Western Animation / Mike, Lu & Og

"Ain't no burger stands, ain't no disco bands, on the island where nobody goes~"

— Opening theme

Mike, Lu, & Og is an American/Russian animated series created by Mikhail Shindel, Mikhail Aldashin, and Charles Swensen for Cartoon Network, serving as the network' seventh Cartoon Cartoon. The series aired from November 1999 to May 2001, running for twenty-six episodes.

When 11-year-old Michelanne "Mike" Mazinsky (Nika Futterman) is asked by her school where she would like to go as a foreign exchange student, she was mostly joking when she replied "a tropical island". To her surprise, her school is happy to accommodate that request. So, where is she off to? Hawaii? Guam? The Caribbean? Try an uncharted island somewhere in the South Pacific, inhabited only by the descendants of the British sailors and pirates that got stranded there centuries prior, as well as some wildlife that's probably more intelligent than any of them.

While Mike is happy enough with the odd arrangement — it's still a tropical island, after all — she does still miss New York City and all the modern staples that existed back home. Thankfully, this is a cultural exchange program, and the locals are just as interested in learning all about "television" and "apartment buildings" as she was about catching some sun and breathing non-smoggy air. And so alongside her new best friends, the island's bratty self-appointed princess Lu Bellissimo Albonquetine (Nancy Cartwright) and her soft-spoken inventor cousin Og (Dee Bradley Baker), Mike attempts to recreate elements of modern life, all while learning from the local culture along the way.

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Tropes:

• Actor Allusion: "Elephant Walk" wasn't the first time a character played by Nancy Cartwright demanded an elephant.
• Accidental Public Confession: In "Sneeze, Please", Lu purposely spread a cold to the islanders that Mike caught in a plot to get her blamed and kicked off the island. However, when Og created a cure for the cold, she lost her temper and accidentally revealed that she spread the cold.
  "There wouldn't have been a cure if I hadn't spread the cold".
• All Animals Are Dogs: Lu treats Lancelot like a dog, even keeping him on a leash. The episode "Palm Pet" even has two scenes where the turtle hikes his leg in an attempt to pee on Mike's pet palm tree Petey before being pulled away.
• All Balloons Have Helium: In the opening sequence, Lu tries to blow up an Action Guy balloon, but the air shoots back into her, causing her to inflate.
• Amusing Injuries: Occasionally.
• Ambiguously Brown: Possibly all of the islanders. They're darker skinned than Mike, have either British or American accents, and supposedly descend from a shipwreck centuries back.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: In "Jujubombs", Lu threatens Mike with "Give me my jujubombs OR THE TURTLE PAYS."
• And I Must Scream: Lu being encased in hard candy mold at the end of "Jujubombs". Not that she didn't like it. Besides, she can still speak, and it's not like she'll be there long.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: When Queeks attempts to teach in "A Learning Experience".
  Queeks: When I was in school, I learned the most important lesson, and that lesson is- Sit still!
• Authority in Name Only: Nobody takes Wendel, the governor seriously, mostly because he really does not have any politics to do. Ditto for "Princess" Lu.
• Bamboo Technology: Og's inventions are often made of stuff like wood and stones because they live on an island.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: The natives of Albonquetine wear loincloths and skirts, but are shown to have no genitals whenever these garments are lifted or are at an angle that allows the audience to see what's underneath.
• Berserk Button: Don't call Mike by her real name (Michelanne).
• Big Eater:
  • Wendel. In the episode "Fitness Fever", after exercising and developing a buff physique, he gorged on chocolates and went back to his old self in a matter of hours.
  • In "Jujubombs", Lu eats at least 5 candies each about the size of her head. What's more, she swallows them whole.
• Birthday Episode: Og's birthday is celebrated in "The Great Snipe Hunt".
• Boats into Buildings: Lu and Og's houses are built from the wreckage of the ship that brought their ancestors to the island of Albonquetine.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution:
  • In "Nobody's Nose", Mike, thanks to Queeks, is chased by a thundercloud until she fulfills her duty as the "nose" of the First Day Of Spring Festival.
  • Queeks himself receives one at the end of "Flustering Footwear Flotsam" when the gods punish him for keeping the shoes to himself instead of destroying them like he promised the other Albonquetines.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the end of "Giant Steps"
  Mike: You didn't expect a happy ending, did you?
• Broken Pedestal: Mike loses all respect she had for the nature documentary maker in "Alfred, Lord of the Jungle" once she sees what a bossy Jerkass he is.
• Bumbling Dad: Alfred spends more of his time fruitlessly hunting wombats than looking after his son Og, while Wendel doesn't do anything to curb his daughter Lu's bratty ways.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Lancelot suffers countless abuse at the hands of Lu.
  • Lu herself has had her fair share of indignities as well, though most of the time, she deserves it.
• Calling Your Attacks: Margery shouts "Kierkegaard Kick!" while joining the debate in "A Freudian Slip".
• Captain Ersatz: Mike's favorite superhero is Action Guy, who is clearly a pastiche of Superman, right down to wearing a cape and a red-on-blue costume.
• Cave Behind the Falls: Lampshaded in "Brave Sir Lancelot" when Mike, Lu and Og find one while looking for Lancelot.
  Og: Why does it always have to be behind the waterfall?
• Child Prodigy: Og is a genius inventor despite being a child.
• Chromatic Arrangement: Mike (red), Lu (green), and Og (blue).
• Cloudcuckoolander: Everyone sans Mike has very unusual beliefs.
  • Cloudcuckooland: Everyone native to the island of Albonquetine is rather bizarre and silly in behavior.
• Companion Cube:
  • Mike has Petey (a palm tree) in "Palm Pet".
  • The captain of the pirate trio occasionally talks with a pink bunny hand puppet.
• Cool Big Sis: Hermione of the Cuzzlewit clan is notably smarter and saner than her two brothers.
• Credits Gag: Episodes from the second season credit the songs as being performed by the Albonquetine National Orchestra and Chorus.
• Credits Jukebox: Some episodes ended with original songs performed by the islanders.
• Culture Clash: Mike is an exchange student from New York and many episodes revolve around her attempting to get the inhabitants of Albonquetine to adopt the cultures and pastimes of her home.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Mike to a T. One of the most notable examples is her reply to Og saying why they have to save Lu in "The Good Ship Bad".
  Og: It's the right thing to do.
  Mike: Funny. Normally I enjoy doing the right thing.
  • Lu can be this too. Take this exchange from "Scuba Doobie Doo", for example.
  Mike: He's just coming here to deliver the mail. He'll be gone before you know it.
  Lu: That's what they said about you.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In "Brave Sir Lancelot", when Og speculates on what may be threatening Lancelot, he lists several creatures and animals described as "giant", ending the list with a giant giant.
• The Determinator: Floyd from "Scuba Doobie Doo" doesn't let anything stop him from delivering the mail.
• Deranged Animation:
  • Lu's Nightmare Sequence from "The Three Amigas".
  • Look at the original concept art and tell me it's not one of the ugliest things you've ever seen.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Played straight with Goat and Pig of the Philosophical Society, but averted with the porcupine member, who is named Spiney.
• Drop-In Character: The Cuzzlewitz clan tend to appear in episodes for the sole purpose of having other characters for Mike, Lu, and Og to interact with.
• Eagleland: Type 2 tourists visit the island in "Crowded House". They turn out to be self-centered idiots who have absolutely no concern for the islanders' ways and belongings.
• Eldritch Abomination: The germ monster from "Sneeze Please" is huge, green, and has limbs, eyes, and a mouth.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Alfred pronounces his R's as W's. Bonus points for the fact he's a hunter.
• Expy: The designs of the characters were based on co-creator Mikhail Aldashin's shorts by Pilot Moscow in the early 90s ("Poumse" and "The Hunter").
• Fangirl: Mike with Action Guy. She even dresses up as him and lip-synchs to audio tapes to ward off the pirates in "Turtle Stew"!
• Feuding Families: The Albonquetine and the Cuzzlewitz clans live on opposite sides of the island and have strong animosity towards each other, though it is implied it is just for show.
• Fish out of Water: Mike is a New Yorker living with island natives.
• Flash Back: In "Flustrering Footwear Flotsam", Mike relates to the horrors of shoe shopping when she lived in New York told through still pictures. There is even a picture of her as a toddler crying.
  MOMMY!!! JUST LET ME GO HOME!!!
• Flat-Earth Atheist: A minor recurring gag in the second season is Lu insisting that the Cuzzlewitz do not exist even when Hermione, Haggis, and Baggis are right in front of her.
• Four-Fingered Hands: All characters have four fingers on each hand.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Many of them are parodied in "Sleeping Ugly", most notably Sleeping Beauty and The Princess and the Pea.
• Freudian Couch: On at least two occasions, people come to Queeks to tell him about their problems while reclining on some sort of couch.
  • In "A Bicycle Built for Me", Wendel and Alfred both come to Queeks to ask him for help about their problems, which are a fear of getting hit by coconuts and the inability to catch a wombat respectively.
  • In "Flustering Footwear Flotsam", everyone came to Queeks when their new shoes started disrupting their lives (Alfred feels he has no purpose after catching the wombat, Margery obsessed with creating "shoe portraits", etc.).
• Funny Animal: Goat, Pig, and Spiney are rather fond of discussing philosophy.
• Gilligan Cut: In "A Freudian Split", Og urges Mike to dress up as Sigmund Freud to settle Goat and Pig's feud, but she says there's no way she'll "wear a fake beard and mustache to talk to a goat and a pig". No points for guessing what happens in the next scene.
• G-Rated Drug:
  • Jujubombs are this to Lu in the episode "Jujubombs". She really likes eating them and her impatience in waiting for Mike and Og to make more are reminiscent of addicts dealing with withdrawal.
  • Also in "Hot Dog" where everyone got addicted to hot dogs. There was even an A.A.-esque meeting about their problems.
• Grumpy Old Man: Queeks tends to be rather crabby, though it's justified because he lives in a cave away from everyone else and prefers to be left alone.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: In "The Hunter and the Hunted", Alfred covers himself after the wombat destroys his tree disguise even though he isn't naked.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • "For the Love of Mike" starts with Haggis and Baggis falling for Mike after seeing her fall into a mud puddle. After Mike successfully gets the two to stop pursuing her, the episode ends with Haggis and Baggis falling for Lu after she falls in the mud.
  • The episode "Margery the Duck" has Og's mother believe she is a duck when she walks in on her son while he's in the middle of an experiment to make a duck think he is a travel agent. By the end of the episode, Margery is returned to normal, but everyone else except for Og and Mike end up thinking they're ducks because they walked in during the procedure to return Margery to normal.
  • Subverted in "A Freudian Split". After Og finally puts an end to Goat and Pig's argument over peanut butter and jelly, they both get into another argument at the end of the episode over cream and lemons, but Pig is made to agree with Goat that cream is superior to lemons after she gets hit in the face with a pie.
• High-Pressure Emotion: Og's face turns bright red with anger in "Hot Dog".
• Humans Are Cthulhu: In "Losing Lancelot", while Lu is running, we're treated to a closeup of her feet to see ants running away screaming.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Og gets fed up with the others wanting hot dogs as messy as possible in "Hot Dog", what does he, a boy dressed in nothing but a loincloth, say to Wendell when he tries to order?
  Og: No shoes, no shirt, no service.
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham:
  • Lu when it comes to a new modern fad. Take "Jujubombs" for example, where she states that she hates Jujubombs until she finally tastes one.
  • And from "Hot Dog".
  Lu: (eats hot dog) It stinks! (eats the rest of it) Give me more of this stuff that stinks!
• If You Can Read This: It's only on screen for a few seconds, but the documentarian's film in "Alfred, Lord of the Jungle" is named "Truly Outrageous Aborigines" according to the clapperboard.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The pirates are always prevented by the titular trio from eating Lancelot.
• Inflating Body Gag: During the opening sequence, Lu tries to blow up an Action Guy balloon, but the air shoots back into her, causing her to inflate.
• Intellectual Animal: Goat, Pig, and Spiney often spend their time talking about famous poets and authors.
• Jerkass: Lu is rather bratty and selfish and in general is the least nice of the main characters.
• Just One More Level!: In "A Boy's Game", Og creates a Game Boy out of Bamboo Technology and gets hooked on it to the point of playing it out during a hurricane and neglecting the island's defenses.
• Kick the Dog: Lu's constant mistreatment of Lancelot.
• The Kids Are American: While the adults have British accents, Lu and Og speak with clear American accents.
• Like a Surgeon: In the pilot "Crash Lancelot", Og dons surgical wear and asks Mike for tools while he builds Lu a fancy car.
  Og: Congratulations. It's a car.
• Lineage Ladder: At the beginning of "Yo, Ho, Who?", when Margery shows the kids an old map of their island, she extends the "father's father" speech pattern to explain Lu's relation to his ancestor.
  Margery: Drawn by the right, honorable Wendell Joshua Albonquetine.
  Mike: Lu's father?
  Margery: Lu's father's father's father's father's father. He founded the island.
  Lu: He didn't "found" it, he crashed into it.
  Margery: (groan) Shipwrecked, yes. A great man, but not a great navigator.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • At one point, Mike is shown to own several identical pairs of red sneakers - the kind she wears all the time.
  • Ditto her red t-shirt:
    Mike: [Holding two identical shirts] Which of these do you think looks best?
    Lu: [beat] The red one.
• Losing Your Head: One of the ghosts in "Night of the Living Ancestors" carries around his detached head.
• Magic Skirt: Whenever the islanders are hanging upside down, doing handstands, or are otherwise in a position where the parts of their bodies their loincloths and grass skirts cover should logically be uncovered, said loincloths and skirts usually stay down somehow. Even when we do get to see what's underneath, the islanders have Barbie Doll Anatomy anyway.
  • Same with Mike. The end of an episode has her bedridden with her leg in a cast and elevated with a weight. When the weight gives heavier, it pulls Mike up and hangs her upside down with her skirt staying where it is.
• Multi-Character Title: The names of the characters Mike, Lu, and Og are in the title.
• Mythology Gag: Co-creator Mikhail Aldahin's short film "Poumse", the partial inspiration for the show, was about a salesman who came to sell his items to a group of island natives. This was eventually reworked as "The King Of Curtains".
• Naked People Are Funny: In "Hot Couture", Og contemplates what he'll wear for Mike's fashion show. While Lu wears Goat like a fur boa, Alfred wears live snakes, Wendel wears ostrich feathers, Margery wears a huge skirt and a crab in her hair, and Queeks wears seaweed, Og's ultimate decision is to take off his loincloth, the one article of clothing he wears at all.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Og is the nice, creating inventions to make Mike feel at her old home, Lu is the mean, being self-centered and demanding, and Mike is in between, as she tries to adapt to her new home.
• No Name Given: The nature documentary maker in "Alfred, Lord of the Jungle" is never given a name.
• Not in Front of the Parrot!: "Repeat After Me" has Mike get in trouble when Wendel's parrot Skipper repeats her criticisms in front of the islanders.
• Not-So-Innocent Whistle: Og does this in "A Freudian Slip" after throwing pies at Mike, Pig, and Goat.
• The One Who Wears Shoes: Mike is a rare human example. She wears shoes while everyone else on the island goes barefoot.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Mike, being from the city, is more knowledgeable and sensible than everyone else on the island.
  • Og, Queeks, and the animals to a lesser extent, though this usually depends on the episode.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: In "The Hunter and the Hunted", Mike tells Alfred that he's the best hunter she's ever known. Alfred replies that he's the only hunter she knows.
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: The island has a trio of pirates who are the shipwrecked descendants of the pirates who shipwrecked the island's other inhabitants.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The three pirates never really do anything pirate-like, due to no longer having a ship. The closest would be their attempts at stealing Lancelot to make turtle soup from him.
• Politicians Kiss Babies: "We the People" uses a variant involving baby animals where Mike kisses a piglet. Wendel's attempt to score points by kissing a baby porcupine doesn't go so well.
• Right Behind Me: In "Night Of The Living Ancestors", Lu is badmouthing her deceased Aunt Lulu, calling her a "self-centered, old hag". Guess whose ghost was behind her.
• Royal Brat: Lu believes that the fact she is a princess entitles her to always have her way.
• Say My Name: Lu frequently screams Lancelot's name whenever he leaves her sight.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Mike goes nuts over the Albonquetine inhabitants' inabilities to understand how baseball works in "Sultans Of Swat".
  • Og in "Hot Dog" when he goes berserk over Mike's insistence that hot dogs should be prepared and eaten messily.
• Scenery Censor: In "Fathers and Pies", Og ends up naked when blasted out of his lab by his father's bumbling. His genitals are covered by pieces of machinery when this happens.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Queeks is elderly and doesn't give anyone his respect.
• Serious Business: Mike with baseball.
  Og: Hey, it's only a game.
  Mike: Only a game? ONLY A GAME?!? Baseball is not only a game! Baseball is THE game!
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In "Giant Steps", Wendel told everyone that a giant is on an annual rampage and Queeks gets Mike to fetch three things (a shark's tooth, a spider web, and and eggshell) to keep the "giant" away. However, it turned out that the giant story was metaphorical for the rainy season and that Margery had the objects the whole time, revealing that Mike had to go get those things for nothing.
• Short-Runner: By any standard, but also for a cable cartoon series.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Lu constantly brags about being the best at everything, being a self-entitled brat. This never ends well for her.
• Smurfing: When Mike starts hallucinating from lack of hot dogs in "Hot Dog", she sees the other characters as hot dogs that say "hot dog" in place of every other word. "We can get along just hot-dog without hot-dog."
• Springtime for Hitler: In "For The Love Of Mike", the Cuzzlewitz boys go crazy for Mike and her attempts to drive them away get them even more attracted to her. And that included cooking terrible food and covering herself with bat guano! She finally gets them away by wearing a dress and putting on perfume.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • The Albonquetines (sans Margery) all have buck teeth. Likewise, the Cuzzlewitz have buck teeth from the bottom set.
  • The ghosts from "Night Of The Living Ancestors" looks like older versions of the islanders.
• Sudden Anatomy:
  • In "The Three Amigas", Mike suggests that she, Lu, and Hermione paint their nails. In the next scene, they suddenly have visible and painted nails.
  • Same goes for Lu when she told Mike to trim her toenails in "To Serve Lu".
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In "A Learning Experience"
  Lu: There are no other kids in this class! And if there were other kids, and I'm not saying that there are, they would not be Cuzzlewitz. Because no one in their right mind would be caught dead with a Cuzzlewitz!
• Taken for Granite: While planning a party in "Jujubombs", Lu gets coated with hard candy by Mike and Og (since they're sick of her jujubomb addiction), and becomes her own centerpiece.
  • A nice aspect is that she doesn't really mind, licking her own lips to taste all the candy she wants.
• Theme Initials: Mike's former friends from New York are named Melissa and Max.
• Theme Tune Rap: The Ending Theme is a rap about the things you won't find on the island:
  "Ain't no cars, no phones, ain't no parking zones, ain't no chaperones, ain't no leprechauns..."
• This Explains So Much: In "The Great Snipe Hunt", Mike quips that it explains a lot after being told that the Albonquetine rite of passage involves hitting oneself in the head with a rock.
• Tomboyish Name: Mike is usually a boy's name. Justified in that Mike's real name is the more feminine Michelanne, but she hates being called that.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Mike is more interested in the superhero Action Guy than anything girly, while Lu is all about being a princess.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mike is revealed to like hot dogs in "Hot Dogs", Lu becomes addicted to a candy known as jujubombs in "Jujubombs", and the three pirates always try to capture Lancelot because they've gone so long without turtle soup.
• Tropical Island Adventure: The series is set on a tropical island known as Albonquetine.
• Two Shorts: Every episode consists of two 10-minute shorts.
• Unstoppable Mailman: Floyd from "Scuba Doobie Doo" doesn't let anything stop him from delivering the mail, despite being a ditz.
• Use Your Head: When Lu tries to think of a plan to put her face on the island's new currency in "Money", she says to herself "Use your head", giving her the idea to ram her head into the printing press.
• Vague Age: We don't know Mike's age, but most articles say she's around 11 or 12. Subverted with Lu and Og; Lu is revealed to be 10 in "High Rise", while Og turns 7 in "The Great Snipe Hunt".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Alfred and the wombat he tries to hunt occasionally act friendly towards one another when the former isn't chasing the latter.
• Vocal Dissonance:
  • The Albonquetines dress in faux-Polynesian attire, but speak in proper British accents. Justified, as their ancestors were British. Strangely, Lu and Og speak with more American dialects.
  • Zig-zagged with the Cuzzlewitz. Haggis and the more intelligent and proper Hermione both speak in Scottish accents, while Baggis sounds exactly what you'd expect an uncivilized native to sound like.
• Walk This Way: In "Yo Ho Who", the captain leads the kids to treasure and as the captain follows what the map says, the kids follow what he says.
• Wild Child: The Cuzzlewitz kids Haggis and Baggis are notably less civilized than the Albonquetine natives. Subverted with their sister, Hermione, who is more erudite and well-mannered than her brothers.
• With Friends Like These...: Mike says this at the end of "Scuba Doobie Doo" after learning that her friends from New York known as Melissa and Max have chosen to abandon her since she first arrived to the island.

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