Mario and friends are looking for the Doom Dancer Music Box. Bully says that “King Dad always said the Doom Dancer was just a legend.” Huh. So, Koopa doesn\'t know about the music box huh? Okay then. One question. If Koopa doesn\'t know about the music box, then why are there statues of him guarding it? At this news Bigmouth starts rambling about how they\'re all gonna be doomed if the good guys get the music box, forcing Bully to plug his mouth and carry him off. The kids decide to ambush the good guys as soon as they leave the temple using, uh, some string? String that Bigmouth is very fond of apparently. Cheatsy ties the string up as a tripwire. It\'s certainly better than nothing, but I wouldn\'t exactly call it a foolproof plan.
Inside, Mario snatches the Doom Dancer Music Box, which is blue and has a big fat gramophone-like speaker, so, nothing like it looks in the game. As soon as he grabs the box, it starts raining bob-ombs. Those guys have all the worst jobs, waiting in a temple for who-knows-how-long, just waiting for a chance to blow themselves up. Mario dodges a thwomp and, due to an animation error, is transparent for a few frames of animation while a boom-boom attacks. Our heroes rush out the front of the temple, and sure enough, all of them manage to trip on the painfully obvious string. The box goes flying way far into the air and Bigmouth pretends he\'s a football star. Cheatsy pushes him out of the way and is in turn pushed out of the way by Bully, who catches the box. Bully starts cranking the box and makes everyone dance for a bit before making them march.
Bully marches his new subjects right up to his dad. When Koopa asks Bully to hand over the music box he responds by trying to control his father with the music. It doesn\'t work of course because Koopa can\'t hear due to his cold. Koopa grabs the music box and makes everyone dance.
We cut ahead to Koopa\'s Doomship, where he has Mario and company, as well as all seven of his kids in attendance, as he plays the music box. As this goes on we hear “Do The Koopa,” not just the name of the episode, but also of the song. As that goes on we also see that everyone and everything in the Mushroom Kingdom has to dance. Mushroom citizens, as well as the crew of the Doomship, which includes paragoomabas and what I\'m guessing are parakoopas, though some are missing arms and one has three legs. In Desert Land we also see a sphinx, an angry sun and some palm tress dancing. Mario comes up with a plan, finally, and stuffs “plumber\'s putty” in his ears so he can\'t hear anymore. It\'s such an effective plan that he may never be able to hear again. Mario knocks the box out of Koopa\'s hands, and with the music stopped, everyone tries to grab it. Koopa and Luigi get in a tug-of-war and the crank comes off in Luigi\'s hands, though due to an animation error Koopa is still clearly holding a music box with the crank still attached. Koopa gets his claw stuck in the crank hole, somehow, and in trying to pull it out, the three Koopa Kids from before pull too hard and send the music box overboard. It finally lands on a poor goomba\'s head, where it shatters. The Koopas start to argue about who\'s fault all this is, while Mario and crew hop down a warp pipe that\'s apparently onboard the Doomship.
Germ Wars
The announcer tells us that Kevin just got back from Kongoland with a prehistoric rock. It seems these guys are always coming back from Kongoland. Kevin observes the rock with a magnifying glass, saying it\'s just like the moon rocks he studied in school, which he says were over a billion years old. Kid Icarus says “that\'s even older than my uncle Methusalus.” Oh what brilliant dialogue this show gives us. Also, Kevin is chewing on a piece of gum. Bubble gum to be specific, as he blows a bubble with it. Simon and Lana show up and Simon begins spinning the rock on his finger. The rock then starts to glow and flies into Kevin\'s hands. More glowing happens and Kevin doubles over. Kevin says he swallowed his gum, but the others are more concerned that he has blue lines running horizontally across his face.
We cut to Kevin lying in bed with everyone around him, including Dr. Right. Right diagnoses Kevin\'s illness as being caused by Viroid backvenomous, which he says is “no more serious than what you humans call catching a cold bug.” So Dr. Right isn\'t human? Or maybe he\'s talking about humans from our world? How he knows what kinds of germs we have over here is beyond me though. Dr. Right hooks up a device to Game Boy and some suction cups to Kevin so he can monitor his patient\'s life signs on Game Boy\'s screen. I\'d also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Dr. Right\'s doctorate is in robotics, so he would only be of limited help in this situation.
Kevin falls asleep and we cut to inside his body, where we see a miniature, yellow-coloured version of Kevin running around as he\'s chased by a bio-organic thingie that\'s walking along the ceiling with two long legs. I have absolutely no idea what the miniature Kevin is supposed to represent. His consciousness? His immune system? I could not tell you for the life of me. It always confused me as a kid what exactly this was trying to signify. The walker thing, that is such a mishmash of stuff that I can\'t even begin to describe, approaches Mini-Kevin and addresses him as a human life force. Okay, so I guess that explains what Mini-Kevin is supposed to be, though it\'s still pretty vague. Inside the walker, we are introduced to our villain for the episode, Viroid,
◊ a bug-looking guy with four arms and three eyes in a circle around his mouth. Funny story, since we failed to record the first half of the episode, and Viroid is only mentioned by name really briefly one time in the second half of the episode, I grew up not knowing what the guy\'s name was. Viroid is accompanied by his sidekick, Cell, a fat, floating creature, with eye-stalks and tiny lobster claws for hands. Viroid starts shooting at Mini-Kevin with lasers, and continues chasing Mini-Kevin as he runs away.
In the infirmary, Kevin is sleeping restlessly. Dr. Right proclaims that Kevin is in big trouble because he\'s not from Videoland and his body doesn\'t know how to fight off the infection. Well score one for the writers actually knowing how immune systems work. We see Lana speaking into a microphone, apparently sending out a message to all of Videoland, asking if anyone knows of a cure. To what is basically the common cold. Back inside Kevin\'s body, Mini-Kevin is still dealing with the walker when Cell flies out and shoots Mini-Kevin in the leg, turning it blue and making it so Mini-Kevin can\'t move it. Mini-Kevin is then picked up by the walker\'s long tendril and brought inside.
Outside, we see Kevin with a cord suction cupped to his head. It\'s still connected to Game Boy, and we get a good look at his screen, which displays a picture of Kevin\'s life force, where we can see that his left leg is blue and the red bars on the left side of the screen are half blue. So Mini-Kevin is Kevin\'s life force? After all these years, I finally get an explanation as to what Mini-Kevin is, and it doesn\'t make any sense. If this little guy falls into Kevin\'s stomach and gets digested, does that mean Kevin dies? Lana\'s worried, and Kid Icarus expresses his frustration by shooting a fist shaped arrow at the ground where it pounds the floor. Simon, actually tearing up here, laments that Kevin doesn\'t have a warp zone inside him. This inspires Lana to try to fight the virus from inside Kevin. Fortunately, Kid Icarus has a shrinking arrow, which itself is very small. Dr. Right tells them to head for Kevin\'s heart, and hands them a map and videophone. Kid Icarus shoots his arrow into the air where it turns to dust that sprinkles down on himself, Lana, Mega Man and Simon. As they shrink, they start floating in a ball of blue light and enter Kevin through his ear. The first thing they encounter is Kevin\'s eardrum, which they float into and bounce off of. After this, their bubble bursts and they begin to fall, but all manage to grab hold of um, some sort of tube I guess. One thing I\'ll say about this episode, the inside of Kevin\'s body actually looks like the inside of a human body. The crew falls down through a sphincter and into Kevin\'s stomach, which is apparently filled with water and purple cubes. Simon however manages to land in the gum Kevin swallowed earlier.
It\'s about at this point where my VHS tape for this episode begins. For years growing up, I had absolutely no idea what happened in the show to arrive at this point, though looking back on it now, I can say I didn\'t miss much. In fact, I think this episode actually makes slightly more sense when you only watch the second half.
Inside the walker, Viroid is pestered by Cell, who wants to look through the para-scope thingy. Viroid plots to dispose of the N Team and grabs a canister of stomach acid. In the stomach, Kid Icarus is trying to get Simon free of the gum, while Lana consults the “Map O\' Kevin.” She determines that they\'re in Kevin\'s stomach. Cell then arrives at the top of the stomach and pours the canister of stomach acid inside, way more stomach acid then could possibly fit in a canister of that size. Mega Man calls Dr. Right for help, while Lana stands there with a look of complete dumbfoundedness. Dr. Right concludes that the substance must be stomach acid, and the N Team crawl up the purple blocks to get to safety. Unfortunately, Simon still has gum on his boot and gets stuck halfway up the climb. Kid Icarus shoots the gum off Simon\'s foot, sending Simon flying up and into Mega Man\'s arms. Mega Man then gets an idea and chews a piece of bubble gum. He blows a big bubble and starts to float upwards with the other three grabbing onto him. Including Kid Icarus, who can fly. As they ascend, someone drops the videophone and it falls into the green stomach acid and melts. Oh, did I mention the stomach acid is green? Because it is.
Back with Viroid, the big guy is upset that the N Team is undigested, so he orders Cell to send fat cells after them. He then gloats in front of Mini-Kevin, who\'s entire left side, minus his head, is blue. He\'s also restrained by what appears to be even more bubble gum. Kevin does the old “you\'ll never win” routine, so Viroid zaps him, turning his entire body blue.
Outside Kevin\'s body, things don\'t look good. Kevin\'s vitals are in the toilet, Duke is barking and Dr. Right can\'t call anyone on the videophone. On the plus side, they get a phone call from Faxanadu. Dr. Right talks to King Melfis, the Elf King of Faxanadu. He dresses like an Elvis impersonator wearing sunglasses. He\'s also blue, or at least his head is. We\'ll be seeing him again in “Feud of Faxanadu.” Faxanadu, by the way, is depicted as giant tree floating in space. Melfis says that he knows of a magic elixir that cures all evil. Unfortunately, getting the elixir is going to be dangerous. With the rest of the N Team inside Kevin, the only ones left are Duke and Game Boy, easily the two most useless members of the group. Despite the warnings, Duke and Game Boy head to Faxanadu, where the king tells them the elixir was stolen by Dwarves long ago. Having watched “Feud of Faxanadu” I think this guy is just spouting propaganda, but we\'ll deal with that later.
As Duke and Game Boy brave dungeons, we get a montage set to “Frustrated,” which is a sound-alike of “Satisfaction.” They fight their way past what I swear are zoomers from Video GameMetroid, a strange squid-headed monster with tentacles for arms, who they defeat by making it run in circles, and a minotaur-like thing with laser-shooting horns. Also, Duke buys himself a suit of armour.
Back at the palace, we see Game Boy still hooked up to Kevin and monitoring his condition. Continuity? What\'s that? Inside Kevin, we see the aforementioned fat cells Viroid mentioned, two big round blob creatures who shoot white goo at the N Team. Thing is, every time they shoot this gunk they get a little smaller. The N Team runs around the fat cells, goading them into shooting at them. Eventually the fat cells have shrunk down to the point where they\'re absolutely tiny and float off. Viroid is so pissed that he breaks his para-scope. He then orders Cell to release the germ squad. As the N Team are climbing down a rope, three blue Mini-Kevins with spiky hair shoot at them until they fall down a cliff. Apparently germs are actually miniature versions of you?
Inside Viroid\'s walker, we see Lana and the others in a cage, apparently made of bone with green slop on the ceiling. They talk with Mini-Kevin for a bit and say how they\'re sorry for failing him. Oddly, they don\'t seem surprised to see a miniature version of Kevin, inside Kevin. Does everyone have a miniature version of themselves running around in their bodies that could die and take them with it? Viroid has the cage thrown out the back of the walker into a river of water. Not blood, water. And they\'ve made a point of saying that this is by Kevin\'s heart, and not his bladder. The cage goes over a waterfall, but as soon as it hits bottom, the N Team jumps out completely unscathed. Guys, if you could just get out any time you wanted, why not do it sooner? Like, when the bad guy was right in front of you?
Back on Faxanadu, Duke and Game Boy find the elixir they\'ve been looking for, making this the first and last time either one of them accomplish anything useful. Back inside Kevin, we see Viroid now accompanied by five evil Mini-Kevins standing outside his walker. The door is left wide open and Lana strolls inside completely unseen. She approaches Mini-Kevin, and the bubble gum restraints disappear as soon as she gets near. Walking outside, the two of them are about to be shot at by Viroid\'s crew. Realizing there isn\'t much time left in the episode, the rest of the N Team shows up and attack the evil Mini-Kevins who all go down in one hit, though due to an animation error they all show up just fine in the next shot. Viroid fires a laser at Lana, but she uses Simon\'s mirror to reflect it back at Viroid, killing him. Lana gives Simon his mirror back, but then Kid Icarus\' shrinking arrow begins to wear off. As they prepare to leave, Kevin says “you\'ll always be my Videoland family.” This seems like he\'s saying it as part of a goodbye, but it\'s actually a plot point. As the N Team enlarges, they\'re surrounded by a blue light and float away, leaving Mini-Kevin alone with Cell, who asks if Kevin holds grudges. We don\'t see the answer, though I\'d love to see Mini-Kevin say that he DOES hold grudges and choke the little guy to death.
In the palace, Dr. Light hooks up the elixir to a tube, presumably connected to Kevin somehow, though I don\'t see any IVs anywhere, just the suction cup on his forehead. Kevin sneezes, and the N Team floats out in their blue sphere and enlarge to normal size. So all is well right? No. See, the elixir is password protected. No, I am not making this up. You need the “magic mantra” of the intended target to activate the elixir. Also, it has to be typed into a computer, because why wouldn\'t you use a computer to administer a magic elixir? Lana remembers the stuff Kevin said to them just before they left, and types in “family.” Kevin wakes up and everything is alright. Then Kevin sneezes out one of Kid Icarus\' feathers.
Kootie Pie Rocks
We start our episode with Cheatsy climbing up to a window and looking in Toadstool\'s castle. Why? To spy on them most likely. I actually think Cheatsy has an eaves-dropping addiction. We see Toad helping Mario into a fancy red suit. Luigi, wearing a fancy green suit, complains about said fancy suit. Toad is also dressed up in a red diner jacket. Toadstool makes her appearance at the top of the stairs wearing jeans with holes in them and a very loose fitting t-shirt that reads “Milli Vanilli.” At the sight of this, Toad faints. Toadstool proudly announces that she can\'t wait to got to the “Real World,” specifically New York, to see Milli Vanilli. She asks why the others are so dressed up, and we learn that Toad assumed “concert” automatically meant the fancy suit-and-tie symphony orchestra kind. Toadstool isn\'t worried though. With Milli Vanilli on stage no one is going to care what they\'re wearing. Having heard everything, Cheatsy decides to go back home and tell Kootie Pie about it.
We cut to Kastle Koopa, where we see Kootie Pie throwing yet another temper tantrum and throwing stuff out a window. She\'s upset that Toadstool gets to go to a Milli Vanilli concert, but she doesn\'t. I have to ask, how do these people even know who Milli Vanilli is? They live in a completely different dimension. Koopa caves in to Kootie Pie and promises to kidnap Milli Vanilli for his daughter. Koopa engages in some schtick where he keeps calling Milli Vanilli by different random names and getting yelled at for it. Kootie Pie runs off saying she\'ll get changed, and Koopa insists that Cheatsy help him with the kidnapping.
Meanwhile, at the concert in New York, we see Milli Vanilli appear on stage. Now, if you\'re not familiar with who or what Milli Vanilli is, all you really need to know is that it\'s a music group composed of two guys. If you want more info, just read the Milli Vanilli page. I should also make mention of the music in this episode. When the show was originally broadcast, it contained a several Milli Vanilli songs. However, later broadcasts and DVD releases removed the songs and replaced them with, you guessed it, an instrumental version of “Megamove.” As I\'m basing this off my old VHS tapes, the songs on my version are intact.
Milli Vanilli starts singing “Blame it on the Rain,” and the brothers\' ears get assaulted by the screams of hundreds of fans. The Doomship arrives and sends down a beam of light on the stage. Huh. Unusually-shaped flying object. Beam of light. I wonder if the Koopas are responsible for the alien abduction phenomenon? Koopa would probably jump at the chance to screw with people like that. The beam of light picks up Milli Vanilli, as well as the piece of the stage they\'re standing on. One dedicated fan jumps off Mario\'s head to touch one of the musician\'s hands. She does so, and after fainting into Mario\'s arms proclaims, “I\'ll never wash my hand again.” As the singers float away, Toadstool exclaims that the act is really top notch and that they really know how to make an exit. Then the Doomship starts flashing. Not sure why. Our heroes finally clue in that something\'s amiss when they hear Koopa laughing. Not sure if he\'s naturally really loud or if he had the loud-speaker on and laughed right into it. Mario hands off the fainted girl to a random person in the crowd and proclaims that they\'re going to rescue Milli Vanilli.
Back at Kastle Koopa, Kootie Pie introduces herself to her captives wearing a green skirt and a red necklace. However, the guys aren\'t too thrilled about being taken away from their concert, though they don\'t seem especially worried about the talking reptiles. Kootie Pie jumps up and kisses one of them, but gets pushed back to the floor. It seems Milli Vanilli doesn\'t want to play for her. She threatens to turn them into accountants, and when they don\'t believe her she carries out her threat. They try to run away but are stopped by a pair of sledge brothers.
Kootie Pies continues threatening Milli Vanilli, now saying that she\'ll turn them into beetles. One of the singers retorts, “who wants to be a band from the 60\'s?” Can I get a rimshot in here? They try to reason with Kootie Pie, saying that they can\'t sing without a backup band. I should have probably mentioned that we did see a brief glimpse of the backup band at the concert, but they weren\'t really important enough for the show to mention. Fortunately, Toadstool and company are watching this whole exchange from the window. Voyeurism seems popular in this episode. Toadstool is worried that she\'ll never hear her favourite band again. Uh, shouldn\'t you be be more concerned about the guys being turned into beetles? Mario says they\'ll rescue Rob and Fab. Those are the two guys\' names by the way. As a kid, I always thought one was named Milli and the other was called Vanilli. They decide to dress up like a band to get into the castle.
The gang enters the castle via an unguarded warp pipe, wearing disguises that mostly consist of really long-haired wigs and hipster sunglasses. Luigi says he wishes they had time to rehearse, but Toad points out that wouldn\'t have done any good, as none of them know how to play their instruments. I guess no plan is perfect. In the throne room, we see Kootie Pie has now resorted to pounding the floor and wailing for her dad to get her a band. Surprisingly, Milli Vanilli recognizes Toadstool from the concert. Mario tells Kootie Pie that they\'re called “Back-ups Are We,” and wants to know if anyone needs a band. Kootie Pie remarks that she must be getting good at throwing tantrums, since she got results so fast this time.
Toadstool goads Kootie Pie into turning Milli Vanilli back into, well, Milli Vanilli, though that really shouldn\'t have been necessary, since Kootie Pie would have done that anyway. They start singing “Girl You Know It\'s True,” with Toadstool and the rest playing the accompanying music. Kootie Pie seems to enjoy the song, but Koopa runs in telling them to shut off the racket. However, Toad is trying to spin his drumsticks around and one flies across the room and right into Koopa\'s mouth, holding it open. We also get a shot of sledge brothers and goombas running to get way from the sound. The gang stops playing and runs for the still unguarded warp pipe. Kootie Pie somehow doesn\'t realize the music has stopped until after they\'re already gone. Kootie Pie then runs to her dad, insisting that he bring back Milli Vanilli. Koopa finally puts his foot down and threatens to throw Kootie Pie in the dungeon if she doesn\'t stop. Geez, if you had just done that at the start we could have avoided this whole mess. Faced with dungeon time, Kootie Pie decides to forget about the whole affair. Back in New York, Milli Vanilli gets to finish their concert while Toadstool cheers from backstage.
As I\'ve already stated, I only had the second half of this episode on my VHS tape growing up. It actually served to make the first half of the Captain N episode more mysterious. I always wondered what events lead up to the N Team winding up in Kevin\'s stomach. Of course, after watching it now as an adult, I\'m disappointed with the answer. By the same token, I knew that there was a Mario episode that I was missing, though after watching “Do the Koopa,” I wasn\'t as disappointed, probably because I never put that much thought into what I was missing. When making the Milli Vanilli episode, they actually got the voices of the real Milli Vanilli, making it the only time they got a celebrity on the show. Conversely, the Super Show had celebrities dropping by all the time in the live action segments. Of course, a lot of them were people like Dracula and Inspector Gadget, so I don\'t think they count.
- If Kevin could possibly die from the common cold (Videoland's equivalent), then does this mean he's at risk of death many times a year if they can't re-enter his body and fix it?
- The visual of Mini-Kevin, inside regular Kevin's heart, and the idea that he's strapped to a table inside a heart.
- The visuals of the whole thing.
- The idea that, while growing back to normal size, everyone could potentially rip Kevin to shreds and burst him apart.
- The idea that whatever happens in Kevin's body creates serious (and nasty looking) obstacles for them - his stomach pumping acid, he rolls over and the inside of his body turns with them, things like that.
- Kevin slowly dying. Not quickly, not risk of, say falling in lava or being crushed, but slowly, from within, and Mini-Kevin (his soul?) being there to witness/experience it.
- Mini-Kevin is frozen blue with those attacks from Viroid. What's that all about? Paralyzation?
I hated that episode. So damn creepy.