I thought this episode was a disappointment, it wasn't bad or anything, but given how much
Frugal Lucre was wasted here, it's still frustrating to watch. With a
Drakken/Frugal Lucre teamup the jokes should've practicly wrote themselves, but for some jarring reason they didn't.
Frugal Lucre, just didn't feel like
Frugal Lucre at all, he should've been annoying the hell out of
Drakken the whole time, he should've been pressing buttons that he has no idea what they do, and going off on rants that Drakken tries to tune out (like back in prison). But it just felt like his
dialogue/characterization was watered down and merely used for the sake of plot advancement without the writer having any sort of fun with the premise.
are you saying that Shego looks good with Martin Smarty rather with Drakken
I remember
Tom Hart mentioning that he had trouble with editing this one, and it somewhat shows. It just felt like
Henry Gilroy (the episode's writer) just didn't get the character of
Frugal Lucre at all, and the end result just left me wondering why the hell was
Kurt Weldon not the one writing this episode? Because by all rights he should've been writing this one, and not that lame Professor Dementor episode. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed some of
Henry Gilroy's work in the past (
Kid Stuff from
Justice League Unlimited is one of the funniest episodes from JLU's run), but here he never even gets the plot off the ground. Also Artie Smarty was really annoying, maybe not as annoying as cousin Shawn, Prince Wally, or Bonnie Rockwaller; but still he got on this viewers nerves one too many times. And don't even get me started on how he ended up saving everyone.
There are a couple positives to be found here. The fight scenes, the storyboarding, and the animation were all fantastic (this episode being one of
Hanho Heung Up's best looking episodes from season 4), nice to hear
J.K. Simmons again (hard to believe that that's his voice), I liked the
Kim-Ron moment at the end, though
Shego had the best moment in the end credits.
It's a shame that the plot wasn't better executed, if it was, this could've been a belter. Sadly it wasn't.
Again, not bad or anything. Just an episode that failed to live up to its potential.